Our eclectic Year 8 :)

Putting together my own curriculum was overwhelming, when Rebekah was moving into year 7.
I am a person that likes structure and knowing what I need to do ahead of time (well, at least a little ahead of time :) ).
However, I found, moving out of that ready made curriculum to piecing things together for year 7 was not as bad as I anticipated. We still have structure, but instead of going to one place for all our needs, I just needed to go to a few.
I came up with this schedule to help plan our days and also to use it as a method of record keeping (from which I write out our end of term reports) for NESA (formerly the Board of Studies).

She finished up with Allinonehomeschool's curriculum for some subjects but continued with it for others as you'll see below.

This year, we veered from Charlotte Mason and began a classical curriculum for history, literature and theology combined. Rebekah fell in love with it from the start and this is something she looks forward to doing each week, and is known to also do schoolwork from this during her holidays (that's how much she loves it).
It combines the three subjects together and is called Omnibus Primary and Omnibus Secondary and is put out by Veritas Press and you can find them here: https://veritaspress.com/selfpaced/omnibus. This course includes books about the time period being studied, both from the actual time period and books written later about the time period. The course is designed to teach children a strong Biblical worldview.

This was Rebekah's year 8 curriculum:

English Literature, History and Theology: 
Time period Medieval history through to the start of the Reformation

For term 1, we continued with year 7 of EP (Allinonehomeschool.com) and added in some other books for Aussie Literature, some of which she read in her free time.
Animal Farm, George Orwell
Treasure Island, R L Stevenson
Aussie Literature:
The Little Black Princess, J Gunn
(she did a book study and report on this)

From Term 2 onwards, she began Omnibus and these are the books studied for literature, history and theology combined:

Eusibius: The Church History
The Hobbit, J R R Tolkien
The Fellowship of the ring, J R R Tolkien
The Nine Tailors, Dorothy Sayers
The Dragon and the Raven, G A Henty
The Gospel of John
The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, H Pyle
Confessions by Augustine
On the Incarnation of our Lord, Saint Athanasius
The Creeds (Christianity)
Ecclesiastical History of the English People, Bede
A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Shakespeare
Commodore Perry in the Land of the Shogun by Rhoda Blumberg
Rule of St Benedict by St Benedict
Beowulf

She also kept a Book of Centuries (not needed for this course but I find this helpful for her and we've done this for years with a Charlotte Mason education 😊 )
Language Arts:

Grammar -
Intermediate Language Lessons part 3, Emma Serl
Language Arts level 7 of EP (AIOHS)

Poetry - as covered in Intermediate Language Lessons, AIOHS, debate class and lots of free reading poetry with mum and dad (Dad in particular loves reading poetry with Rebekah) :)

Debate -

Weekly classes at a  local homeschool co-op.
(Rebekah loves these classes as she really enjoys debating and public speaking.
Her favourite role in debates is 3rd speaker as she loves having to think on her feet).

Spelling and Dictation - Language Arts of EP

Writing: Rebekah continued the Language Arts course of EP, also did book reports, written narrations, and writing speeches for her debate class.

Maths:

My Pals are Here Maths (Singapore Maths)

Science:

Aplogia Exploring Creation with Chemistry and Physics, Jeannie Fulbright, along with the notebooking journal (Rebekah wanted to do it this time though she hasn't liked the Apologia journals much in the past)

Apologia Exploring Creation with General Science, Jay Wile (began in term 4)
Biography of Isaac Newton, Hudson Tiner

Geography:

EP Geography and Cultures course continued from year 7
Around the World in Eighty Days, Jules Verne (continued from year 7)
Material World, Peter Menzel
Hungry Planet, Peter Menzel

Civics and Citizenship:

Term 3 was set aside to focus on this subject (formally). We do discuss a lot of this in real life anyhow but in order to record it for NESA we decided to use these resources.

Prime Ministers of Australia, Jill B Bruce
Magna Carta, C Walter Hodges
PEO website (Parliamentary Education Office)
Skwirk (Rebekah used this online resource in year 7 as a supplement for a couple of things and we used this to study civics and citizenship)

Languages:

Rebekah loves Latin so she continued Visual Latin (from Compass Classroom) the course she began in Year 7.

Creative Arts:

Ballet 3 x week, lyrical dancing

She began teaching herself how to play a keyboard, using a program called Piano Maestro as she loves playing her keyboard! 

