Our Weekend

I spend the first part of my Saturday morning finalising my newsletter and writing other bits and pieces.  Occasionally I go for a walk – but not this week!

The children have a short check list though there are many details hidden in these headings:

• Chores (regularly daily chores)
• Extra Chores (during the week they are responsible for one area of the house, if they haven’t done all the chores necessary then they finish up on the Saturday.)
• Desk (tidy their table-top trays, put away all books as they will use their table during the weekend for creative projects)
• Clothes for Sunday (ironing)
• Cook’s helper (Joshua this week) also needs to cook morning tea

I am supposed to do homemaking chores, prepare raw food and food for Sunday and then finish my lesson planning for the coming week.  This week most of my cooking time was in preparation for guests this evening.

 

Sunday – we all slept in as it was a late night last night.  Not only did our friends stay late, Josh, Pete and I began an indepth conversation on pessimism, optimism and the joy of the Lord.  We didn’t get to bed till late.

We skipped our regular family cooked breakfast this week but as the kids and I ate a very quick breakfast of cereal we pulled out a worksheet Daniel had tried to fill in during last week’s sermon to revise the sermon.   He had struggled to take notes during the sermon as it wasn’t based on a Bible story/character.  We had a great discussion as we reviewed Josh Harris’  Feeding the Flesh cartoon as this summarised the sermon (though the minister didn’t use this example.)  Daniel took the book – Dug Down Deep – to share with the other kids in his discussion group but they didn’t have time – the leader is going to talk about it another time.

After church we all spent the afternoon relaxing in some way:

• Pete did some reading, a nano-nap, then pottered in the garden and put up a netball ring for the girls in the shed.
• Joshua helped Daniel download blender.org and played a war game
• Jessica read and later in the afternoon put the new netball ring to good use
• Nomi read, played on the computer, and joined Jess with the netball
• Daniel put together a wooden kit, played around with blender, rode his bike and joined the girls with the netball.
• I prepared lessons for tomorrow!  We have 3 little boys join us for the morning – we will work with a FIAR book.  I love  FIAR and so miss it since my kids have grown a bit too old.  The kids kept popping in with suggestions and memories as I was trying to choose a book – I eventually chose Harold and the Purple Crayon – which the girls have great memories of.

For our thinking movie we watched another History of Christianity and Western Civilization.  We were on track time wise so we watched the dvd before dinner, and sat up at the table to eat and discuss it.

 

Bits and Pieces that Happened:

Cook’s helper:  Jessica – since I didn’t have access to my blog last week I didn’t record what Jess cooked.

Monday:  Piano lessons have changed again – now they are Monday morning at 8.30.  This is a really good change.  At first I was hesitant to have something ‘interrupt’ our Monday morning start to the week, but Daniel and I can continue with our regular routine and I don’t think it will have much of an impact at all.  The piano teacher has another commitment after us so the lessons won’t drag on – though we will miss the chats we used to have together.

As I said, we had 3 little boys join us for our homeschooling morning – J6, M5, L3.  They arrived at 8.30 – we went straight into reading Harold and the Purple Crayon.  They were familiar with the story via a DVD.

• We read the story and discussed how we would have solved the problems Harold faced
• We then drew different storylines (as if we had the purple crayon).  I managed for find 5 purple pencils (3 boys, plus piano teacher’s son, plus Daniel).
• I had the boys all read inbetween lessons – during this time I refreshed myself on the lesson plan and collected paper, scissors, glue, books etc.
• We then discussed fractions – though I didn’t use that word, we talked about cutting a pie up evenly so we could share it.  They made a notebook page to show this.
• We then went outside and looked at what we could see and then we drew in the air – kind of like tracing – but keeping one long line like Harold did.
• We came inside and read another Before FIAR book, I am an artist.
• Morning tea time – everyone went outside to play in the cubby or on the veranda as I prepared some fruit.
• We started to talk about the moon and the phases of the moon when it dawned on me that it would be best to pull out a model Pete made our kids to show how the sun shines on the earth making night and day and how it shines on the moon too.   They loved this.  They then completed another notebook page showing the sun, earth and moon.  It was great to see their individual interests shine as they did their notebook pages.  J6 – created a slide which showed the different phases of the moon, and M5 drew an extra drawing of all the planets.  L3 just had a fun time!!
• While I prepared lunch they played with different toy sets or outside.
• When they left I was tired, but well pleased with our day.

I write in detail what we did, as people often wonder how FIAR works.  The only difference here is that we did Art and Science on one day and we did no phonics.  I continue to be sad that Daniel hasn’t had FIAR as a memory – I am toying with the idea of finding a way to share the books with him – but that is another post!

