• Friday, December 7, 2007 - It's hard to believe my "newborn" is 5 months old now!
My last entry was his newborn picture. That's how long I haven't blogged for.
I've had a lot to say in recent weeks, but very little time for blogging. I am drastically cutting down my computer time to get serious about looking after my family.
I finally bought the Managers of Their Homes book and am implementing a schedule. I don't want to speak too soon, but it is helping. I really want to wait a month or so to give a more realistic evaluation, but I feel that I am at a point in my life that I CAN do this!
I really battle with tiredness. In fact I shouldn't really say battle because most often I just surrender to it. After going through the Demolishing Strongholds workbook at http://www.restorationministries.org/
I finally feel able to fight it as a demonic attack.
I encourage you to go through this material as well, it's all free, which is refreshing! I found I was "demonised" by almost every demonic stronghold mentioned in the workbook. I had believed that Christians couldn't be "demon possessed", but now I know that ALL MY LIFE I have been "demonised" and had NEVER BEEN TOLD HOW TO GET FREE!!! I have been a Christian about 20 years.
I have always felt that my battles against sin were hopeless. I would muster up a whole lot of will-power and pray, and ask to be filled with the Holy Spirit, and that would last a few hours at most before my defenses collapsed and I would give way to sin. Usually anger or irritability, but many others as well.
Most of the time I HAD NO WARNING that I was about to sin- the thought, the feeling and the action would all be over in a split second. This was not the "Victorious Christian Life" I had heard about. I now realised that in those cases I was under the power of demonic strongholds- demons that had taken up residence, and I THOUGHT THEY WERE ME!!! I thought those thoughts were my thoughts. I have been free a week now, and I feel I'm finally starting to live.
I want to emphasise that I was personally responsible for every sin I committed whilst under the influence of demons. Our Father in Heaven will not take the excuse "the devil made me do it" or "I was tired" or even "I was pre-menstrual". There is NO EXCUSE FOR SIN, but there is forgiveness if we renounce it and turn from it.
But I had confessed and repented more often than I can remember and still there was no victory. I really really wanted to do what my Heavenly Father wanted, but much of the time, I was unable to. Now of course the attacks still come, but I have control. There is a point when I realise I am having a thought that doesn't conform to Yahweh's will, and that I have a choice, to either give in to it, or to renounce that thought and ask to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Then, miraculously, it is GONE!!!! Will power just did not work, but Holy Spirit power sure does!
I won't say I haven't sinned for the past week, I have. But now I feel that I have a choice. I feel that it IS possible to have victory over sin.
Hopefully I will have time to update my blog as I travel this journey, and I hope if you can Identify with my struggle, you will head over and check out Demolishing Strongholds
by Mike and Sue Dowgiewicz. They also have an audio and a video of the material in the book, also for free if you prefer to watch or listen.
Now we are gradually helping our children to get rid of their demonic strongholds too.
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• Friday, December 7, 2007 - Heart of Wisdom book giveaway!
Robin Sampson at Heart of Wisdom is running a Homeschool Weekly Book Giveaway!
To enter: The Heart of Wisdom Winter Giveaway Contest is open to everyone over the age of 18 anywhere in the world. There are two steps to enter:
- Subscribe to the Heart of Wisdom blog (enter your email address in the box on the upper left corner of the HOW Blog and click “subscribe.”)
- Leave a comment below and/or sign Mr. Linky to verify your entry. (If you are already subscribed your name will be automatically entered). You need a blog address to sign Mr Linky below.
Every Monday, one entry will be randomly chosen using Random.org to receive one homeschool book or Heart of Wisdom Ebook. RANDOM.ORG acts as an unbiased third party who conducts the draws in a manner that is guaranteed to be fair and truly random.
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• Wednesday, July 18, 2007 - Newborn Photos
• Monday, July 9, 2007 - It's A Boy!
Micah Elisha was born at home on Wednesday 4th July. 3.7kg. I am recovering and Micah is doing well. When I work out how to I'll put up a photo; we're borrowing my parents' camera as our died just before Micah was born... |
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• Friday, June 29, 2007 - Unschooling
Well, baby is now nearly 2 weeks overdue. Well on Tuesday he/she will be. At least I had planned to do lessons up until the due date.
I have been reading a few history books lately. Famous Men of the Middle Ages is a good one. It's also available free online at The Baldwin Project, along with a lot of other good books.
I've also been reading a book from the library, the only book from the library on homeschooling (!) about unschooling. Whilst I don't think I'll ever become a complete hardcore unschooler, the ideas in it certainly have merit. However I don't think it is biblical to just "trust the child" to educate themselves on what they want to learn when they want to learn it. Children need discipline, and they also need to be instructed in the Scriptures, which is one of the main reasons we're homeschooling! However, I am encouraged to give the children more choice in what they learn, and more time to follow their own interests, as well as committing to helping them, not just learning what I have scheduled for them. We have periods of unschooling where a lot of this goes on, and usually the children are happy to return to lessons when we do.