Composer Study:

Haydn (also read Josephy Haydn by Opal Wheeler)

Schubert

Art Study:

Giotto

Rembrandt (and a visit to the Art Gallery for the Rembrandt exhibition)

Additional books studied:

Emily of New Moon, L M Montgomery (and wrote a book report) 

Young Fu of the Upper Yangtze by Elizabeth F Lewis,

Free Reads:

The first four years, Laura Ingalls Wilder

Anne of Avonlea, L M Montgomery

Aslan's Call, Mark Eddy Smith *

A Midsummer Nights dream, Shakespeare

The Fire in the Stone, Colin Theale *

Anne of the Island, L M Montgomery

At the back of the North Wind, George Macdonald

Anne of Windy Polars, L M Montgomery

Amy Carmichael Rescuer by Night, Kay Walsh (Trailblazer books)

Anne's House of Dreams, L M Montgomery

Maggie Rose, A Birthday Christmas, Ruth Sawyer **

Anne of Ingleside, L M Montgomery

Kidnapped, R L Stevenson

Meet Marly (Our Australia Girl series), Alice Pung***

Marly's Business (Our Australian Girl series), Alice Pung***

The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict, Trenton Lee Stewart

Escape from Mr Lemoncello's Library, Chris Grabenstein

Behind the Gates: Tomorrow Girls series, Eva Gray

Run for cover: Tomorrow Girls Series, Eva Gray

Bridge to Terabithia, Katherine Patterson (read before)

The Australian Twins, Daphne Rooke

Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain*

The Silver Chair, C S Lewis (read before)

Brownie, Amy Le Feuvre

Gillian and the Garden, Elisabeth Batt

Flower of Gold, Dorothy O Royce

The Thirty Nine Steps, John Bunyan

Cocos Gold, Ralph Hammond

Picwick Papers, Charles Dickens

*Ron read these to Rebekah at night

** I read these to Rebekah

***Historical Fiction about a vietnamese refugee to Australia

Rebekah's Year 7 Curriculum

(This post has been sitting in my drafts forever! So, I've  now edited it to add what we used / didn't use as we have just finished our official year 7. This was my first year putting together my own and so I created an unrealistic work load and had to cut back some of what we couldn't do.)

We've been using and enjoying Living Books Curriculum for the past few years. It tied in nicely with the NSW Board of Studies' requirements for the primary school years.

However moving in to the higher school years and having to satisfy the curriculum outcomes made it difficult to continue with Living Books Curriculum and I couldn't really find another Charlotte Mason curriculum that tied in neatly with what we had to do or a curriculum she could work from semi-independently at least, that we liked. 

So.....I for the first time had to "put together" my own curriculum! 

I was overwhelmed by the whole thought and drowned in hours of scouring the internet to piece together what I needed.

Thankfully I remembered this free online curriculum that I'd heard of years ago and put on the back burner because I didn't think it was rigorous enough for Rebekah: allinonehomeschool.com

I looked at it again and found that I could easily match their Ancient History course to the NSW outcomes! That got me excited and I knew I could beef it up / adapt it quite easily to make it more Charlotte Mason for my liking:)

I looked further and found that I could easily use their Geography and once again adapt it to make it more Charlotte Mason and their English had some great classics too! 

I was starting to feel better :)

Maths was easy, we could just continue with Singapore Maths. 

I got the homeschool planner from homeschoolingdownunder.com which had all the NSW outcomes laid out with suggested books.

So after a few hours of working through these, I came up with this for Rebekah:

 Year 7 curriculum for Rebekah

Bible and Christian Studies:

Bible reading plan as outlined in EP curriculum Level 7 year 1 studying the books of Matthew in the NT and in the OT books from Genesis to Esther.

With mum 3 x week: Pilgrim’s progress to the end then ‘TheDavid Club’ by Andrew Shepherd.
(We ended up not using The David  Club after all not because we didn't like it but I decided to give her some extra books for free reading instead).

English:

Literature and Poetry: 

Reading 7 of EP Curriculum 

Rebekah did oral and written narrations from these books.

Books used:

The Spy, James Fennimore Cooper; 

Penrod and Sam, Tarkington; 

The Call of the Wild, London;

Treasure Island, Stevenson; 

The Talisman, Sir Walter Scott; 

The King Will Make a Way, Giles

(We are carrying over the last two into year 8)

To the above, I added some other books that Ron and I felt would be great for her to do as part of her 'school work':

Animal Farm by George Orwell, We of the Never Never by Jeannie Gunn and The Word Spy by Ursula Dubosarsky.

