I love the tutoring I’m doing. It started out with one student and now I have three! Their ages are 5, 9 and 11. It’s challenging to engage them and to give them work they can succeed at. Usually by the time parents engage a tutor the child has had quite a bit of time at school feeling like a failure so I try to give them tasks and games they can succeed at and still learn from.

I’m always scouring the Internet and shops for new resources. I often make my own though if I haven’t been able to find just what I need. It’s lots of fun 🙂

I’ve started recording my own audio books, I use the Hot Potatoes software to make quizzes, cloze, crosswords and match up exercises. The Learning Place from the Queensland Government has lots of free information which I’m using word lists etc.

Papers Past contains more than one million pages of digitised New Zealand newspapers and periodicals. The collection covers the years 1839 to 1932 and includes 52 publications from all regions of New Zealand.

I found this site while researching my great, great grandfather’s family the Boyds. His father was one of seven brothers born in Argyllshire, Scotland, 4 went to New Zealand, 2 came to Australia and the youngest we have yet to find out what he did.

Here’s story I found which is possibly refering to two of the 4 brothers Allan & John:

Allan Boyd was once out on his run when a boar met him, and Boyd got such a fright that instead of using his gun he climbed a cabbage tree near, leaving his gun leaning against the trunk. After settling himself, he tried to draw his gun up, but it went off and shot him. John MacCrae found him and carried him home, when John Boyd ran to Dunedin for a doctor.

I love that all these records are being digitised!!! The more access we have to history, public records, libraries, and the Internet the better!

These are my great, great grandparents Alexander and Martha Mary Boyd (nee Heeps). This is the first photo I’ve ever seen of them!! I just got a book on cd of the Boyd family history which included this photo! I’m very excited and touched. Reading their stories is sometimes heartwarming and sometimes tragic, the families faced many losses and hardships.

Grampians Texture  20 – 25 February 2010, Halls Gap, Victoria.

I’ll be doing the Crazy Crochet workshop with Abi Thompson on the Saturday and Sunday, I’m really looking forward to it. It’s even motivating me to save money! 🙂 I’ll combine it with a trip to Bendigo and surrounds to do more genealogy research too!!!! Exciting stuff!