Back in the swing

I really love this time of the year. Last year is in the past and there are so many exciting possibilities looming in the future.  A new year brings with it the most exciting thing of all - a new schedule! I'm a big fan of plans and schedules and time tables and even though we often don't stick to them religiously it's comforting to know that when things are going pear-shaped and out of control we can look at our schedule again and be reminded of what we could be doing and when. The Snork Maiden especially is liking having a time table and is suddenly very eager to do her work and learn new things.

We kicked off our new year at the annual Not Back To School Party at a water theme park not too far from home. About 250 other homeschoolers were there taking over the park. It was a great day to relax and have fun with friends.

a ride that looked pretty tame but really wasn't!

driving a mini car

racing down head first!

The time came to get stuck into our work.  I won't go into the details of our time table but it mostly consists of Table Time, Indonesian language, the usual maths/English stuff and our project for the year: The Middle Ages.
Table Time is a new thing I've come up with after reading many other blogs and their versions of Circle Time, where families spend time together learning scripture verses, prayers and/or poetry and copywork.  I have adapted this into Table Time where we spend every morning choosing and writing out an inspirational quote and decorating the page, then learning a poem.  At the moment we're using one of my very favourite childhood books called "A Child's Garden of Verses" by Robert Louis Stevenson.  It's a Golden Press publication with beautiful handstitched artwork by Virginia Tiffany.

These are some of the images from two poems the girls have learnt so far: At The Seaside and The Swing.

We choose uplifting quotes from "101 Moments of Joy and Inspiration" by Meredith Gaston.
Both girls really love starting the day this way - settling our minds and being creative puts us all in the right mood for the rest of the day and they are easily able to move onto other studies without any fuss.

Table Time on the deck

Moomintroll's work from today

The Snork Maiden drawing happily

one of mine

Indonesian studies are taking off at last, with the help of these free podcasts from the Learning Indonesian website. They feature a native speaker who has a beautiful melodic voice - that helps alot when learning a new language.
Our big project for the year is the Middle Ages. As it was Chinese New Year last weekend I thought we'd begin with Ancient China. So far we've read about the Tang Dynasty, read poetry by Li Bai, Wang Wei and other famous poets, learned about inventions from that time period including toilet paper and the first moveable type (woodblock printing) and explored Confucianism - a blend of Buddhism, Taoism and local Chinese beliefs and practices.

Buddhist shrine at our local Chinese New Year festival.

the Snork Maiden found her lookalike

having a go at woodblock printing, using polystyrene blocks. It proved challenging carving out the letters backwards!

 Confucius says...

"I hear and I forget.  I see and I remember.  I do and I understand." 

                               "Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated."   

Alone Looking at the Mountain

All the birds have flown up and gone;

A lonely cloud floats leisurely by.

We never tire of looking at each other - 

Only the Mountain and I.

Li Po