Treasured Moments - 7

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.
Today is a treasured moment.  Today I am once again a full time SAHM (Stay At Home Mother)  Last year I suffered a really bad "The grass is always greener" moment and applied for an evening position at Big W as a Store Recovery Associate.  I have since been working 12 hours a week.  As the year wore on I became more and more exhausted and started neglecting so many things that needed to be done around here.  Final straw for me was once I started home schooling Sir N and found I was not giving him 100% that I had a chat with Paul.  I am pleased for the experience has taught me the full value of the priviledge I have of staying home full time with my treasures.

2.
Seeing Sir N climb up his first mountain. We went to Hanging Rock yesterday.

3.
Seeing Sir N jump up and down in delight when I said we can take the tag along out and go for a cycle together. My goal now that I am home is to go out daily together and enjoy the outdoors.

4.
Seeing Sir N land his first Rainbow trout when he went fishing with Paul at Hanging Rock yesterday.

5.
Yay I finally found a moment to work on GEMS 2 TOTS today and am really looking forward to investing in this blog.  Pop on over and share some of your thoughts.

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

Making a Volacano

In our home school we have been reading about Volcano's and decided to make one out of plaster of Paris from a kit I purchased from ALDI.

Sir N and our kit.

Contents of our kit. Great easy to follow instructions.

Putting the elastics on to hold the pieces together.

Plaster of Paris ready to mix.

Poured the mixture into the mold.

I got a little bit of a start as it started pouring out the sides but no fear there was enough and it soon stopped oozing.  I am grateful Paul was home when we did this as I would have waited too long before pouring the mix into the mold.  If you wait too long then you get a lot of bubbles in the mix you can't get out, it needs to be runny when you pour it in.  I also thought I had used too much water but that was not the case. We left it on the bench for about four hours and then ....

One volcano we had!

We waited for about a week before we attempted to paint it. This step was more time consuming than I had anticipated so I helped Sir N.  I think in hind sight I should have taken out the poster paint and thicker brushes.  Older sister came to the rescue and provided us with glitter glue pens which Sir N thoroughly enjoyed applying to this volcano.

The instructions say to mix paint, vinegar and dish liquid for red coloured eruption.  I was disappointed with the chemical reaction this had. (I have since learned that you need to mix food colouring, dish liquid and baking soda then add vinegar for a red eruption, we had mixed the paint, dish liquid and vinegar) So we tried again this time with baking soda and vinegar and that was much better. You could hear the bubbles forming and popping.  It was so much fun.

Baking Soda, poster paint (it's better to use food colouring)
dish liquid and vinegar.

Sir N's volcano and city.

Adding vinegar to the baking soda.

1*2*3 Success

We had lots of fun doing this.  You do not need a kit to do the same with your children.  You can accomplish the same thing using a water tight jar of some kind (plastic, metal or glass).  Put it down build up some soil around it, make your city etc then add baking soda, food colouring and dish liquid and mix in the jar.  Slowly add vinegar and watch the eruption. 

Blessings

Tuesdays Treasure - 14

This week at the Plaza I noticed that they started putting out the Christmas decorations (a little early to my way of thinking!) which got me thinking that I wanted to share with you some of the books we use at Advent with our family in case you wanted to purchase them to bless your family before Advent begins on 27 November 2011.

Personally I love Advent as it is an opportunity to take all the commercialism out of the Christmas Season and a time to build family traditions and memories.  I love that it is an opportunity to pass on traditions to my children and to create traditions using the colours of Advent.  More on this next month ........

Jotham's Journey

• Author: Arnold Ytreeide
• Format: Paperback
• Number of Pages: 168
• Vendor: Kregel Kidzone
• Publication Date: 2008
• Dimensions: 9.25 X 8.50 (inches)
• ISBN: 0825441749
• ISBN-13: 9780825441745
• Ages: 8-12
• Series: Family Story for Advent

About 11 years ago I first read about Jotham's Journey on the Sonlight Forum in the lead up to Christmas.  I was looking for something different to do that would enrich our family.  There were a few positive comments and some negative but I decided to take the plunge and purchase a copy (which is now falling apart with use) I must confess this is by far the BEST advent story book I have ever purchased.  Every year we talk about it and we read it for a couple of years in a row until I purchased the next two books in the trilogy: Bartholomew's Passage and Tabitha's Travels. We now read one of the books each year starting at Advent.  I love Advent Wreathes and Jesse Tree's and look forward to sharing our stories with you this coming November and December.

A few of the book sites have listed this book for 4-8 year olds and I disagree with this evaluation as the story is quite in depth and needs children to be older for them to appreciate the content.  There are quite a few frightening happenings that young children should not go to bed thinking about (such as when Jotham's is kidnapped by .... (better not let the cat out the bag here LOL)) We tried reading Jotham's Journey with Sir N last year but he was too little to understand.

To obtain the full pleasure of the trilogy you need to read Jotham's Journey first.  The other two books can be read in any order. Each book comes with a chapter explaining Advent Wreathes and traditions.  The back of the book has a calendar giving the dates of Advent for the next 10+ years.  Each evening you light the candle on the Advent Wreath and then read the story.  (We share out a holiday lollie that we only eat at Advent) At the end of each chapter there is a focus on Jesus page with scripture and a prayer.

I found some great information on how and why Jotham's Journey was written. 

Format: Paperback
Number of Pages: 168
Vendor: Kregel Kidzone
Publication Date: 2009
Dimensions: 9.25 X 8.50 (inches)
ISBN: 0825441730
ISBN-13: 9780825441738
Ages: 8-12

Format: Paperback
Number of Pages: 160
Vendor: Kregel Publications
Publication Date: 2010
Dimensions: 9.25 X 8.50 (inches)
ISBN: 0825441722
ISBN-13: 9780825441721
Ages:8-12

These books are currently on sale at Christian Book.com and they are also available at Amazon.com where you can take a sneak peek inside as well as from The Book Depository and in Australia from Koorong.




Which are some of your favourite books for Advent ?

Blessings

Edited 12/10/2011

Thank you Erin from Seven Little Australians who recommended I take a look at Aussie Book Threads where she has a special section of  Advent / Christmas list of picture books and chapter books. Take a look and see if you can find something for Advent that would suite your children's ages.

This post is linked to Favourite Resources Link Up Party over at  Learning All The Time