Well, it’s been a while since my last post… basically because I am still recovering from shock. I suppose it was inevitable really, what with having boys and all. It’s all a bit gender stereotypical I know  but apparently it is quite common amongst the younger of the male species. Ariel has discovered Frogs. And as he is often want to do when it comes to the smaller marvels of God’s creation, he has developed an obsession with them. At any given time I can reluctantly gaze through my front screen door (there’s no way I’m actually going OUT THERE) and see 5 or so ex-honey buckets housing a collection of the evil slimy creatures in various stages of morphological madness.  Still, this is the joy of home educating. Who needs a university degree? My sons’ etymological, zoological, and amphibian husbandry training has already begun.

Speaking of which, I have stumbled across a new curriculum idea to add to our eclectic brew of learning. It’s called The Heart of Wisdom Approach and is based on the Hebrew model of education, which is completely Holistic and doesn’t separate the spiritual life from the physical, mental/intellectual/academic life. This is the complete opposite of the current model of eductaion which is based on the Greek Classical method, which aims to separate and segregate everything. It sits well with us because it also acknowledges the actual Sabbath, Feasts of the Lord, and His actual way of life and makes it the focus. It’s also really really good because it is adaptable to any style of home educating….so it fits in with the rhythms that we already have been endeavouring to follow AND as an added bonus it helps me to remember to meditate on God’s Word as well. So we’ve been implementing some of the suggestions and Ariel did some copy work (writing, reading stuff) around the days of Creation (hey, where else would we start??) and learnt a new word: Atmosphere. He was pretty chuffed about that one.

Anyway. Other than that and the aforementioned ‘delight’ of Ariel’s graduation onto frogs, we have been plodding on as usual. We recently had the opportunity to spend the weekend up in the beautiful Blue Mountains at Leura, and while we were there had the most amazing raw gourmet dinner party. Julie from Conscious Creations  outdid herself in creating the most delectable raw gourmet I have tasted. The Hearty Chili was a hit for the die-hard carnivores (who would have thought? No meat!) and her chocolate macaroon pie was simply divine. If you ever get a chance, take the plunge and go to one of her workshops or buy one of her cakes. Alternatively, if you can’t get to Bondi (where she is located) you can come to one of my raw workshops (next one is 13th April)..and I’ll actually come to you.

But I digress, this blog is meant to be about the boys learning adventures. They did enjoy the food though! Anyway, while we were up in the mountains we did all the touristy things and went on the steepest railway in the world, across the skyway cable car, and walked down to Katoomba Cascades. It was great and the boys had a good time. Another of my highlights was foraging Hawthorn berries outside the oohlala posh Lillianfells Hotel.  Ariel and I are going to see if we can germinate them and attempt to grow a living fence. (we figure it will be quicker than waiting for the actual fence to be built).

Opa came down for a visit last week, and during that time he and Ariel really got into creating mazes on paper. Really really complex and tricky ones which Ariel was pretty good at. He has been creating new ones most mornings since while he has his breakfast.

Analytical skills, problem solving, hand-eye co-ordination, botany, horticulture, biology, nutritional science, vocabulary, reading, writing, grammar, physics, Bible study…. who needs school?

Actually this is what makes the natural learning part of our journey fun. Despite the fact that our formal main lesson has fallen by the wayside the last few weeks (due to a few lifestyle changes, rain, and not being arsed)..we have been doing quite a lot. During the rain we made some new friends…a family of beautiful rainbow lorikeets decided to grace us with their cheery presence. It was interesting that the birds only appeared just before a storm came and torrential rain with it…but it was kinda nice to draw the correlation for Ariel that the rain wouldn’t last for ever because God made us a promise that He wouldn’t flood the whole world again..and although we didn’t see any rainbows in the sky, we did see it in the birds. Stretching an analogy? maybe. but it brightened our week anyhow.

Of course, they also required the obligatory feed for the time on our verandah.

