Weekly Report 2008:29

With the sudden appearance of high temperatures and lethargic little ones, our third week of semester was disrupted somewhat. Despite doctor's visits, (yes, yet another of my kiddos is back on antibiotics, this time it's the big gun penicillin), I managed to keep almost on track by picking the most important/best of Thursday and Friday's planned activities and focussing on those.

Circle Time
Jeff was very busy preparing for his first in a series of interviews with our church's denomination for consideration as a candidate for Ministry of the Word, so I led most of our Circle Times this week. We read the stories of Abraham & Lot choosing land, of God's promise to Abraham (descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky) and then the fulfilment of God's promise in the birth of Isaac. On Friday, we read of God's request that Abraham sacrifice his promised son, Abraham's faithful obedience and God's last minute provision of an alternative sacrifice. It was wonderful to spend a week talking about God's promises, and how even though we often have no idea how He could possibly carry them out, or we feel God's promised gifts are under threat, God is still faithful, trustworthy and true. In the words of the Colin Buchanan song (from Isaiah 46:9-10), "God says, 'I am God and there is no other. I am God and there is none like me. I say: My plan will stand, and I will do all that I please.' " How true this is!

Literature
We finished Dangerous Journey this week and will be using a quotation from that for tracework/copywork/dictation and narration for Joshua next week. I just have to pick the quotation! I have loved reading through this with the children, despite the times when I had to hide the pictures because they were too scary. At the moment many of the people met on Christian's and Christiana's dangerous journeys are a bit of a mystery to the kids, but the events such as the unintended visit to Doubting Castle were clear enough metaphors for them to take in, with the help of Mum & Dad's ongoing commentary. I can see re-reading this book over the years will continue to yield fresh insight and encouragement for the Christian Life as we and they grow and go through some of the events portrayed allegorically by Bunyan.
Anna has a burning desire to narrate the story of the three little pigs to me, so she will do that for her narration next week. This week she narrated Tim to the Rescue much better than Joshua' who hadn't the patience that particular day.

Literacy
Joshua has finished re-reading all the Bob Books in the second (orange) set. He is a much stronger and more confident reader for the practise. Anna is now three books in to the same set, and of course she is reading them slower but, from my memory, she seems a lot more fluent than Joshua was when he first read the set. She has begun picking up picture books and trying to read the words on her own. Last night she announced, "Shhh! I am trying to read the newspaper!" and we realised she was reading the headlines over Jeff's shoulder. This is a step of independence in reading which Joshua has yet to attempt. Jeff considers it another reflection upon her insistence on "reading" from picture books when she was little. I just think she's obviously going to grow up like me... head perennially stuck in some book or other!
Writing lessons went well this week although, due to Abigail and later Samuel's sickness, we only managed three days out of the planned four.

Mathematics
We finished Lesson 19 from Earlybird Mathematics 2A, convering quarters. The kids have a pretty good grip on this now and even Abigail has learnt a bit from listening in on some of our discussions. We didn't get to begin Lesson 20 as planned, but will still hopefully finish the book next week.

Science and Geography
Our study of Polar bears was enjoyed by all this week. As well as the websites I already mentioned, we checked out some pictures my cousin sent me from their trip to see a polar bear at Sea World, in QLD. The kids loved hearing the polar bear roar (from the National Geographic website). We also watched a TV show "The Tipping Point" about the retreat of the Arctic ice cap. In the middle of all the shots of floating sea ice, we saw about one minute of footage of a polar bear with its prey, a seal. The kids liked that, and they also liked hearing about one particular arctic bird which has no nest but lays one egg on a small shelf many metres up sea cliffs, then stands over it to warm it for three weeks. The hatchling is three months old before it takes its first flight down from the cliffs. What a precarious life cycle! As you can probably guess, we've been looking at the Arctic Circle for Geography this week.

Craft
The kids made elephant pictures, drawing around their hands and then painting them. We also made cardboard cut out people and dressed them in colourful cut out paper clothes, and this was Joshua's favourite. Wednesday's efforts with the water colour paints were a hit as well.

And in the evenings
Joshua loved Anchor Boys again this week. He told me excitedly yesterday, "Mum, today's Friday! That means tomorrow's Saturday and then there's only one more day before Anchor Boys Day!" Yes, we have one excited boy in our family.
I enjoyed my second week of T@N classes. I am glad I am studying two such different subjects, one exegetical (1&2 Samuel) and the other more practical (Head, Heart & Hands), because two exegetical subjects would have been overwhelming.