Week Six - February 5 - 11

Wow the weeks are flying past. I read about what others are doing and I feel like we're not doing enough or maybe we need more routine in place. Sigh - that is one thing about homeschooling that gets me - the amount of doubt and scrutiny that I put myself through. I wonder if I would still do it even if the boys were going to school though? Just seems like it is such a constant thing and even on the days that I am feeling confident it doesn't take a lot of questioning from outsiders for all of it to come back to me.

We had a good week this week. I think the lessons we learnt were more about social skills and compassion. Those types of learning are hard to put into words but I think they are some of the most valuable things that come from homeschooling.

This week was letter F week.

~* We didn't do a lot in terms of the letter F. I am finding it quite a hard thing to carry on. The boys are interested but on their own terms and in their own time. They like talking about the letters but I don't think they are quite grasping the concept of what they do in terms of reading and how their sounds make up the words we read/write/speak. So we only did a little about the letters. We did some writing and talked about F words. We also caught up on our alphabet book.

~* We had our homeschooling playgroup this week. Liam came home declaring it "the best playgroup ever". We went to a park and had an Australian theme - we made Australian flags and had a BBQ lunch - sausages on the barbie - very Aussie! The boys had a ball collecting the bark, leaves, and sticks to build up the fire for the BBQ. The flags were a winner too. The boys in the group had a great time throwing sticks into the duck pond and running around together. The boys love all of their new friends at our playgroup and I am really enjoying getting to know the mums too. It is such a lovely group of people and it is so easy being with them. The kids all get along really well and even though we do have our moments with the boys getting over excited they all look forward to seeing each other.

~* We made some Salt Dough on Wednesday. The boys made statues galore. Once they were baked we got out the paints to decorate them. It was a close friend's birthday last week so she received some home made statues - Liam made her cats (she is a huge cat lover) and Ewan made some ladybugs. They were a big hit.

~* Once the salt dough creations were painted we got out some paper to continue painting. The boys love to do butterfly prints - where you paint one side of the paper and then fold it over to make a print on the other side. The always make stunning pictures doing this - just gorgeous.

~*Crosswords - Liam and I have been doing the junior crossword from our free local paper each week. Liam is great with finding the answers to the clues and constantly amazes me with his vocabulary and also understanding of the words. There were a few clues this week that I thought he would find tricky but he gave me the answers with ease. One was "Alike". I was having a brain freeze and couldn't think of the answer - Liam meanwhile pipes up with "Similar". There were also some that needed some background knowledge that he learnt new vocab from - like the clue "Tree limbs" - I explained to him that our arms and our legs could also be called limbs and then asked him what he thought tree limbs would be - branches of course! A simple excersise (and one that I enjoy!) but so valuable.

~* My mum and dad were here for two nights this week too. For mum teaching comes naturally to her - she's not a professional teacher but is always making things in to learning experiences. Sometimes it bothers me (there's that doubt creeping in!!) because it seems like she is testing the boys but it is just something she does and the boys will learn a lot from her I'm sure. Dad is the same though he is not so constant with it! Mum had the boys going through different letters of the alphabet and finding words for each letter, she read countless books, and also talked with Liam about Navajo Indians and native American Indians. He really enjoyed it and always has so many questions!

~* Tomorrow we are planning a trip to the beach - the boys can't wait! And next week we have a few activities on too - there is a free sports program being run by our city council at our local park, we are meeting with friends at the pool, and we also have a meeting with a volunteer coordinator about doing visits to a nursing home. I'm really excited about finding out more about our visits to the nursing home and am looking forward to starting that. She told us that the residents in high care (a lot of people with dementia) really enjoy visits from children so we will be doing that which should be interesting. I have been wanting to get the boys involved in some volunteer work for a long time so I'm hoping that this works out for us. I'm a little nervous about it - Liam is so energetic and both the boys can be very noisy. Hopefully they will understand that they will need to be considerate of the residents and in turn that the residents/staff will be understanding towards us. Hmm will definately be a good experience either way!