I share this long post each week – which I write up bit by bit through the week – to help people who are new to a lifestyle of learning, or to a discipleship approach see what a day can look like.  My days will look different than your days but I want to show the ideas

• that we take our children into our life and teach them in whatever we do,
• that we need to put relationships and heart issues first,
• that we need to talk to our children,
• that they will learn in real life type situations and
• that we balance lifestyle-learning with book-learning, there are seasons in our days, weeks, months, year!

So bear with me as I document our days – to be honest it helps me keep those discipleship focuses too!

Our Weekend

Saturday

I was at the Boyanup Christian Homeschool Conference; but I’ve already written about that here.

Sunday

Family went to church and afterwards Daniel went to a friend’s birthday party.  His friend had been waiting till all his friends came back from their family holidays in order to celebrate with him.

Conference wraps up and the two ladies from Kununurra, Caroline and her husband and I head out for dinner.  Not raw – but an award winning salad.

Bits of our Week:

Cook’s Helper: Daniel

• Monday – Lasagne – bought from the store!
• Tuesday – Spaghetti Bolognaise – learning to brown the mince
• Wednesday – Fried Potato and Poached Eggs and salad – learning to poach eggs and practicing peeling potatoes
• Thursday – Fried Rice – Daniel was focused on planning his birthday party so I prepared this myself.
• Friday – I bought a whole pumpkin the other day when there wasn’t much on the shelves so we will have a few pumpkin dishes over the next few days! Tonight we’ll have pumpkin boiled in coconut milk served with rice.

Monday

(Still in Boyanup at this stage)  We leave Boyanup early Monday morning – catch up with my friend who has my Thermomix and then head to the airport.  My two friends from Kununurra and I feel very much the country folk as we see the crowd around us!  A lot of turbulence on the flight – it was very nice to be home.

Halfway up the drive Pete stops and puts a blindfold on…. Ahhh now they are going to start talking!!  I had a feeling they were up to something!

My front yard has had a makeover.  Unfortunately I don’t have a before / after photo to share with you but the front yard did need some attention.  The kids worked with Peter from the time I left till the morning I arrived.  They moved the old rose bed, replaced it all with beautiful lawn, put in new reticulation, and set up a water feature.  Pete and I had talked about it so he knew what was in my mind but I was never expecting a water feature!  It was all a very nice surprise.

Over dinner we watched the video footage the kids took during the project – Front yard Blitz!  (take off of TV Show – Backyard Blitz).  I don’t think we’ll be sharing that video – it was very wobbly, lots of zooming in and out and we were left a little sea-sick while watching it!  The kids could see very quickly where they went wrong and are ready to give videoing another go next project.

For those who are learning to see learning in our lifestyle this week looks like they didn’t do much desk work (they tell me they did a little) but the concept of working as a team, of planning such a project, of doing things in a sequence and growing in their understanding of hard work all plays a part in their education.  Then there are the things that they learnt with the video-ing.  Plus the kids were responsible for maintaining the house and cooking each evening meal.  Plenty of learning going on!

 

Tuesday

First up today is to prepare the house for visitors!  The accountants were here by 8.00am so before then we needed to spruce up the house – though the kids had managed to keep everything fairly much in order while I was gone the inside of the house really did look like everyone had been focusing on the outside of the house!!  So within the hour we had the floor vacuumed, windows shining, laundry done and general pick up, plus fresh muffins to serve.  It was good to have such an excuse to make us work hard!

I am very exhausted!  Feel like a Mack truck has hit me – so not up to much today (once the accountants left!)  As I rested Jess talked to me about her Bible study and her history.  With Bible study she has come to a halt and wasn’t sure how to write what she has learnt.  As we talked about it we realised she has learnt more about study skills than content but that is okay.  She’ll move onto a new study tomorrow.  We looked at her history resources as she tries to decide whether to notebook or lapbook World War II.  Not sure she’s decided completely but she is going to write a few notebook pages to start with.