 

Tuesday – We decided to take time off this morning to go to a waterhole so I kept in the office till time to go and the kids worked on their independent studies and the girls put our picnic lunch together.  Josh had to work today – as there was a break in the weather making it dry enough to do a little mowing so we waited till he came home before we headed off.

The waterhole was full and fast flowing.  We had it all to ourselves.  Yesterday was a public holiday and there would have been people everywhere.  One of the benefits of being self employed and homeschooling is that you can enjoy these types of spots when everyone else has commitments!

 

Wednesday – I woke at 3.30am and when I wake in the morning I very rarely can get back to sleep.  So I sat at the keyboard and managed to get some good work done.  But it wiped me for the rest of the day.

Nomi and Daniel started with their independent work, then we had Bible study together around morning tea time.  I then pulled out our Geography book but as I read the lines where blurring and I’m not sure my sentences made much sense.  I needed a nap!

I spent the rest of the afternoon resting – a bit of scrapbooking and a DVD.

To be honest – I don’t know what the kids were doing because they were down in the family room with a sign up saying “Mum – Do not Enter” – which is what happens when presents are being worked on!

Nomi had a lady from church come out to visit to talk about art.  She stayed for about 1 hour and they had a good time, inspiring each other.  There is some talk about her showing Nomi some different projects and Nomi showing her how to sew.  Sounds like a fair deal to me!!  I love it when people in the community step forward and connect with my kids based on the kids’ interests and talents.

Jess helped me cook dinner and afterwards prepared three parcels for me to post tomorrow.  She is responsible for all my parcel dispatches.  We had stuffed zucchini (which was a new recipe) and leftover roast.  Daniel said to me that he liked the zucchini and he was glad he had given it a go – he is trying to taste new things; actually, I’m trying to get him to eat new things because often it takes more than just the first tasting to get used to new textures and flavours.

 

Thursday – our start was fairly normal – out the door by 7.15am with Jess, Nomi and Daniel ready to do the week’s grocery shop.  Actually I was doing two week’s grocery shop as I’ll be away next Thursday and I wanted to cover the family with food for that time.

We finish our grocery shopping in time to drop Jess and Nomi off at Mainly Music.  They are a part of the team that runs this outreach every week.  Just as we turned the corner Mrs G (co-ordinator) phoned to say that the toilets in the building were seriously blocked and so there would be no Mainly Music this week.

So the girls had the morning off – the sad thing about that was that I was going to go out ‘on a date’ with Daniel just him and me, and that wasn’t now going to happen.  Hopefully I’ll find some time before I head off next week.  We hung around town till we could get to the post office and then headed home.

The good thing about them having the morning off was that they could now help unpack all the groceries – the worse thing about grocery shopping, especially when you shop for two weeks!

The rest of the morning was spent on individual studies and pursuits.  Daniel struggled – he is frustrated at the moment as he has all these building ideas in his head but he doesn’t have the strength or skill to carry them out.  Pete and I are working on this but it has me a little stumped as to what to try next, and it breaks my heart to see him so frustrated internally.

Thursday night is our Bible study night so we had an early dinner so we could have everything ready for when people arrived.  It was a good discussion – the session was on Philosophy and ethics and the challenge we were left with was “Do we live like we believe God is?”

 

Friday – was our monthly homeschool co-op.  Today 8 families gathered together at our place.  We started with a character session on Thoroughness, had morning tea and then our activities.  For the older than 10 age group they did drama for 1.5hours – the mum who took the group introduced them to what is drama, they talked about their imaginations and then went through various exercises to begin to get comfortable with using their voice, face, and body.  The younger group had a short session like “Show and Tell” where a few kids brought something to talk about.  Then they did a series of 6 science experiments led by one of the mums.  One of the nicest parts of the co-op is when all the activity is over, the kids run around outside (it was a beautiful overcast, breezey day) and the mums sit in the lounge to catch up.

Our kids spent the afternoon working on their various projects – once again I was shut out of one end of the house!  Actually I wasn’t up for much anyway as I had a migraine so I just rested.  Then we heard about the earthquake and tsunami in Japan so I watched the news and dozed.

The kids decided to stay home from the youth Bible study this week.  So we had a family movie night which greatly blessed Daniel as he misses these nights when the big kids all go out.  After the movie I took myself off to bed though I believe the boys – Peter, Josh and Daniel stayed up and watched a documentary on the development of the U-boat.  Daniel was very excited to see this on the TV as he had made a model U-boat last year.