Stuff On My Blog

Not/Back to school day!

2012-01-23T21:41:00.000+10:00

This will be the lamest back to school/not back to school post ever... because....I have no photos *hangs head* My iphone took bodgy, blurry pictures and they are all awful. But, aside from that it was a great day.

Sam was SO glad to go back to school, we found his room no problem and introduced him to his teacher. He was excited, gave me a kiss & cuddle and ran off to find his seat and see who was in his class. Merry, who started prep (kindergarten), was a bit excited but also a bit nervous I think. His teacher seems nice and she had potato heads and other cool toys on the tables for the kids to entertain themselves with while all their classmates came in and got settled. She took a pic of each child with their parent(s), which I think she is using for the digital roll call. Digital roll is cool, when the kids come in and have their morning group time on the carpet they go up to the fancy whiteboard thing and touch their photo and are marked 'present'.

Frodo and I gathered some snacks and water bottles and headed off to our Not Back To School Day at a great park. Rocks Riverside Park is a park that I've heard great things about, but when we tried to go it was always closed for repairs which was a bummer. Then in January 2011, it was completely flooded and has taken the better part of the year to reopen apparently! So, when a mum from a regional home school site I've chatted with asked if we wanted to meet up there so the kids could play and we could chat, I jumped on it.

The park was so great, and Frodo really seems to have relaxed... when we had a park meet up in early December, he was so anxious and repeatedly asked when we could go home. He was so painfully shy and afraid to approach the other kids to play that it was just sad to watch. I knew he would loosen up eventually, but wow... huge difference! We all made introductions and Frodo went to walk around and check out the park a bit while the other boys snacked... shortly after they followed and all 3 of them were hanging up the giant spider web climber. It was great to watch. They snacked together, ran off to try out the excellent flying fox and zipped across the park, and even located a couple of bush turkeys poking around in the shrubbery. What really shocked me was when he asked if he could get wet... you see I knew they had water play there, but he swore he didn't want to bring or wear his swim gear. He only enjoys water if it's a pool. But the other boys were in the water ... and he wanted to join them so I said go ahead... the seat of the car will dry :) It was worth it just to see him able to relax and enjoy the company of other kids without fear that they were going to do something mean to him.

We discovered 4 of our home schooling books, all part of the History Odyssey reading, delivered and waiting by our front door when we came home! Shortly after that, Strider arrived home and we went up to get the brothers from school and Merry was just elated that dad came to get him. Everyone had a great day and we are planning are many more to come this year!

Happy Belated New Year!

2012-01-07T14:15:00.001+10:00

Hope you have all had a spectacular of a start to your 2012 as we have! We have been thoroughly enjoying our family time since I last posted. We rang in the New Year relatively early, by watching the 9pm fireworks on tv... we thought about driving into the city, but the weather was a bit iffy so we just played some Cluedo and hung out at home.

A few days later, we headed off to Wet n Wild for a day of fun in the sun. This is Buccaneer Bay, which is specifically for kids under 10... great water slides, cannons, pools to swim in, and the ever popular big water dumping bucket.

Much fun was had by all :) The lazy river, or Calypso Beach was also a big hit. We found a small shady spot (NO mean feat that... I swear you have to get there at the crack of dawn to get a good shady spot with seats. We rocked up at 950 for the 10am opening time and there was not a free seat in the place.

Sam was all about the water slides, here he is on his first trip up surveying the scene to decide if it's something he *really* wants to do. He did... and repeatedly at that lol. He is totally Captain Adventure!

Except when it came to the tooth that has been dangling for weeks lol. It was painfully obvious that he would leave said tooth to dangle till the cows came home without intervention... so hubby decided to give it a bit of help. It was attached by the teeniest sliver of gum, but there was still copious amounts of wailing and carrying on like someone was murdering him... but out it came. Now, of course, he is quite pleased with himself ;) and looking mighty adorable at that! He'll have that gap for all of about 5 minutes, as the adult tooth is already through!

On the school front, we go in to get the little dude uniforms in 2 weeks @@, I can hardly believe it. They are looking forward to the first day of school :) I started buying Frodo's home school materials this week! I've had most of it selected for a couple of months so it's more just exercising the visa debit card than much in the way of decision making.

We'll be using a lot of old favourites:
- History Odyssey ancients level 2 (history, literature, geography and a lot of writing) (books ordered to go with from Fishpond.com ... go the free shipping!)
- Math U See (we'll be going through the multiplication & division levels for a bit of confidence building)
- Time 4 Learning (supplemental use, especially for math)
- Reading/ Writing a-z (great online/printable comprehension activities and writing tools)
- Science -- I was really sold on Real science 4kids but ...I'm waffling lol, Mr. Q's chemistry is looking
pretty sweet at the moment AND he has a half price special starting on the 17th!!
*Still trying to find a good source for a time line and a few other bits, so if anyone knows one that doesn't charge a fortune for shipping or is Australian, please share :)
-LOTE (Languages other than English) - We were going to do Auslan, but the classes that were getting organized didn't work out... they ARE doing Spanish, so Lucas said he'd give that a go. We'll probably use Livemocha for practice in our own time.
-ART - Lessons with our home ed group for 2 terms, after that we'll use our Usborne Art Gallery book and trips to the local galleries. Lucas is also interested in learning guitar (his dad & the Teen are both learning) so we may get him a 3/4 size instrument and lessons sometime later in the year.

Can't wait for the parcels to start arriving.. I LOVE a box of fresh home school stuff to explore... and it gets the boy pretty excited and interested as well!

Oh wow, what a day :)

2011-12-28T22:29:00.000+10:00

Today we christened our family gift by going to Movie World and getting our seasons passes made :) It's about a 40minute drive from us and by the time we arrived the boys were beside themselves! It was not too bad, crowd-wise, in the morning, but got a bit much after lunch time. We arrived and took a wander down Main Street around 10am to find THIS coming up behind us! Some evil villains were up to no good, attempting to wrangle a young lady into their clutches when the Caped Crusader himself rocked up on his very spiffy looking Batmobile to save the day. There was a mock battle, just like in the movies, and in the end the damsel was saved by Batman and he rode off into the sunset.

Frodo did not care for the rather loud Batman music playing, but thought the scene was cool... while Merry lost the plot and burst out in tears. I think he actually thought it was a real fight and that someone got hurt. So we sat down outside the Harry Potter shop (which looks JUST like a shop out of Diagon Alley) and explained to him that it was all pretend, just like watching a movie.... took him a few minutes but he perked up.

The boys thought this car was just awesome... it was full of 'bullet holes' :)

On our way to the Kids Zone we passed THIS very evil shop! Thankfully it was NOT open yet! lol

On arrival in Kids Zone, Merry & Sam went on the Tijuana Taxi's, who's patron was Speedy Gonzales. These taxi's were not terribly speedy though lol... but once he got the hang of it, Merry did quite well. Sam sped past before I could snap a pic of him (he must've gotten the fast car :P)

While waiting for Dad & Merry to come back from the Yosemite Sam train ride, Frodo & Sam hung out with Taz for a bit and we had some fruit & cold drinks in the shade. The boys all had a go on the bumper cars and thought it was great fun. I noticed a pattern... Merry cops the poops about getting on every single thing, there are tears, he rides and has a blast... then wants to go again after LOL.

Then we went back to Main Street to watch the Looney Toons Rock n Roll show, which included Bugs, some 'girl rabbit', Daffy, and Tweety... Good fun!

Hubby went off with the Teen, who was unable to ride the Superman Escape roller coaster without someone to hold his hat,glasses,wallet etc... and took Frodo with him. This left Sam, Merry & I to our own devices. We checked out the Kids Zone, but it was 1230 at this point and omg where did all these PEOPLE come from?? The lines were absurd so we went exploring the rest of the park. We wandered down the little replica China Town, and then meandered over to the Wild West part of the park. This was SO cool :) There is a little old west style main street with decked walkways and fake shop fronts (nice shady spots to sit for a cold drink & a rest). Sam & Merry thought Boot Hill cemetary was entertaining... I have weird kids ;)

They also thought the small 'Custom Coffins' shop, complete with deceased in coffin leaning against the wall, was great. In the interest of brevity and bandwidth, I have graciously left that photo out... dude in the box looked a little ripe lol.

We wandered through the rest of the area and found a great spot to sit & eat in a 'barn' filled with picnic tables. Perfect... shady, cool breezes, and off my FEET for a bit! Eventually the Hubby, Frodo & Teen joined us where we noshed on some chips (fat french fries for my American friends ;) and had a look at this most awesome ride.

Sadly we did NOT get to ride the Wild West Adventure, because while we waited for the rest of the crew, the line went from fairly short, to positively ginormous! We did watch a half dozen logs full 'o people go splashing down though, and Sam is adamant that he MUST ride this next time :)

Such is the beauty of season passes, from now until June 30 we shall regularly darken the doorsteps of the theme parks. We are testing out Wet n Wild on New Years eve, as they have a special evening for littlies. Free activities included with admission, and a movie at 7pm (Smurfs.. but I shall persevere) and they bump the clock at 5pm so the kids can enjoy ringing in the New Year at 9pm :D

Can ya tell I'm out of practice??

2011-12-25T20:07:00.000+10:00

With this bloggin' thing?!? I popped on to put a few holiday pics up, only to realize I haven't posted in December at all *sheepish* SO, with considering that a brief update is in order. Sam finished school for the year a couple of weeks ago, he got a special award and was so stoked! He had no idea it was coming, which made it even more fun. Here he is with the principal presenting him with his certificate AND a special gold pin. He loves things like pins, so he wore it constantly and has made a special box for it hehe.

Aside from that, Merry & Frodo and I went on a special park day with some home school friends, both old and new :) and had a blast. Merry was incredibly water logged by the time we were done! Frodo was rather shy & reserved most of the day, but given the crap treatment he's recieved from kids at school, me & the other mums were very understanding of his reticence! We've signed on for classes starting in February with them though, so hopefully he relaxes and enjoys it :)

The first week of holidays we went to the Ipswich Nature Centre, which is an animal park :D The boys love it, but Merry was quite young last time we went so he really got into it this time! The first critters we saw were some rather LARGE Goana's... they were about as long as Frodo is tall ( and he's nearing 1.5metres!). I would have taken photos.. but Mr. Goana was feeling VERY friendly to Mrs. Goana (who didn't seem interested lol) and yeah.. that just doesn't make for blog friendly photography! Next up were the wallaby's and they were much more photogenic :)

Sam met an interesting Emu... it followed us up and down the fence for a bit, I'm fairly sure it was after food.

But when Sam stopped, the Emu stopped and stared him straight in the face! I was pretty glad for that nice tall fence between them.

There were also some domestic animals... Merry found this Silky Bantam chicken to be just the most curious thing. He kept going back to have a closer look at the funny chook.

There was a fair bit of this as well...

And some cool scaly critters! This is a blue tongued lizard (left) and a frill necked lizard (right). There were also Wombats, which I couldn't get a good pic of due to glare off the glass of their posh air conditioned sleeping dens.... and Bilby's, which are housed in a semi darkened enclosure since they are nocturnal critters.

Which catches us up to yesterday, Christmas Eve :) The grandparents came out as always, for our traditional seafood feast, which was delish. Frodo was Very pleased with himself as he got to decorate the Pavlova.

After the boys went to bed, and the grandparents wandered off home, the stockings were .. well, not hung lol but filled at least ;) We don't do a massive gift fest like so many do these days but the boys were thrilled with their loot.

A couple of much anticipated wii games were received so there was a little bit of this :)

And a lot of this (hangin out on the patio)-

To play with this! A totally cool little pirate ship water play table. We don't have a big yard so no pool, and our trampoline is bundled up in the garage.. but this and a slip n slide we can accomodate! Frodo has had a 2nd bout of tonsillitis, poor kid... and a bad reaction to some penicillin (not allergy, just puky!) he's finally on the road to recovery.
Which is a good thing because the one thing we really did splash out on (pun intended lol) was locals passes to the big 3 amusement parks until June 30, 2012... and we're making the first trip in a few days. I was a tad worried but I think he'll be through with the first antibiotics and good to go have some fun!

Until then, I'll be spending my time relaxing on the veranda reading my fave book, The Mists of Avalon, on my new Kindle! Merry Christmas to me :D And a super wonderful holiday season to you and yours, whatever holiday your family celebrates at this time of year!

Weekly wrap (slightly belated!)

2011-11-28T21:37:00.000+10:00

So last week was our 2nd week of home schooling, and Frodo is still happier than the proverbial pig in poo lol. He's been working very hard at it, but he's clearly still getting used to the situation. Friday morning when I told Sam his uniform was on my bed, he asked what about MY uniform... before going "OH, yeah right!" hehehe Sam doesnt' seem too bothered that Frodo isn't going to school with him now... although in my eyes he's a little sad walking up the path to his classroom all alone.   He is already telling me how next year he wants to walk Merry to HIS classroom and pick him up to meet me at the gate in the afternoon. So clearly he misses even that little walk in with his brother.

