MyWeek (4-10 Dec)
It's great to be free. No National Curriculum boxes to tick and no school policies to follow. But I do have a routine and it's one I am glad to stick to. It's been a fairly typical week.

It's Monday and I'm into two homes for a couple of hours teaching a total of five children. That's a twenty minute drive from my home. Well worth it for the chance to teach about Jesus' encounter with John the Baptist in one grammar lesson and God as creator of water in another (to think - I get paid for this).

On Tuesday I'm in two homes teaching a couple of girls. In the first the twelve year old does a bit of Maths and finishes off some English work on pollution and sin. She surprised me at the end of the lesson by asking me what my daughter would do if she were taken to confession at school (Angela - not her real name- had been to a R.C. Primary and was now at an ordinary secondary school). I guess she'd asked this question because of something in our worksheet. Anyhow, this gave a great chance to speak about really confessing our sins to God and asking him to thoroughly change us.

Wednesday's lesson is spent teaching handwriting to a twelve year old boy Jo. He's very responsive and it's an exciting lesson in which he is taught that one of the best talents God has given us is a sense of beauty. We go on to look at how this can be seen in the lines, curves, slopes and proportions of neat handwriting.

A pair of naughty little boys on Thursday. After sending one of them off for disrespect and having his mum speak to him, I went on to read from the parable of the Prodigal Son. Although, this was not the main point of the parable we got a chance to talk about respect. Explained the lesson and its aim to their mum and dad afterwards.

Finally on Friday another twelve year old, this time her dad, a Frenchman, asks what we are doing for Christmas and we get into a conversation about the Christmas story, John Calvin and the interpretation of the Bible.

What a week – and there's still the Saturday morning conversational class for English as a Second Language to go.