Living
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Ireland, Scotland, England & Wales: Anseo A Thagann Sí
Three short days and our precious Anna Maria(21) boards a plane and heads off on an adventure of a life time. She lands in Dublin and then begins her travels throughout Ireland; then later on Scotland, England and Wales. Three months living and working in Ireland and the UK will be a wonderful experience and we will be following her travels vicariously through photos, email and skype. Anna Maria has researched well and has an itinerary complete with a list of sights to see and adventures to experience. If any of my readers from Ireland and the UK have ‘must see’ recommendations to add to the list, we’d love to hear…
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See Me Homeschool: A Pictorial Record
Joining in the See Me Homeschool Blog Hop, a photo record of a day in our week, the beginning of a week, a rainy day. Pics only, no words!
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Our Learning Spaces – Aussie NBTS
Wrapping up this year’s Aussie NBTS Blog Hop by taking you on a tour of our Learning Spaces. Our home is a ‘house still under construction’, we are slowly melding ‘two houses’ together, some rooms are still awaiting their floorboards, the finishing touches are far from done and decorating is not my forte. However we’ve built our home ourselves and filled it with lots of love. We gather in our learning room to use the blackboard for various language arts instructions, and the younger children sit at the the desk for some of their lessons. The smaller table on the right is used by our littlest ones. The cupboards house the children’s…
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A Day in Our Life – Aussie NBTS
Back with the next installment of the Aussie NBTS blog hop, today I’m sharing a ‘Day in Our Life’. I was hoping when I chose to share a midweek day it would be a ‘normal day’, and it is, and it’s not, ’cause each day is always slightly different. Some days we have after school activities, some days we don’t, some days are more ‘routine perfect’, this day wasn’t. We started late, we didn’t pray, we spent far longer house cleaning than usual, the boys were rather aggravating and yet… it was also a terrific day, we persevered and deep and real connections were made whilst the children were tracing their mega…
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Our Plans & Resources – Aussie NBTS
Time for more chat over at the Aussie Not Back to School blog hop. Last week I introduced you to our students. Today we are going to talk plans and resources, as we did three years ago. It’s rather timely to be chatting about this topic as a ‘curriculum chat’ was requested by a reader during the survey. Be sure to head over to Kylie’s to check out yet more ideas and methods from other Aussie home educators. When you have been home educating for over a decade and a half, the learning and the living is all entwined, in many respects how you ‘go about’ home educating your children is an…
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Meet Our Students – Aussie NBTS
Kylie and Chareen are co-hosting the Aussie Not Back To School Blog Hop! Three years ago we joined in the fun, and it’s time again:) Calling out to all Aussie homeschoolers to join in. Be sure to pop on over and meet everyone. We are kicking off the blog hop by introducing our ‘students’. Whilst this year we have only five ‘official students’, obviously all of our children have an impact on every aspect of our lives including our learning. Our baby, our pre-schooler and our three graduates whether living at home or far away in Sydney all play a part. If they need us, whether directly or long distance, learning is…
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A Week of Surf & Faith
We have just returned from our annual Catholic Home Education camp (our 14th year) a week of sand and surf, our children love the opportunity to swim at the beach daily. We were blessed to have daily Mass with our camp chaplain, Father Terence-Mary gathering together with all camp attendees. Each evening we concluded the day with Benediction and the Rosary always a highlight. Every night after prayers we enjoyed various activities; ice breaker games, quiz nights and on the final night the children produced a play. They worked diligently towards this event every day and impressed and entertained us with their talent. We couldn’t run our camps without the…
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Annual Athletics Carnival – 15th Year
*All photo credits go to our daughter Anna Maria, the official photographer of the day, who took over 1,300 photos on the day!! Monday saw us enjoying our annual Home Education Athletics Carnival. Hard to believe it has been 15 years since our local group began hosting this event, in fact when we began this lad was a new babe in arms. This year was his final year to compete and he really gave it his all. The passion, determination and skill of 17 year old boys is impressive to say the least. The skill of 15 year old boys is rather remarkable too.…
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Our ‘Boy’ the Swim Coach
Our son Carpenter is supporting himself through College as a swimming instructor. Whilst staying with our College children I was thrilled to have the opportunity to watch him teach. His love of teaching was something he had already conveyed in his discussions with us, but seeing him teach, it was most apparent. He had a smile for each child, was clear in his directions and expectations, and radiated a joy and love for what he was imparting. In particular I loved watching his hand signals, being an indoor pool the noise was incredible, the hand signals he developed were ingenious and the instruction clear. Carpenter has now been teaching for…
