We love Ashie-Boy

We have the nicest neighbours. They have a pony. It does not live next door to us but lives in a paddock down the road. He is a white pony. Jordan is a 17 year old high school student and every Wednesday she teaches Annamaria horse riding. She shows her how to care for the pony by brushing him down and how to remove mud from in his hooves. She also gets to feed him, and put on his saddle, bridle and reins.

Annamaria would love to have a horse, and she is saving up. I think she has saved $32 so far. She sometimes does extra jobs so she can save more money. The only problem is we need a farm first.
This week the rest of the children had  a real treat because they all were able to have a turn riding Ash, including Lily. That was pretty fun. The funniest part was Lily had a big tantrum when she had to get off, and an even bigger tantrum when she had to take the riding helmet off. She just wanted to keep it on her.

Annamaria is becoming a professional. She can walk, and trot with Ash. She can also ride bare-back and without holding onto the reins. When Ash was jumping over the logs, he did a massive jump which surprised Anna and she grabbed onto his mane.

Ella was super excited to get her turn. We only went to watch Annamaria so we could take some photos, so getting to have a ride was a surprise.

Joseph enjoyed himself, but thought it was a bit scary when Ash was trotting.

Joshua would love a horse as well. 

 Lily was all very serious when she was riding. She loved the horse and wanted to be involved in all the action, as long as his face did not come too close to her.

Lily having a tantrum on the floor when she had to get off the horse and take off the helmet.

Mothers Day

A favourite poem for Mothers Day

 William Ross Wallace (1819-1881)

THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE IS
    THE HAND THAT RULES THE WORLD.

      BLESSINGS on the hand of women!
        Angels guard its strength and grace.
      In the palace, cottage, hovel,
          Oh, no matter where the place;
      Would that never storms assailed it,
          Rainbows ever gently curled,
      For the hand that rocks the cradle
          Is the hand that rules the world.

      Infancy's the tender fountain,
          Power may with beauty flow,
      Mothers first to guide the streamlets,
          From them souls unresting grow—
      Grow on for the good or evil,
          Sunshine streamed or evil hurled,
      For the hand that rocks the cradle
          Is the hand that rules the world.

      Woman, how divine your mission,
          Here upon our natal sod;
      Keep—oh, keep the young heart open
          Always to the breath of God!
      All true trophies of the ages
          Are from mother-love impearled,
      For the hand that rocks the cradle
          Is the hand that rules the world.

      Blessings on the hand of women! 

          Fathers, sons, and daughters cry,
      And the sacred song is mingled
          With the worship in the sky—
      Mingles where no tempest darkens,
          Rainbows evermore are hurled;
      For the hand that rocks the cradle
          Is the hand that rules the world.

I love being a mother. There is nothing more satisfying than stroking my baby's hair while she sleeps, or listening to my son talk to me about the battle of midway, or singing the children to sleep, or reading them stories at bedtime. Yes it is hard, tiring and exhausting at times, but isn't anything that is really worth doing well?

Why I love Leadership Education a.k.a. Thomas Jefferson Education

For home education we follow a philisophy called Thomas Jefferson Education (TJED) or Leadership Education. It is a fantastic way to bring up children in light and truth and to inspire them to learn. My youngest children are in CORE phase, where they are mainly learning right and wrong, good and bad, and work and play. My older two children are in Love of Learning phase, where we are inspiring them to fall in love with learning about a broad expanse of knowledge. Here are my highlights of this week doing TJED. 

1. I love it when Ella (3yrs) volunteers to set the cutlery on the table and then asks her big sister Annamaria (6yrs) 'can you train me?', which she obliges to do.

2. Joshua's conversation a few days ago after finishing reading 'The Once and Future King' - 

"The problem with King Arthur is that when he sets up the round table he makes the assumption that all men are inherently good... I mean they are all inherently good, but some of them just choose to be bad." 

That was such a good opener for a discussion. We talked all about people being corrupted by power, the innocence of children and the importance of having GREAT mentors, especially during those formative years. (Wish it could have been video-taped for the homeschool authorised person who does not think my children understand anything of what they read... yes my son does comprehension daily)

3. Overhearing Joseph and Ella. They were sitting down looking at her 'who's your hero book of mormon puzzle. This was the conversation...

Joseph - Is this a goodie or a baddie?

Ella - Goodie?

Joseph - No he's is a baddie...King Noah

Joseph - Goodie or Baddie?