However we never got to the second two!

Poetry as set out in EP Reading 7 from Dickinson, Keats and Tennyson

Australian Poetry: 2 x week – Australian Bush Verse and other Australian Poetry at home.
Poetry is read only in the first week or two of Easy Peasy so we read poetry to Rebekah at other times including for bed time read alouds - just because we love and enjoy poetry!

Grammar: Intermediate Language Lessons by Living Books Press 3 x week

(I opted not to use Easy Peasy's Grammar because we had already done ILL part 1 and 2 in years 5 and 6)
We ended up cutting some of the chapters out of ILL and adding in EP's Language Arts for year 7 as ILL was getting a little tedious and I found EP had some great grammar lessons that suited us much better and also helps meet the outcomes ;)

Writing: I wanted Rebekah to begin learning some styles of writing so she will do some of Easy Peasy's year 7 writing course.

Copywork: Aesop’s Fables copy work 4 x week on the days when there is no c/w in Reading 7. (We didn't end up doing this as her work load was full enough)

Spelling and Dictation: As directed in schedule/ by mum on a weekly basis.

Debate: Weekly classes at a home school co-op.

Logic and thinking – as scheduled in EP year 7 (We ended up ditching this and going with "The Fallacy Detective" by N & H Bluedorn, reading a chapter or two a week .....

Current events – Tween Tribune (online newspaper for tweens) 2 x week, Ongoing family discussions and watching of news, Behind the News. (Didn't end up reading the Tween Tribune)

Shakespeare: read a play depending on what’s available to watch live during the year.

(We watched Bell Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in Term 1 so Rebekah re-read the children's version of this)

Maths:

My Pals are Here maths

Science:

Exploring Creation with Human Anatomy and Physiology (term 1 to 3) with living books to supplement it. She did oral and written narrations from these along with notebooking pages to go with some of the work and experiments from Apologia along the way. We chose not to get the Apologia notebooking journal as from past experience we didn't use most of it, so Rebekah made her own notebooking pages from what was available free online.

A Gruseome but true story about brain science by Phineas Gage

Louis Pasteur Germ Killer by John  Mann

Blood and Guts by Linda Allison (to complement experiments in Apologia Human Anatomy)

 Gregor Mendel The Friar who grew peas by Cheryl Bardoe (on genetics)

Exploring the world of Chemistry, J H Tiner (Term 4) (We didn't do this as we found we didn't like it much, more like Rebekah was a bit young for it, so we've put it away for when she's a bit older. We instead began  Apologia's 'Exploring the World of Physics and Chemistry' by Jeannie Fulbright). 

Computer: following schedule of EP level 7 when scheduled. (We ditched this through first term).

Research Project: Pick one topic and follow guidelines to complete it (google research projects for year 7 and 8) This can be done in year 7 or 8. (Didn't get around to this)

History:

EP Curriculum Ancient History component as scheduled for days 1 – 95 with additional days for Ancient World, Egypt and China.

She did oral and written narrations from these along with mapwork.

History Spine:  The Story of Mankind by H VanLoon

The Ancient World: Investigating Ancient History – Kingfisher  “The Ancient World” ; Life in the Great Ice Age by Michael Oard; Cairo Jim and Doris In Search of Martenaten by Geoffrey McSkimming

The Mediterranean World:
Egypt: Cairo Jim and Doris In Search of Martenaten by Geoffrey McSkimming ;
Mara Daughter of the Nile by Eloise Mcgraw

The Asian World:
China: The Ch’I-Lin Purse: A collection of  Ancient Chinese Stories by Linda Fang;
The Emperor's Silent Army: Terracotta Warriors of Ancient China by Jane O’Connor;
China The Waking Giant by Nuri Mass.

We didn't need to do this but I chose to teach Rebekah more about Ancient India, and so we read some chapters from Beacon Lights of History Volume 1 along with another fictional book we had at home.

We did mapwork and kept a Book of Centuries along the way.

 Civics: Skwirk, Prime Ministers of Australia by J Bruce (from library). (Didn't get to this, plan to cover it in year 8)

Special thanks to Carol from journey and destination blog who helped me with some of the additional living books for History and Science :)

Geography:

EP Curriculum Geography and Cultures Component as scheduled along with additional living books to be read along the way. Some of them are living books about the area covered and some are about the lives of great men and women of God from that part of the world.

