Recap on our first fortnight

Well as of today, we have officially completed our first 2 weeks of homeschooling!  There have definitely been moments of exhaustion on my part, wanting space from the endless chatter etc., but most of that was actually due to William being unwell (he's had fevers on and off for 3 days, and very little sleep).......... but I can honestly say that overall I have never felt so at peace.  Things are beautiful between Stu and I at the moment, we have enjoyed doing a little renovating and purchasing of new furniture on the homefront and are on a journey of learning more about each other.  I have all my children close to me, feel connected and strong in those relationships which is so important to me.  And I'm finding time for everything..... well, the important things....... keeping a balance, and keeping time for prayer and closeness with God which keeps my mind focused too.  I recognise how much I need Him, and find that as I seek and lean on Him and desire Him more each day, things just - well, work.  Life is good!

I have learnt an enormous amount already about what works and doesn't work for us as a homschooling family.  I will post more on this next week.  We are getting there, learning as we go!  I know it will be an evolving process.  :)

Over the course of yesterday and today (which we primarily spent at home), we made this:

I printed off the letters of the alphabet using Microsoft Word (beginner's alphabet)  Aa  Bb  Cc and so on.  Saraya used a ruler and pencil to rule a grid on the paper.  She and ELijah then cut all the little boxes out- great cutting practice for Elijah!  We then measured how high the letter boxes were, multiplied by 26 to work out how big our poster would need to be.  They then glued all the letters on in order.  It's lovely to see Saraya encouraging Elijah, helping him out with verbal cues and praising him when he gets things right!  These two children can be fairly competitive, and I've actually noticed their relationship improving now they are doing more together.  Very exciting!  

Saraya then used the index in our family Atlas to find a country beginning with each letter.  These she hand-wrote in a notebook.  She then typed each country out on the computer, we printed them off, drew straight lines for cutting, cut and pasted beside the corresponding letter.  And then, we printed off an A4 page with all the flags of the world, used our flags of the world chart to find each one (they were so tiny!!), cut and pasted once again.

So this activity was a good little project on top of the other subjects we've been learning this week.  If you're interested, they are:  Reading and oral Narration, Handwriting, Phonics, Spelling, Maths, Bible study, Science, Geography, Art (crafts plus Picture study), Music and Nature Study.  We're mostly following the Charlotte Mason method of homeschooling, which some of you may be familiar with.  It is heavily literacy based, so we read ALOT together - all sorts of things.  Poetry, classic literature, recipes, articles, picture books, letters, history books, nature books, etc. etc.  We also cover all or most of our work by lunch time, so the afternoons are free for resting, reading, craft, helping me around the house :),  and free play.  Saraya seems to be enjoying the style, and we're getting the balance of work and play right for us, slowly but surely.

I can only praise God for this opportunity, thank Stuart for all his support (he has a few fun things planned for him and the kids to do this weekend, to give me a bit of child-free time!), and also thank my friends and family for all their support and encouragement.  I so appreciate you!