Frodo was a bit under the weather most of last week, and I had full intentions of just letting him veg till he felt better. But he was having none of it... as I got Sam ready for school he asked 'MUM, when you take Sam to school can you log me onto T4L before you go?' (the school is 200m away, and while normally we'd walk.. if I have to pop over to the shop or something we will drive) I dropped Sam off, hit woolies for milk & bread and was back 30mins later (relax his teenage brother was here :P and Frodo rang me twice in that time anyway lol).

That day he spent ages learning about the Olmecs (and I think moved on to the Phoenicians), doing multiplication, learning about the layers of the earth, and doing a whole unit worth of the language arts lol. So much for a sick day!   The rest of the week was much the same, except Thursday, when we had to drop off the hubbies van at the shop and then go into the CBD. Frodo riding into the city is a stretch any time, but after having spent a couple of nights with queasy tummy we got the teen to supervise him. When we returned (with a posh iced chocolate for the teen as payment ;) Frodo had QUITE the temperature! Our doctors are awesome and had a spot for him in 10minutes if we could get there.. SOLD I replied :)    It turns out the boy has quite a case of tonsillitis *sigh*   And seeing his history with NOT getting better on his own, the doc opted to offer us antibiotics straight away.

A few days of gatorade and E-mycin he's perked right up thankfully! Just in time for the homeschool group park day tomorrow morning at a very cool park about 5minutes away from us.   He's very much looking forward to the morning and meeting (or re-meeting) some other home schooled kids.    This is going to be a pretty light week for him, we've got park day tomorrow and then Thursday is a christmas ceramics workshop which should be excellent fun!

For Sam, it's the last 2 weeks of school (which he loves, so I can see him being a pain in the backside during holidays lol). I'm a bit miffed as I didn't realize today was the deadline for buying the pass for the term4 disco... hubby rang the school and asked if she could write us in for a hand deal and we'd come fill out a form and pay in the morning. Her answer was NO it is already closed... this was 5minutes past 3pm, so it's not like they had ordered the bloody food since the end of school?!? So, because he lost the form (I think his waterbottle leaked in his bag and he tossed it out) and I didn't realize the deadline, he gets to miss out on something he was excited about. And the cranky cow at the school desk doesn't really care. /rant Ok, Sam isn't heartbroken or anything... he will dress up at home, we'll bbq sausages & have ice cream after and play dance music at home for him :)   I'm just annoyed.

Then in the last week of school there is an awards day... and his teacher emailed to say he will be getting an award (that he doesn't know about!) and asking if we'd like to come. So of course, I'll pop down for that.. he will be so surprised and excited :)

In other news... I've gotten really BAD about remembering to take pics to put up with my posts (which sorta happens when one doesn't post for months I guess? lol) so my project for the week is to have at least a couple of photos to add to my weekly wrap! Remind me in comments if I do not :P

OMG...Perfection!

2011-11-18T16:29:00.000+10:00

A day or so ago I notice that my blogger background was deceased. It was a freebie from delightfuldots, and I had JUST put it up for summer (Not sure if y'all noticed, I like to change my template for the seasons hehe) and I guess the way she has you install them links to HER photo sharing site (whereever they are stored) and doesn't have you download the file to your computer. Big problem because her traffic is clearly enormous due to the links and it has exceeded bandwith :( So I had a blanky blog.

So I finally took a few minutes to go searching for a new one. I found THIS beauty and had to have it! Alas there was a problem with the site and it would not download! A scroll down the comments underneath showed it has been a problem for a while. SO, I managed to find it at another site and downloaded it! It required a fair bit of tweaking to fix all the widgets that were in all SORTS Of bizarre places, and the date was UNDEFINED... but once I sorted that out I was giddy lol.

Anyone who knows me, knows that I live for a nice posh coffee.. and if I am sitting at this laptop blogging, there is probably a cuppa riding shotgun on my left LOL. I have (almost) never met a coffee I didn't like, so this blog template is SO me that it's just not funny!

So, does anyone know if it stuffs up subscriptions/follows if you change the name of the blog ONLY in the header? I've been tossing around the idea of a new name for a little while now... not really settled on anything yet, but just not feeling this one anymore if you know what I mean? The new theme kinda begs for something caffienated, don't you think???

Our first week..

2011-11-17T12:28:00.000+10:00

Is going along rather swimmingly, if I do say so myself :) We did not get to go to the bowling/art gallery outings today unfortunately. Strider was supposed to be off work today to stay with Merry & be here for the rental inspection.. but his boss decided they'd just start late instead. I'm not complaining about the money of course ;) but we were looking forward to it. Instead we picked up a nice bakery snack and popped into the bookstore and picked up some fun reading material. And I do believe we're going to go to the office supply store & pick up a few bits like a binder for his subject notebooks, and a zippered pencil case that has binder holes in it (IF I can find one) so Frodo can always find a pencil etc if he has his binder handy.

Frodo is using Time4Learning to fill the last 4 weeks of the 'school year' .. I figure it'd be a pain to start our actual planned curriculum and then stop for summer break! We may go somewhat through breaks during the year, but after the year this poor boy has had, he deserves a nice long break! So far, he seems to be enjoying the program. He happily logs on and does at least one activity of each section ... today he did an antonyms lesson + quiz, some multiplication review, an activity about the layers of the earth (and wrote notes in his science notebook & did a diagram & pasted it in) and did the quiz on that too. We did the section of social studies on the Olmecs and wrote some of the important bits in his notebook yesterday, and today we grabbed out the Usborne IL Encyclopedia and read a little more about them and cruised a few links.

I am liking the T4L for the fact that he is enthusiastic about ANYthiNG on the computer, the activities are relatively brief (a god/dess send with his attention span), and we can then add to it with other resources! I may end up having to add Samwise to the account because I can see Frodo wanting to continue over summer with it since it's only an hour or so worth of 'work'... and Sam will get quite jealous!

And I have just been told I have the most beautiful gift coming from a lovely friend! I adore the artwork in Barefoot Books, but they are not available widely in Australia (you find a *few* here and there on Aussie book sites, and the odd one in Borders.. is Borders still Borders here?? lol). I soooooo wish the company would get on opening an Aussie distributorship, I would sign on to sell them in a split second! (if just for the discount LOL) So to my wonderful friend, thank you! It will be a lovely holiday gift for the boys..and *sheepish* me lol, because I love a gorgeous book :)

404 not found???

2011-11-15T16:35:00.002+10:00

Bite me blogger for eating my post!

Hurrah! It has begun :D

2011-11-14T15:35:00.000+10:00

This is what we did today!

This is Frodo mailing off his registration packet to the Home Ed. Unit! He was very excited to put that in the post box, that's for sure!

Then we followed up with a celebratory iced chocolate and doughnut :)

There was a bit of multiplication practice thrown in this morning, but overall it was a day of destressing & relaxing. The boy needed it and so did I. Tomorrow I'll have a bit more for him to do as I've signed him up for Time4Learning so that I don't have to start our chosen programs only to pause for holidays after 4 weeks! I think he'll enjoy it as he's all about the computer. I'll be adding some writing and such in there, and he's going to write a letter to his new Pen Pal over the next few days as well.

I'm SO looking forward to some positive social time for him ... this week we're going bowling & to the art gallery workshop with a great home ed group! And I've signed him up for a Christmas ceramics workshop in a couple of weeks too :) Looking forward to it, AND to having a full year of fun next year!

Ps. I did email the principal last night letting her know he wasn't returning with a brief, non accusatory (mostly) blurb about the fact that after nearly a full year it is clear to me that he just is NOT intended for the school environment etc... and as of yet I have had no reply. I guess that shouldn't surprise me, she hasn't been overly kind /caring to him while he was THERE, so why would she care when he is gone?

There has clearly been a mistake...

2011-11-09T12:21:00.000+10:00

My son is NOT the type of kid that would walk up to a girl with a visibly broken & bandaged toe and then stomp & twist his foot on hers. Yet, that is what the school expects me to believe. He brought home a BRO, which is a form the children have to fill out when they did something wrong. In it they must detail what the incident was, and what they should do instead next time. On it he stated he wasn't paying attention when he walked up to the student to ask her for something, and that he didn't intend to step on her foot. He did write that some of the other kids say he did stomp but that he did not. A teacher, or the principal, actually wrote that it happened the way everyone else said.    I'm fed up, and I've emailed & called the principal but no reply yet.

Not that it matters... the school has labeled Frodo as a 'problem' despite him having diagnosed special needs. And as my DH says, the minute we tried medication for him, the school gave up on him. The communication book that was started to help him & us with feedback on how he did each day has not been seen for the entirety of this term (5 weeks). No matter what the problem is, it is ALWAYS Frodo's fault and there are ALWAYS other students willing to attest to the fact that he did X, Y or Z.    Coincidentally, these are all the same kids that exclude, ostracize and bully him both inside & outside of school hours... but the principal doesn't, or won't, see this.    I guess the problem doesn't exist if you put blinders on and look the other way?

As I said, I've called (left a msg) as well as emailed the principal and have gotten no response. I also wrote a long reply to the stupid letter that I was required to sign :) and I have emailed his teacher asking if HE was there and could he please enlighten me about the situation since the principal isn't bothering to do so. I am almost done with his learning program, so I guess that is priority #1, since I can't see him remaining there even the last 5 weeks if he is not even going to be listened to.

In the remotest possibility that it IS true that he did what he is accused of, I would sort of have to blame the school for allowing the other kids to continue to mistreat him for the entire year... who WOULDN'T be angry and act out at that point? They have known of the situation all year, yet really not done enough. Can't wait to get this kid home again, so he can start to heal from the year of misery he has been through :(   I feel guilty for not seeing exactly how much it was affecting him sooner (I did know he was struggling, and pushed for help and got some but I had no idea he was so angry inside)

Teachers clearly don't have to do THIS ...

2011-10-28T12:36:00.000+10:00

For every.single.child in their class! They would have no hair left if they did! ;)

I must write a plan that:
a. has regard to the age, ability, aptitude and development of the child concerned;
b. takes account and promotes continuity of the learning experiences of the child concerned;
c. is responsive to the changing needs of the child concerned;
d. reflects and takes into account current understandings related to educational and other development of children;
e. is responsive to the child’s need for social development;
f. is supported by sufficient and suitable resources;
g. is conducted in an environment conducive to learning.

Wow... they don't want much do they? lol I suppose it really isn't that difficult for just one child though.
A. clearly I won't write a plan for high school, since Frodo is 10.
B. well that's just edubabble that I'm assuming means we'll have 'regular' learning activities.
C. is easily enough met by saying 'doing x and moving on as he is ready'.
D. Got that covered with the whole cross curricular learning thing :D
E. Well, since he has been miserable with the 'social development' school offered for the last 9months, I don't see how I can fail? I think I'm being responsive to this particular need by removing him from school :)
F. I'm a curriculum whore... there I said it! I LOVE scouring the web for, and usually buying lol, great books and other learning material. I did even when the boys all at school even *hides*
G. As Merry would say, easy easy lemon squeezy! Our house has books, computers, the internet, space... oh, and NO 34 other children....we'll be just fine.
The Home Education Unit wants a 'term by term' breakdown (more to show that we have an understanding of how long things will take to work through I think). I am currently writing Frodo's learning plan for the next year, I've gotten into term 2 now with my 'general' plan of what we'll be studying. I'm not getting OVERLY specific.... it's a lot of 'We'll cover approx. the first 1/4 of the History Odyssey lessons, allowing extra time as needed if he becomes interested in a topic!' then c&p in the next term changing the numbers ;) and adding in a visit to the museum when this exhibit is on, and a trip to the local theatre as an arts excursion.

I have decided on most of what we'll be using this year (links to come in the sidebar!) although I'm loving two science programs and don't want to give either up LOL.

Math U See (delta & gamma, then moving on as he is ready)
Mathletics subscription
Timez Attack (multiplication computer game)
History Odyssey Ancients level 2 (encompasses history/sose, as well as literature, geography, composition,
      and Vocabulary
Typing Tournament (touch typing instructional computer program)
Real Science 4 Kids
Real Science Odyssey (we will be using these programs to complement one another as one has more
      information and the other has more fun experiments!)
Reading a-z membership (comprehension)
Writing a-z membership (additional composition activities)
Youtube, the internet, and the library!

There will undoubtedly be more, and that doesn't include the great Home Education group we're rejoining! They run some terrific weekly classes in everything from sign language, to spanish, to art & drama.