Oral and written narrations were done along with mapwork. 

Books used:

Around the World in Eighty  Days by Jules Verne

George Mueller by Janet and Geoff Benge
The Family Under the  Bridge by N S Carlson
The Story of David Livingstone, V Golding

Global Environment field trip to Wetlands Olympic Park with additional research and a written essay.

 One community and the way it interacts with the selected Global environment - The Mighty Murray by John Nicholson, Rebekah read it and wrote an essay on the topic from the book.

In NSW in years 7 and 8 students need to study 5 compulsory subjects: English, Maths, Science, History and Geography along with 2 electives from a selection of 4. Rebekah chose the following:

Electives:

Languages:

Latin (her co-op finished up teading Latin at the end of 2016, so she began Visual Latin in 2017 and is loving it!)

Creative Arts:

Dance classes weekly and ballet 3 x week

Guitar lessons fortnightly changing to keyboard lessons from July. (Guitar finished up end of 2016 and she continues practising at home, she didn't commence keyboard lessons)

The following are not required for the NSW BOSTES, however, we try to follow the Charlotte Mason methods so are included:

Book of Centuries: Updated every week

Nature Study: we didn't do as much as I would have liked to but went on nature walks as much as we could and journaled along the way.

Picture Study/ Art:

I got Rebekah to follow along with Easy Peasy's Ancient Art course of study so she could see some of the art of the countries she was reading about in Ancient History.
We also did Tom Roberts, Rembrandt, Giotto 

Composer/ Music:

Once again I got her to follow along with Easy Peasy's Ancient Music course so she could listen to the music from some of the cultures she was studying about.

We also studied the lives of Mozart and Tchaikovsky and read their biographies and listened to their music during the year.

Free reading done this year:

Heidi, Johanna Spyri
The Peterkin Papers, Lucretia Hale (with mum)
The Von Trapp Family Singers, M Von Trapp (with dad)
Where the mountain meets the moon, Grace Lin
The Watchmakers  Daughter, Jean Watson (On Corrie Ten Boom)
David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
The Lost Prince, F H Burnett (with mum, still going on)
The Golden Goblet, E J Mcgraw
William Carey, obliged to go by Janet and Geoff Benge
Shakespeare's Scribe, Gary Blackwood
Anna and the king, Margaret Landon
Mystery of the Roman Ransom, Henry Winterfeld (Sequel to Detectives in Togas)
William Wilberforce the Freedom Fighter, Derick Bingham
Escpape from Mr, Lemoncello's library, Chris Grabenstein
The Second Jungle Book, Rudyard Kipling (with dad)
The Thieves of Tyburn Square: Introducing Elizabeth  Fry by Dave and Neta Jackson
Bridge to Terabithia, Katherine Paterson
Traitor in the tower: John Bunyan, Dave and Neta Jackson
Alice Miranda takes the lead, Jacqueline Harvey
The Christmas Stories of George Macdonald
These Happy Golden Years, Laura Ingalls Wilder
Star of Light, Patricia St John
Sky Lark, Patricia St John
Meet Ruby (Our Australian Girl), Penny Matthews and Lucia Masciullo
Teddy's Button, Amy Le Feuvre
Tree House Mystery, Gertrude Warner
The Time Machine, H G Wells
Ben Hur, Lew Wallace
The Silver Chair, C S Lewis (with dad)
Michael Faraday Father of Electronics, Charles S Ludwig

Looking back at 2014

I have not blogged for over a year! I had been thinking of doing a couple of posts during the year and then I got an email from a lovely friend I met in blog land Lynisha which nudged me further to get this post up!

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 :)

Nine is fine and so am I!

Well, it's been a long long time since my last post!

I've come by occasionally to blog again but then it's been so long I haven't known where to start!

Since my last post, my beautiful daughter has turned 9! We made up a catch phrase when she had her birthday "Nine is fine" and it certainly has been!
She is blossoming into a lovely little lady!
Some cutesy little girl things have made way for more 'lady like' things, interest in fashion, make up etc are on the rise!
I'm really enjoying this season of my daughter's life, besides, it's great having some one to give me fashion and make up tips :)
Every age has it's own charm and beauty doesn't it!
She has become very interested in cooking and learning to sew and we've had some fun cooking times together and with her friends on 'cooking' play dates!

