Weekly Report 2008:2

We started back into school this week, at least part of the way. I plan to add in a subject or two each week until we are fitting it all in about the time institutional schools are opening their doors to students. This will, I hope, make it a little easier on both me (as I tweak the daily schedule) and the kids (as they get used to holding pencils again because Teacher Mum said so, rather than because they chose to do it.) This week I added in Language Arts - well, at this level it's just basic reading skills and penmanship.

We've already been keeping steady with Circle Time almost every week day. We are back into memorising some verses that I have chosen from our daily Bible story. We recite our verses, read a new story and then have a prayer that includes an application from the story and the kids colour a picture related to the story. Jeff's been leading while he's not at college, but I will be doing it most days when he's back to the grind in a few weeks. This week we were hearing about the start of Jesus' ministry, so our memory verses were Luke 3:21-22 (Jesus' baptism) and, since that was learnt so quickly, we've already started learning Mark 1:17-18 (Jesus calls Simon and Andrew to follow him). The kids are amazing me at how fast they are learning these verses, especially since they often don't say anything aloud when I read them out, until, after a few days, they just join in with me suddenly and show that they know every single word.

As I did last year, this year I began with a single task for their first day: Joshua and Anna had to do a self portrait to go on the front of their school folders for the rest of the year. Below is Joshua's self portrait, of himself as Rescue Man. Notice the initials embalzoned on his chest, the army hat and (for me the most impressive) the yellow cape with green stars and a green wallaby - that's the Wallabies flag that Joshua drapes over himself.Just for a comparison to reality, here's a photo:Now here is Anna's self portrait. She's wearing her new favourite pink dress with red flowers. I think there's something odd about the hair but I didn't want to ask her why it was like that. I was afraid her self image has been scarred for life by the prolonged after effects of the two haircuts she got last year from people under the age of five (ie her big brother, the first time and herself, the second).On a more positive note, this picture comes with a caption: "I'm holding some round things in my hands that Samuel threw out of his playpen. I've picked them up to give back to him because I love him and he's my baby brother."

The rest of the week went well, if I could only ignore all the whinging and whining. Actually, after a little copy cat complaining on Tuesday, Anna settled right in to her alphabet penmanship lessons (tracing five upper and five lower case examples of one new letter each day). Joshua was not so easily persuaded that this was going to happen whether he wanted it to, or not. But he did all his work each day (read and trace one primarily-CVC Basic Code sentence), and sooner or later he's going to realise that he'll get more time to play afterward if he spends less time off in a bedroom listening to himself complain. Hopefully sooner, rather than later. Anyway, it must have gone okay because I've just agreed to have one of his friends over for Monday morning - and the friend will be joining us for Circle Time and Language Arts.