Ella - Goodie  

Joseph - Yes, Nephi is a goodie.

Core phase is sooo fun.

4. Teaching my sons valiant class today at church and Joshua saying on the way home why can't our normal valiant teacher teach like a TJED teacher.

5. Sitting on my bed and glancing out the window I see Joseph teaching Annamaria how to throw a garden cane (javelin-style) in our little back garden. Had to grab the camera and get a quick pic of that. If they were stuck in school, they just would not have the time to develop these close relationships which I am relishing watching develop.

Here Joseph is showing Annamaria the correct way to hold and aim the garden cane.

 And here she has thrown it across the garden. I just love it!

Learning the apostle names

We really enjoyed general conference. The kids have had a blast learning all the names of the apostles, especially when they turned it into a hand-clapping game.

Too cute

Ella-Rose is so cute. She says 'Jesus kissed me'. I asked her where?, she points outside and says over there.

Reading the scriptures

I was really surprised with my children this week. They each set their own goals with no prompting from us. It started with Joseph.  He decided he wanted to read the Book of Mormon we started together and he has already read the first 10 chapters.

Annamaria started reading Genesis. She had some funny comments. First she thought it was pretty funny that 'Go said it was good' 3 times in one chapter. So I explained why he said it was good. Because God was creating a beautiful Earth for us and he had to make sure it was just right.

This morning she told me something else was funny in the Bible. She told me that God told Adam and Eve to be fruitful. She did not understand what that meant but we were able to talk about God wanting Adam and Eve to have children just like  fruit trees bear fruit.

Last week we went to visit friends. They gave us a French Book of Mormon.  Today Joshua told me he wanted to study the Book of Mormon in French.  He made a start and I can hear him now reading verse for verse French then English.

They all also decided to enter the local agricultural show. They want to enter into the art, cooking, handicrafts, cake decorating, and woodwork sections. So we are going to be busy over the next few weeks.

Lily in her first pair of shoes. Too cute!

This is trying to get the kids to all look at the camera together for a photo.... not going to happen!

Little monkey

Anna doing leap-frog. She loves it.

Ella- looking simply gorgeous!

Our garden is becoming slowly productive. We are growing corn, basil, tomatoes, strawberries, chilli, lettuce, cucumber, beans and pumpkin. The kids take turns to water the garden.

Joseph made himself a shield.

This is where I found Lily

Anna and Ella decided to make prices crowns.

Joshua is still loving his sailing, and planning on what boat to build.

Ahoy me hearties!!

Joshua has had an awesome year or reading sailing books. He read the 12 books in the Arthur Ransome series - Swallows and Amazons. That was a book my Grandfather had read to my mum when she was little (I think)... I never read it when I was young, but remember my mum recommending it to me.

It was the beginning of a desire for Joshua to learn to sail. He has also read the 12 books in the CS Forester series about Horatio Hornblower which is historical fiction set in the Napoleonic wars. He has also read Kidnapped, Robinson Crusoe, Treasure Island, the first 2 books of the Imaginarium Geographica chronicles, and the Temeraire series.

With us moving it has taken a while to get him enrolled in a sailing club, but today, he finally had his first sailing lesson. Joseph also is learning to sail. First they had to learn to capsize the boats on land, then in shallow water and then in the deep water. After that... they were sailing. They were pretty lucky... there were meant to be 8 in their class with only 6 boats between them, but only Joshua, Joseph and 1 other child turned up, so they pretty much had a private lesson.

Joshua did very well the teacher was impressed with something he could do... something to do with changing hands... which she said her kids who have been sailing since October are only just learning how to do that... maybe sailing is going to be his sport. He was certainly very excited, when I checked in on him at 9pm last night he was wide awake as he was too excited to sleep, and at 10.30pm he was still excited thinking about sailing.

He was so happy afterwards... He loved it.

The teacher gave us forms and told us to fill them out if we wanted to carry on with the lessons. Tane and I just looked at each other and said, 'yes, we'll definately carry on'. We asked Joshua if it was harder than he expected... He said 'Yes, harder, but more fun!'

Joseph did well for his first lesson... he had a bit of trouble with the turning at first and capsized 3 times in a row, but then was up and running like his big brother.

Tane, Anna and Ella got to go for a ride in he motorboat, so they had a fun time too... and they all had a swim in the river in the end as well.