I'm hoping to be done with this by the end of next week, as I have to have it recieved at the HEU before we can withdraw him. I don't know if the school will give him his report for the 2nd half of the year or not, but apparently it doesn't matter as he will automatically be registered at the grade of his agemates ;)

Ok, I have procrastinated enough.. back to work!

The home stretch..

2011-10-05T14:31:00.000+10:00

Well, the boys have just entered term 4 of their school year. Sam is still thriving and loving it, Merry is looking forward to going to prep next year... and Frodo is still keeping his head above water so to spreak. Academically, he's doing well enough, and his behaviour has improved steadily through the year.. but socially, he is still struggling. He doesn't HATE school, but he doesn't LOVE it either.

He doesn't have 'friends' at school, although one or two boys will sometimes let him play with them at break... and a lot of kids exclude him, a few actively pick on him. He has always preferred to sort of do his own thing anyway, so he hasn't gotten upset about any of this. But in my opinion, he is receiving no real positives from school.. and picking up a few negatives. I can't see much point in that really... and it really pushed the decision when I got an email from the behavioural specialist today that they are closing his case and he won't be recieving any help from her office any more and the plan they put in place will be tossed since he's so much improved. So the entire goal was for him to be 'good' at school... not really for him to have a better experience at school :(

SO, we are starting the process of bringing him back home :) We discussing how we want to go about it, distance ed, registered on our own, etc. We haven't really made any of those decisions yet, but Frodo sort of wants to finish the year out, sort of doesn't. More on all of that ... well... once I have more on it lol

Holidays over!

2011-07-12T11:33:00.000+10:00

Today was the end of two blissful and relaxing (mostly) weeks of school holidays. The boys have mostly enjoyed their time off... we've gone to a couple of awesome parks, they made their own band, spent some time with Nanny & Grandpa, and their Uncles were over from New Zealand. On Friday night, we rounded up the Uncles' visit by having dinner at the RSL club near the grandparents house... it was a huge hit with the boys as always. Sam was quite stoked because we bought them tickets in the raffle of the night, and he won a $50 meat package from the local butcher hehe. He has requested that Nan pick it up for him, and that she get stuff that would be good for a bbq so they can come help us eat it :)

Sam was itching to get back to school to see his little mates, Frodo seemed a bit excited too even! Yesterday, we spent some sorting out the boys backpacks, finding lunchboxes etc, and getting uniforms set out for today. (An aside, must go buy Sam a zipper pull to put on his school hoodie... a $46 hoodie and he's had it a month... and the zipper pull rips off... awesome quality *scowl* ) Sam & Frodo didn't even complain when we told them that no, they cannot sleep together because it's a school night. (these boys will happily sleep together, in a single bed, every night if we let them... except it takes them till 9pm to GO to sleep, so we only let them on weekends!)

I also spent a good portion of the day baking :D I made blueberry muffins for school snacks, and corn dog muffins for their lunches today. A corn dog muffin, is just what it sounds like... a corn bread muffin, with chunks of cut up hot dog inside... a tasty treat in the boys' opinions! I am, unfortunately for the budget, back on the hunt for lunchboxes... our easylunchboxes have not stood up well to Frodo's lack of impulse control *sigh* He swings his lunch bag around and CRASH onto the concrete it goes... cracking whatever is inside... hopefully he's lucky enough that it has happened AFTER he ate whatever was inside?

Merry is at his 2nd to last day of preschool today, Thursday is the last day for him. I'm going to try to find something special for he & I to do together either Friday or Monday of next week ... and I'm going to try to find some more preschool activities to make up for him, so he can have learning games and fun stuff for our days at home. I need to give our days a loose structure, otherwise Merry will beg to play the wii ALL DAY LONG, which is not a viable option! Any suggestions for activities, websites, or printables would be very welcome!!

With that... I'm off to enjoy the few hours that I have on my own :)

* my iphone isn't wanting to send pics so that I can post them dangit! Might try to insert them later IF they come through!*

Um.. Happy July .. and stuff??

2011-07-08T14:09:00.000+10:00

Life has been stressful my dear readers, and while I have logged in and contemplating posting... I just wasn't able to figure out what I wanted to say.    In a nutshell, the last few months have sucked for me.   Dh's work fan finally died to the tune of a repair that we could not afford to make (could up up to 4k) so we have purchased a new van (here's hoping the tax deduction/depreciation for that saves our ass at the accountants). And just like everyone else, financial times are tough.

Some of you may remember that Merry begged to go to preschool when his brothers went to school this year, and I obliged, and he seems to have enjoyed it. (although there is a little separation anxiety at drop off time, he has a great time there and Miss Emma always has pics of him smiling and enjoying himself) Well, my income is more than it was at the start, and our child care benefit has dropped significantly.... so the 300 a month for preschool has now become over 550$ a month for preschool. I made the call that it's just TOO much, and starting in 2 weeks, Merry will be home with me every day. I'm already on the net searching up some of my favourite blogs that have preschooler material (*waves* Hi Kylie!) and saving things to a quickly growing folder of preschool activities in my bookmarks.   So, once again, what started out as a home schooling blog, will have a little taste of that original focus :)

How are Sam & Frodo doing at school?   Well Sam is the absolute Belle of the ball, so to speak!   He LOVES school, and daily during this 2 week holiday period he has said oh I can't wait to go back to school! And he was quite upset that Monday is a pupil free day :( His reading is coming along fabulously, and he & I still work on this at home and he's really enjoying it. He's a mathematical whizz according to his teacher and he has NO shortage of friends in class.

Frodo is improving :)   We are fairly sure that he does have ADD, and he has some Asperger's symptoms/behaviours as well but those are just idiosyncracies and not life impairing for the most part.   We go back to his Paediatrician this week to discuss behavioural interventions etc to help him cope better with frustrations etc.   Academic wise, he is on par with where he 'should' be... but I know that once we get plans in place to help him cope socially & attention wise, his grades will pop up to the above average range.    But he's doing pretty well these days and for now, he wants to stay in school. I'm giving the school a term to show me some improvements and if he doesn't seem happier there at that point, I'll withdraw him and probably do distance ed for the last term before deciding what to do next year. I will not keep him in school if he is miserable just because it is considered 'the norm'.

Merry will be going to prep most likely next February, and at that point I'm considering University for myself. Numerous ideas are in my head as to what I'd like to 'be when I grow up' but I'm not decided on anything at this point.

I'm planning to get myself into the swing of blogging regularly again, so I'll see you here again soon :D

Ooops, another month snuck past!

2011-03-24T21:49:00.000+10:00

Lot's of things have been keeping me busy this past month, leaving not so much time to sit down and blog about how things are going!    I've been working about 20ish hours a week, which is always nice for the bank account lol, but not always so nice for my sanity or sleep!   I'm sitting here feeling a bit poorly (have had a GI disturbance going on most of the week... now a sore throat, just shoot me now?) and watching the Lord of the Rings (first movie tonight :) so I figure it's a good, quiet time to update.

We're nearing the end of the boys first term as 'school kids' and I can see a lot of progress I'm happy to say. Frodo has not complained that he doesn't want to go to school in 2 or 3 weeks now. He had a brief issue with another kid in his class that was eventually brought to light & worked out. The school & I went back and forth a bit, but I'm mostly okay with how it worked out in the end. Frodo knows that if the issue occurrs again, exactly what he is to do... and at this point he and the other boy seem to be getting on better.

Frodo's behaviour in class is still a challenge... he was making progress and then about a week ago he just went south big time. His teacher and I are touching base every afternoon so I know exactly how he was that day... if it was a bad day, the Nintendo DS doesn't come down from it's shelf. I hate to take it away, but that is the one thing I could come up with that might be enough motivation for him to try his best. So far, it's working... this week he has done pretty well .. thank goodness his teacher doesn't expect perfection ;)

Sam made the move to the grade 1 class just after my last post I believe, and he is really thriving there. His reading is coming along in leaps and bounds and he enjoys the things they do in class. He has commented that he's 7 now, and he thought only 5 and 6year olds could be in grade 1... but I told him that was only a general rule otherwise schools would spend forever working out where each kid needed to be and never get anything done! He doesn't seem stressed about it thankfully.

Merry is enjoying his 2 days of preschool a week, and I must admit... so am I lol.  He has a friend in the room next to his that he looks forward to playing with every time he goes :) He happily races off onto the playground at drop off time, and just as happily runs to give me a cuddle when he finally notices me at pick up time.

In just over a week, we will be moving ... conveniently it's just up the road from the school. The boys are looking forward to walking to school every day! I'm looking forward to them living in the neighborhood with some of their schoolfriends and being able to hang out socially outside of school. The house we are going to live in has very little in the way of a yard (pretty typical for the area sadly) but the neighborhood will make up for that we hope. There are several great parks within a kilometre of where we will be living... one directly across the street even.

Inconveniently enough, we visited that park and two of three kids got stung by wasps shortly after arrival. While I recognize that we (as humans) are building into their (as bugs) territory... I will be much happier after the council makes it's visit and moves the wasps along into the nearby bush. Ok... so they will nuke them I'm sure... but I hope the activity encourages their brethren to STAY the 50metres away in the woods ;) Either way, once there is more human activity at the park and in the area, I think the critters will decide that they'd be happier elsewhere.

Work, well it's work. There are to be big changes in our program, but they are slow coming unfortunately. We had hoped to have it sorted by now, but it appears that I get to pull at least one more weekend of graveyard shifts *SIGH*   And this is that weekend. *double sigh*   Ah well, I shall take the other LOTR movies, some popcorn and iced tea to keep me company while I wait for the phone to ring.

The hubby has had mostly 4day work weeks in the last month.. he is off tomorrow as well, as there is nothing in the warehouse to deliver except concrete slabs. So, we've planned a trip to IKEA... it's only 40 minutes away so it's not a TRIP really... just a trip hehe. We are ditching our sad, 50dollar ebay living room furniture as it's in awful condition, so we're going to have a peek at Ikea. I've heard a lot of people say good things about their Ektorp range of sofas so we are going to have a test drive.   I've nearly every cent of my pay into saving to help with moving expenses and for just this purpose, so I'm pretty excited to go shopping for it. And a few other odds & sods.. as one can't go into IKEA and come out with JUST what they went in for lol.. at least not THIS 'one' ;)

Happy spring my northern friends... and to those here with me in the southern hemisphere... bring on Autumn!

4 Weeks

2011-02-20T17:55:00.000+10:00

It's been 4 weeks since we became a public schooled family, and while I wish I could say it was the PERFECT move for us... I can't :(   I'll get to why shortly.

Sam hasn't yet moved to the grade 1 classroom, but he's visited a couple of times and says he likes it :) He says there is a lava lamp & legos in there, so what's not to like lol. Emotionally he is settling in very well, he isn't bouncing with excitement to go in the morning, but he has not had any 'bad' days at school yet.

Frodo on the other hand, is upset most mornings over going. He tells me daily he'd like to go back to homeschooling and why.   He says he is having trouble with the 6hour days, he feels bad that he tries hard to be as good as the other kids, but can't always do it. The room is set up in groups, each group has 4 (I think) students at a table... and they earn points through behaviour & classwork, towards a prize at the end of the week. Last week Frodo was at a table alone though, and I'm not sure if that's something that will rotate through other students being in a group of their own or what. I'm really hoping that is the case, as I would hate to think he is being singled out or made to feel bad because he isn't 'perfect'. But in effort to not fly off half cocked about it, I'm waiting till Monday to see if he is in a different group.

I want them to give it a fair go, and not make the choice to pull them before they have had a real chance to settle in to school because for right now, it is something I need. I think it is doing wonders for my sanity honestly, I am calmer and more relaxed with the kids (and in general). However, I'm obviously not ready to sacrifice THEIR happiness so I can be sane... but the converse of that really doesn't work for me either.

Ups & Downs

2011-02-06T12:23:00.000+10:00

Well, we now have 2 weeks as a school going family under our belts. I wish it was all sweetness & light, but life doesn't work that way. Frodo had major issues with the noise (construction still ongoing at the school, and too many kids talking he says!) The noise seems to have settled down in week 2, as the construction right around the building they are in is mostly completed.. just a bit of turf to go down now.

His teacher says he really seems to be settling into the classroom routine well! He is having absolutely NO problems with the work thus far, which I was never worried about anyway with him. And every day as we walk onto the school grounds, he is saying hi to numerous kids in his class loving that aspect of it.

I've met with Sam's teacher, who is really great, twice. Most of you know that I've decided that even IF I were still home educating, that I would be holding off on Prep for Merry for another year (he is only 4.5 which I think is just too young for formal education no matter the environment) and I have spent several months wondering if that might have been a better option for Sam as well. He's doing great with the classroom routine, and his behaviour is lovely Mrs M. says.. but he just is not where the rest of his class are. I knew that he wasn't, but when he was learning from home it wasn't so much of a concern. SO, his teacher & I had the chat and I have decided that Sam would be better served making a move to the grade 1 classroom. The class size is small, and ALL of his classmates would be learning the same things he needs to work on.

