Friday fragments and Linkfest No. 15

Hosted by Mrs4444. When you get to the bottom of this post don’t forget to come back up here and click on this link to Half-Past Kissin’ Time so you can go check out all the other fabulous Friday Fragments … Continue reading Friday fragments and Linkfest No. 15

Friday Fragments and Linkfest No. 13

Hosted by Mrs4444. I won’t be around to comment on everyone else’s Friday Fragments till early next week, we’re off camping at the beach for the weekend – wish us good weather and kid-friendly surf! **** Monday morning’s car trip to school conversation went like this – Tom: Mum, how old do you have to be to mumble mumble mumble? Me: I can’t understand what you’re asking. Tom: *repeats* Me: It’s like you’re speaking a foreign language! Tom: How old do you have to be to have sex? Me: *enlightenment dawns, he was spelling S-E-X and I just wasn’t parsing … Continue reading Friday Fragments and Linkfest No. 13

Friday Fragments

Hosted by Mrs4444. Things about which I am glad: Despite my fears I did not have an excruciating back spasm and find myself swearing loudly in the middle of delivering my Parents & Citizens Association President’s report to the hall packed with the entire families of nearly every student at my kids’ school. When Caitlin tried to pick the front door lock with a stick this afternoon she broke a piece of stick off inside it thus preventing the key from fitting in the lock. The sliding security door uses the same key as the front door (which was the … Continue reading Friday Fragments

I’m really rather fond of this time of year

Here we are at the beginning of December, my house is strewn with Christmas decorations, the kids have decorated the tree, we have strings of lights ready to festoon the garden, I have all my special Christmas candles out, the Advent calendar is hanging by the dining table, there’s Christmas music loaded up on the iPod and I’ve started my annual re-read of Connie Willis’ Miracle and Other Christmas Stories. Yes, I’m an atheist celebrating a pagan mid-winter festival co-opted by the Christian church to commemorate the birth of a man who was was almost certainly not born on the … Continue reading I’m really rather fond of this time of year

Bye, bye November

It’s been fun, I’ve written 12 times as many posts as I did last month making it through my third NaBloPoMo with relative ease and, I think, only minor irritation to my family. We have 2 and a half weeks of school left for the kids, that’s only 12 days of primary school to go for David. I got his high school orientation info pack today, so many pieces of paper, so many forms to fill in, fees to pay (I’m interested to see that these include a voluntary $100 per student donation to the P&C – wonder how many … Continue reading Bye, bye November

More thoughts on Scripture in schools

I started to respond to comments on my previous post on the subject but it was getting kind of epic, so I thought I’d better chuck it all in a post of its own. This may be a little disjointed! (BTW, Scripture = Special Religious Education, or SRE, but no-one calls it that.) A couple of people made reference to the thumb-twiddling in the library being not such a bad thing, I must admit I very nearly included a disclaimer in the original post to the effect that I was quite sure the kids were perfectly happy with the thumb-twiddling … Continue reading More thoughts on Scripture in schools

Ethics classes to be trialed as an alternative to “Scripture”

This is fantastic news. It’s about time there was something better for the non-scripture kids to do than go to the library and twiddle their thumbs. When my oldest first started school I hadn’t quite given up on the church, I’d long since moved away from any belief in god but I still saw value in the ethical teaching and the community that a church fosters. So off he went to Scripture classes, as did most of his classmates. It wasn’t long before I was rather regretting that decision as I found myself dealing with the some of the less-nuanced … Continue reading Ethics classes to be trialed as an alternative to “Scripture”

Mondays aren’t usually this bad

Today I have dealt with more than my fair share of angst. I got up this morning with some no small effort and went to check on Tom’s fish tank. I hadn’t done this for nearly a week, Tom had been very responsible with feeding his fish and I’ve been kind of busy. In Tom’s tank I discovered one very ill looking siamese fighting fish lying upside down on the gravel. Tom had to be bundled off to school hoping that his Simo would be ok, I warned him that it didn’t look good. After the kids had gone to … Continue reading Mondays aren’t usually this bad

Market day

We held Christmas markets at the school today. In 40 degree heat. (That’s 104F for you non-metric types.) I shared a stall with a friend, it was our first markets for both of us so we had no idea how it would go. Thank FSM that Simone had organised a table cloth and clever deployment of a box for our display, ’cause I completely dropped the bundle on that aspect of things. Our stall It was a bit breezy and the earring displays were exhibiting slight nautical tendencies, sailing across the table every so often. Eventually we managed to arrange … Continue reading Market day