A blissful beach holiday with no phones or internet.
Days of walking and watching, fishing and resting.
home education
A little glimpse into creative family life
I filmed this yesterday afternoon because it felt like a bit of milestone. In steaming hot weather, with a pedestal fan blowing on us, my 9 year old, set up and weaving mostly independently on the rigid heddle loom while I was weaving at the floor loom. It’s funny how things can happen so naturally and then you suddenly realise you’re living a dream moment. I posted it on Youtube, thinking it would probably be largely overlooked as viewers seem to prefer my instructional videos to anything else.
But what a response! Quite a few commented that the video had brought tears to their eyes, for different reasons. For one subscriber, it was that her parents had never invested the time in her that she craved. For another, the video brought back wonderful memories of her own creative homeschooled upbringing. Many commented on the simple beauty of the video.
Wow, was I surprised. And so pleased. It reminds me that I am so blessed to be able to share with others in this way. It encourages me that, even if I feel like I don’t do a good enough job as a parent, others think I do. And it gives me joy, that God has much work for us to do, if only we will co-operate, love and trust.
I hope you are all having a most blessed week, until next time 🙂
Sketch Tuesday – on a tree
The girls were reluctant to have a go – I think they are too used to drawing what they want rather than within a theme. It’s a great way to challenge your drawing skills and expand though, so I told the girls that I intended to draw a picture and so they could too. It worked!
Planning to NOT fail
I was trying to juggle the demands of family, homeschooling, activities outside the home, volunteer roles and a growing home business and so I assumed that there was simply too much for me to do on my own. This lead to exhaustion and a definite lack of hope – how could I get through everything that needed to be done?
Towards Christmas and in the holidays afterwards it started to dawn on me. Each day would start with that overwhelmed feeling, knowing I would be chasing my tail until I fell into bed that night. You would think after 12 years of doing this, I would have systems in place, but life is ever changing as people grow and every year is different to the last. I started thinking – does it have to be this way? What positive changes could I make to avoid another year in this state?
Well, a few years ago, I decided that I hated planning. I felt that if I spent the best part of my day educating the children, why should I spend my precious evenings planning for the next day? So I did away with all planning and I think that is where things started to go wrong, though at the time I felt I was freeing myself of a great burden. I think also over this time period, the kids, whether consciously or sub consciously, began to lost confidence in me. And I definitely began to lose confidence in me!
But now I was ready to give planning another try – not in the way that I used to. At the start of this year, I bought a planner from Homeschooling Downunder and printed out the pages I felt would be relevant. I bought colour coded folders and boxes for each child.
Life and Learning at home
Every now and then I write down some of the things we’ve done in a day. Especially if I’m feeling the kids haven’t focused enough on academics or, the ever gnawing feeling at many a homeschool Mum, that they haven’t learned enough.
Today it was challenging to write that list, there was too much! I thought I’d share with you some of what we did to give an idea of an average day and to show you that even if you don’t feel like you’ve done a lot, it’s pretty amazing when you reflect back.
Bite your tongue Mum.
“Sometimes I wonder whether you will ever learn anything!”
“Are you kidding me, you tipped it over again?!”
“What is wrong with you?!”
“You have ruined my day!”
“Why can’t you be like your brother/sister?”
“You make me so angry!”
Gosh, aren’t they nasty statements?
Well, I’ve thought of all of these, quite regularly in fact. The worst part is I’ve even said some of them to my children.
It’s really hard to not verbalise these thoughts sometimes. But I look upon it like this. I’m storing up treasures. These treasures are especially for my children. Each time I bite my tongue is a little victory. Yes, for me, but so much for them.
They may not know about your interior struggle but they will remember your words. 5, 10, 20, how ever many years down the track, they will remember your words and how you made them feel.
I know this. You know this.
Is it time for you to start storing some treasure too?
Madam Tickleberry’s tea party
The week that went so fast…
Gallipoli study
I call our study a complete success and appropriate for each of us, regardless of age. My next topic idea is the Early Settlers with a bit of a focus on the gold rush. If it all goes well I plan to surprise the children with a visit to Sovereign Hill as none of them have been there before.
If you’re looking for ideas for study topics or ideas to share with your children I highly recommend you head over to Sue’s blog- Stories of an Unschooling Family where you will find a plethora of blog posts and many podcasts related to unschooling. Sue’s blog is a real inspiration to me.