Welcome to our Self-Directed Studies guidelines that we have put together for ourselves and the children. No reading today….but definitely well on the way to getting an education!

Last month we read nearly seventeen thousand books between us…….

pinch and a punch for the first of the month….it’s April Fools Day!

We didn’t read excessively last month, focussing instead on a range of other activities, but we did churn through a few more books, which are listed here.

informal thoughts recorded elsewhere (keeping up my desire to write every day)

The Beautiful Country, a movie set in Vietnam and the US

Hotel Rwanda, no guesses for the setting of this one

Also watched Miss Potter….a beautiful stirring artistic biographical movie incorporating a number of her stories, capturing wonderful scenery, authentic costumes and a dash of political comment thrown in for good measure. Totally recommended.

it’s been a very non-booky week

we’ve planned and mostly organised a silent auction

we’ve made a couple of books

we’ve been part of the ultimate blog party (had to read for that!!)

we’ve played with the new collage creator programme

we’ve kept everyone fed and generally clean

we’ve sorted the winter clothes and made all necessary purchases apart from two pairs of shoes - all up $60, not too bad eh!

we’ve taken two loads of *stuff* to the sallies

we’ve started a major production run of flower presses

i’ve enjoyed a too-short portion of The Lonesome Gods each evening before bed

we’ve bigtime overhauled the vege garden

but we haven’t read any chapter books aloud
and we’ve missed it

It’s a book party here! Every day.
Feel free to pop in to see what we’ve been reading this year, our favourite-est ever books, how Thomas Jefferson affects us today in New Zealand, book reviews, gold stars, our education plan (which includes no gold stars)….come on in and join the conversation.

And if you want to see some of my other loves, you could visit Pilgrims’ Progress, which will eventually be a record of our family’s trip around the world (though we don’t leave for another seven months seven months less one day, but we’ve still got lotsa posts and pages up) and have pinny, will cook (the pinny part I love, the cooking I could take or leave, but I really did want to give my kids - and there happen to be eight of them - a wee record of why we eat what we do, so there you have it).
Oh, and about those kids - they love getting comments on their two blogs as well. If you’d be so kind as to pop in and say HI to them, their smiles would reach all the way to the moon: inventions and adventures……..in awe and wonder

Another Jill Tomlinson story. And we enjoyed it even more than the last one.

I’m going to award this one five stars, because there is so much to talk about through it, especially issues relating to serving each other and growing up and taking responsibility.
(but it doesn’t come across as “preachy” - its just a good yarn)

At the end of this reading, I asked the children what they learnt from this book.

Apart from the gorilla information (that they eat bamboo and sticks, they don’t like getting wet, they make nests for sleeping and old gorillas get too heavy to sleep up a tree, the young are very small, the old get silver hairs on their backs), they picked up some of the “character” lessons:

• help each other
• be sorry when you have hurt someone
• be kind to animals
• help children younger than you…..and the elderly too….and I suppose you could help anyone for that matter
• catch someone if they’re falling out of a tree
• work with each other

L7 reminded us of the most important lesson:

“Bang your chest or a tree stump and roar if there’s danger.”

I imagine there are a lot of books by this title. The particular one we read is illustrated by Tracey Moroney. Nothing memorable. Just “nice”. With forty rhymes, it would be a good starting point for someone totally unfamiliar with “English nursery rhymes”. But we have other preferred collections on our shelves. I think the thing with nursery rhymes is that they’re meant to be recited aloud anyway, the words are supposed to roll off your tongue. So if the pictures are going to add anything they need to be quite spectacular. These ones are not. (That is to say, they did not overly impress me. My three year old, on the other hand, did snuggle up so she could view every page. However, she has not returned to the book to pore over it alone as she does with others, so I do not think I am being too harsh in my judgment!)

What step of TJEd are YOU up to?
I’m not sure I’m ever going to get to real scholar phase! Finding the time is just so hard. But I might make it to Slow Scholar Right now (still) I’m at Love of Learning for poetry - absolutely enjoying reading poetry, which I never have before. Time constraints are probably what prevent me from digging in deeper, but I feel my confidence with it rising by the week, so maybe it’s a good thing to take your time. With art, I’m in a Love of Learning stage too and tipping into scholar-ish with the reading I’m doing about it all - but really need to be doing more practising. Actually, to be honest, I’m still probably in a getting-over-a-school-teacher-telling-me-I-needed-more-confidence-stage. Definitely lacking. Time issues again too. Actually, I feel like I’m dipping into lots of things and not giving any of them the attention they deserve (although my learn-to-knit year was pretty intense and has continued to prove to be highly productive knowledge!!!!) 

How are you finding it? 
I struggle between do I read my Bible OR a classic OR knit OR sew - and when on earth am I going to get to embroider? 

What classics have you read?
Anne Of Green Gables, Little Britches, Laddie, The Chosen and I’m on The Lonesome Gods. Plus the books we give five stars to I count as classics (and obviously must have read). 

Have you found yourself a mentor? 
No. And I’m very aware that we’re about to go away for a year so I’m not too worried about it.

A group to discuss the books with?
If we weren’t taking off I’d be asking R*** if she would like to, and another friend has registered interest.
I’ve got ar eady-made group at home - in fact, I’ve put up on the calendar four “book discussion nights” that I intend to do with at least my older two this year. Just to get going with it. To be that little bit formalish perhaps. Though I imagine we’ll sit round with hot chocolates and just chat! And ideally I would love for it to involve other people too.
I wonder if it would be possible to *chat* online….even on this here blog…..or if it would be too tiresome. Talking beats typing! What do you (you, whoever might be reading this) think?

Another treasure of a book.
It’s an oldie (published in 1964) we picked up secondhand. Hardcover. Yellowed pages. Black-and-white line drawings. Musty-smelling.
It sat neglected on the shelf for a few years before I even opened it. And what a pity!
Trapped inside, unappreciated was a wonderful anthology of poems about creation, about childhood, about love, about God.

Accompanied by Margery Gill’s illustrations, this selection of poems, verses, hymns and carols draws on the very best, including such well-known writers as A.A. Milne, Alfred Tennyson, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Isaac Watts, Charles and Mary Lamb, Eleanor Farjeon, Mrs C. F. Alexander (of all things bright and beautiful fame), Robert Louis Stevenson, Walter de la Mare, Robert Frost, Christina Rosetti, John Bunyan and that prolific writer whose sheer output I marvelled over as a child leafing through the pages of the hymn book, Anon.