Truth and Righteousness

Ephesians 6:13-14

Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness.

"Stand" seems to be an important word here, appearing 3 times.  "Withstand" implies a resistance to something... the evil that will be rampant in the "evil day".  Having done that, we are told to "stand".  To be upright.  Not to be lying down.   We do not merely stand, only to be knocked down again by the evil that abounds, but we are to stand with armour, defending and attacking.

Truth must surround us.  What truth?  The absolute truth of the Word of God!  Not some airy-fairy, post-modern 'truth' which cannot stand the test of time.  Only the Word of God as our belt, upon which we can hang our sword and other important parts of our armour.

The breastplate protects the largest, most exposed part of our bodies, and this must be righteousness.  Again, it is not our own brand of righteousness.  It can only be the righteousness of Jesus Christ imputed to us.  This holy righteousness is free from weak areas, holes and kinks.  This is the only righteousness that can be depended upon to protect us from the darts of the evil One.

Practically, all this means that we must spend time getting to know the truth of God's Word in the Bible.  We must ensure that we put on the correct breastplate, believing in Jesus ALONE for salvation.  Today, when temptations come at us, we shall be able to stand and withstand.  Praise the Lord.

Against Cosmic Powers

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Ephesians 6:12

We are in a fight. A wrestling match. But not against fellow man. The principalities, powers, rulers of the darkness of this age.... what are they? I gave Sarah a word search puzzle related to this verse to do today. She had difficulty finding some of the words, so she ended up circling two very insightful 'words' - TV and IT!!!

I do believe that it is through the TV and the computer (more specifically the Internet), that these rulers of darkness have their primary dominion. When we switch on the TV, or casually browse the Internet, we enter their world. Be careful not to take anything out and back into God's kingdom. If you can, don't let these dominions into your home at all! Spend too much time in these dominions, and we'll soon have PR there. Be warned. These spiritual hosts of wickedness are in the heavenly places. We might not be able to see them, but they are in the ideas propagated, the visuals we see, the little bits of omissions that we are liable to make. BEWARE!! We are to wrestle against these, never allowing them to gain the upper hand.

Hiatus...again, eczema report and Compulsory Education

*sigh* It's just that I've been so lazy to blog. Ok Ok, I promise I'll blog more regularly. I know that nobody really reads this blog, it's merely cathartic for me, and serves as a written record of what's happening in our homeschool, or wherever.

On the eczema front, it still bothers me, but less so. For the past 3 weeks, I've had only one real flare-up. Of course, it still itches, but it seems to be much more manageable. Perhaps it's the Neem, perhaps it's the visit to the foot spa TCM place in Yishun, very likely it's due to the fact that HDB has completed cementing works near our block. Or perhaps because I'm much more consistent in applying my moisturizers and creams. I still have to sweep up piles of dried skin from various places around the house every day. I'm trying to sleep earlier, wake up a little earlier to do the ironing, instead of ironing late at night. This is more difficult because Gabriel has an erratic waking time. Sometimes, before I can apply the iron to the first garment, he wakes up. Other times, like today, he allowed me to iron for 1 whole hour before I woke him up. But we shall pray and persevere.

The application for exemption from Compulsory Education is due at the end of October. I've mostly finished. I learnt quite a bit in the process. I have ordered some new art curriculum for Sarah. Should be fun. Hope we can do it. Now I just have to make a time table and tidy up my CV as well as fill in the application form itself. Print everything out, bind it up and send.

Today I feel so lazy and tired. It's the last day of the homeschool break. I want to tidy up Sarah's wardrobe. Still need to change the kids' bedsheets, make some rempah titek to use/freeze and put clothes in the machine to wash. But I have just 1 hour to do all that. Oh yes, I also need to clean the floors of the living and dining rooms. HOW?? Lazy me! Tired me!! I just wish I could sleep all day. Still have to send Sarah and Ben to gym this afternoon, not forgetting that I also have to cook dinner before going out, put G & B to sleep right after lunch.

I'm getting old. Hope I have the energy to start homeschooling again next week.

HS Holidays

It's holidays again! For 2 weeks.

We had planned to go to the zoo today, but alas, it's been raining all night, and still is, so we'll have to postpone that. In any case, I had double booked with the air conditioning serviceman, so we'll just let them come and do their job.

Chinese lessons will still go on though, because their Beijing Language School enrichment classes still continue, and they definitely must be consistent with their Chinese, otherwise they forget everything!

So what are our plans these two weeks? Besides daily Chinese practice, we hope to scrub the grouting between our floor tiles (can only do that when Gabriel is asleep otherwise he'll probably try to walk all over our work in progress), we'll bake some cookies, visit the Jacob Ballas Gardens with some other homeschoolers, play at the Pasir Ris Park, maybe do a little shopping. Sarah still has gymnastics 3x a week, and Ben once a week. Mummy intends to do some wardrobe organising for the kids, and scrub and tidy parts of the kitchen. Most importantly too, there's the application for exemption for Sarah to complete. Hmmmm.... looks like quite a lot to do! Hope we can achieve it all.