The school has some sort of 'educational opportunity' specialist (or some such title) starting this coming week and she will work with him to ease into the new classroom. I think once we get that done, he will be much happier (not that he's UNhappy.. but he gets a little distressed because he can't read the things that his classmtaes are reading) He will only be about 6ish months older than most of the grade one kids in the new class which will be ok, as he is currently in a mixed grade 2/3 class so a large portion of his classmates are much older.

One aspect of school they are both loving is taking their lunches :) I ordered easy lunchboxes ( http://www.easylunchboxes.com/index.htm ) which are quiet cool, if I haven't mentioned them before lol. The kids enjoy helping pick out things for their lunches and I've found some great sites with neat ideas for creative lunches and look forward to trying out a few. I'm figuring once a week 'fancy' lunches might be a doable thing for me, since I enjoyed participating in muffin tin monday (even if I didn't post pics!). So far, the number one lunch was 'snacky lunch' day... it had ritz crackers, sliced cheese kabana (a type of sausage that you eat cold), cheese cubes, grapes and sliced cucumber (with salt, of course says Sam) Tomorrows lunch will be a big hit as well... I'm making corn dog muffins :D I'll have to remember photos.

I would update on my work life... but last night was a hell night at work, so I would have nothing good to say lol (other than that I will get paid for it at least LMAO) so I'll just leave that alone!

So today was THE day..

2011-01-24T20:30:00.001+10:00

For the first time in years, and indeed EVER for Sam, the boys went to school today. They were up SUPER early and very excited. They eagerly got dressed in their uniforms as quickly as possible, including hat, shoes & socks lol. We chose stuff for lunches and filled their cool new lunch boxes then added a snack for morning tea as well. And there was still nearly an hour to go before we needed to leave!

So morning cartoons filled a bit of time. We left early anyway, as we had to find out their classroom assignments and locate them as well.. not hard to do really since there are only 4 of the major buildings complete on campus yet! We met their teachers, who seem lovely. They are in composite classes.. so Sam is in with grades 2 & 3 and Frodo is in with 4 & 5. Drop off went smoothly, and when Merry & I left, the boys were in their respective classes doing fun little activities chosen to keep them entertained while the teachers met the parents & the rest of the students.

Merry was quite put out about the whole thing... He wants his Sam back! (he told me this through out the day) so he & I went to the shops and got a ham & cheese danish from the baker and Merry got his very own blended iced chocolate ;) He didn't drink half of it... but it was for medicinal purposes.. to wash away his woe and all that. Then we eventually (after MUCH discussion on his part) managed to choose him some new shoes to replace his much loved Diego sneakers, which are sadly no longer available that we can find. He changed his mind several times, and even decided at one point that NONE of them would do *sigh* but I finally got him to accept a pair in the end.

Then we came home.. and it wasn't even 11am yet! The house was quiet... freakishly, unnaturally quiet. Merry wanted his brothers... I sorta did too :( We snuggled on my bed for over an hour just having a cuddle & a chat. I've been informed now that he wishes to go to kindy (preschool) ... what on EARTH am I gonna do with my time if he keeps that up and I actually have to LET him!?!?! ARGH!

Eventually the time to go pick them up rolled around :D Merry was quite happy and impatient that they did not come out RIGHT NOW! Finally they did though, and he gave Sam the biggest hug ever... it was so cute. Frodo & Sam were all smiles at pick up, they said they had a GREAT day. They made lots of friends and like their teachers so far.

Here's Sam with a big cheesy grin as he finds his name tag and explores the classroom a bit! When I last saw him this morning he was merrily building with some gadgety things :)

Frodo settled in quite nicely, he was chatting up his classmates and working on a word search puzzle when I left. Funny, when I told his teacher that he would need some gentle guidance on classroom etiquette, as he was homeschooled for 3 years, he said OH but I went to school when I was 5. As if to say 'don't worry, I got this covered!' lol

The day was not without drama though, as we loaded into the car to come home, DH was distracted and didn't notice my ARM sticking through the back door to give Frodo some papers to hold... I now have a nice purple line & raised welt across my tricep where it got crushed by the door *sigh* Man does it suck to drive a stick shift at a time like this!

All is quiet here in the Hobbit household now... the boys are all sleeping, tomorrows lunches are made (and particularly epic ones at that... must take a photo & share) and all ready to do it again tomorrow!

Sadness, Then Awesomeness

2011-01-18T00:01:00.000+10:00

I'm sure just about everyone that isn't living in a 3rd world country without television knows by now, that 75% of Queensland has had severe flooding. It's been surreal, and emotional to watch. In 1992, I lived in Homestead Florida and experienced Hurricane Andrew in all his glory. I joked for years, that all my stuff now lived in the Everglades. What little wasn't ruined by the storm, was destroyed by looters & vandals. WTF is wrong with people, that they will destroy or take, the last few things that remain of a families LIFE, is just beyond me.

Amazingly enough there have only been about 18 or so arrests for looting at this point. Kudos for most of the people of Queensland for being truly awesome people and helping out their fellow Queenslanders, instead of being heartless bastards. There have been some amazing stories out of this tragedy, and I have been moved to tears by how amazing peple have been to each other.

My new job was supposed to be getting underway in the last week, but the suburb where I am to be working, and where corporate HQ is at for the orientation... were in flood affected areas, so that was an obvious no go. But this week I am getting stuck into training. DH on the other hand, has nothing to do. Here comes the awesomeness. Last week, from Tuesday midday on, it was impossible to work due to massive, unbelievably widespread flooding. For us, this was awful... dh is a contract driver.. no work = no pay for self employed folks. He was told today by his boss, that every one of their 7 drivers would be getting paid at a rate of about 2/3 of their avg daily rate! This is something they have no obligation to do whatsoever. And dh has been there maybe 2months tops. The company didn't want to financially disadvantage their drivers because mother nature pissed on our parade (pardon my french lol)

So, we will NOT have to hit the govt up for one of their income support payments, and I'm happy about that. There are people out there with no homes, no electricity, no anything... I am happy to cop a few hundred dollars so that there is more for those that truly need it.

Long time no see...

2011-01-14T21:48:00.000+10:00

A friend contacted me today to see how we are doing and I thought I'd best pop in and give an update. I didn't realize it had been since the end of October that I posted here, I guess discussing things home schooly was a bit upsetting for a while for me so I was avoiding the subject.   A lot has happened over the last few months...

On Jan 24 both Frodo & Sam will have their first days of school at a 'brick & mortar' school. I found a brand new school in a suburb we like (and have lived in before) that we have enrolled them in.  I'm very pleased in that the school is starting the year with a total of 80 stufents! I think that will go a long way towards easing the transition for the boys.  The principal is arranging for Frodo's hearing issues to be evaluated and possibly bringing in an OT if required. She seems lovely and really loves what she does, and it shows. Not at all like principals I remember from years past that's for sure.

Merry is still not going to start school until next year, as he's just too 'young' emotionally.   The boys are actually quite looking forward to it and were very excited about trying on uniforms and checking out the school back pack. They've got spiffy new lunchboxes that they love, bento type sort of, and are looking forward to a special first day of school lunch here (schools here do not provide meals, so all kids take their lunch. They do have 'canteen' which has snacky foods available for purchase but they are more a treat thing for most). We pick up their uniforms next week (very snazzy looking in Frodo's opinion... nice polo's with a school emblem and red microfibre shorts) and must get black sneakers for school shoes this week. Haircuts were had this week as well :)

In all honesty, they have taken this far better than I! It has taken me the last couple of months to really get to a place of acceptance but I have put on a brave face for the kids. Now I'm *almost* looking forward to it along with them. I had been feeling very much like I have lost myself somewhere along this journey of learning, and was not coping well with that. I have a new job, which as soon as mother nature stops throwing her fury around in our river system, I will start training & orienting for. It is a night job and I have to admit I really waffled when I got a night job. I wondered if I'd done the right thing... if I should cancel their enrollment etc.   But after a lot of talk with DH, we decided that doing it all (or trying to) is doing me IN. I had to admit my limitations... I can't work nights, even if it's only 3/4 nights a week, and still manage to educate the kids. It wouldn't be fair to them, or to me. So at least for now, we are staying the course we have chosen.

We will also be moving house in a few months. Our real estate agents are horrid, so we have decided we will move into the suburb where the kids school is so that we can walk to school and check out this whole school/ community thing.    And I have gotten a copy of my college transcript from the U.S. and plan to apply to go to nursing school when applications open later this year. (would have applied in december, but the transcript was too slow to arrive *sigh*)

If anyone still has this little blog of mine on follow, If you'd be interested in me continuing it and updating on our transition from home to school and life in general... please drop me a comment :)    Thank you for reading along on this amazing journey that we have been on. Know that this is not the end of my children & I learning together...but at least for now, it's a big change in how we do it. I will continue to be every bit as involved in their education as I can possibly be... and I'm sure the teachers will get sick of me volunteering on my days off LOL.

The end of an era...or Big changes a comin'

2010-10-28T16:27:00.005+10:00

As if the last three months haven't been FILLED with them already. Strider has finally gotten a full pay check from his new job.. and oh boy, was it NOT what we were hoping/expecting/NEEDING! We're talking literally half of his previous paychecks... and then once tax comes out, and over 100bucks a week fuel (which is clearly required to drive parcels around)... the amount left is barely twice our rent :S I've looked, and applied for jobs hoping to find something for nights and weekends.. with no luck. I have applied for night fill jobs with supermarkets, no luck yet. Clearly something has got to give.

And sadly, homeschooling is going to have to be it. At least for now :( It's nearly the end of the school year here (about 6wks to go I think) so we are going to TRY to limp along until the new year starts in Feb (Goddess help us, I don't know how!?!) and then my little men... at least 2 of them... will be off for their first 'school' experience. We've talked about it with them.. and surprisingly they don't seem bothered by it. They both have lots of questions and I'm going to try to arrange to visit the school they will most likely be attending so they can get a feel for it. Mr. Sam and I will spend this time really hammering reading.. he seems MUCH more interested (and seems to retain more!) lately.. so I'm taking advantage of that. Frodo's focus will be getting those multiplication facts down. There will still be other bits & peices, but Frodo is way ahead in all things language... and Sam is a slow starter at reading.. so those are the two priorities for the next few months.

On to job hunting... it sucks! I have looked at all kinds of positions in my most recent field (disability care) and they require 2-3 sleep overs a week PLUS day work (one place even does 24hr shifts, with paid sleepover time... like I want to spend 24hrs away from home at a time?) The shifts are sometimes starting at 630am... others not ending till 530pm. Great for traffic... not so much so for picking up kids from school at 245pm! I started thinking that they were going to be at school from the time they woke up, until dinner... that's just not acceptable.

Then came the idea... I have, in the past, been licensed as a Family Day Care provider in several states (in the US).. why not look into that here? So at this point in time, I'm awaiting permission from my landlord, and I'm booked into an info session next week. I gave thought to trying to do this AND keep the boys at home... but in all honesty, I am admitting my limitations.. it would just be too much. And someone would end up missing out, and that would end up being the boys in the dept of homeschooling I'm sure. And I would rather them have an education at school (although we'll still read cool books, go to neat places on weekends etc) than a home education with a mum that's too busy, too harried, and just plain too overwhelmed.

So as much as my heart wants to keep them with me to learn full time, I'm accepting that 6hours a day is not the end of the world. This option will at least give me the ability to meet them to walk home with a smiling face, and have afternoon tea with them as they tell me all about their day. My head has just been forced to admit that it's just the way it is going to have to be... at least for now.

In a year, after I'm settled into a 'work' routine I may offer them the chance to home school again if they would like. Or.. I could win big in the lotto on the 30th.. one never knows!

*I'll definitely still post here occasionally during this transition time. After all I WILL still be home schooling until then ;) And I'm considering starting a new blog for my new adventures with little people next year. So I'm not goin' anywhere!

Why Hello there October!

2010-10-02T23:25:00.005+10:00

Fancy meeting you here! And not a moment too soon, I must say. So far Octoer has been rainy.. all 2 days of it... but I know it will be better than September (really... it HAS to be LOL). Today I saw this:

Ok.. not that *exact* tree... but I saw a Jacaranda in full bloom. It was spectacular, if a little early! I am fairly sure that Jacaranda season is normally in November... which means the local Jacaranda festival may not actually HAVE blooming trees to match it's name this year. Unless of course the organizers are paying attention like I was ;)

Here's to a wonderful October, friends! I've added a button to Mrs. B's 31 days of Halloween again this year.. so if you're inclined, pop over for some October fun!

