Highlights of the Half term

The last half term has been busy and whilst these things are never perfect, progress has been made. Three items have helped contribute to this.

Family Nature Learning Sessions
 The London Wildlife Trust ran a series of six  Family Nature Learning Sessions for home educators. We spent a couple of hours, once a week, with a group of others, in a woodland area, learning about making shelters, footprints, minibeasts, birds and making fires. The latter was very popular. We tend to spend a fair amount of time outside but having a reason to get outside during the greyest, coldest time of the year was helpful.
The only downside was that the children were tired after the sessions and my grand ideas of doing all the morning work, in the afternoon just didn't succeed. We substituted with read alouds and poetry tea!

Not part of this but allied to it has been our nature table. Youngest Son is particularly interested in lichen and moss so has been busy adding specimens.

Brave Writer
I've written a bit about Brave Writer before. We used the free writing and poetry tea ideas last term.

We have continued with these items this term but added writing ideas from Partnership in Writing. This lead, amongst other things, to a writing project on codes and using a suggestion about narration, making a diorama of Robin Hood.

There is much more that we can do and I have plans for another writing project starting after half term. 

Goal setting
This seems obvious, probably to everyone except me. I've set goals for the children before but not shared them with the children or made the goals too distant to be useful. This half term, the children had simple goals which we discussed and rewards for achievement of these. This has worked and half term has seen each child help make a very chocolatey recipe. Of course, I plan to set goals again in the next half term.

Now, we are enjoying a different sort of week with our half term break. I love these breaks half way through the term. Time to recharge but not enough time for everything to be forgotten or for the novelty of a break to disappear.

If you enjoyed this post you may like to follow Delivering Grace by Google Friend Connect, G+,Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram or e-mail.

Ebenezer

On Saturday, we went to the opening of a new building for the Trinitarian Bible Society (TBS). We had a tour round the new building and then went to the thanksgiving service in the warehouse part of the building. A service in a warehouse on a wet, grey day doesn't sound inspiring but it was a most encouraging occasion with around four hundred people meeting to thank God for the provision of the building.

We heard the remarkable circumstances which had led the TBS to be able to acquire an old factory site and redevelop it into purpose built offices and warehouse space for the work of translating and distributing the Bible.

The sermon was from 1 Samuel 7 verse 12

Ebenezer...hitherto hath the Lord helped us.

I was a bit dubious about singing in a large warehouse space but actually the a capella singing was beautiful. The last psalm was the first part of 78. I was really struck by the metrical version and yes, how we want to declare God's works to succeeding generations. May this be the prayer of every Christian parent.

Attend, my people, to my law;

thereto give thou an ear;

The words that from my mouth proceed

attentively do hear.

My mouth shall speak a parable,

and sayings dark of old;

The same which we have heard and known,

and us our fathers told.

We also will them not conceal

from their posterity;

Them to the generation

to come declare will we:

The praises of the Lord our God,

and his almighty strength,

The wondrous works that he hath done,

We will show forth at length.

His testimony and his law

in Israel he did place,

And charged our fathers it to show

to their succeeding race;

That so the race which was to come

might well them learn and know;

And sons unborn, who should arise,

might to their sons them show:

That they might set their hope in God,

and suffer not to fall

His mighty works out of their mind,

but keep his precepts all.

If you enjoyed this post you may like to follow Delivering Grace by Google Friend Connect, G+,Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram or e-mail.

Caring for an elderly parent at home and Giveaway

My booklet about looking after older people at home arrived today. 

This booklet looks at the practicalities of caring for an older parent, particularly, when they come to stay with the family of one of their children. This covers

• Who is responsible?
• When Grandma moves in.
• Grandma can eat jam first, you can't: Three generational living
• Looking after yourself
• When it all gets too much

The booklet can be purchased from Pilgrims' Friends.