When the rain finally took a break we got the chance to catch up with our beautiful little unschooling group at Fagan Park, and we welcomed a new family to our group. So stuff has actually been happening.

Now it’s really hot and we’ve been inside again. So to borrow a principle from permaculture..see solutions not problems… we took the opportunity to explore the Fruits of the Spirit. and because we all need a little reminder every now and then, they are (in order of appearance): Love, Joy, Peace, Longsuffering, Gentleness, Goodness, Faith, Meekness, Self-control. We even painted them over our dining room archway (because sometimes one REALLY needs reminding). The reason we started working on these was not so much because of my addiction to buying fruit trees (and having no-where to actually put them once I realised they were going to be huge when they matured) but because for the last 8 months we have been participating in a programme called Growing Kids God’s Way…yes much to my shame, we have been partially Ezzo-fied. I say partially because I’ve managed to separate the chaff from the wheat in the programme ( and hopefully inform others of it as well) and use the bits that are actually useful and biblically-based, but the rest I’ve chucked. Why don’t I like this programme? Well, it’s basically an off-shoot from their Babywise programme which is a load of Biblically unfounded dangerous rot around ‘sleep-training (read control crying), scheduled feeding, etc in babies. The practices they advocate are actually physically dangerous to a child..and this actually doesn’t show your child how to love & respect you. So anyway there’s heaps written about why these programmes are dangerous, punitive, and adversarial rather than loving and actually following the example Christ gave us. So when I spoke about lifestyle changes before, we’ve changed our tact a bit. We still do the boundaries, understanding love languages, couch time for me & the superman, etc BUT we now approach our children from the charge that Christ gave when He said ..”if you do these things for the least of my brethren then you do them to me’ ..believe it or not this also includes children.  For further information on this Biblical Christ-centred method..have a look at www.gentlechristianmothers.com and www.aolff.org 

For someone who homebirths, bresatfeeds full term, co-sleeps, carried my babes, and basically responds to my children with the mothering instincts God gave me..it makes much more sense (and it works) to parent in a continuous gentle manner than all of a sudden employ separatists methods. Despite what many people think God isn’t separatist. He gives us boundaries (the Law) but He helps us when we ask Him, and when we seek Him, He always keeps us close under His wing. The imagery that God uses throughout His Word is that of a mother tenderly caring for her nursling. Why would He use this imagery to describe His care for us if He didn’t expect us to treat our children the same way?

Anyway, enough with the rant. We’ve had a pretty good week.

Well, with the public holiday last Monday our rhythm for this week has been a bit more fluid, and we’ve been quite te social butterflies. Wednesday, we got together with our little Natural Learning group at Blenheim Park, which i always enjoy because of the amazingly yummo living food creations that people bring, and the beautiful like-minded company of course and the kids had fun climbing trees in defiance of the sweltering heat.

  Then on Thursday Ariel went to the beach while Josh & I stayed at home doing some chores in preparation for a dinner party we held on Saturday night. Friday we went out again to visit another lovely expecting mum and her young son and all the boys had a great time, and we were all very happy that the rain was finally here. 

So even though we have been out & about all week the boys and I did manage to get back into our morning yoga rhythm. I’ve decided that our circle time/movement circel will consist of our yoga practice on Monday, Wednesday, & Friday, and other movement games  on Tuesday & Thursday. From past experience, I found that if we did the yoga every day it becomes a bit boring (and this way I have time to come up with new stories for each posture). Here’s some pics of my little yogi; 

We were also extremely pleased to recieve the final set (for now) of our homeschooling books from Christopherus Homeschool Resources (www.waldorfbooks.com) wth many many heartfelt thanks to Opa & Pa-Peter & Daddy for buying them for us…….  It’s very timely as now (for some crazy reason   ) people have started asking about our homeschooling journey, have we officially begun, what is Ariel actually learning, blah balh blah….all with good intentions no doubt, but a little annoying when you have to keep explaining that he has actually been lerning from birth (if not before) and if he hadn’t learnt anything he’d be a vegetable (which do actually have some intelligence..but that’s another story)…so just because we don’t do 9-3 every day and he doesn’t have a uniform and he isn’t reading Shakespeare or doing 4 unit maths yet doesn’t mean he is not learning. If you ever feel so inclined ask him about the workings of an ant colony or how to engineer mouse traps out of blocks, or what the ten commandments are…he’s no dummy. Or simply keep reading this blog. Have you stopped learning since you left school?

