A week of learning - Part 1

Wow the last week was a big one!

My little friend Morgan turned one. Oh my boys are growing up so fast. I'm sorry Leah I had to steal this picture. It is just so fun! (this is me, the Morgster and Hayden)

These boys make my life so mch richer! I love them and their beautiful mummies tons!

My class started learning about Space this week. I am loving it! I realised in my quest to be ahead of my class at knowing things about Space that I know nothing. It has taken me 28 years to realise that there are soooooo many things I don't know. And there is no possible way that I will ever know everything there is to know. Sad, but also cool. It was a fantastic reminder of the bigness of God and how human knowledge is NOTHING compared to God's knowledge.

However, this week I did learn two things that I thought were very interesting (my poor friends, every time I learn something interesting it's all they hear about... so just skim this bit if you don't want a science & history lesson).
Science bit: Our earth is really really really really tiny. My class and I made a scale model on our classroom wall (well not really a model cos it was 2 dimensional) using this handy website:

Build a Solar System Model 

(this is my favourite website at the moment and this place in now on my list of places to visit before I die). You seriously need to make the model. Numbers do not do it justice. I have explained it to all the people I work with, but then they walk into the classroom and see the size comparison and go "are you serious?" I was a bit the same even as we were blu-tacking it together. Incase you're lazy... we made a 3 metre sun. That's like higher than normal ceilings & wider than my little lounge room. Compared to that Sun... our Earth was not even 3cm, it was just over an inch in diameter. And if you remember from the Sun Song we sang last year, our Sun is just a middle sized star. Hmm anyway my kids are humouring my enthusiasm for this topic and we are having a fabulous time being amazed at our Creator together.

The History bit. So for the second half of term 2 we're looking at Sea Explorers and British Colonisation of Australia. So I've been doing a bunch of research about that as well lately. I really wanted to find out about Australia's Christian Heritage so I've been googling like mad (I love that googling is a word these days) (I also love that googling is a thing. How did we ever do research without it!). And I came across somethign really cool... Australia was actually claimed as "the Great Southland of the Holy Spirit". Seriously. There was a guy names Quiros in the early 1600s who may or may not have found Australia (depending on what you read), but whatever he found he thought it was the "great south land" (which we now know is Australia) that everyone was searching for and named it Australia del Espiritu Santo. I love that my country was dedicated to God (even though he may have been in Vanuatu... I'm still claiming it.).

Oh I forgot... there was a 3rd thing I learnt. The first sermon preached by an Englishman in Sydney was based on Psalm 116:12 & was preached under a tree on February 3rd, 1788. Interesting verse to start a convict settlement with hey: 

What can I offer the Lord
      for all he has done for me?

I don't know that the convicts, who were far from their families and everything they knew in a land where they were almost starting civilisation from scratch, would have shared Rev Johnson's sentiments that day. But I like that that was the verse our Sydney was started on.