An Unschooling vignette

A vignette of an unschooling week?

What have we done? Well I have been sick and working and getting exhausted so that curtails everything!

Anthony has spent some time at university with his brothers, typically reading in the university library while they have been in class. The head librarian told me she loves my boys because they all love to read, especially poetry. ( What a nice thing to say!)

We are watching one Harry Potter movie a week, in preparation for the new Harry Potter movie which comes out on July 13. My, how young were the actors for Hermione and Ron and Harry in the first movie!

We are eagerly watching the Dr Who series each week. Amy pregnant? Does Rory trust the Dr??

And we quite like the Sarah Jane Chronicles, a spin off from Dr Who and my Mother's Day present...an episode a night....

Anrhony has been picking up the books from the My Story series.. We own the whole set, novels in Australian history, he has read some but he saw the set on the shelf and decided to read his way though.

Mondays, Anthony has two friends over for gaming before we go to my Kumon centre and this week because I was sick I gave them money to walk to the fish and chips shop and buy chips and potato scallops for lunch. A real treat!

We have been praying the St Anthony novena and going to masses and Anthony has been serving. On Tuesday I had to go to the doctor and do Kumon banking so we met another homeschool family for coffee.

Weekly stuff is drama class , piano class and son Alexander teaches guitar on Wed nights to Anthony and one of his friends.

Jonathon, Alexander and Thomas are on university study break, exams next week.

We had a friar over for coffee and a chat. Anthony wrote an essay on St Bonaventure because when we were in Melbourne and talking to a friar Anthony's knowledge on the saint was woeful ( a Franciscan! A Doctor of the Church! One of my favourite saints! Gasp!) so I said "Good practice for uni one day.. Do some research, write 1000 words on the saint some time". He finally got around to it and one of his brothers read it, said great info but needed an introduction and conclusion. So we talked about these and a hook .

Anthony has also done some Kumon Maths while his brothers have been studying. And hung out with them and played games and did junk mail delivery. We have talked about booking excursions for homeschoolers to an Australian museum and to a cemetery after I booked an excursion for the OOSH kids (my other job not the Kumon one) to tour McDonalds.

And at OOSH I taught a few little girls to knit, they are knitting scarves for teddies. I brought home their knitting so I could do a few lines at night and speed up the knitting progress. This sparked memories in my sons and we all laughed and talked about when they were little and I taught them to knit and they knitted scarves and jackets for teddies and belts and gun holsters for themselves and how they thought knitting grew by itself over night as I would surreptitiously knit a few lines for them myself each night... just as with the kids at work!

Thomas is baking bread today, they are all helping me with work for my Kumon centre and will work for me at Kumon tonight. This week I have been in cooking mode..something about me being sick makes me want to cook, even though I don't feel like eating. Or maybe it just winter? I've made Pasta Carbonara, Chocolate Self Saucing Pudding, Apple Pie, Fettucine with a fresh tomato sauce, Apple Cake....

Currently listening to chant, in honour of St Ephrem, Doctor of the Church, composer of poetry and hymns.

So that's been our Unschooling week! Although I have asked Anthony today to please ( for Mummy!) look at his Saxon Physics and some Latin and Anthony,Thomas and Alexander have enrolled in the Macquaurie University Winter Language School for a week of Introduction to Coptic. And I found an amazing recipe for a lemon cake using lemons we grew in our tree-in-a -pot and we made this fantastic cake for the Ascension !