I have a couple of copies of this booklet to give away. If you would like a copy either for yourself or someone else, please leave a comment with why you would like a copy and your email address. I won't publish these comments so your email address will stay private. I'm not particularly into random number generators so will select two from the comments. I am happy to post abroad if necessary. 

Giveaway closes Friday 12th February 2016 at 2300 GMT.

My hope and prayer is that this booklet will be useful. 

If you enjoyed this post you may like to follow Delivering Grace by Google Friend Connect, G+,Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram or e-mail.

Book Club

At our local Christian home education group, I run a book club for the over eight year olds. This is only one part of the group and takes place towards the end of the meeting. Each book club session takes about 20-30 minutes.

There are two main components to the group

• book recommendations
• discussion of a book which we are all reading

Recommendations

This has proved to be the most popular part of the group.

The children can recommend books and are always enthusiastic about this time.

 I ask the children to include

• title
• author
• setting
• genre
• a brief outline of the plot without spoilers!

The group has only been running since September but last term, we voted on favourite books that had been discussed, at the end of term. The winning book had a living author that we were able to email and from whom, we received a prompt reply. 

Obviously, there may be an issue around a child recommending a book which doesn't fit with another family's standards and for this reason, and to remind people of the recommendations, I email the parents a list of recommendations.

This term, the plan is that the children will try to read another child's recommendation and that we will again vote and write to the author of the winning book.

Book

We read a book per half term related to our continent study. The actual reading takes place outside the group time and discussion happens in the group. So far,  we have read Return of the White Book,  A Single Shard and Jungle Doctor to the Rescue. Next half term is due to be The boy who biked the world.

In this part of the club, we talk about the book in question. This might be an introduction to the book, usually with maps. This first session about a book would involve less discussion than the following sessions. Another recent session involved discussing what makes a good  book both in terms of literary issues and from a Christian point of view. I am hoping to discuss plot structure and draw plot outlines. We have spent time talking about the effectiveness or otherwise of books written in the first person.

In terms of price of books, I try to keep to a limit of £5 per book although that may be achieved by buying a second hand book. Ideally, the books would be obtainable from the library but so far, this hasn't been possible. 

It is important to have preread the book that we are going to discuss. 

I am not fussy about whether the child reads the book themselves/ has it read/listens to an audio version and purposely don't ask the children to read aloud. The idea is not to alienate poorer readers but rather encourage all the children to enjoy some books which are new to them. 

A particularly helpful article about running a book club is this from Playing by the Book. 

I am always looking for book recommendations. Next term is Australasia and Antarctica so books about these continents would be particularly useful. Please let me know about book clubs that you have run or enjoyed. I'm very much an amateur at this!

If you enjoyed this post you may like to follow Delivering Grace by Google Friend Connect, G+,Facebook, Pinterest or e-mail.

February in Books

This is the first year that I have set myself reading lists and I'm still reeling a bit. The first book on one of the lists is now completed and I'm a fair way through the first on the other. Reading is feeling a bit more pressurised than usual. Has anyone else ever felt like this with reading lists?

Anyway, the current reads are

Expository Thoughts on the Gospels: Luke Volume 2 by J.C. Ryle. These are brilliant. I've just started volume 2. Just a short paragraph as a taster:

If we do pray, let it be a settled rule with us never to leave off the habit of praying, and never to shorten our prayers. A man's state before God may always be measured by his prayers. Whenever we begin to feel careless about our private prayers, we may depend upon it there is something very wrong in the condition of our souls. There are breakers ahead. We are in imminent danger of a shipwreck.

D'Aubinge's The Triumph of Truth: a Life of Martin Luther. This is slow progress perhaps because I read another book about Luther recently.   When Lightning Struck was fictionalised and aimed at older children so, to be honest, I enjoyed it more although The Triumph of Truth isn't unreadable, just long.

Another long book is Bleak House. My on-line book club is reading this book. I've read Bleak House before and enjoyed the twists of Jarndyce vs Jarndyce, after all, I'm married to a lawyer. This was already on my Kindle and I'm reading it again. 