2010-09-27T14:18:00.006+10:00

Today was a day of absolute silliness! We had an errand to run at the shops, hung out on the playground for a while.. and then when making the required stop for bread we saw it. A circus skills workshop right in the middle of the mall... and free no less! Apparently you were to sign up ahead of time but I never saw anything about it... so I asked if they had a couple of free spaces and the very lovely ladies were happy to have Frodo & Sam join the group!

There was tiny clown bike riding .. only one little girl got more than a few feet lol.

Plate spinning.. both guys got up to 2 plates, but the third sent it all pear shaped.

Sam showing his mad hula hooping skills. Two hoops!
More plate spinning. Sam was ecstatic and having a ball as you can see.

This contraption is called the "diablo" apparently. They had a good time, but I was a bit worried they were going to launch the thing and crack someone on the head with it. Luckily everyone made it out in one peice ;) Below is Sam having a go, and looking very serious about it!

As you can see, a good was definitely had by all :D

Garden goodness!

2010-09-26T18:17:00.004+10:00

I thought I'd update on how the garden is going, since I managed to eek out enough time to post ;) It's going very well thus far, these pics were taken on the 18th or so, so a week ago (and 2weeks after the last pics from a few posts ago). Currently the bed with the silverbeet in it is enormous, and the beans have hit the top of the (admittedly too small) climbing cages. The cucumbers are finally starting to grow a bit, I started them as seeds so they ave been very slow! I don't think they are a bush variety after all, as they are sending out tendrils to grab something to climb... so this weekend we'll get on frames for them to climb.

The carrots are strange, according to dh, who pulled up 'one' and reports that it's a cluster of little carrots that have twined around each other LOL. I didn't get a chance to check that oddness out, maybe tomorrow.

The other bed has monstrously huge yellow button squash plants... they must be 75cm tall now. They have a few little squash on board, pollinated and growing nicely :D The peas are climbing, albiet a bit sloooowly. We've already pulled the bok choi and lettuces and eaten them *NOM* The new tomatos are going well, although the squash keep shading them and I have had to lop few leaves off them to prevent tomato plants growing at a 45 degree angle lol. One of the tomatos (the biggest of course) 'accidentally' got lopped off whilst snipping squash leaves that were overcome with powdery mildew *sigh*

We have already had a couple of meals of things like bok choi for stir fry, our fave cheesy silverbeet bake, and a few skinny spring onions for fried rice :D The tower of strawberries is giving at least half a dozen daily, much to Sam's glee... and although ALL of the tomato plants in pots (black russian AND cherry) are now dying of some unknown evil... the last tomatos on the plants are ripening as if in some attempt by the plants to survive in some small way :) They are nibbled by humans and cuddly rodents alike (the really tiny cherry toms are their favourites)

There are still 4 capsicum plants in amonst those two jungles, they are not getting big yet as I don't think the sun can find them in there! lol I'm hoping the summer heat will invigorate them... despite the fact that it will sap us of the will to move!

And so the month rolls by...

2010-09-26T13:35:00.004+10:00

It's been a hell of a month... and honestly I'll be glad to see October. DH has started a new job that he seems to love, he txt'd me earlier this week saying " loving it so far, it's just like questing in WOW" (for those of you that don't know it, we are serious World of Warcraft players LOL) He likes that it's something different every day ... once this week he went to both coasts for work.. in one day! lol

With all the stress in the house (new family member, dh losing his job, etc) things have been rather hit & miss in the realm of schoolwork, but we're getting back on track. Our co op activities on Monday are finished for the year, but the group has other great things planned and we're looking forward to it. The boys will be finishing up their swimming in November, and in a week or so we'll start tennis lessons with the home ed group. The hobbits are VERY excited about that! I really considered the ice skating lessons they have planned, but Frodo is not overly coordinated ;), and Merry would not be tolerant of hanging out for an hour. Maybe next year I guess!

At our last co-op, I purchased the next TWO levels of Math U See for Frodo (gamma & delta) and he pestered me for days to start Gamma instead of finishing boring old Beta hehehe. I've never seen a kid so excited about multiplying ;) The Teen is sure I've ruined them, no kid should ASK to do math! lol Sam is just finishing Primer now, and will start Alpha this coming week.

A week or so ago I got a discount voucher in the mail from Learning a-z for their writing program and checked it out. It looked really great, and for 20bucks even if it wasn't it still wouldn't be much of a waste. So far I really like it, I think it will help Frodo with his 'creative' writing a great deal. He is good with the mechanics of writing, and can write sentences with no problem, but grouping those sentences together into an organized, related, collection of thoughts... not so much! They have some neat exercises, and good printables, like a 'graphic organizer' for writing a personal narrative. They have them for various levels, from a beginnging/grade 1 writer (generally expected to be able to write one paragraph with 5 sentences) to a more advanced student (grade 3ish, where they 'should' write 3 paragraphs with more developed sentences) We're going to give slot that into our days this week and see how the hobbits like it. They DO have a free intro lesson as well, that includes some of these things, available for download from the site :D

I also got sucked in by the raz-kids reading site (also on learning a-z) and we're doing their 7 day free trial membership. I'm thinking we may pick it up (well, once dh gets regular pay! 80bucks is not in the budget at the moment!) The boys are really enjoying it. There are tons of levels (all the way up to about age 9-10) .. Sam is doing aa for the second time, his choice.. and Frodo is doing level Q which is a lot more involved and even has web based 'quizzes'. Bonus is that it is paid for by the 'classrom' so I have one classroom, and my two students at their own levels.... so no purchasing the program twice :D

There's a noticable lack of photos today, sorry 'bout that. A couple of garden ones to come, but I haven't been great about keeping the camera handy lately! Sam on the other hand, is becoming quite the shutterbug according to the memory card heh... maybe I'll share some of those in the near future.

Where did August go?

2010-09-06T18:36:00.005+10:00

It seems to have flown by without my consent! We are well on our way to adapting to having 4 boys in the house (5 if you count Strider lol) and boy #4 is on his way to getting used to having 3 little brothers drive him bonkers ;) As usual, Frodo is moving constantly so he's blurry lol.

Spring has also well & truly sprung here! In the last two weeks of August (while the nights were still very chilly, at least for us) I noticed the trees over the back fence going from bare twigs to having tiny tufts of that pale, springy green on their tips... to just the day before Spring arrived completely exploding into green! The next day it was 26C lol, welcome Spring!!

We spent a lot of time in the garden, Sam is stoked that the strawberries are ripening at the rate of several a day! They are often small, and some are alpine berries which are long skinny things instead of fat ones... but they taste amazing. We've installed our raised garden beds, and on Aug 3 we planted them up and they looked SO empty... but just a month later the change is amazing! In the last 2 days actually, several things doubled in size... totally not kidding! This is what the beds look like now.

The top pic has peas (in the wire cage/towers), lettuce and bok choi, 4 new tomato plants, basil seeds, 2 capsicum and 4 button squash which have gone crazy. The bottom one is full of silverbeet/chard (which I love), 'magic' purple king beans (grow purple, turn green when cooked!), baby carrots, 2 more capsicum and a square of spring onions. In pots we still have tomatos, and the kids snack on the few ripe cherry tomatos they find ;)

We've had our regular Monday co-ops and they draw to a close for the year after next week. For term 4 we're having more theme activities and excursions, which should be great fun. We'll miss our Mondays, but we'll see our friends at Park days, tennis lessons and other outings!

We've also had a bit of stress, as DH was suddenly, inexplicably, and immediately FIRED from his courier job. No fault of his own, as he's the most awarded driver at the company (or was) but hard economic times have hit the company and he's out the door. But that's ok, we pooled our strength and helped each other keep our heads together. Within 4hours of being unemployed he had an interview set up. Within 24 hours of being unemployed he had been offered a new job. It's not perfect, but it's steady and pays almost as well.. so he's starting next week. When the universe closes a door, it opens another they say.. and in the last 6yrs our new doors have always been for the better. Let's hope that trend continues!

Art, craft and other assorted excitement :)

2010-08-11T19:07:00.006+10:00

This last couple of weeks has been... unusual, to say the least. Our home & family is in the middle of a big change, which I'll share in it's own post... cause it's just that awesome. It's led to things being a wee bit scattered in the formal learning department though, and I've been busy with all manner of things and just haven't had a chance to post really.

Here are some pics of what we've been up to lately. Frodo has been drawing like a madman, he loves to draw anything related to his favourite video games... but the other day he was looking at the world map on the wall, and suddenly HAD to draw the Egyptian flag LOL. I was very impressed.

Here he is cranking out a portrait of Princess Peach from Mario fame. He gets really into the process, as you can see!

Merry has been avidly working on his scissor skills *eek* So scissors have to be up high (although, this morning early we heard him pushing furniture around to try to get them @@ lol). He loves to cut out figures of movies & games he likes... and the tinier the better!

At Our 2nd week of our homeschool coop for the term, the boys had their art, gymnastics and a 'mixed bag' class that went over really well. In art, Frodo did a little study of Vincent Van Gogh and made a reproduction of Starry Night. It turned out really good, but I neglected to get a photo yet.

Sam had sculpture this week, and he sculpted a very funny little fish! He, the fish that is, came home with us and will be painted tomorrow now that he is fnally dry. Frodo has a crab that he made in week 1, and he'll be getting a spot of colour as well.

The BIG hit of the week though, was the Crazy Candles class! The children were given a wick and then had to hand dip their own candles using the pots of melted wax in various colours. They had to dip about 25 times in the base colour, and then 15 times in each additional colour layer.... with a quick dip in water to cool the freshly dipped wax between each dip. So it was a fair bit of work!

At the end of all that dipping, the gentleman that was facilitating the workshop let the kids choose what design they wanted and then carved it up for them. The knife was very sharp, and some of the designs pretty intricate, so it's probably a good thing he did the cutting!

Sam (and later Frodo as well) chose a very spiffy race car design for their candles. After they were carved, they got a couple of dips in clear wax to give them a shine, then a bit of a soak in a cooling bath so the kids could take them home.

Doesn't Sam look thrilled? These candle cars have been loaded up with lego man drivers and raced around plenty. We have a 2nd week of this craft toward the end of the term... Sam says he is making me a pretty one as a present next time.

Scones!??!?!

2010-07-25T17:44:00.003+10:00

*** For some reason this did not post on July 25, when it was originally posted, so I'm guessing it got 'eaten' into the drafts folder when my IE threw a dummy spit. So for your amusement, here it is today lol. I am rather having a laugh at myself at the leve of frustration a stupid scone caused!***

Oh for the love of all that is holy (or holey for that matter) would someone in the universe reveal to me the secret of SCONE making!?!?! I have just made a batch using a recipe from Australia's MasterChef's cookbook... and while they tasted great... they are about half an inch tall. Seriously!

Frodo & I followed the recipe just so, measuring everything exactly. Kneaded 'lightly' as the instructions said, baked and voila. Flat arse scones *sigh*

This is not my first epic scone failure either. Everyone says 'scones require a light touch' fine, I barely touch the bastages and they STILL DON'T RISE!!!!! Don't think I could get much lighter than that, could I?

I refuse to be defeated though. I have found another recipe and am trying again.

*** Added upon posting... Yes, I DID finally create edible scones that actually LOOKED like scones (somewhat, anyway) So I can claim victory in the battle of Caz vs. Scones!!

Craters Happen!

2010-07-24T17:02:00.005+10:00

We have had the best couple of weeks around the Hobbit household. We're gearing up to start our Monday Pcyc classes this week, but the boys have been a bit stir crazy with the lack of THEIR things to do so when a park meet was organized last week, we were ON it!

This was a newish group, and is more of a side shoot group really, as it has a few members of other groups we're part of. The only difference is it is purely secular in nature... and oh wow, how nice was it to not have to worry about saying something that might offend, or make uncomfortable, the more religious home educators. The other group I attend IS an inclusive group, but sometimes you just don't want to have to screen what you say at all times ya know?

We met at a GREAT park, never even knew the place was there. And directly across from the cop shop, so you're pretty guaranteed to be safe from wandering hoodlums and such ;) My friend and her hubby & kids came, and to the boys delight, they brought their DOG!

Oh MY, Merry was just in LOVE with Sammy the dog. He NEEEEDED Sammy (lol his words, no kidding) and the kids were so good with the pooch. My gf's kids, despite being 12 and I think 14, were more than happy to play with my guys and help keep an eye on them. I told C that I might have to start paying her kids for park days LOL. Here's Sam walking Sammy (lol) and loving it!

We also had fun with science this week. We made Craters! Totally loving the experiments from this science curriculum . We're finishing up the 'space' section and moving on to the Earth science end of things now. For this experiment, I filled a baking dish with about 5cm of flour, and then had the boys use the sifter to 'dust' the top with cocoa powder (ok, so we used el cheapo home brand chocolate muffin mix, it was 1/6 of the cost of cocoa ;) ) Then we took marbles and recorded their diameter, then dropped them from varying heights (knee, waist, then shoulder) to see how that affected the size of the craters they made.

