Our family's life in New Zealand
Just for my mom, here are two videos of the little ones.
This first one is of Little Miss counting to 22 when she was playing hide and seek with Mr. Imagination.
This is Mr. Imagination reading me his list of words. He has only learned six sounds so far, but he’s doing quite well at sounding out words. In the background you can hear Little Miss and her incessant questions and comments!
Today was our homeschool group’s annual concert. As always, we enjoyed the musical pieces, recitations, songs, and skits performed by the other families, and also sang a couple of songs ourselves. Here are videos of us singing both of them.
Our first song was one we learned in our house church in Michigan, a very beautiful prayer.
Oh, Heavenly Father and merciful Lord,
We come to you now in one mind and accord.
We are so undeserving to make this request,
But with your sweet spirit Lord let us be blessed.
Chorus:
Open the windows and pour out a blessing,
Shower your power upon us O Lord;
Send such a blessing we cannot contain it,
Lord open the windows of heaven today.
So often we’ve witnessed your power so strong,
But yesterday’s blessings are all past and gone.
Once again we come needy as humbly we pray,
And that’s why we lift up our voices and say:
The second was Sing Hallelujah to the Lord, which has so much repetition that I’m not going to include the lyrics.
And, for those who don’t understand the title of this post, it is not a boring group at all. Dead Boring is the name of the group, and has been for some 20-25 years. The mother who started the group told her son that she was starting a writing group, and he responded, “Oh, that’ll be dead boring.” She said, “Yes, it will!” and the name was born.
The kitchen table broke one day, so Simon and Mr. Diligence fixed it for us. I’m sure glad Mr. Diligence has learned to fix things, too, since Simon is no longer here!
Princess likes to try out all sorts of new places to sleep in.
She also wants in the house all the time. She can walk along the ledge outside the living room window, and she begs to come in that way.
Her favorite place to spend the day is on top of our refrigerator in the laundry room. One day, she was rolling around trying to get attention from the boys and fell off!
Mr. Imagination making toast for his breakfast on top the stove.
Little Miss showing off her ponytails.
A dear friend sent these flowers to me! I was bringing the cow home one evening when a truck turned onto our road. I kept the cow off the road, and wasn’t paying much attention to the truck, but it went slower and slower so I finally looked. The driver, a man who had been a neighbor at one house we lived in, was holding out these flowers to me! So beautiful. Thank you, dear friend!
One Sunday at church, a girl who loves Little Miss decorated her with these pansies, so I asked the girl if she would take some pictures for me.
These are places we frequently find the cats. Bandit wants a soft, warm spot. Princess wants to be on something, and the computer, when it’s open, is a favorite. If I close it she’ll find some other place. She loves to curl up on a sheet of paper!
Our beef cattle. The two black ones will soon be going to the works. The white one was our calf last year.
I’ve always felt like geography was the weakest subject in our homeschooling. I’ve tried various ways of incorporating map work into our school days, but everything I tried was hated. Finally, I just hung a world map from the bulletin board beside the chair I sit in to read aloud, and when I think of it I’ll point out the location of the story we’re reading. When Let’s Go Geography came available for review, I decided it looked like something we could really use. Because it was described as being good for approximately grades K-4, I decided to have Mr. Sweetie and Mr. Imagination use it. No one older wanted to, anyway.
Each week, we get to study a different country. The first two weeks were actually regions of the United States, first the Northeastern States, and then Hawaii. After that, we spent a few days with Canada, and then Haiti and Nicaragua. We’re going to Belize on our next adventure. My little boys are loving this course! Especially, Mr. Imagination cheers when I say it’s time for geography. A few days ago, we were reading a biography in the evening and it mentioned that the person had gone to Hawaii. I didn’t even know Mr. Imagination was listening, but he got quite excited and pointed to Hawaii on the world map, telling everyone that we had studied it! That was fun to see. And just look at the list of places we get to “go” in the future! (Do you see what the last one for Year 1 is?)
Each lesson has a lot of variety. It’s set up so you can spend five days per lesson, so one section of the lesson each day of the week. We ended up doing each lesson in only 2-3 days, and skipping a few days each week. It’s just hard to fit something like that in every single day. We did the map work and colored, cut out and glued the flags one day. Another day, we listened to the national anthem from the country and watched the YouTube videos linked to in the lesson, and then each boy dictated to me what he remembered about the country and I wrote it on a notebooking page for him. Sometime later, either that day or another day, they each colored a picture of something from the country. Little Miss always had to have a coloring page, too, and she usually wanted a map to scribble on as well! There are crafts given for each lesson, but we never did any of them. They would have been fun, but we didn’t have the needed supplies on hand. It’s not that they are hard to find, but just things that we don’t keep, such as white and red plastic disposable cups to make into a lighthouse, or paper lunch bags to make into a puppet. I keep hoping we’ll come across a craft that we have the supplies for. 