Josh also spoke to me about his studies.  He is working on an essay and needed to talk it through.  I helped him with his outline/organisation and he went off and wrote an essay he is happy with.  He is working on a unit on Australian politics – I am really glad Pete is here to talk about his thoughts (out of my league!)

Pete went out for dinner on business, so the kids took their dinner down to the family room to listen to an audio Josh wanted to share.

 

Wednesday

Today was a slow and late start – think the rain is slowing everyone down!!  After we completed our chores and the house was all tidy we packed up and visited our friends.   My friend wanted to talk about the conference and see how things went.  The kids are always up for a play-date!

Early afternoon I took Nomi to the podiatrist to remove some of her toenail.  Once the podiatrist saw things again she decided to do both toes! Nomi handled it amazingly – she chatted and snapped photos the whole way through So Nomi spent the afternoon feet up watching a movie – it didn’t take long for us all to congregate together and enjoy the movie with her.

While we were in town Jess completed her Keepers homework – working on some scrapbook pages using various techniques.

 

Thursday

Even though I was up early working on our menu plan and shopping list I wasn’t ready to go shopping this morning so we gave that a miss – probably go tomorrow morning.  We usually go before dropping the girls off at Mainly Music at 8.15.  Nomi stayed home from Mainly Music due to her sore toes (whoever said it wouldn’t hurt – was wrong!!)  She worked on her scrapbook pages for Keepers.   Daniel and I picked up a bit of fruit and veg though.  After seeing the shelves completely empty (not a vegetable in town) it is wonderful to see the fruit and Veg section filled up (though some of the other shelves were running a bit low – cereal, toilet paper, biscuits, cold stuff).

After we unpacked the groceries Daniel asked his Dad to help him refill the windscreen water on my car.  I worked in the kitchen – I was very uneconomical with my time but I made some raw wraps (from zucchini), veggie concentrate (to use instead of veggie stock powder) and salad for lunch with a homemade salad dressing.  I was very pleased to hear that 3 out of 4 kids actually asked for salad for lunch.  We are making progress!

This afternoon was Keepers where our friends joined us – I’m teaching the girls digital scrapbooking and today they worked with text and fonts.  They are learning heaps and are becoming very familiar with the software.

Pete raced into town to sign Daniel up for Cricket for this season – gave Josh an opportunity for driving.  Josh has volunteered again to help coach cricket with the young boys.

Bible study – only one other person turned up and since we hadn’t spoken to them for a while (with seasonal comings and goings) we spent the evening chatting about a few challenges and situations they have found themselves in, we prayed together and called it a night!

 

Friday

Another day where I’m not focused!  Hopefully I’ll be upto it again on Monday.  We gathered together for a quick family devotion – There is only One God (and the Trinity) and then Nomi, Daniel and I worked through a bit more of our Bible study.  Then the kids worked on independent work and projects.  I pottered here and there – can’t say what I really did.

Jessica has started working on Facets – a magazine she helps me publish 3 times a year.

Just before lunch I crashed on the couch – two hours later I surfaced feeling a little better.  I slept through everyone making their own lunch and cleaning up.  I spent the afternoon reading a novel.  Don’t do that too often.  By dinner time I was feeling a bit chirpier.  Pete and Josh went into town and picked up the few groceries we needed for the weekend.

We had an earlier dinner – watched a episode of Hogan’s Heroes while we ate.  Pete then took the older three off to Bible Study in town.  Daniel and I cleaned up the house; then Pete joined us for a game of Take Two.  Daniel turned on the last bit of Better Homes and Garden while I went into town to pick up the kids.  They are starting a study on Spending Time with Jesus which is a good topic – timely too.  They also spent time talking about whether Tattoos are wrong for Christians.  We spent most of our time talking about this coming home.  It was a good conversation as I challenged my children to think through scripture – the whole of scripture, not just one verse.  I then challenged them to think through the consequences of taking a particular line.  God’s grace is for all and our standards need to fit all situations if they are based on God’s Word.  We could have talked for hours but I packed the kids off to bed and had an early-ish night myself.