What a fantastic start to the last term of 2009. Our first full uninterrupted year of home educating, and our 4th year of mixing home educating in with our life/work/play. The first image is from our Secular Home Educators picnic we had in September. What a wonderful day it was! Large group of parents and children all committed to enjoying life, peace and freedom! This is a photo of a Gunyah that all the children made spontaniously.

D is doing really well with speech and it seems the years of growing will increase his mouth size enough for his tongue to not worry about anything more, however we are proceeding to see an ear/nose/throat doctor just to be sure.

M is on track with her work and her writing is becoming very neat. In general they are happy, energetic and engaged children. Recently we lost both of my grandparents and their mum became single again. All three of these ‘life changing’ events are enough to shake anyone. Rather than focusing on what we would have liked to have happened, we accepted what is and as a consequence learnt a lot: people die, things don’t always work out according to plan, there is always another adventure around the corner etc.

We are once again a happy family of three. On the weekend we team up with other home educating families, so we are also a family 5 or 6 or 12 or 70.

Last week we attended an art gallery excursion with about 50 children. D enjoyed drawing portraits of the two ladies in his life (me and M).

A couple of days at home in our learning room and we were back out at the beach walking around caves and learning to surf. Kangaroo sausages for BBQ by the beach at 7pm while the sun was still up…love Australian summers!

African drumming, Landcare river excursion and volunteering, piano lessons, Scouts, Gymnastics, birthday parties and lots of swimming, construction, writing, reading and cooking with math!

What’s next?