Built into the year’s study of geography are three review lessons, one after each two continents have been studied. This review lesson looks like fun! I know my boys are going to love matching flags with the correct countries, and we’ll spend some time learning about latitude and longitude as part of the first review lesson. There are also some pages to match pictures with the country in which they were taken.
Here is Mr. Sweetie with some of his pages.
And this is Mr. Imagination, with some of his pages!
We’re saving all our pages, and at the end of the year I’m planning to have someone drill holes in them so I can sew the books together. Then, each of the boys will have his own book of world geography. When years 2 and 3 are available, I will probably buy them; this is a program we have really enjoyed. All you need to use it is an internet connection and a printer! I am trying to get a few books from the library with more pictures of the countries we’re studying, but our local libraries are pretty small. This is when we’re glad for YouTube and someone who has taken the time to find links for us! 
We spend a lot of time at the kitchen table in the mornings, doing lessons.
The day Mr. Sweetie learned about borrowing when subtracting, we got out the Base 10 blocks to illustrate what was happening. As soon as I was done with them, Mr. Imagination and Little Miss started playing with them—no wonder I sometimes have trouble finding all the pieces I need!
Mr. Intellectual loves building towers with the blocks, then taking a video of the tower collapsing.
Mr. Diligence is required to spend some time reading something—whatever he wants to—every morning. He’s been reading the Circle C books lately, and really enjoying them. He read the entire Circle C Beginnings series, and now he’s reading the two Circle C Steppingstones books that have been published.
Mr. Imagination isn’t officially doing school yet. He’s quite capable, but he doesn’t want to most of the time. He’s just 5, so I’m not pushing yet—but some days he does things like this! He wrote the numbers to 28, just for fun.
Little Miss spent a lot of time one morning sorting this tiny animals by color. Sometimes she sorts them by kind of animal, or just stands them up. They came inside a Mancala game someone bought at a secondhand shop, and they have been played with a lot more than the game!
Spring is here! Some days sure don’t feel like it, but more days are warm than a month ago, and the grass is growing.
The first garden work was done in mid-August. Simon took the rotary hoe (rototiller) through part of the garden, after I showed him what needed done. It broke after he got some done, though, so he tore it apart and took one part to a local man to get a replacement shaft made. We picked up the finished piece the day I took Simon to Christchurch to get his Learner’s Licence; that night, Simon and Mr. Diligence stayed up till midnight putting the rotary hoe back together. He felt like he had to do it because he was leaving home a couple of days later and wouldn’t have another chance!
This is the lemon tree right outside my kitchen window. So beautiful!
Esther babysat the day I took Simon to Christchurch. She sent the boys outside for a break at one point during school. They started wrestling, and Little Miss was telling them to stop!
When it didn’t work to order them to stop, she tried to manually separate them!
We are working our way through Exploring Creation with Astronomy this year, and a few weeks ago we laid out a scale model of distances in the solar system. We were all blown away by the vastness of our solar system!
We followed the directions on this page, but instead of merely putting slips of paper on the ground we taped them to fence posts. That made them easier to see.
We started at the edge of our yard by the paddock and headed toward the road at first. When we got to the road before we got to Neptune, we realized we had to go the other direction! So, we started over again at the hedge by the road. This first picture shows the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, and Jupiter is in the creek.
Here is Saturn, and the boys are heading to where Uranus should be.
Looking back from Uranus to the sun—see those tiny white spots between the house and the bush, right in front of the hedge? Assuming the sun is the size of a dime, these are the distances!
Now, the boys are at the Kuiper Belt (I’m assuming that’s where Pluto is; it’s no longer considered a planet, but we haven’t gotten to the chapter about that area yet.) Can you see my boys? They are barely visible in front of that shed, past the fence and the bathtub. I took this picture from Uranus.
I couldn’t believe these distances! So incredible. Then, a day or two later, we came across a video we had watched before, but it was well worth watching again, about the size of the solar system. Watch this and see how someone else portrayed it.
We also came across this video, the day we started the chapter on Saturn. My boys found it fascinating!
One thing I’m getting from this study is how amazing our God is! The planets are just incredible. So different from each other, and so incredible. I really appreciated the chapter on Earth, which showed so many ways our planet is perfectly suited for life—but none of the others are. The vast distances in space are awe-inspiring, too; if God’s creation is so vast—what about Him?
Mr. Inventor turned 16 a month ago! How time flies. I remember so clearly the loooong week of waiting after his due date before he finally arrived, on the hottest day that summer (I’m positive it was the hottest, anyway!). He was my shortest labor to that point, and I remember being slightly in shock that it was over so quickly. And now, since he is 16 and has moved away from home to begin a new job, I’ll start calling him by name on here, Simon. One less nickname to remember to use!
