This month has been a busy one with the start of many new homeschooling projects. I created a new group, comprising six children and their parents, which meets in my kitchen to study geography, on alternate Mondays. We are using Heifer International materials. Heifer is a wonderful charity, that supports people living in poverty across the world, by giving them livestock and trees. In this way they can support themselves. The curriculum is all about fair trade and focuses on three products most of us buy on a regular basis: Coffee, bananas and cut flowers.
On intervening Mondays, a different group meets, again in the kitchen.
With this group too, we started a new local history study, based around
our local farms. It is an integrated project, so the children are
covering
science, language arts,geography, math and art, as well as history.
Presently, we are studying soil, and learning how the ice age shaped
this area. This includes both the soils and the first farmers - a
native
American peoples called the Lenape. The children also got a chance to
make their own worm bins and are learning how important worms are for
the soil. These worms are red wrigglers and are used for
vermicomposting, in other words composting indoors. A great way to use
up some of your kitchen scraps.
The huge earthquake in Haiti deeply upset and concerned us,
especially as we have been supporting The Barefoot School in
Port-au-Prince for a number of years. We have been co-sponsoring a
child called Sadrac. Amazingly, all the children, parents and teachers
are safe. One little girl broke her leg, but that was the only injury
and the break was such that a cast could be fitted and the break
allowed to go on healing. She also received crutches. We have been in
almost daily contact with the director. They do amazing work amongst
very poor people. The school has been feeding up to 450 people daily,
but tomorrow the school opens again for lessons, which is wonderful
news.
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We celebrated Martin Luther King's birthday at Sunday School by
hearing God's Dream by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and making beautiful
hand pictures using oil pastels.
The moon has been truly beautiful this month, and Phil has obtained
some great shots of it, especially one over the graveyard.
