Holidays! Milestones

It's holidays again. Til the end of the year. We've started our homeschool holidays 2 weeks early because the kids have been signed up for some intensive Chinese classes every day for the next 3 weeks. Ben is going for Speech and Drama, and Sarah for Oral and Comprehension.

I hope to do tidying up and spring cleaning of the WHOLE house, but bit by bit of course. Send kids for class, come home and tidy up for 1 hour before fetching them. Don't know if it'll work, because alas, I realise I must also prepare lunch! Gymnastics is still ongoing 3x a week.

Milestones

Yesterday, at Mama and GongGong's place, Sarah finally hopped onto a two-wheeler all by herself, pushed herself off, and rode down the road. She then turned and rode back. I was so proud of her accomplishment. We had been running with her wobbling about for ages, so this was really a proud moment.

Sunday School - Sarah is now in the bigger kids class, P1-P3. With Aunty Mei as teacher. They have just begun a new series called Children Desiring God by John Piper. Sarah remarked that she liked Aunty Mei's class, and went up to Aunty Mei to tell her. An encouraging moment for Aunty Mei indeed.

Ben is now without his sister in his Kindergarten Sunday School class At first he refused to attend, I had to take him in and sit him on my lap. But once he saw what the others were doing, he joined in, and everything was OK from there.

Gabriel now feeds himself rice at mealtime. He must have his white rice alone first before he'll eat any other protein or vege. Strange behaviour. He has also begun to tell us when he needs to poo. Great! He talks in sentences, but most of the time, I cannot decipher what he is saying.

Today's sermon was a summary of Ephesians. The main thrust was the grace and peace of God bestowed upon us in Jesus Christ. Wonderful Grace of Jesus. And the deep deep love of the Lord in electing, calling and justifying us. May we meditate on this and find this love and peace in our hearts so that we too can share this love and peace with others.

CE application

Finally printed out the application and supporting documents for the exemption from Compulsory Education.  Going to file it up, photocopy my certs and send it in.

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.