I sometimes have a tendency to overschedule lessons, just because there's so much great curriculum to do! Added to that I don't want to waste what we've bought! I love it when our scheduled lessons provide a spark of an idea which kindles into an interest. This has happened with bird-watching after beginning lessons in Jeannie Fulbright's "Flying Creatures of the fifth day" book. Three of our children are now noticing the great variety of bird life around us and thinking of ways to attract them to bird feeders. They are becoming proficient at using our field guide too. The same kind of thing happened when we studied the Astronomy book from the same series. However this was not so evident when we did Botany, I think because instead of doing it as a group, with me reading aloud, I assigned the reading and projects for them to do on their own.
I've almost decided to resume where we left off studying Diana Waring's "Romans, Reformers, Revolutionaries" guide. I really want my children to have an overview of the sweep of world history before they leave me, and I think this will help us get just that. It does involve a lot more planning and gathering of resources than The Mystery of History, but it also offers more choice and is "meatier" for the older ones. We will use the relevant lessons in Mystery of History as read alouds. I'm thinking of leaving the younger ones (6 and 7) out of history for now unless they want to do it, because they really don't have the maturity to understand even what history is! I'll read them interesting stories from history, and leave the formal study until later.
You'd think after about 10 years home schooling I'd know what I was doing!
Hope to have some baby news soon... |
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• Sunday, June 24, 2007 - I Haven't Had the Baby Yet!
But that's pretty normal for me. Most of my babies (4 out of 6) have been "late" , ranging from 10 days to 3 weeks over the "due date". All I can say is I'm looking forward to losing a LOT of weight soon! |
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• Sunday, June 24, 2007 - Diana Waring's History Alive Study Guides
We have used "Ancient Civilizations and the Bible" and are now onto "Romans, Reformers, Revolutionaries" in this series of history study guides. I have moderated a Yahoo group for discussing this curriculum for a couple of years now but there have been few members. If anyone reading this is using one of the study guides, or wants to know more about them, I have placed a "join" button for the group at the side of my blog.
The third guide in the series is called "World Empires, World Missions, World Wars". So basically three guides, for Ancient, Middle and Modern History. Each is designed to be used over a year but we took longer! For more info visit www.dianawaring.com and join the Yahoo group!
  
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• Tuesday, June 5, 2007 - Large
I'm feeling very blobby lately. I'm 38 or so weeks pregnant and getting rather tired of the burden. I was thankful that it's only like this for a short while, and some who are very overweight have to carry around a burden like this for a long time! I get so tired and have a lot of back pain. But soon I will get to see our precious new baby and it will all be worth every minute of discomfort!
I'm still homeschooling, on a pretty strict schedule at the moment. We're reading through the Book of Acts for Bible Study, and also going through a stickfigure Bible timeline, drawing a couple of pages each day. I got it free from homeschoolestore.com. We've started a new history curriculum, the Mystery of History Volume 2- the Early Church and the Middle Ages. So far so good. All ages together, 6yo to 14yo. We're doing Flying Creatures by Jeannie Fulbright for Science, but the 14yo is doing General Science Apologia. He's not really a science boy but I hope he gets something out of it and it's a great foundation explaining the whole rationale of creation science. So a lot of our work is sitting around the kitchen table all together at the moment, and I like being together. Also I can conserve my energy just sitting there!
I'm able to do less and less housework these days, especially tidying which involves picking things up off the floor. I cook, and I wash clothes and hang them out to dry. Beyond that anything is a bonus.
I may blog again before the baby is born, but I may not! |
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• Wednesday, May 23, 2007 - Yearly calendar
http://incompetech.com/beta/cal-yearly/
This site allows you to create a year-to-a-page calendar for any year in PDF. I am finding it very handy for homeschool planning. I can highlight and scribble all over it in my preliminary planning phase. I hope it can help you too! |
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• Tuesday, May 8, 2007 - Valley of the Liquidambers
On Saturday we went and had a picnic at the Valley of the Liquidambers, in Heathcote, Central Victoria. I'm glad we didn't leave it one more week because most of the leaves would have gone by then I think.
 Also I was realising there weren't too many pictures of me on my blog, as I am usually the one taking pictures, so Dale took the pictures that day:
 (Only 6 weeks until baby no. 7 is due!)
So there you have it, pictures of myself!
 The girls collected beautiful bunches of autumn leaves, which are now being pressed in the pages of old phone books.
 Autumn leaves are a novelty here as all native Australian trees are evergreen!
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• Thursday, May 3, 2007 - What a Bible!
 This is the latest novelty in our house. It's a huge old church Bible given to us by someone in town. They found it in their shed and had no use for it so gave it to us. Dh put it in the shed for a while and brought it out the other day. You should see the children crowd around when it's out on the table:
 This Bible is at least 183 years old!! Ds12 wanted to get it out to read for our Bible study today, he enjoys the King James language- it's a novelty because we don't use KJV.
