coming close to the end of the school year..

The school year here in Australia. is coming to a close. Most schools pack up there books and bags and head for summer holidays from mid December.
We are winding down our official schooling as well. But we can't wind down life learning.
Brid is finishing off a unit study  about Blessed Juniper Serra and his life. She has journeyed to Spain, Mexico and looked into missionary work. She is making a start in this area herself.
Fr Brown has grapped her attention on our ebook reader. I am sure that series will be complete soon.
Maths will come to a hault as well. Will we continue with Maths Online? We will finish this level and reassess it early next year.
So I have asked Brid to complete all areas of work she is working on before mid December.
Ideally I would like to concentrate our days on the season of Advent. It has come around too quickly, but as we organise our christmas decorations into various boxes, it is no trouble to locate the Advent Box. We are looking at various Advent crafts and ideas at the moment.
She has enjoyed reading Apologia Anamtomy & Physiology, making the occasional journal entry, and creating a great board game.
Earlier this year we began a faith text from seton.Witness to Faith. It is there new yr8 text. Some would consider this too schoolie. But it has been a walk through our faith, through the centuries. We won't be completing this as Brid is taking this slowly, enjoying and soaking it in. It has given her a greater understanding of our faith, and thats always a good thing.

Next post, I may share with you the different areas Brid and I have decided we would like to tackle.

So for reading in the holidays I purchased a series called My story. WW1. Brid loves these books and as they were on sale at book depository I could afford to splurge a little.She has already began reading one of them. I need to hand these out individually, or else no chores or work of any kind gets done. Is this controlling, maybe, but its also teaching self control and discipling ones self.

Changes and ..culling.....saints.....Jane...

We have been really looking at our current school workload.
Recently, we culled curricula and books that are not suiting us anymore.
At the beginning of the year we had a long list to get through, and I was stressed looking at the list wanting Brid to get right in and excel.

Well within a week or 2 we had tears, loud words and uncomfortable silence, as we licked our wounds. Not a good start to the year. We both tried to please each other but we weren't fooling each other.
My expectations put Brid under enormous stress, she wasn't enjoying all of our day. And nor was I.
We rearranged our subjects and I took away my expectations. I looked at what she liked to do. I let Brid achieve in her time. This wasn't easy for me, but necessary.
This term, we have dropped Geography, Science and History. All worthwhile curricula, and we will come back to them in the future.
I said to Brid lets  stop the train, and spread our wings for a while.
Instead we are looking at these areas in context with Stories of the Saints and Literature for Young ladies-. I have blogged on these before, but as we get further into these Brid was interested going deeper. This is usual for her and why I started a subject a week last year.
So let me explain.
Apart from Maths these are the only areas we do.

At the moment Presenting Miss Jane is a hit and will lead nicely to introduce Jane Austen to Brid's reading list. She reads through her list and no expectations are made to write about them. This will come next year as we continue our Tuesdays with a friend.

St Gianna Molla is a modern day Saint and one I admire greatly. Dermot read a biographical book about her life recently and It was with delight we saw the first in the Series "Stories of the Saints", was this amazing women. It is a unit study, spelling vocabulary words comprehension analysis are covered. We have covered Italy in WWII, Milan, Looked at various speeches from the time of WWII.
We have researched areas of faith, other saints- St Francis and related these areas to her life.
We will cover Science and look at stages of Pregnancy and talk about Pro-life choices. I am sure this will led to some great discussions.
These 3 focus areas are taking us on many interesting trails. She is still gaining a solid education, but in our way.
We talked about not living inside a square, we have decided we like living in a semi circle- or a big smile. We can occasionally get out and smell the trees and jump back in to safety. The smile symbolises being able to stretch and grow and not having restrictions.
So where to next,
Brid is fascinated by women in various periods of history. 
Women like-
Queen Elizabeth I, Marie Antoinette, Caroline Chrisholm, Marie Curie, Mother Teresa, Helen Keller, Florence Nightingale, Cleopatra, Queen Victoria, Suffregettes, Mary Queen of Scots, and then a few authors such as Louisa May Alcott and Enid Blyton. the list keeps growing.