On the home school front, we started Living Books Curriculum when we finished our last school year some months ago. We are thoroughly enjoying it once again!
I love that I can just pick up the teacher's manual and go every day (aside from some minor tweaking to add Aussie history, art, poetry etc).
The books are engaging. Rebekah's favourite book is 'The Children's Homer'! She is yet to realise that her mummy didn't grow up with these books and that I am learning so much while home schooling her!

I've had a terribly busy year with work (I do some part time work from home), with my involvement in the local home school community, our church, and to top it off, we've had to travel interstate a few times this year due to family reasons.
I've missed my blog friends, I know some of you on Facebook and that has been great! However, I've missed the rest of you and have visited your blogs as time has permitted, which hasn't been that much!

I am not sure how much time I can devote to blogging and keeping up with blogs but I will certainly try to come by and visit from time to time. My health is improving slowly which has been great! Thanks to all of you that prayed for me! I know it has helped!

Here are some pictures from the past few months:

Rebekah doing some baking:






A bracelet she 'sewed':



Ron, Rebekah and one of our guinea pigs 'Peekface':



and this last one was just a couple of weeks ago, when Ron got to sit in for the first time on her end of term 'exams'. Here is Rebekah proudly showing off a 'certificate' I gave her for completing her term well!

I'm still here but things are changing!

I've been a bit absent from blog land for the past couple of months, just visiting from time to time as my time and moods allow:)

I've been through some serious 'curriculum' searching for Rebekah for her next academic year (year 4) which for us starts in April (as we don't follow the traditional school year).

I've had some health issues (ongoing and still working on getting answers) and so I've had to make life easier in terms of our homeschool curriculum.
I've loved the Ambleside Online curriculum but I've been finding it a little challenging in terms of my time and energy.
I find I need to research a lot before making changes to books as I don't want to short change Rebekah. I had already modified it a little to suit us but as I was looking ahead to their year 3, I found I just didn't like some of the books and would have had to swap out a few, changing/ adapting involving more effort and time on my part. I think I was starting to tire of all the "older" books too somewhat. Also, at this stage in my life I was looking for someone to 'tell me what to do' without having to research, research etc. So.....I'm going back to Living Books Curriculum!

I researched quite a few different curriculums and prayed a lot and I just couldn't get past LBC. We did enjoy the two years we did with them for Rebekah when we first started out. As I looked through their booklists and teachers manual samples, it brought back memories of some of the fun books we read and all the 'extra activities' they suggest, I realised that a few things were falling through the cracks for us including map work for geography, and a lot of the other hands on activities to add to our learning that don't come naturally to me! I'm sure I'll be changing some and adapting it to suit us but atleast I have a general guide for the year ahead that I pick up each week and know what to do! LBC is also rich in good books and utilises a lot of the classics like Ambleside Online but they also utilise a lot of newer books. I like exposing Rebekah to more modern well written books and being not a literary brain myself I have to search and trawl through book lists and blogs to expose her to these. LBC saves me a lot of time and effort with this!

I've continued to moderate our local homeschool group and also am very involved on a weekly basis with some families that have started recently homeschooling from our church, running the science class in this group. So it's a co-op style group and we're doing Apologia's Astrononomy book this year. I must say we're enjoying and appreciating the dynamics that comes with learning in a group for Rebekah (being an only child).

So, I've been busy and continued to stay productive with life in general (despite my health challenges and this is purely due to the grace of God and an amazing and supportive husband) but just not in blog land! :) I'm really really sorry to all my faithful blog friends out there, I've tried to visit as much as I've been able to but I have not been as active as I have in the past. I'm not sure how and when this will change but this is where we are at for now:) I'll continue to blog and visit you all as and when I can as I've missed my peeks into your lives and the interaction, sharing and friendship that come along with that:)

p.s. if you'd like to be friends on Facebook, please email me from my profile page and I'd love to keep in touch with you through FB :)

Happy New Year!

Happy New year!

I'm still here but have sadly neglected my blog!

What can I say, I think my excuse has been lack of time and this lack of time has caused me to stray over to Facebook where it's quicker to keep in touch!
I no longer refer to it as Fakebook as I referred to it in this post as I've actually found a way to make it work for me:) It has helped deepen some of my real life friendships and it has made a way to connect more intimately with some of my blog-gy friends too.

