Treasured Moments 4

Do you find yourself falling into a pattern of daily grind, skipping the 'fun' activities because you don't have time or lack energy?

Do creative arts, nature walks, drama, read aloud or spontaneous acts seem only a distant dream in your life?

Yet these Treasured Moments shared with loved ones uplift us, nurture our soul, remind us of the beauty and joy in our lives.

We want Treasured Moments for ourselves, for our children, for our families but how can we make it happen?

... Commitment ... Encouragement ... Support ... Ideas ... Plans.

I invite you to join us every Saturday and share your plans and ideas, your targets and goals and your stories ... your 'Treasured Moments'. In this way we may inspire one another, encourage ourselves and start achieving our dreams. Hosted by Erin at Seven Little Australians and Counting

My Treasured Moments this week are:
1. Having my special friend Mrs L come over with her six beautiful children and just spend some time in encouraging fellowship.

2. Watching Sir N enjoy playing with cousins and friends during the week. I also enjoyed watching him help with the big move on Tuesday.  He loved being in charge of the lift on the removal truck. I also enjoyed seeing him enjoy a lesson at a different swim school.

3. Being there when my parents received the keys for their new home.  What a special time it was walking through their new home.

4. Being encouraged as I read posts at Creating with Wisdom I especially enjoyed Vicky's post A Book Meme and look forward to making mine, discovering Susan's blog Home Grown Kids at Kerugma and being encouraged with her post Watch my heart .... not be idle .... my weakness and Belinda at Live Life with Your Kids and one of my favourite blog posts that really encouraged me was written by Jennifer Fulwiler over at Conversion Diary titled The Goal Oriented Life. In fact I am looking forward to sharing this post with my husband and going on a date and making a goal list with him.

5. Receiving my new point and shoot camera in the mail.  I am so excited. I wanted a small camera that could fit in my hand bag and could function as a capturing special moments camera for my blog.  Paul bought me a FUJIFILM Finepix AX350 from Digital Camera Warehouse.

6. Seeing the crystals finally form in the crystal growing bath which Sir N put together a few weeks ago. I will be doing a photo story on the crystal growing later this week.

7.  I have been reading and encouraged by Michelle over at Homeschooling Downunder.  She has been doing the 31 Days to Clean Challenge Having a Martha House the Mary Way by Sarah Mae.  One of my goals is to get my home in order and I have been sort of floating around aimlessly.  So I have taken the plunge and purchased the E-Book (US $4-99) and will be starting this challenge on the 1 October 2011.  I am looking forward to doing this challenge.  Do any of you want to join me ??

8. Last but not least I took the plunge and made a second blog.  This blog came about because I am feeling really run down, burnt out and in need of Godly encouragement.  I have called it : GEMS 2 TOTS. (Godly Encouragement for MotherS 2 Train Our Treasures) I will be getting it up and running some time over the next month.  So please pop on over and have a look and let me know of great resources I can share.


To join in you are welcome to add your post on Seven Little Australians and Counting using the Mr. Linky form (please link to the individual post) and include a link back to Erins post. If you haven't a blog we would still love to hear your voice, just leave your stories in the comments.

Blessings

A day time trip to the zoo.

Today was the last day of our week of rest and the weather was so beautiful we decided to go and visit Paul at the zoo along with Pop Pops and Granny. 

We were blessed with three wonderful encounters: The Serval Presentation, Behind the Scenes Serval Encounter,  and seeing The Cheetah Lure.

I wont say too much but let the pictures tell you of our adventure. 

Serval presentation. Paul showing the markings on the back of the ears.

Paul with serval in the serval encounter enclosure

A serval dew claw

Demonstrating just how high a serval can jump to catch a bird in the air.  Amazing.

Demonstating the agility of these beautiful african cats.

Cheetah waiting behind the scenes.

Watching Paul put out the cheetah lure.
 Zoo keeper explaining to us what is happening behind the scenes.

Successfully caught.  Now enjoying his meal.
The word cheetah means spotted one.

It was a wonderful afternoon of time together.  Over the years I have found that making outings like this an all day event would really exhaust the little people so these days we tend to go for two to three hours at a time.  I find that this shorter time span better suits us and tends to be more productive.

Blessings

Homeschool Rhythms

There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens,
Ecclesiastes 3:1



We have been on school holidays this past week and this got me thinking about how we came to our home school rhythm.

When we first started on our home education journey I started out by following school term dates and was really fearful every step of the way.

As we marched along the weeks doing school, home school outings, extra mural activities I found we were becoming more and more tired and the more tired we became the shorter my fuse grew and the more cranky we all became.  There had to be a better way. 

I started asking the moms around me what they all did.  A few of the mom's did a 5 week school cycle and I decided to give it a go.

Sonlight works on a 36 week school year. I took my IG (Instructors Guide) and divided it by 4 and came up with 9 four week cycles.  Added a week in between each four week cycle means that school will take us 45 weeks a year and that in turn leaves us with 7 weeks to have a long summer break over December and January.  

I put this into practice and I must confess it's the best thing we have ever done. I find that four weeks of continuous school means no one gets too tired.  One week of holidays is short enough to not get out of practice and not long enough for boredom to set in with the added bonus that it's not hard to get back into the rhythm of regular school after one week of holiday.
 
We have not quite settled into a daily rhythm yet and as soon as we do I will be writing a post on what our daily / weekly rhythm looks like and how we have organised our school.

So tomorrow we start back for our second round of school.  Week 5 -8 with Sonlight Core A and we will be adding in Expedition Earth from week 6.

What rhythm works for you and why do you use it ? IF you have done a blog post about your home school rhythm please add the address I would love a read.

Blessings