Monday

I thought I would do another series of what happens in our house – day by day.

I woke up on Monday morning with focus.  My daughter, Jessica, has encouraged me to turn off my computer at night time in order to help me do the right thing in the mornings.  So this morning I had my Quiet Time, booted up my computer, read an email that I knew I wanted to pray about and then headed off for my walk.  I like to listen to teaching audios while I walk so between this and prayer it is an encouraging time.

The rest of the morning routine went well – we were ready to start our family devotions at 8.30 (a bit late but that is okay we are about flexibility) and then a tradesman came to fix our fridge door (it fell off a few weeks ago!)  So I sent the kids off to do their Discipline studies – Math, and finishing off any notebook pages.

We started 9.00 with family devotions and prayer.  We are doing a study on truths that will help us with our family relationships.  I’m basing this on the One Another scriptures though we are taking a little rabbit trail on Honour for this week.

Jessica then went off and worked on her own studies for the day.

I introduced our new Bible Study to Nomi and Daniel.  We are going to do a quick overview of the Bible.  Due to our study schedule and other commitments we will only get through the Old Testament this year, though will do the New Testament next year.  After each significant point in the lesson we paused, talked about what I’d just read and made a notebook page (lapbook fold).

Because of our late start we did not get to Daniel’s reading lesson or living math today.  I’m not too worried about this at this stage as Daniel is reading every spare minute and we have phonics lessons on a need-to-know basis as he reads his books.  Though I do intend to continue formal lessons with him.

By this stage I was feeling pretty blah so I packed myself off to bed for a nap – but Jess needed me for her math so I did that.

Then I contined a read aloud to Nomi and Daniel for their General studies (we are doing a history/geography unit using Tiner’s Exploring Planet Earth – and I’m supplementing with a few picture book stories.)  By 11.00 I could not focus on the words any more and I needed sleep badly so I took myself off again, telling the kids to wake me in 1 hour.  Which they did, and I told them to give me antoher ½ hour.  Which they did.

While I was asleep Nomi and Daniel continued their discipline / independent studies, and then turned on an audio story and kept their hands busy with a few different creative projects.

After lunch I sat and watched a teaching DVD.  Jess sat with me for a while.  At one point I didn’t understand what was being said, she explained it to me.  What a blessing!  At another point in the lecture I called Josh in to listen to an illustration that I thought he would appreciate – this ended up in talking about some heart issues.

I usually go into town on a Monday afternoon and catch up with a friend for a prayer time but I felt too blah so I cancelled that and continued to watch my DVD.

Daniel had some quiet reading time and then tried to set up his computer based microscope.  I tried to help him, but it didn’t start working till Josh and Jess gave him some of their time to sort it out.

Nomi spent the afternoon sewing.  The machine needle kept breaking and she didn’t know why.  I went and had a look-see to find that she was using the wrong foot.  This was a good lesson for both of us.  For me, I need to get up sometimes and go to the problem.  And for Nomi she learnt more about the sewing machine.  There was a few other times I interacted with Nomi through the afternoon as she worked on her projects.

Jessica jumped from project to project.  She tried to print out her skirt pattern but the computer kept crashing (I think she had too many windows open).  She worked on her gift/birthday calendar, and on a bag she is making.  At one stage in the afternoon I took a break from my DVD and talked to her about her Bible study book – Walking Wisely by Charles Stanley, there was a point there she wasn’t so sure about.

During the day I edited an assignment of Joshua’s and encouraged him not to leave it to the last hour before he submitted it.  He also walked me through how he intends to keep on top of his assignments and due-dates.

We had early chores as we were going out to a Christening service and dinner.  As we prepared for the evening it was a good opportunity to share with the kids that we had dedicated each of them when they were babies.  This meant that we thanked the Lord for them, that we gave them to the Lord for his service and asked that He would guide us in bringing each of them up in His ways.   We discussed the story of Hannah and Sammuel.

I was thinking, before I started to write this summary, that if I just took the one on one interaction I had with each of my children I could say that they had a day of worthwhile learning opportunities (and then as an extra they had the specific lesson times as well.)  This post is very long and wordy and I don’t know how many of you (my readers) have made it to the end – but the reason that I write these summaries of my days every so often is to remind me, and to encourage you – that so much goes on in our homes, in our family and in the hearts of our children that we need to be encouraged that learning does happen!