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Leaping Into Literature: A Tradition Returns
Way back in 2013 I had an idea and like all great ideas it took off, blazing a path. The idea was to devote the whole of Term 4 to an immersion in literature, predominately with a focus on quality picture books. When introducing new ideas to our children I need to carefully consider as often my great ideas quickly become firm Tradition, as has our Leaping into Literature, which now reaches it’s 6th year!! Over the years, with our older children particularly in mind, we have expanded our Leaping into Literature Term to include another Tradition, our Bookworm. This is a favourite, oft visited reading competition which the whole…
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7 Quick Takes: Lots of Projects
Head on over to This Ain’t the Lyceum to read more 7QT for this week. 1 We use the Readerware database to keep track of our extensive collections of movies and books. I love being able to track what books (and movies) we do and don’t have and one day I’m going to splurge and buy the mobile phone app as well, it will save having to ring from town asking my teens to check the database. It’s rather fun hearing the beep as the scanner reads each bar code as new books enter our home (and the database), yep I’m a nerd. One thing irks me though, some sellers place their price tag…
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Flooring The Last Room! Our Room
Early September we finished flooring the last of the children’s bedrooms which finished off our supply of salvaged floorboards from the Convent school. We still needed flooring for our bedroom so we followed leads for new boards, one being the purchase of second hand boards from a local demolition company, but at $3.50/lineal metre this translated to $850 for one room! PC is an accountant at a local plywood company and we began considering the option of plywood floorboards. I admit I held some biased beliefs against ply, I might have called it ‘fake timber’ and so needed to become more flexible and knowledgeable in my thinking 😉 PC’s work had a couple of…
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Homeschool Burnout & Recovery
Nearly twelve years ago we achieved our dream, one we’d been working towards for years. We finally purchased our rural property! It was the best of both worlds, 147 acres/49 ha only 15 minutes from town. The property was everything we had looked for with the variety we wanted. It was; cleared, semi-cleared and bush, there were flats and hills, a creek and dams. Plenty of land for the children to explore and enjoy, a dam to swim in complete with a flying fox and canoes, space for a dune buggy to roar around in and trees to build a tree house in, places to go camping, freedom to be…
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7 Quick Takes: Spinning Plates
Head on over to This Ain’t the Lyceum to read more 7QT for this week. 1 When I take a look at our calendar for the upcoming month I nearly hyperventilate, there is so much happening in our life at present, so many ‘plates’ I need to start ‘spinning’ and keep them spinning weeks prior to the events. Two birthdays, which translates to deciding on and ordering presents online weeks ahead, it is also a party year for one child, so invites to go out and party games and food to be planned and executed. There’s my sister’s engagement party which will involve a seven hour round trip in one day. A Family Reunion…
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Flooring Another Bedroom
Inspired by the ease and quickness of flooring Jelly Bean’s bedroom, the weekend before last we continued on and laid the floorboards in the bedroom of our youngest two. Rather exciting as this means all the children’s bedrooms are now sporting floorboards, we only have our bedroom left to floor and we have done the whole house! Although we have also officially run out of the floorboards we salvaged all those years ago from the Convent school and will have to source more boards for our room. Once PC started us off, Jelly Bean 14 and I kept up a steady pace of laying and nailing, whilst PC measured and cut boards out…
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7 Quick Takes: Engagements And More Engagements
Head on over to This Ain’t the Lyceum to read more 7QT for this week. 1 Just over a month ago I wrote my first 7 Quick Takes after four years and had every intention regards sharing 7QT’s regularly, and yet three more 7QT’s have gone by and I’ve been missing in action. Though if you’ve been reading my blog you’d realise plenty has been happening here in the interim. Five days after that post we were threatened with a bushfire, in which we were evacuated and subsequently had 85% of our land burnt, fortunately our house was spared. Too we’ve been enjoying the news and flurry of action since our eldest son Carpenter became…
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Floorboards For A Bedroom
A few weekends back we turned out attentions towards flooring bedrooms. We are ‘on the home run’ now with only three rooms, all bedrooms to go! Which is fortunate as we are also nearing the end of our floorboard stacks. All timbers piles were dismantled and boards sorted into lengths. First up we began with flooring Jelly Bean’s room, she was rather excited by this prospect and couldn’t wait to have her room floored. Poor PC had badly pinched the nerves in his neck the day before but he bravely soldiered on and mostly alone as there were other happenings that weekend. It was the same routine as always; placing green…
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Receiving The Sacrament of Confirmation
Last month our two youngest boys, Jem 9 and Bass 7 received the Sacrament of Confirmation, the second of the three sacraments of Christian initiation into the Catholic Church. Confirmation completes Baptism, by which in the laying on of hands and the anointing with Chrism Oil, which first happened at Baptism, we are confirmed with the fullness of the Holy Spirit. We are reminded of our participation in the ministry and mission of Jesus, and strengthened to follow Jesus more closely. We were so blessed that the opportunity arose for our boys to make their Confirmation at Marian Valley. Previously our children, all seven older ones, had received their Sacraments at…