Here's dad getting in on the home ed fun for a change, helping with the crater measuring. The boys then documented their measurements and we discussed why they thought the meteor (err.. marble) dropped from the heighest position made the biggest crater. They quite enjoy being little scientists when we get out the lab reports.

We also had a great little 'poem' activity to help the boys remember the difference between Meteoroids (just orbiting out in space, minding their own business), Meteors (entering our atmosphere and burning their way through), and Meteorites (the bit that's left over IF any of the meteorite doesn't burn completely up and something actually hits the Earth!) They thought it was quite amusing that the same item has three different names just based on WHERE it happens to be at! lol

Oh Hai!

2010-07-08T10:08:00.002+10:00

Really, we didn't vanish off the face of the earth... honest! More in just a moment!

Where in the world are the Hobbits!?!

2010-07-08T09:41:00.009+10:00

Well the hobbits & I have been busy busy the last few weeks... and obviously mama hobbit fell off the blogging bandwagon lol. I did TRY to come post a few times, only to get interrupted or distracted, so I gave up *sheepish*

The Uncles were over from New Zealand for a few weeks, and we spent a fair bit of time hanging out with them. The boys dragged them along to swim class, played mah jong on the ipad with them, (Uncle M and Sam were on the ipad... Uncle N and Frodo were relegated to the 'old' laptop lol. Old being 6mos old... but not new & sexy like the ipad) and bubbles were blown & paper airplanes made. They're back in NZ now, so hopefully they are enjoying some peace & quiet... cause they didn't get a whole lot of that when the boys were around!

This week we headed out on an epic journey, 1.5hours each way!, to the Abbey Medieval Faire Kids Day. It was just me & the boys and I was a bit concerned, but in the end we had a fabulous day! Mother Nature cooperated nicely with the weather... last year it was dreary & drizzly off & on all day. This year, mostly sunny with a cool breeze... perfect! Prepare for pics!

The boys had a ball! There was junior jousting (sans horse, of course!), sword fighting, shield painting, cardboard sword making, animal petting and archery... among other things. They got a kick out of all the people in costume and the 'funny' speech they used.

There WOULD have been a pony ride, and the boys were very disappointed that didn't happen. That's the only thing I would say really needs improvement ... the company hired to provide pony rides was WOEFULLY ill equipped. They had 2 ponies for 1000 or so kids! I sincerely hope that those poor ponies got to take good breaks during the day... but with 60odd families in line at a time? I'm kinda doubting it :( I've already made a 'suggestion that they plan for that more next year so children aren't disappointed, and more importantly, the animals aren't mistreated!

There was no doubt they enjoyed the day, especially when the next morning I woke up to a mini tournament in my family room lol!

Brisbane Botanical gardens

2010-06-22T20:45:00.007+10:00

This is gonna be a photo heavy post, (but I'll keep them small) be warned ;) We met up with the kids Uncles (who are visiting from New Zealand) and MaMa (great grandmother) at the local Botanical Gardens today for a wander around. Uncle Nigel arrived before us and had maps in hand for the childrens 'Hide & seek trail' and the boys were stoked. Basically it's a marked trail through part of the gardens with numbered things for children to discover as they walk. I think there were 17 items in all, sculptures and various neat peices of art, and the boys found them all. Without further adieu.. pictures!

Blogger isn't wanting to cooperate with formatting here, so we'll see what comes up where LOL. Pics are in no real order, as that's where blogger & I did not see eye to eye and I can't strongarm it much! But they show a (mostly) lovely day.

The boys got to see a real sundial.. and as the winter solstice was yesterday, it was right on time, showing a perfect 11am to match my phone. The boys enjoyed hanging out with the uncles, and MaMa (they just dote on her.. up above is a shot of Merry and her, hand in hand, marching up a path :) The funky fruit bats hanging on the tree, panda sculpture and the koala were items the kids had to 'find' on the trail. I loved it.. the pandas were in the bamboo garden, the koala near the eucalypts etc.

The first two pics are the kids in the Japanese garden.. they all loved the stepping stones across the water and went on about how 'treacherous' it was hehehe.

The BEST item in the whole garden (aside from the natural items of course;) was the Xylophone. It was near the fern house, and was a fern shaped bench. It had an assortment of mallets and the boys (and uncles) had a great time making music with it. It had a lovely, deep sound.. not the obnoxious tinny clang of some.

The kids have not stopped talking about it and have ticked off all the great things they 'found' during our trek. It would have been a little bit nicer had Merry not had several meltdowns over not being allowed to run wild *insert eye roll here* but ah well, such is life I guess??

Life, and stuff, from our week

2010-06-13T19:13:00.007+10:00

The last week has been a long one. Both Frodo & Sam had the cough a couple of days... then Merry wasn't so well (poor guy was sick on his birthday, that's just UNfair!) Then it happened, as you know it must when everyone else has had it... mum eventually succumbs.

Not being one to do things by halves, I came down with a whopper of a case of the flu. Fever, chills, aches, sinusy stuff... oh yes, I had 'em all. I'm FINALLY coming round a bit (although I confess that's due to sucking down cold & flu tablets for the last 24hrs) but it's led to a null & void week here pretty much.

Frodo & Merry were content (ok, thrilled) to get to enjoy a week with predominantly media based learning. Frodo has gotten into TimezAttack, so he's getting a headstart on multiplication (which we'll start in about a month) and he spent a little time on skwirk and the nasa spaceplace website :) Sam did a few lessons of Reading Eggs, and tried out his cool new file folder game. It's matching the upper & lower case alphabet and has the added benefit of having small pictures of items that begin with that letter sound. He quite enjoyed that one.

Both boys watched a documentary (via computer, if I didn't mention we have a new superfast net plan with 25G worth of downloads....oh it's sheer bliss!) called Voyage to the Planets. This was episode 3 I think, and it was Uranus & Neptune. Something about space and small boys, but they are drawn to it like nothing else! They both sat here in my chair and oooh'd and ahhhh'd over the amazing pictures and the interesting little tidbits of information.

We had some particularly windy weather, and the winds obviously went fairly high because we got THIS amazing picture (well, amazing for my crappy little camera anyway lol)

And we ALSO had a real, honest to goodness, FROST! It was -1C very near where I live just before daybreak yesterday... BRR!!!! It still warmed up to about 20c though, which is nice. I was a tad worried about our little potted veggie farm, but being under cover of the veranda seems to have benefitted them and there was no harm done. Although with Merry AND Sam trying to water... we may need to switch to growing rice???

Random pics from the last week

2010-06-07T15:16:00.002+10:00

This week is Merry's birthday, so we had cake & fun with Nana, Grandpa (in the pic helping the dude cut hsi cake), uncles Mike & Nigel along with boring old mum, dad and brothers ;) Buzz Lightyear featured prominently as you can see.

Last weekend over MY birthday, the grand parents took the kids to the weekend markets by the bay. The kids played on the giant bouncy castle, and Sam braved the ENORMOUS inflatable slide and had a ball. There was fossicking around on the beach & rocks and a very up close look at a poor turtle who got hit by a boat propeller :( Thankfully nobody was incredibly emotional about that for more than a few minutes.

At some point Merry got his pants legs wet and just ditched them altogether. Here he is doing what boys do best .. getting dirty!

There were also swim lessons... don't the boys look very flash in their pro swim gear? hehehe They are both doing pretty well... but Sam is definitely our 'sportsman' .. he's going to have an awesome swim stroke!

There was also the usual at home stuff ... messing around with our veggies, taking care of our ratties, driving mum crazy...you know how it is. But now and again, a moment of perfect sweetness like this one... Watering the garden is Merry's new found love. Looks like Sam is going to have to share!

It's rather funny.. our tomatos and such are going crazy (I mean CRAZY, this week they are 6 inches taller than the last pics I posted here, easily!) yet the trees that I mark our seasons by as I drink coffee on the veranda? They have just let go of the last straggler leaves that were hanging on for dear life, despite being yellow and being blown hither & yon by the winds of recent days. Such is life in Queensland I guess!

Garden update

2010-06-02T10:43:00.004+10:00

It's a particularly dreary looking day out, but I snapped a few pics when I checked my veggie pots to see if I needed to water :) Thought I'd share! A post or two back, there are pics of them from about 2.5wks ago to compare...

My silverbeet are looking glorious... just a couple of weeks ago (scroll down on that link) they were tiny things that couldn't even stand up by themselves! Now look at 'em go! You can see my 3 biggest tomato plants behind them (black russians) They are caged for support as they grow, but earlier in the week there was INSANE wind, so I had to stake them so they didn't lay down like lounge singers. Basil sneaking into the shot on the right ;)

Lettuce! These have gone just crazy, we've already cut and eaten some with several meals and they've only been planted for about 2 weeks. They're mixed varities of lettuce's and Asian salad greens.

More tomatoes! These guys are cherry tomatoes I believe. And my very happy spring onions back there :) DH sprinkled coffee grounds around the tomatoes, as I read that they like them, so we'll see how they go. We chose these 3 plants as they were lagging a bit behind the others.

Close up of the silverbeety goodness. A few more weeks and we'll be making my fave Cheesey baked Chard recipe (that I stole from a fellow blogger, here!) We don't do ours vegan, so I use regular cheese & milk... and it's to die for. Quite often DH & I will have that and a roll and call it dinner ;) You can bet when I put in my garden bed, silverbeet will feature prominently lol

AND last, but not least... the newest member of the Hobbit household *sigh*. THIS baby was my birthday present from my darling hubby & his parents... Isn't it beautiful??? lol It's gotten a fair bit of use and we're getting pretty good at making a nice coffee...Not consuming much instant, except when I was desperate Monday morning and had to race out to meet DH during his van catastrophe! And boy, it just was NOT the same!

And now.. Winter!

2010-05-31T18:23:00.003+10:00

As tomorrow is officially the start of Winter for us Aussies, I thought I'd get a head start on decorating for the season :D Autumn is actually my favourite seas, but a Queensland winter is like most normal places version of a mild Autumn lol... so what we have now, and maybe for the next couple of months, is pretty much Autumnlike weather. And I'm loving it! I actually saw a maple tree (not common) with it's gorgeous gold & orange leaves in various stages of falling from the tree. Todays high temp? a whopping 21C (which is about 69-70F) but for an acclimated Queenslander, if you're not in the sun you want a sweater on!

And if tomorrow is the first day of Winter.. then TODAY.. is my birthday! Yep, I celebrated another trip around the sun today. For surviving this year.. I was awarded a brand spanking new, shiny esspresso machine! (thanks Mum, Dad & Strider!) I was also given 24hours sans children by my MIL, from mid day Saturday to mid day Sunday. Bliss. I should make up some exciting adventurous tale for what I chose to do with my kid free time.. but alas, I'm boring. We came home through the CBD (city centre for non aussies) and grabbed sushi at one of my fave places, picked up some coffee beans to test out my birthday present and headed home. We played some WOW (as addicts will do ;) and watched 'Angels & Demons'.. love me some Dan Brown novels! Loved the movie too, Tom Hanks is one of my favourite actors.

We stayed up very late, and slept in very late too! Imagine DH's surprise when he looked at the clock and it was 950am LOL... since he usually wakes up at 4am, this was QUITE a sleep in! The parents returned our kiddies after lunch, and the house we tidied up that morning, was promptly untidied. Life returns to normal ;)

***I'm so utterly behind with things I never posted a weekly wrap for last week... so I think I'm gonna say stuff it for the week! Be assured, we did school work and baked & had fun, and all of the other things we usually do!***

Blog hopping again after hiatus!

2010-05-25T18:49:00.004+10:00

This week we are talking about our favourite subject to teach our kids, great topic :D

I'd have to say that hands down, my favourite 'subject' to teach the boys is science. The world and how things in it work and grow are totally fascinating to me. The boys have endless excitement to learn about these things. Now they love learning in general, but math & grammar just can't muster the excitement & passion in small boys that the inner workings of the natural world can! Just tonight we were outside on the veranda, since it was a warmish evening (but cool enough for no bugs to pester us!), and Merry was all excited because he found a puff ball. You know... those little round fungus thingies that release spores when you squish them. That was investigated for ages.

Then Frodo pointed out Venus, shining brightly in the mostly darkened sky...and went on to look for Mars & Jupiter as well (not sure if we got those right.. must have a peek at google sky and see!)

Then there was possum spotting (on the neighbors roof, thankfully, not ours lol... they're noisy little buggers!) and checking out the moth that was hanging out on the brick wall near the light. All this scientific exploration, and we have a rather sterile and boring little tiny suburban backyard.