We had a wonderfully blessed Christmas day with my family in Sydney. We alternate our Christmases between Ron's and my family to be fair (as his family are in Victoria - another State in Australia). It was surprisingly cool for Christmas in Sydney which we enjoyed!
We had a multicultural feast of Indian, Italian and Aussie food, warm times spent with the family and my parents even invited their neighbours, so there were 25 of us at lunch!

Rebekah got a Furby for Christmas. I had'nt heard of a Furby until a couple of months ago, apparently they were around in the nineties and have made a comeback with apps to boot!
Here she is with her little friend:

Ron had a couple of weeks off work and we had a lovely 'staycation' in Sydney. It was really nice to be on holidays at home as we got to rest a lot. We also spent a lot of time at the shops (malls) as we had some terribly hot days and we sought refuge there to give our airconditioning a break! Time was also spent at the local pool and the beach.
Ron even started some cooking! He is not a cook by any means but with some encouragement from Rebekah, they together decided to cook dinner one night and it turned out pretty good too I must say! An asian chicken dish:)

Rebekah has been enjoying lots of play dates with her friends that are on school holidays. However, she did get back into 'school' work last week. We don't follow the school terms as it gives us the freedom to go on holidays when we like. It works really well for us as you get cheaper accommodation and a lot less crowds at your holiday destination!
Homeschoolers are a spoilt bunch:)

She is still finishing off her year 3 work and I'll post about our year 4 when we get there!
She has also graduated from a bath to 'showers'! I know, I'm a bit slow:) I've talked about that in the past here so I won't go there again:) She's enjoying the graduation to a shower and feels very grown up!

Last year was a pretty tough year for me but we managed by God's grace; (this also impacted on my blogging as I didn't have the head space to blog). I'm looking forward to good things this year!

Hope all my bloggy friends are well, I've tried keeping in touch via your blogs. I'll head over again soon and catch up on your posts. I wish you all the best for 2013!

A scientist? A dancer? whatever it is, she's growing up and keeping me busy!

Hello my friends, I'm still here! I'm so sorry if you've felt neglected by me.
I have had endless issues with blogger trying to read and comment on your blogs. I am not a tecchy person and am still trying to work out how to get my Internet Explorer to co-operate with me:)
When I have time on my ipad I visit you but that time is few and far between and I prefer reading blogs from my pc as it's bigger and better:)
I promise I'll try to catch up with you all soon.

In the meantime, here's a post I've taken a few weeks to complete! Life has been busy and my blog as always comes second:)
...........


I told you some time ago that we kept Rebekah in her booster seat for way longer than she needed to be in it here. Well, she's graduated from the booster seat to sitting in the front seat when it's just the two of us.
Part of me doesn't want her to grow up too fast but the other part of me is really enjoying watching her develop and become a little young lady!
Rebekah has really changed so much in the past 6 months. One thing that has changed is that she has become extremely talkative!!! (unlike Ron and me I have to say):) Who would have thought, certainly not me! She used to be so quiet. She admits she loves to talk! I've decided I am going to enjoy her talking as it's a great way to connect with her - listening to her talk about the thousand and one thoughts that go through her little head;)

She's also graduated to this at coffee shops when we go out as a family:

She's definitely graduated from lying in her capsule at the coffee shop, to having to keep her entertained while her parents enjoyed their lattes and cappucinos, to then having her own babycino, from that to a minicino and playing with the toys the shop provided to doing what we love doing after sipping our coffees - reading!




She enjoyed a science club she attended last term and I think this cover she made for her folder says it all:

I love her love for science!

She has also enjoyed performing at her end of year ballet concert and has been given the opportunity to dance with a group of students at some scripture assemblies in local public schools. They will be dancing to a christmas song about the birth of Jesus. Rebekah just loves loves loves performing in front of a crowd! So, when the opportunity arose I signed her up for it with no hesitations! We want to nurture the in born performer in her! I am not sure where her love for dance will lead her to but for now, I am just glad she's enjoying ballet and we love to give her the opportunity to perform when it arises.
She will also be performing that dance at the kids services of the church (that run's the ballet school) over the first weekend in December. (It's a big church!)

It's a cliche, but she's definitely growing up, thought not too old to still do this with Daddy:

We are still doing school and will continue till a week or so before Christmas I'd imagine as we don't follow the traditional school year. I'm looking forward to my mum and step dad coming back from India from their yearly missions trip in a week! There's so much I especially want to talk to my mum about! I've missed her!

I hope to do another post or two before Christmas (my average has been once a month lol) so I'll wait till then to wish you all a Merry Christmas!