We all went together to buy him a tap and die set, which he had been wanting for a couple of years, for his birthday. It didn’t come in time, so Mr. Diligence went to town and bought a box of ice cream and some cones. He worked hard to make the biggest stack of ice cream possible on top of the cone, and then put it in the freezer. After we ate dinner, Simon asked, jokingly, “When am I going to get my chocolate ice cream cone?” Mr. Diligence had been teasing him that we were plotting to get him chocolate ice cream. Was Simon ever surprised when he was presented with this cone! Even though he shared a bit with his little sister, it took him two sittings to get through it.
He was very pleased with his tap and die set when it came!
And for those of you who are wondering, he is working for a mechanic, planning to start an apprenticeship with him after a 3-month trial period to make sure he wants to do it. He is living with the family, a lovely Christian family with eight children, about 4 hours from us across the mountains, on the West Coast.
Yes, I know we’ve been home in New Zealand for around six weeks now. It has taken me awhile to get caught up on posting on here. I like to keep things in chronological order, because that’s just the way I am, so here we go.
This was our first evening home. We landed in Christchurch around 9:30 am, so got home around noon. We unloaded the van and I cooked lunch; in the afternoon I unpacked all the suitcases and plastic totes we had packed with books, fabric, and other treasures we brought home. We sure enjoyed the warmth of the house; a friend had come early that morning and started both fires for us. It was quite chilly outside, since it was still midwinter. We were used to the heat of midsummer in Ohio, of course, so the warm house was especially welcome. By evening, what with the difficulty sleeping sitting up on the airplane the night before, and the eight-hour time difference between the Eastern time zone of the United States and our time here, these boys fell asleep waiting for supper to be ready. We tried to wake them up to eat, but finally gave up and carried the two younger ones to bed. Mr. Diligence stayed all night on the couch. Little Miss wasn’t asleep, but she was imitating her brothers!
A couple of mornings after we got home, we were treated to a visit from this pair of Paradise Ducks in our yard!
Our first Sunday home, we went to church in Kaikoura, enjoying thoroughly the beautiful mountains. Some us us found out how much we had missed the mountains and the sea while we were gone!
Little Miss was delighted to finally get to wear this dress, which a great-aunt had given her. Because of the long sleeves, I saved it to wear here, where it’s colder, rather than in Ohio where it was so hot.
The cats were happy to be home. We picked them up on our way home from the airport, and they obviously remembered this place. We wondered if they would run away, but they were happy here right away. Esther was amused when she saw this scene one afternoon.
This was our second Sunday home; we went to Waikari for church. It poured for a couple of hours, but the skies started to clear as we left, and then we saw this brilliant double rainbow!
Looking back the other direction, this is what we saw.
We greatly enjoyed our trip to America, but there is no place like home, and no place like New Zealand!
We left Ohio to come home to New Zealand on the 24th of July. Our flight didn’t leave until evening, so we had the entire morning to finish packing—and we needed it! We had our baggage allowance pretty much maxed out, with nine pieces of checked luggage (only two weren’t big enough to pack 50 pounds into), nine carry-ons and nine personal bags. Air New Zealand has a limit of 15 pounds for a carry-on, so we had to weigh all of those, too. It took the morning to juggle things from bag to bag to get the weights right, and when we finally finished, we packed everything into the van and went to a local business to weigh them on their postage scale, since I don’t totally trust bathroom scales. Thankfully, we were fine with everything, and the job was finished by lunchtime. We ate lunch, then packed our sandwiches for the evening into our backpacks, to eat while we waited for the first plane in Cincinnati. We knew Air New Zealand would feed us—but that would be after takeoff in Houston at 10:00 at night!
I took a quick picture of everyone, just in case I needed to know, for some reason, what they were wearing on the trip. Here is Mr. Intellectual, ready to go home!
We were actually running just a little early, so my father-in-law directed us along a back route that ran beside the Ohio River. We enjoyed seeing this barge going downriver, but then he had another surprise.
He remembered the Anderson Ferry which runs across the river between Ohio and Kentucky. This ferry has been running since 1817—that’s 200 years now! He asked someone if it was easy to get to the airport from the ferry, and she said it was, so he paid the $5 fee and we got to cross on a ferry instead of a bridge! This was my first time ever to ride a ferry. We all enjoyed the quick crossing; it couldn’t have taken more than about five minutes.
In no time, it seemed, we were driving off the boat into Kentucky, where the friendly woman who had assured us that it was easy to get to the airport led us right there; she said she had to go there herself. We really enjoyed this one last adventure before going home!