DECORATE YOUR HOME

Is your home lacking colour and personality?

Get busy with the paints, crayons and coloured pencils!!

Then stick the results up for everyone to see. :o)

Most of all - remember to have fun when you are doing art with your children. Encourage them not to focus on the "end result".

Let them choose which pieces they'd like stuck on the wall (or in our case - the laundry bi-fold doors), which pieces can be cut up and used for cardmaking, which pieces will be put into their Notebooks, and which pieces are not so precious and can be thrown away.

Blessings
The Mummalady

MAKING A BOOK

We found a book in the "free" room of the local Re-Use shop.

The pictures were lovely but as I read through the story I realised that the little girl had a bad attitude towards her father, she complained, and worst of all there were references to occult things.

So I cut the pictures out, glued them onto paper and made up my own story. The little girl now loves her family, prays with her father and gives thanks to God when her prayer is answered in a way that she could never have imagined.




The presentation isn't the best, I know it would have looked nicer typed up, and the binding certainly wouldn't win any prizes - but often the children don't care about presentation.

They love this story and it has been read many times since I made it.





Blessings
The Mummalady

KNIT A BALL

We've had fun knitting balls just recently, so thought I would post a photo of how you construct these balls.

I used the pattern from here.



Lovely that there is no sewing up to do!


Blessings
The Mummlady

BEAUTIFUL HYMN

GIVE A CHILD SOME STICKS

Daddy made the children some sticks to play with.

The younger ones made fences for animals and a some simple towers.

When the little ones went to bed the big boys had a go with the sticks.



Clever boys!


Blessings
The Mummalady

FIRST STEPS!

Our business has now officially taken its first step!

We have purchased the domain name: www.willowcottage.co.nz

This is very exciting, but also a little scary as we step out into cyberspace and try to figure it all out.

Our first products, beautiful wooden baby teethers, are happily nestled in a box of tissue paper, waiting to be purchased.

Blessings
The Mummalady

RECENT RESEARCH SHOWS ...

The above image is a picture of Miss Charlotte Mason - from this website: http://www.squidoo.com/CMbasics


Hi readers.



I just wrote an email to someone, and thought I would post some of the thoughts I shared with her.

One of our children just turned 17. He is mostly self-directed in his education - learning Japanese, still doing maths and handwriting etc. He is also designing a webpage for our family business which we just purchased the domain name for! He's been homeschooled since birth.

And having just been blessed with a new baby, I believe it is profitable for our family if I spend time researching and learning about new/different educational ideas and seeking encouragement in our home education journey.

I've been researching many different educational styles - so far I have studied Charlotte Mason, Montessori, Steiner/Waldorf, Reggio and am now looking at Thomas Jefferson Education.

Whilst Montessori, Steiner and Reggio have some wonderful ideas I also see some of their philosophies as very dangerous. And whilst I admire Charlotte Mason's philosophies and ideas I realise that some are way beyond my capabilities!!

I must also say that having read (several times!) The Fallacy Detective by the Bluedorn brothers, it has opened my eyes to many fallacies and (sometimes) outright lies that people either unknowingly, or knowingly insert into their research and philosophies.

This is a very, very interesting field to study (when I have time!) and I'd like to give a presentation to some of the Mums from our group towards the end of the year.

I will be publishing my findings on this blog when they are in a readable state!

In the meantime if anyone wants sound advice on how to raise and educate children I recommend reading the Bible - this is our first and last word on the subject. This book has no fallacies, no lies and can be trusted to stand for ever.

Blessings
The Mummalady