One of the reasons that science is my favourite, is that the internet makes SO much more available than ever before. We don't have a telescope, but we can hop on google sky and it's almost like we do! No microscope either (yet!), but there are up close images of slides of just about ANYTHING you can imagine online. Then there are the local interactive things like the planetarium and science centre and nature reserves. Endless possibilities.

The looks of awe on their faces when we do an activity or experiment and they see the end results is just totally worth all the work.

Weekly wrap: science madness!

2010-05-21T13:02:00.008+10:00

We've had a really busy week this week, and here are a few pics of our adventures :) I'm not going to subject by subject it as detailed this week as.. well.. I was bored by the last one LOL.

Our big focus this week was all things science. Monday the boys had Professor Jellybean science class #2, where they made freaky goo Octopi/jellyfish/THINGS lol, as well as SNOW! The real live fake snow type stuff that they use in movies and such.

As you can see, it was a huge hit throughout the week at home too. Must hose down the brick wall near the patio table.. it's slathered with glitter goo!

We also did a few experiements from the Real Science Odyssey.. Mapping Uranus & defining planets. (the mapping was a demo of how scientists know what the surface of distant planets that are covered with thick clouds is like, defining planet was learning about how scientists determined that Pluto didn't REALLY fit into the planet category) There's also a pic here of the 'Neptune is out of order' experiment.. but my swiss cheese brain cannot remember if that was this week or last lol.

And no, Merry did not do that graphic... but he insisted on embellishing it throughout the week ;) We also watched part of a documentary on space, but it was too involved so we're going to iView a better one on the net later :)

We also spent time pottering in the garden and the boys are stoked with how well things are growing..Sam is biding his time very patiently until he can steal cherry tomatos off the vine LOL. (doesn't that silverbeet look NOM NOMNOM!?!? and spring onions are 1.89 a small bunch here.. so those babies are a goldmine of savings for me!)

There was a bit of math in there... Sam is doing a fair bit better with his skip counting by 5s. The secret was getting him hooked in.. all that took was a handful of 5c coins! (he LOVES coins of any kind) Frodo was a bit more motivated with it this week.

Frodo read a chapter or two of his Knights of the Round Table, as well as a space book Sam got with something.

We have been in the lessons of History Odyssey on Monks in the Christian church, and Islam the last couple of weeks... enthusiasm is low as religion is not my cup of tea. I DO want my boys to have a basic understanding of other faiths though, so that they can be tolerant and accepting... not hateful & fearful as so many people are today. So we soldier on. But there have been a few questions about WHY the Muslims and Christians felt the need to war over simply believing different things.

Other than that stuff, Frodo wrote another letter to his pen pal in the U.S. The postal service ATE the last one :( Sam did a couple of handwriting pages and practiced a bit more on unlined paper. For some reason he does not like lines.. his letters refuse to have anything to DO with lines actually LOL .. ne'er the two shall meet.

And back to science hehe.. we finally got around to picking up new binders (read swiss cheese brained mum forgot) and the boys are now decking them out so we can fill them up with this years stuff. (I say this year because since our registration changed, we are technically starting our home ed year now)

There was also a LOT of outside time for physical activity, plus gymnastics classes on Monday and swim class on Sunday. I've been dragging the boys outside after our formal work around 11am, even though they would much rather nag me to play on the wii. They still manage to have fun ;)

Art this week was finishing up their castle drawings, and in class they used shapes to draw a birdhouse and then painted it. Frodo rather enjoyed the castle drawing more than the birdhouse lol.

And now, Friday! We had a celebratory 'snacky lunch' (which is rolled ham, cheese wedges, crackers, grape tomatos and cucumber slices with dip and mandarin sections) and I have been named mum of the year.. or at least day, as I am making their fave friday fried rice and yum cha!

And now...

2010-05-16T14:57:00.001+10:00

Coffee break! This morning I was treated to about 5hours of time all to my self by my darling husband, who took all 3 of the boys to Nanny's house for swim lessons. Merry didn't have to go along, but I needed to stay home to get our favourite asian chicken & sweetcorn soup going in the crockpot and DH knew that Merry would NOT be impressed if he were left behind. So as they got in the car, I made myself a lovely cup of coffee.. not unlike those above (only bigger!) with my favourite mudslide beans, and a dollop of real whipped cream on top. I then proceeded to thoroughly enjoy it. The entire thing. While it was still hot. Bliss.

I DID do other things during these hours of course, I put on the delightful soup, which is now stinking my house up wonderfully. I played on fb for a few, watered the veggie plants and noticed just how chilly it is out there! The plants don't seem to mind though, and really, neither do I ;) It's not so often that Queenslanders get the excuse to really bundle up in winter clothes. I mean, I actually put SOCKS on! And a sweater. But give it a day or two and we'll have 25C again. And sweaters will go back in the closet, socks will be tossed... and coffees on the veranda will have to be had in the morning before the sun starts cooking you as you sit on the veranda.

If you'll excuse me, I do believe there is more of that coffee waiting for me. And if DH is nice, I might even share some with him ;)

Gardening joy!

2010-05-15T19:15:00.003+10:00

Today I got the ok from the real estate agent to just go ahead and put in the couple of small raised veggie beds in the backyard. She said not to bother asking, just do it as long as I am happy to throw a bit of grass seed over it when we go eventually. WOOT! I was kinda leaning towards the 'it's easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission' school of thought anyway ;)

SO today I set about picking out where my first bed is going. I've only got one to start with, but I'll definitely get a 2nd going later. It's a 1.2metre square bed that's 30cm deep. I'm going with the square foot gardening concept (1.2m is almost exactly 4ft ;) and I spent some time on THIS fabulous website today planninng out my beds. They have premade 'plans' for 8 gardens, or you can go to the planner tab and enter dimesions and then drag veggies and herbs etc onto your squares. Not only that, but it tells you how many of each plant you can put in it's square.. and you can print the whole thing out complete with info on each plants needs. I'm in love.

After receiving the go ahead, I was all but giddy and spent half the afternoon out in the yard day dreaming of all things growing. And I spent the other half on the computer playing with that planner lol. Ok, not QUITE half.. but enough *sheepish*

My little potting veggie seedlings are going well, and helped a bit with my need to be DOING something.. but not enough. DH & I had a big talk and we have decided to bide our time here for a while longer so that we can save for a down payment on a house in a year or so. I don't LOVE this neighborhood... but I can live with the slightly bogan neighbors a bit longer if I can at least have a REAL garden while I save for my own little peice of earth to play in.

In short.. our homeschooling will now have a lot more plant science going on, and you'll be hearing (and seeing) a lot about it! Just call me Farmer Caz.

Weekly Wrap

2010-05-15T18:35:00.002+10:00

Another week has flown past! We started back to our Home Ed networks weekly activities for the term on Monday and it was very obvious how much the boys missed them over the long break! (too many public holidays on monday at the start of the term = short term! :( Without further adieu... I'll get on with it!

Math: Frodo worked on his multiple digit subtraction with regrouping this week. I was a bit draggy about the math this week though, so we will probably work on it a bit more this coming week as well. Sam is skip counting by 5s and struggling with why on earth you would want to LOL. Tried sitting us around the table and counting by 5's using each of our hands for a visual aid, but he still said 11? lol So I'm going to find the skip counting songs cd and see how he goes with that.

Language arts: Frodo - Reading comprehension lesson, Grammar Once a Week (revision for the first part of the book). He also did a solar system grammar 're write' where there was a paragraph with no capitalization or punctuation and he had to write it correctly below it. He did exceptionally neat work for him! He also did a couple of pages in his cursive handwriting book. He read two chapters of his 'Knights of the Round Table' book and the Magic Tree House 'Knights & Castles' study guide. Sam - did a couple of episodes of Reading Eggs, worked with his new upper & lower case alphabet matching game (made by moi) a bit, and we worked on starting sounds of words throughout the week at completely random times :) He also did a couple of pages of his handwriting book and got up to the first section review.

History: This week we were on Monks & the medieval Christian church. The boys didn't really 'get' why certain countries rulers thought that everyone had to have the same religion as they did.. and I don't either really. I simply had to tell them that sometimes things people do in history just don't make sense. We did our reading in the Usborne encyclopedia, and Frodo read his Knights of the Round Table chapter, and answered a couple of questions about what he read. (his comprehension has come a LONG way this year!) For our history craft of the week, we made illuminated letters like the medieval monks did in their monasteries, as well as decorated a peice of notepaper with patterned borders.

Science: Busy week science wise around the Hobbit home! I finally went and purchased the Earth & Space Real Science Odyssey from Pandiapress.com, to go along with our studies this year. While I did work out our plan for the year and we'll be sticking to that, I decided I liked some of the activites in their free preview enough that I wanted to add it to our program :) This week we studied Neptune and how it is SOMETIMES the 8th planet but for 20 out of 248yrs, Pluto skips in line and Neptune becomes the 9th. We also learned about Pluto and how it USED to be a planet, but was demoted a few years ago and is now a dwarf planet.

The exercises were just great, and the kids enjoyed doing the 'experiments' and filling out their Lab reports! They've asked if we can do a few of the activities for the planets we have already covered... who am I to say no to kids asking for science?? lol

They also had their first Professor Jellybean class (see previous post!) and the kids LOVED IT! And we watched 'Our Earth' on ABC kids, the subject was plate tectonics, continental drift and volcanos. Frodo was riveted so that was a success.

Lote/Sose: ABC program on Hindi wedding traditions...very interesting stuff.

Art: Class with Miss Liz on Monday was their first drawing class.. the boys had a bit of trouble at first, getting back into the routine. Frodo left class well before it was over *sigh*, and Sam was a bit confused and ended up with an unrecognizable castle lol. SO, I chatted with Liz and got the low down on what the goal was and the boys & I sat down Friday and repeated the project. The idea was to use basic rectangle & squares, putting them together to create a castle. The boys cut templates then positioned & traced them. THEN the fun of embellishing by adding knights and scenery and DRAGONS began!

Health & PE: Gymnastics class for both on Monday, MUCH scooter riding outside. Merry had HIS very first tots gymnastics class as reported earlier, hoping it goes a little better this week lol.

Other stuff :D We baked our favouite eggy pies this week and Frodo did ALL the grating (except the cheese which is too hard he says.. and I agree lol), we planted the last of our seedlings and the boys have been doing the daily watering and checking for bugs etc.. Merry had playgroup and enjoyed hanging out with the other kids, riding bikes, doing puzzles and playing with lego.

Monday madness

2010-05-11T14:34:00.003+10:00

Or, thank Goddess that's over! LOL. Yesterday was our first Monday of home ed network activities for this term, and it was BUSY. Both Sam & Frodo are signed on for gymnastics and art class, plus the big hit of the term, Professor Jellybean science classes! Professor Jellybean, or PJ as she says we can call her for short, is doing 2 hands on experiments with the kids each week. If the next 5weeks are as gooey and messy as yesterday, MAJOR HIT lol.

HERE is Sam rockin the lab coat & safety glasses, looking every bit the miniature mad scientist! The kids totally enjoyed getting all geared up and stuck into their experiments.

This week they made a glittery 'goop' that Frodo informed me is made using a seaweed based food thickener, and some really freaky slimy 'worms'. Very excellent was their official verdict.

It was Merry's first time EVER having his own classes to go to. He's signed on for tiny tots gymnastics (which I must go to with him) and a playgroup for under 5's.

He did very well for the first 20minutes of gymnastics, all the parents were around the giant parachute floofing (new word, like it?) it up into the air and down again... the littlies were getting under & getting their noses tickled by it. Then we did stretches and animal walks... Merry thought that bit was fun. And he really enjoyed the floor activities... big foam steps with a hill to tumble down, tunnels to climb under, ladders to climb UP, rings to swing from, and his fave.. the mini trampoline to jump onto and bounce off the other side.

Then the bar activities ... very simple things like pretending you are a possum swinging from a bar (with parental support). Well Merry was NOT in the mood suddenly. He had to wait his turn, and chucked a wobbly about it (that would be the Aussie equivalent of 'pitching a fit' btw). He can't do this out of the way, he has to hurl himself onto the mats directly in the way of other people (intentionally) and then shrieks bloody murder when I have to move him for his safety (and everyone else's ability to participate!). The screams were heard all through the building I'm sure @@... I did eventually get him to calm down enough to walk the balance beam with me... but it was all over for all practical intents & purposes.

I managed to mostly maintain my sanity hehe, and really he's not even 4 and has never done an organized activity in his life. So I'm not surprised. His playgroup went much better. He had a nice time riding the scooters, doing puzzles, using markers and playing in the sand. It was VERY nice to have activities for the little ones while the big ones were off in class!