Last, I think, although I'm sorely tempted to pick up a short book that can be finished in a day or two, is How to teach your children Shakespeare by Ken Ludwig. For a non-English literature specialist this is a helpful book explaining how best to teach children a few lines of Shakespeare; some of the background to some of the plays and some information about poetry. I'm not an enormous Shakespeare enthusiast but this is helpful background to use in deciding which plays to study and to learn about their contribution to the language. 

Our read alouds are Jungle Doctor to the Rescue by Paul White which we are reading for the book club; Joan of Arc by Diane Stanley to fit with history and Bronze and Sonflower by Cao Wenxuan. This latter book is set in China during the Cultural Revolution.

Please do let me know about the books that you are enjoying. 

If you enjoyed this post you may like to follow Delivering Grace by Google Friend Connect, G+,Facebook, Pinterest or e-mail.

February Inspiration

February is a month that brings mixed feelings; maybe more greyness but hopefully, the very early hope of Spring. 

I hope that these links will provide encouragement.

Over at Se7en, there was a useful and inspiring post about a 365 day photo project. I find that taking photos is a great way of finding the beauty around even in the grey times of year. My personal plan isn't to take photos every day but perhaps, a slightly lower target.

There has been a fair amount of debate, here in the UK, about regulation of home educators and the profile of home education, after a particularly sad case in the news. This article, from a head teacher, brings balance to this.

Laura Ingalls Wilder fans will find this article about the science behind her books interesting. It looks at the location of the school where Laura taught; the severity or otherwise of the Long Winter and Mary's illness.

Becky, at This Reading Mama, has written about Five things that Struggling Spellers need. The second point about spelling being organised in a logical way makes so much sense. We have abandoned a spelling curriculum where the words seemed to have little connection after the first four or so on the list. All about Spelling, which is mentioned in the article is the programme that we use with one of the children.

Tanya has written an article that I feel too guilty to write about starting late in the morning. Yes, maybe I should just accept that we tend to stay up late and not feel bad that we don't start at eight.

Finally, Lizzy has written about home educating without losing your head.

I hope that you all have a joyful February.

If you enjoyed this post you may like to follow Delivering Grace by Google Friend Connect, G+,Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram or e-mail.

How to Unplug your Child

Like many parents, I am concerned about the amount of screen time to which children are exposed.

Yes, there are plenty of learning opportunities involving screens and we do use screens for history (Veritas self paced), for occasional YouTube science videos and for reading (Kindle Fire for immersion reading and Kindle/laptop for ebooks). Still, computers tend to encroach on leisure time. I would be the first to admit that I haven't been the best at controlling this. Younger children in a family also tend to benefit from older siblings' skills at doing up old computers/putting on the lastest software and the general accessibility of screens. In view of all this, I was delighted when I saw How to Unplug your Child: 101 Ways to help your kids turn off their gadgets and enjoy real life by Liat Hughes Joshi on sale with the BookPeople.

When the book arrived, my child who is least interested in screens, took the book off to read and soon returned with a wish list, including a games night, a spa day, borrowing a dog, making sushi and charades.


Cardboard stair sliding has proved immensely popular including with the child who most likes screens.

The ideas vary from incredibly easy, for example, bath time at the wrong time to challenging, start their own business.

My only concern is that I would have loved some more ideas for the children to do on their own. There were some, for example, the cardboard sliding and making a mini-parachute that the children can do alone but probably, most of the ideas do require parental help e.g. stories around a camp fire and geocaching. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to abdicate parenting but there are times when, like other parents, there are phone calls to be made or the freezer needs defrosting and then it would be helpful to have a section that children from about five can manage on their own. 

Overall, this is a helpful book and should provide plenty of ideas for activities. I plan to try to work through many of the ideas. 

  Disclaimer: I purchased this book for the use of my family. The opinions are those of myself and my children.

If you enjoyed this post you may like to follow Delivering Grace by Google Friend Connect, G+,Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram or e-mail.