What Ariel has learnt this week……how to play/work with others that don’t always share the same opinions (relationships), how to engineer blocks in a way that they won’t destroy the whole trap when aiming to catch a mouse (analytical thinking), taking care of sea snails (responsibility for another life), how to master the ‘gum tree’ pose in yoga (balance & co-ordination), etc etc..ad infinitum………..

As you know we are basing our approach on the Steiner model of learning which not only emphasises the importance of learning through imaginative mimicry of everyday household life but also the importance of rhythm. Although we have loosely followed daily, weekly & seasonal (Holy day) rhythms since Ariel was born, I have been a bit more focussed on it since ‘officially’ starting to homeschool this week. So our daily rhythm now looks like this:

• circle time -morning verse (ours is currently the Lord’s prayer), giving thanks, movement games
• story time
• main lesson activity (carries on from theme of story)
• freeplay
• morning tea
• activity (depending on day -art, craft, music, food preparation. gardening)
• freeplay (while i do some chores and prepare lunch)
• lunch
• quiet time/story
• outdoor freeplay/walk

Again this rhythm is fluid according to when we actually get up & have breakfast, if there are any morning errands, or when our homeschooling group gets together.

So as this was our first week I thought we would start…at the beginning…of everything. Our storytime began with the days of creation. For this I employed the help of a beautiful little treasure which Ariel aptly named…Treasure.

 Our Storyteller

Ariel knows his alphabet and is playing around with reading but I thought i would review this for him anyway just to deepen his understanding of the letters, their sounds, their characteristics, and how to write them. This week and next week, however, we will begin with form drawing to start becoming used to writing the actual letters with grace and ease. For our Main Lessons this week we have been looking at the signatures that God has put in His creation…the patterns that commonly re-occur in the natural world..and use these as a base for our form drawing. The boys and I explored our garden and found numerous spirals, flowforms, circles, branch-like patterns, etc…here are some that Ariel drew from memory;

 …and some inspiration…..

Story number 2 was reading from a book called ‘Uno’s Garden’ by Graeme Base..and has the underlying theme of looking after nature and achieving a balance between looking after our beautiful planet and existing here peacefully. It fit nicely with our theme of the creation and what God said when he placed Adam & Eve in the Garden (ie: that they should tend it). Ariel did some more form drawing and then moved on to building a natural indoor habitat for some grasshoppers he had found.

We had our homeschooling get together on Wednesday this week at Bicentennial Park in Homebush. There was only the 2 of us (families) this week.  Nevertheless, the mum’s had a good time chatting and eating yummy raw food creations and the children had fun playing together, riding their scooters, and building sandcastles in the sandpit..until someone threw sand in someone’s eyes. This brought up a good opportunity to explore the concepts of saying sorry (acknowledging the mistake), asking for forgiveness (seeking restitution & repenting from the heart, ie: realising that they had taken away the joy of a friendship from the other person) & restoring the relationship (by offering to help build the wronged persons’ sand castle).  At the end of the day all was well, and everyone left as good friends again.

Joshy meanwhile has been having fun doing what big brother is doing (listening to stories, playing in puddles & drawing with crayons), playing the drum, and eating lots of raw food (something his brother doesn’t enjoy so much..but we are on a winner with green smoothies every morning). His favourite past-time though seems to be sweeping the kitchen floor. It’s a tremendous help! See, Joshy is already learning a valuable lesson!

Till next time.

Peace. xo