We have been reading through Proverbs in our homeschool time Bible study lately- a chapter a day. Most of us have a copy of the New Living Translation so we were all using that version for study, however yesterday a couple of the children couldn't find their Bibles so I grabbed a pile of different versions of the Bible off the shelf and handed them out- giving each person a different version. We went through each proverb in the chapter, reading it in 5 different versions, around the table. It was such a valuable exercise we did it again today, only they had to choose a different version to the one they had yesterday.
Benefits: *realising there are different ways of saying the same thing.
*Vocabulary building- synonyms. Eg mocker / scoffer / scorner / arrogant person.
*Everyone reads the entire chapter and gets practice reading aloud.
*Without knowing Greek and Hebrew, this is the best way of looking at what the original meaning might have been.
*Each person is looking at each verse in the Bible in front of them, and can't "zone out" whilst it's not their turn to read.
At the end of each chapter we each choose which was our favourite Proverb and explain why. During the reading we discuss what the proverbs mean and how they apply, thinking of examples sometimes. It takes quite a while to go through a chapter this way!
I think at least some of it is sinking in because I often hear "Daddy this morning in our Bible Study we read in Proverbs..."
A funny: We had just read this Proverb: "Those who do violence to their father and chase away their mother are children who cause shame and bring reproach." (19:26) I asked "Who would do violence to their father and chase away their mother?" And 19 month old Zoë put her hand in the air and said "ME!" She had no idea what I was asking, she just recognised a question!
Here's a picture of Zoë with her Daddy:
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• Wednesday, May 2, 2007 - The Aprons are Finished!
The girls were so pleased, and they really did most of the sewing themselves. I had to supervise everything and show them what to do, but they learnt a lot.
   I could write more, but I'm really tired and need to finish cooking dinner. Only 7 weeks until baby no 7 is due. |
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• Monday, April 30, 2007 - Sewing aprons with the children
I decided it was time for my 7yo and 9yodds to start learning to sew, so they're doing a great job making aprons. The pattern was for: 
from http://www.allfreecrafts.com/sewing/quilt-block-apron.shtml but we aren't doing the quilt block or the tea towel hanging off it, just plain. I'll post some pictures when it's finished.
Problem/opportunity: my 6yods wants to make an apron too. I can't find any boy apron patterns, but I found a picture of one that looks good and easy, so we might try this:
 
Looks easy enough and boyish enough... |
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• Thursday, April 26, 2007 - Blast from the Past
This piece of playground equipment made to look like a mosque is in a park in Islamabad, Pakistan. We lived in Pakistan for 2.5 years, returning nearly 3 years ago in 2004.
 This was in another park, near Islamabad. There was a sort of junkyard of old tanks, and the children enjoyed playing in them! Nathan is poking his head out of the top. |
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• Monday, April 23, 2007 - The boys were...
Kneading dough! I think kneading dough is a great activity for teenage boys- gets out some aggression LOL! The boys were most upset I had posted that photo, and are hoping their homeschoolblogger friends don't see it!
I've been experimenting trying to get a good soaked grain bread lately, and have success using baker's yeast, now I'm going to attempt to do the same thing with sourdough culture. I don't like the really sour taste when the sourdough culture has been left for a long time, so I've been soaking the flour in kefir and water for 24 hours, then adding yeast mixed with a little water. So tomorrow I'll make two loaves- one the yeast way, the other the sourdough. I'm not brave enough to try it on our only loaf of bread so that's why I'm doing two.
The advantage of soaking the flour is it neutralises the phytic acid in the wheat, which acts as an anti-nutrient and stops your body from absorbing many of the goodies present in the bread and whatever else you have with it. |
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• Monday, April 16, 2007 - Guess what these boys are doing???
• Monday, April 16, 2007 - Bushwalking
• Monday, April 16, 2007 - Passover 2007
We decided to set up our Passover table on the floor of the lounge room, so we could recline, just like in Bible times. It was a bit hard to stop the 1yo, Zoe (right) from wrecking the table, but we strapped her into her portable high chair! We had a lovely evening, reclining around the table! |
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• Monday, April 16, 2007 - Our Goatie Girls
Front: Priscilla, followed by Prudence, then Quinracia, Blossom and Michaela at rear. Not much green in sight still, the drought is hanging on tight.
Goats are such companionable animals. They always come to greet me when I go out to them. And the milk they give is lovely! Michaela, our adult Anglo Nubian doe, was served last monday by a buck called Shabeen, so in about 150 days/5months we hope to have some lovely little kids, doe kids please Lord! Our human baby is due in 9 weeks too so this will be a baby year! It is our first year breeding goats, and we're only planning to breed from 2 this year. One Anglo Nubian and one Toggenburg.
On the left is Preston, our buck, and on the right Prudence, who we hope will breed with Preston this year. What a happy, contented couple they are! |
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• Monday, April 16, 2007 - 7yo Artist
Keziah, 7, really enjoys her art lessons. For her we use "I Can do All Things" and "Joseph the Canada Goose", see www.howgreatthouart.com. When she grows up she wants to be "a mummy, and an artist, and a farmer." I reckon she can do it! |
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A Yahoo Group for
discussing Diana Waring's
History Alive Curriculum
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