Homeschool Concert

The kids had so much fun over the last 2 terms with their homeschool classes. In the first term, Anna did art and literacy and numeracy games, Josh did outdoor activities including archery, shooting and bushcraft. Joseph did BMX biking and go-karting. Both the boys also did cooking, and made some delicious treats. I was especially pleased with josh contributing to the class by suggesting a recipe and providing it to the class to make - ginger biscuits - one of his favourites to make at home.

This term Anna did a different art class as well as a dancing class. Joshua, unable to do his first choices, ended up doing digital photography and singing... that was not his favourite thing to do, but by the end of the first class, I could see him enjoying himself. They visited 3 rest homes and sung for them throughout the term. They sang fun songs like 'she'll be coming round the mountain when she comes' and 'You are my sunshine'. So who couldn't enjoy that. It was such a special experience for them to share their talents and get to talk with some of the old people in the rest homes.

Joseph did sports and cooking again. I think he mostly enjoyed eating what he made, and he also did not get his first choice of class.

On the last day of classes for the term, the children put on a concert/show and tell of what they had been doing during the term. Joshua's class sang - the singing was accompanied by homeschoolers also some by guitar, some by recorder and some by ukulele.

Anna performed her dance and really was excited about that... She said her best part of the day was 'dancing on the stage'.

Joseph's cooking class made macaroni cheese and garlic bread for everybody.

Ella-Rose made a bunny mask in creche... besides playing with lego, trains, colouring and having
stories and songs.

Square numbers and multiplication tables

Over the past few weeks we have been working on our times tables...
I realised trying to get my kids to simply memorise these lists of facts was pretty boring... and they are pretty resistant to anything that is boring. So just through spontaneous activities we have been learning them.

It all started one afternoon when we were sitting on the steps outside. I grabbed the whiteboard marker and the whiteboard. While the kids ate afternoon tea, they took turns giving answers to the times tables on a multiplication chart. This was a really great way to see which times-tables they knew and which they needed to work on. After a while, I could see their interest was waning, but I could see they needed to work on the 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, and 12 times tables.

We went inside and I considered that 'done'. About an hour later, Anna-Maria came back inside to show me she had completed all the empty spaces... and they were all correct, except one. Because she did not know these ones she had worked them out so had taken a while. I was impressed with her concentration and determined attitude to complete the chart.

Ella wanted a turn with the board, so she drew a teddy bear.

Practising the times-tables and food seem to be a good combination for my kids. Even Ella wants to be quizzed if it means she gets crackers for swearing.

Last week we learnt square numbers, after they had practised them, we had a 'Who wants to be a millionaire?'-style quiz, with life-lines included... which made them feel it was okay not to have to get everything right, every-time.

This week we have been working on the nine times-tables, so we have been learning the tricks to remember these.

Also, I found a cool maths puzzle book from the library called 'The Grapes of Math' by Greg Tang.

It is a really good book for encouraging/developing mental math strategies... for older kids. Joseph especially enjoyed it... I think because his basic maths facts were up to speed... Anna got a bit upset as she did not grasp one or two of the concepts initially, but she persisted and got there in the end. It is also good for younger kids, as they just like counting the objects or looking for patterns.

Homeschool Stuff

The kids have been having a lot of fun learning a whole assortment of things during homeschool.
One day they decided to make a pyramid with their duplo. They just had a whole lot of fun working together on this one... which is nice as sometimes lego can cause more trouble than fun.

Last week we went to an art class where the kids learnt to draw sports people. It was very good. The pictures the kids drew were also pretty good, but the boys were starting to tire towards the end, but Anna-Maria was in her element. She absolutely loved it. I picked up a few art books from a recent garage sale, one of Renoir's, Van Gogh's and Rembrant's paintings. Anna-Maria looked through the Van Gogh book, got paper and pencils and started copying his pictures of irises and roses. She just loved it.

She really loved art. There is not a day goes by without her (and Ella) drawing a large amount of pictures. So one of projects this term will be studying the impressionists and doings lots of art and painting. We have nearly got our learning cupboard sorted out so that our project work will be a lot easier.

Ella-Rose entertains herself and has already claimed the title of Monkey-Ella, but here is the evidence to prove she really is a monkey.

She also likes to be very involved in what Lily is doing.

Today I was asking Ella everybody's names. When she got to me, She knew I was mummy, but I told her my name was also Deborah, 'Mummy Deborah'. I pointed to her dad and asked who's that? She was obviously trying to think of his other name, grinned and said 'Daddy Boy!'