FIRST DAY A SUCCESS, BUT...

Wednesday, April 25, 2007
First Day a Success, but...
...I have a new found respect for people who home school full time, every year, all their kids, wow...

Doing it for a day is easy, even a week or a month, but the 'what are we doing today Dad?' question, reminded me that I wasn't putting JT on a bus to have someone else do the hard work - it was up to me! I hope I can do a good job, and balance it out with everything else. It will really help me with some personal disciplines. But certainly feeling a sense of call to commit to the journey helps attitudionally.

So yeah, Tuesday went well (yesterday was a public holiday). JT learnt heaps about Anzac Day from various sources and even though I told him he could finish up at 3.00, he was still happily working away on stuff till 3.30. That's what I want to see more of - a passion and interest in learning. He wrote this great diary from Gallipoli and put himself in the role of a Turk. Interesting perspective. He likes reading about war so it wasn't hard to interest him in the topic, but I think hearing real life stories about death and sacrifice brought it home in a new way that war is a horrible thing.

He also keeps a log of what he does throughout the day which seems to work well.

The rain has been great, but the sunshine today made it possible to walk the dog together, which I usually do on my own at about 8.00. So that was nice.

By the way, my blog is saying it is 'wed 25th', but it's actually 'thurs 26th' so there is some issue there with international clock. I'll try to fix it.



Monday, April 23, 2007
First Day today!!
Well, this is a good day to stay inside and have school, eh JT?

It's a beautiful full on raining day here in Manly and so plans for surfing for sport will be postponed, not because it's wet, but because of stormwater run off.

I've got a busy work day today, but I spent a bit of time yesterday planning the week and I thought because it's Anzac Day tomorrow, that JT could use part of the day to complete a project on what Anzac Day is all about. I don't think he knows much about it - so my hope is that by the end today he will know what it is, why we commemorate it, as well as being able to tell me a story about one of the old diggers, where he fought, why and what happened. There should be some articles in today's paper to help with that. Then tomorrow (a public holiday) we will go to one of the Anzac services and that will help to bring the experience of 'Anzac' home even more.

And yeah, we'll get a bit of maths and spelling done too. I found a great listing of the 1000 most popular English words which we will work through as 'spelling lists'.

But it's nearly time for our morning devotion - working through Mark's gospel, so I better run, we've got an 8.00a.m. start.