I started blogging for the purpose of keeping a journal of some sort of our home schooling journey. So I thought I'd do a 'wrap up' of our year - an all in one type of post for this year:)
Rebekah turned 10 early this year and my what changes have come with that age! She is turning into a delightful young girl!
I say this all the time but I just love all the conversations I have with her when she wakes up in the morning and starts sharing all her thoughts (perhaps stored up from the night before?), at breakfast, during the day, driving to places, etc. Ron gets to share in this in the evenings, when he takes over and has 'daddy time' with her. She still looks forward to her 'daddy time' every evening! Time spent with her daddy! This includes playing a board game / Ron showing her something interesting on the internet that he's just found out about/ checking out awesome videos at thekidshouldseethis.com/ bed time reading and praying together before she has her own independent reading time at night.
This is a picture of Ron even doing 'origami' with Rebekah! He truly loves her to do this as he is no 'crafty' person :)
The other big change I've noticed is that she has become very self - motivated in her school work. I now lay out her work in a diary which covers a week over two pages. She can see her weekly work and I also break it down into daily chunks. She starts her work at 9.30 am ( a time she appointed) and sets a timer for 2.5 hours. If she finishes earlier she will do some of her work from the following day (this has not happened much) and if she goes over time it doesn't bother her too much either:) She knows she still has plenty of free time to play, dance, strum her guitar, etc!
It's been a very busy but productive year as well for us, filled with weekly ballet, acrobatics ( a new class she started this year and absolutely loves), a local home school co-op where she learns Latin and Debate with quite a few other kids, fortnightly guitar lessons with another home school family, monthly meetings with another local co-op that I started a couple of years ago - where the kids do a bit of 'show and tell', some art together and then play! We also attend our fortnightly park day group which meets at parks around Sydney and which I have the pleasure of co-ordinating :)
Rebekah has loved her Latin classes this year and I heard the good news just recently that her Latin teacher is able to teach them again next year, hooray! (He is a home school graduate himself, now studying at University and his schedule permits him to continue next year).
Rebekah loves her Latin and loves the fact that her Latin teacher loves 'old books' like herself :)
She has absolutely enjoyed her guitar lessons too and you would often find her strumming her guitar in her free time!
Here she is playing her guitar for one of our local home school group's 'end of year' performance:
She still absolutely loves her ballet lessons and is excited that from next year she'll be doing two ballet classes each week instead of one! She still wants to be a ballerina one day. The last few weeks saw her take part in her end of year concert as well as in front of a very large church in Sydney at one of their events! I'd estimate there were at least 2000 people in attendance on the night and she loved every minute of it!
I also had the joy of planning and organising a "Home Educators in Converstaion" night in August. It came about because I moderate a home school group and I get a lot of questions via email about home schooling from new parents wanting to find out more. I called on some of my local friends - mums and a dad who have home educated their children for a lot longer than I have, that could share from their varied perspectives, and it turned out to be a very successful night. They generously volunteered their time for this so we could make it a free event (well virtually free except for a very minimal cost to pay for the hire of the venue). About 25 families showed up and out of the few families that were just 'thinking' about the possibility of home schooling at least one that I know of has decided to go ahead. The rest were just encouraged in their journeys and also hearing about the different pathways to Tertiary Education after being home schooled. All in all it was a very successful evening by the grace of God!
Another great thing that happened this year was that I started attending a monthly encouragement night that was started by another home school mum. Together we are studying Sally Clarkson's book - Season's of a mothers heart. This has been a very encouraging time for all of us, studying the book together, sharing our lives and hearts with each other, praying for one other etc. Thanks V for this!
So, that's our year in brief! We've had one of our best homeschooling years this year, for which we are so thankful to God!
p.s. This is a very late post ha ha but I wanted to for the sake of my blog. It was sitting in my 'drafts' for a long long time :)
3 comments:
Wow, you are busy with all those activities and running groups! Even if it's an old post, it's still good to hear about a part of your homeschooling journey. I hope you feel like writing another post soon!
Glad to read your post though a bit late!! Nice to know you are doing a lot, impacting others as well.... Rebekah too has a lot under her belt.. awesome! Also.. she looks lovely playing the guitar... What a great year you had! Looking forward to another post. If I could urge you once more! :) Hugs!!
Post a Comment