Blog
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How To Raise a Family of Readers
How to raise a family of readers? Reading in our household is an integral part of our family culture: our children are read to from birth through to their teenage years, reading independently is nurtured, and reading as a pastime is highly valued. Our children are surrounded by books as our home literally contains thousands of books: books purchased, gifted and found at book sales. Both my husband and I are readers as are our children; conversations, activities and movie watching are entwined around our love of reading. Simply, reading is something we do as a family. Reflecting upon how we have grown a reading culture, I decided to ask…
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My Daybook: 17th February, 2019
Outside my window… it’s late at night, out in the bush it’s totally dark and quiet, blessed to live in the bush I am thankful… for my husband, madly in love with this man, every day I wonder ‘how did I get so lucky?’ really I am so blessed. We celebrated our birthdays last week, two days apart, and spent the night away in our nearest Beach City. Two days to enjoy eating out, wandering the shops and just time together, uninterrupted. Though sometimes you have to laugh, there we were thinking no children, no teenagers only to discover our resort was booked out for the AFL matches, we were surrounded…
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My Daybook: 15th January, 2019
Outside my window… the children are playing in the pool. We put up a small, only 84cm/33in tall, above ground pool for Christmas and it has been immensely popular, hours and hours of waterplay I am thankful… that we had all our children home for Christmas, it’s always a blessing when we have a full house. It was Carpenter and Rose’s first, and last Christmas as an engaged couple, next Christmas they’ll be married! I am thinking… it’s not long until we ‘launch’ Princess (17) into the world. It’s her last academic year at home and part of her transition will include Tafe, contemplating my tick boxes, all the skills…
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2019: Happy New Year!
Happy New Year 🙂 May 2019 bring you many blessings. Well we’ve had the laziest start to the New Year; late nights, late mornings, loads of reading, jigsaw ‘battles’, board games, floating away hours in our new little pool, days by the River, essentially the perfect recipe for Summer days, recharging from an epic year and gearing up for no doubt another epic year. At some stage during our children’s teen years our lives became, full to the brim and overflowing and they have flowed continuously since. This year our eldest Son Carpenter will marry his darling fiancee Rose, so I imagine that will guarantee to top our charts of…
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The Australian Homeschool Summit is Back and I’m Talking Again!!
The Australian Homeschool Summit (Online) is back…and once again I’m going to be one of the workshop presenters What I’m Presenting This time I’m going to be sharing about Centering Your Education Around Australian Living Books. I’m thrilled to be talking about a topic that is near and dear to my heart. I admit to being rather passionate about Australian Living Books, the type of passion in which I can cause others’ eyes to glaze over. However amongst my fellow home educators I’m with my people and I’m sure you’re just as keen about Aussie Book love, if not you will be by the time I’ve finished 😉 I’ll be…
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2018: A Year in Review
So hard to believe we’re already in 2019! Before we move forward towards the New Year let’s have a quick recap of the Old Year, like all years since forever it was jam packed with life. My new refrain is ‘boring is great, I love boring’ though there were not many boring moments in 2018.  It was a fantastic year, so much happening, many special moments, although there were times we barely held on by our fingertips. Let’s get to recapping the old so we can begin the New. Since we began moving into life with older teens I find my time and energy is more limited, so alas blogging for…
- Blog, Home Education, Home Education - Language Arts, Home Education - Leaping into Literature, Learning
Leaping into Literature: Animals & Anthropomorphism
The past fortnight saw us once again diving deep into our Leaping into Literature immersion. This fortnight we focused on reading our way through our collection of Animal and Anthropomorphism (attribution of human characteristics & behaviour to animals) picture books. We discovered and re-discovered some real treasures, we also discovered some total duds. When well done, picture books can be wonderful avenues for learning, informative and engaging, and springboards for the imagination, Jack Jack (12) was so inspired by one book he began re-writing plot twists. Yet some picture books can be such a disappointment, the illustrations gorgeous but the text dull, the premise of the book rich with possibility but…
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First Holy Communion for Bass
Three weeks ago Bass (7) was blessed to receive Our Lord for the first time during a Missa Cantata at the Carmelite Monastery in my nearby childhood town. Extra special was that he received Our Blessed Lord for the first time from our Bishop Emeritus, who has also given First Holy Communion to seven of Bass’ older siblings,  all bar our oldest, the continuity is treasured. Our first seven children were also all Confirmed by our Bishop Emeritus, though Jem and Bass were Confirmed at Marian Valley. The Sisters were so excited that Bass was receiving his First Holy Communion with them 🙂 The Missa Cantata in the Southern Hemisphere has…
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26 Australian Picture Books for Remembrance Day
Remembrance Day, the 11th of November 2018 marks the 100th anniversary of the Armistice which ended the First World War. Tomorrow at 11am a minute’s silence will be held around the Nation to remember those who have died in Wars. When attempting to explain War with children, the why’s and how’s are often more easily understood through books, picture books create a space to discuss and ponder, to begin to grapple with the enormity of the sacrifices made and the complexity of issues. Online Database of Australian Books Be sure to head on over to our Online Database of Australian Books to find more books about our War Years.…