My DH's nephew last night was feeling the Monday blues, and actually asked his mummy to homeschool him! LOL!!! He's doing very very well at school, top boy, prefect etc etc. So what does that actually say about how kids are enjoying their schooling? If even the top boy can ask his mummy to homeschool him, and this was not a one-off thing, it apparently has been going on for some time, then what of those kids that are struggling with coping in school? Food for thought.

Wow, it's been a month and a half since I blogged. And to think that I was going to blog every week! Well, I still have that ambition, so here goes for a new start. (Yeah, like real. Let's see how long this lasts)

P1 registration is upon us. We were going to register Sarah at the nearby Horizon Primary School, which is a new school nearby. But after giving it some thought, we figured that it might be easier not to register her at all, than to get her a place and then have to write in and go to the Principal to get her withdrawn. So we're NOT going to register her. We're still in the process of writing up the curriculum et al, and waiting for the MOE to release the CE Exemption application forms. We're sure we want to homeschool, and I'm sure that's the direction the Lord would want us to take on this. I pray that our homeschool will be a place where Sarah can be nurtured and loved, and taught the truths of God's Word, in addition to learning her 3Rs, and Chinese :),

I've been tweaking the kids' timetable a bit more recently, and it's a challenge to keep to it. I just needed to get lunch on the table a little earlier than before. So far, it's only happened about 3 days out of 10. Let's try to do better this week. May the Lord help me to redeem the time.

I think my itchy skin has not helped my time management one bit. I find that I spend quite a bit of time scratching myself. *sigh* Just started taking aloe vera. It's supposed to help. Let see how it goes. Have to take it constantly for several months.

I've been reading from Proverbs with the kids. I was reminded of my favourite verse in the Bible : "Trust in the Lord with all of your heart, lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths" Prov 3:5-6

Let us wholeheartedly trust in the Lord almighty for the souls of our kids, for their education, for our own direction in our lives. He indeed will direct our paths.

Flexible

HFMD has eaten into our homeschool schedule. We were off school for nearly 2 weeks. So now it's catch up time! But then this is what homeschool is all about, isn't it? No need to be so uptight about schedules. Flexibility is the keyword. That's the beauty of it all.

Ben has started 'formal' homeschool, with Christ Centered Phonics minus the written work for now. I will be starting him on CCC Math as soon as I get his little study table tidied up so that he can sit there. It's such a joy teaching these little children who are eager to learn and look at you with eager eyes, sitting straight up in their chair. Sooooo cute!

Sarah and I have loosened up on the Mystery of History work because it's a bit beyond her. We'll probably go through it again, and do the timeline and other projects at a later time.

Someone I know was lamenting the fact that her Primary One son has lost interest in learning. She was wishing that he could learn at his own pace, and go back to having fun while learning. So I told her to homeschool! LOL! She's genuinely interested, and will come and visit me one of these days soon.

Exemption is due soon, and I'm not ready! So many things not done yet, and so little time to do it! I must once again sacrifice the homeschool schedule to do this 'nonsense'. *sigh*. But then again, exciting times are ahead!

We're back

WOW! It's been a long time since I last blogged here. Lots has happened. Let me see, where shall I begin?

Well, at the end of March, the family took a break from homeschooling (not our scheduled break, mind you) to make a loooooooonnnnnngggg trip to the US for Gary's PhD defense. Foolhardy or not, it was quite a nice time away. The long flight was quite a pain though, and the kids took a week to get over jet lag. We thought we could have some nice field trips looking at the spring flowers. But alas, when we got there, the trees were still bare to the bone. Hardly any flowers to be seen, let alone leaves! It only started to turn green on our last week, and by then we were too busy with other things to really do much study.

The good weather there did not do much for our eczema. It was far too dry. In fact, we all got itchier. Gabriel loved the fresh milk there, but we had to stop it after he started having mucousy stools. Too much lactose in the milk I think. Ben was acting up, as always. Sarah had a good time, met new friends, renewed old acquaintances, watched PBS.

The kids most enjoyed visiting the Indiannapolis Children's Museum, Wonderlab and Conner Prairie.

Now it's back to the grindstone, have to catch up on what we missed. I'm also starting to get my curriculum for the next 6 years together and write a document for the Exemption from Compulsory Education for Sarah. It needs to be done bit by bit otherwise I'll never be able to finish it.

Our prayer needs for this week are that Sarah learn not to waste so much time in dilly-dallying; that Ben be more cooperative and less rebellious, and that Gabriel put on some weight.

Ok.... breakfast time.