Here's the little dude busy at work. He also spent a fair bit of time on the massive climbing play structure.. that's not even half of it in the picture. On the way home, it was a very peaceful drive... as he snoozed happily all the way home.

My goal for next week...I'm just hoping he makes it 5 minutes longer in his class before melting down lol. I KNOW he will settle in eventually :D

Our Week

2010-05-09T20:37:00.003+10:00

'Twas a short week here, as Strider had Monday off for a public holiday. We still managed to pack plenty in to the week though!

Math: Frodo worked on 2 digit subraction with regrouping/borrowing, he seemed to catch on pretty well, but needs more practice to reinforce the idea that you MUST write down what you borrowed straight away or you'll forget it ;) Sam was on skip counting by 10s, oddly enough he did not catch on to this as well as he did the 2's or 5's! So we'll work on it a bit more this week by playing the skip counting cd and finding things that come in 10's to count.

Language arts: Frodo did a Reading Comp exercise on summarizing, learned the i_e spelling words (which he's really way ahead of, but the book also has him do other activities with those words so he enjoys it), and Grammar once a week pages about Homophones and what a simple sentence must have.

Both boys did work in their handwriting workbooks, and Sam & I made a game for matching upper & lower case alphabet letters.

Science: This week it was Saturn and Uranus, and their respective parts of our lapbook project. The boys were fascinated to learn that if you found a bathtub or ocean big enough, Saturn would actually FLOAT! And that if you put Saturn (including it's rings) between the Earth & moon.. it would barely fit! Frodo did a solar system word search as well.. he loves those things :)

SOSE/History: Frodo started reading the chapter book "Knights of the Round Table" and answering comprehension questions after the chapters. It's not a long book so he should finish it in the coming week. We read a bit more about Emperor Justinian and his Code of Laws, and Frodo copied one into his history notebook. We moved on to Charlemagne and HIS laws... which were not quite so equally applied to the poor Romans. (Frodo was very indignant about that!) and Frodo did his map for the lesson.

Arts: Frodo made his particularly awesome castle, and both boys made Illuminated style letters ala the Middle ages. Frodo did almost all of his letter, but Sam wanted me to draw the letter form for him and let him do the colouring in and embelleshing. The boys also made me a stunning mothers' day card while having a sleepover at their Nana's house on Friday night :) She pulled out all the stops and gave them a ton of scrapbooking bits & peices and they had a great time!

Health & Physical Ed: Swim lessons on Saturday this week, a LOT of time out in the yard as the weather was lovely the latter half of the week, kicking the soccer ball around the park with their Uncle & cousins at the park.

Special Mothers Day Edition!

2010-05-09T17:47:00.004+10:00

Happy Mothers' day to all you blogging mamas out there! I had a very lovely one. I woke up to be presented with a beautiful card the boys made for me while they stayed overnight at their grandparents house Friday. Nana turned them loose with scrap book supplies and the result is gorgeous... and I fail to have a picture!!! lol Then hubby made me poached eggs & toast, which is my favourite breakfast ever and a nice mocha to go with it. NOM!

Hubby just happened to catch the winner of the last Australian 'Master Chef' tv series at a bookstore in the city, signing copies of her cookbook. So guess what both his mum AND I got for Mothers day? Signed copies of a really lovely cookbook... with some delicious sounding recipes to try out. I've already chosen the first ones to be added to this weeks menu hehe.

Then we headed off to the family 'do' at a park about half an hour away. The whole family was there and we had lunch picnic style and laughed and had a great time. The kids kicked the soccer ball around and we adults took turns herding the masses of them over to the playground area and back.

A few pics from the day... 2 of my 3 plus their cousins sorely testing the maxiumum bums per chair ratio for this seat lol!

Merry pigging out on cake :) And last, but not least, Sam... where he could have happily stayed the ENTIRE day! He positively adores Humphrey, and she (yep, she lol) is so sweet & tolerant. They kept each other company very well.

It was a really nice day... right up until someone, I can't remember who, mentioned something about school. @@ Then my SIL, opened her big mouth. "OH *neices name* LOVES school, she has since the first day she went! and she gets MUCH better SOCIALIZATION there than we could ever give her at home!" This is the second weekend in a row she has done this, and I'm just about pissed off.. as my children were RIGHT THERE! I'm hoping they were busy eating their cake & didn't notice their Aunt basically bashing our choice of education.

I bit my tongue all the way home, so the kids didn't hear me abusing their Aunt. Then I hit facebook and grumbled on my status update, and yes SIL is on my friends list. I was a good girl and didn't name her directly... just simply said it's frustrating when people assume we are judging THEIR parenting choices just because we happen to make different ones! Somehow I doubt she'll even 'get' that it was her honestly. But it made me feel better to say SOMETHING.

Honestly, it was REALLY hard to not point out that the 'socialization' her daughter learned at school had her being snotty & ignoring her cousins as they tried to say good bye to her and give her a hug. Yeah.. I'll pass on that socializtion thanks.

HOWEVER! After having a mini rant, I refused to let this do more than dent this nice day. Strider & I went outside as soon as the sun was not directly in our faces, and started planting the seedlings I bought yesterday! We now have 4 black russian tomatoes (omg yum), 2 pots with a total of 8 silverbeet, and a pot of spring onions planted and waiting for the morning sun on the end of the veranda :D We still have 4 cherry tomatoes, and 3 punnets of mixed lettuce seedlings to go in... but we ran out of soil lol. My lovely hubby is going to pick up a couple more bags on his way home tomorrow so we can finish up. It REALLY has been making me sad not to have any veggies growing in our yard, so I was very happy to get a few things in. Next weekend, provided these plants are all in.. it's off to get even more soil and strawberry plants!

Getting out & getting my hands dirty really helped get rid of the funk from the earlier incident and was a perfect way to end Mother's day.. doing one of my favourite things :) I hope all my mom friends out there had awesome days!

A day of bliss

2010-05-06T21:08:00.003+10:00

We have had a few days of exceedingly dreary, and sorta chilly weather. There have been breaks in the rain but nothing wonderful. Until today... the skies were just amazingly blue, it was perfect.

SO, we did what any self respecting homeschoolers would do.. shelved the books and headed outside! We spent pretty much the entire day hangin out in the back yard... the kids made a fort of their climber, stepping stones were hopped, tether tennis was whacked about and other fun was had :) I actually got to drink a coffee, while it was hot... because the boys were too busy running around in the sunshine to pester me ....err, ask me, for anything!

I read a bit of a gardening book, made a grocery list and menu for the week and watched the kids thoroughly enjoy themselves. It wasn't a day without learning, since obivously that's impossible ;) We caught 15minutes of a show about ice ages on tv.. and Frodo build a rockin cardboard box castle to go along with our Middle Ages studies.

Here's the boy hard at work constructing :) And with the finished product... demonstrating the drawbridge. Note the fancy woodwork around the entry ;)

And we talked about gardening. I'm getting ready to get stuff to plant and we talked about what THEY would like to grow and we walked the yard to find a good spot to put our prefab raised bed (and I am hoping the real estate agent doesn't lose the plot lol)

Merry found & picked up a rolly polly bug and thought that was grand.. and Frodo managed to catch a ladybug (ladybird) and put her on our basil plant as it's being snacked on by something.

And here is a photo from our weekend. It was my 2nd sons 17th birthday, and while he's in the US, we always make a cake to celebrate. The boys totally cheesed up the happy birthday singing here...

Tomorrow afternoon Nana is picking up the oldest two for a sleep over (Merry is gonna play hell about THAT!) and swim lessons, as sunday is Mothers day and no class. So the hubs & I will be having OUR favourite dish for dinner (cheesey baked chard NOM). The boys won't eat it, so we'll get to have it without complains ;) since Merry won't eat anything lol.

What I'm saying here is that I really WOULDN'T hold my breath on seeing a weekly wrap out of me in any kind of timely manner lol. Tomorrow night will be adult relaxing time.. Saturday working in the garden time :D and Sunday is family get together at a park for a Mother's Day picnic. So, nope.. not likely lol.

The weekly wrap that wasn't (or, my week away from bloggdom)

2010-05-05T21:28:00.001+10:00

Well now, aren’t we glad THAT’s over with. Hopefully my walking off in a huff for a week (was it only a week??? It felt looonger!!) was enough for Blogger to pull it’s head in and behave! Either way, I have outsmarted it and am typing this in a WP program.. Take that you fascist blog site you!

What has the Hobbit family been up to this past week? I’m sure you’re all dying to know (well, the maybe 20ppl that actually actively follow anyway lol) what you’ve missed. There was the usual schoolwork … we’re up to Saturn in the solar system now, and reading about Charlemagne in History Odyssey. Math is cruising right along for both boys and Frodo is REALLY picking up with his writing these days!

Sam has ditched on Reading eggs for the last week.. But that’s ok, I’m making him ‘beginning sounds’ activities and a game to help him match up the lower case letter to it’s upper case version (he can tell that a m makes an mmm sound.. But the M throws him!) The boys got a bit of ‘technology’ in today, as they helped me laminate the activities I’m making for Sam. They were fascinated with how the machine worked, and more so that they got to put the pieces in the sleeves so I could feed them into it.

Sam is doing exceptionally well with his handwriting and is using the solar system matching cards almost daily… he likes the pictures ;)

We had cousin L’s 7th birthday party on the weekend.. And the kids enjoyed spending the afternoon at the park eating lots of disgusting junk food (srsly, fairy bread = white bread +butter/marg + farking 100s & 1000s /sprinkles WTF?!?!?!) A mum of one of L’s classmates came up, introduced herself, then in a ‘we’re going to do it anyway, but it’s a courtesy to ask’ let SIL know she was doing a drop & run and would be back at 3 to pick her child up. Um OK. If you have to introduce yourself to me? It’s not on to assume I’m going to babysit your child just because it’s a birthday party. Big public park, with a hugely busy street on one side and open water on site. WOW is about all I could say.

Of course, SIL didn’t miss a beat with ‘OH when you’re in public school you go to SO many birthday parties and meet so many parents that it’s just the norm’. Um, wtf-ever. I just rolled my eyes and reminded her that I do have 2 children that did that, so do indeed understand. And that I am so friggin happy we aren’t obligated to go to 25birthday parties of kids we wouldn’t normally be hanging out with. (ok, I was slightly more polite than that… not much though)

It just shits me that we don’t seem to be able to have a family gathering without someone bringing up in some way that my kids are missing out on something! They’re not people, get over it already.

*deep cleansing breath*

Thankfully it was a long weekend, so I had Monday with DH home so I could get over my ire hehehe. We’ve been busy busy, so I’ll have a nice weekly wrap … whenever I get around to posting it that is!

I fear the only picture I have to offer today is one of our new additions to the ratty cage. This utterly adorable dude’s name is Sniffy.. Because Sam says he keeps sniffing in his ear every time he picks him up. (note to self.. chicken wire not the best foreground)

Dear Blogger

2010-05-05T20:59:00.001+10:00

I think I am almost ready to forgive you for being a fascist and eating my nice posts. So, I'm back-ish.

DIAF Blogger!

2010-04-28T17:17:00.002+10:00

I may, or may not be back later to post. As I had just written a relatively long post, saved several times.. and effing blogger ATE it!!!!! It saved 3 stinkin lines, and it seems to be doing this regularly. Yes, I realize the smart thing to do would be write in word and c&p.. but it shits me that I have to do that to get this bass ackwards site to work as intended.

I'm going to have hot chocolate.. with whipped cream.. and possibly chocolate sprinkles. And IF that's enough self medicating to make me feel better, I will return to REwrite my entire post. But I wouldn't hold my breath....

I'm surrounded by Merry Men! (take 2)

2010-04-28T16:45:00.007+10:00

Seriously, is that not the CUTEST thing you have ever seen??? Over the weekend I hit Spotlight and found felt by the metre to make the boys their 'medieval style hats'... which Sam has dubbed Robin Hood hats (despite their not being green ;)

And that is all I'll say right now, as Blogger has had another 'issue'.. I'm just about ready to give up on this blog for all the frustration it is causing!!

How to make a homeschool mum's night?

2010-04-27T10:24:00.004+10:00

Give her a quality movie (Braveheart was the choice for this hs mum), a good cuppa coffee, and a pile of newly laminated montessori activities to cut out for her eager learners! Thank goddess this was NOT on a Friday night, or I'd have to be a bit worried about mys social life ;) But for a Monday, quite accpetable hehehe.

We spent the weekend doing a major cleanout of the garage, and took a major load of stuff for donating & dumping, so my plans to test drive my new (el cheapo) model laminator kept getting put on hold. But yesterday I got everything mounted on heavy paper and went to town. It worked VERY well for a cheapie model... and I do mean cheap, this baby was 18bucks. Hell, the laminating pouches (100) cost more than the machine did LOL.

My big goal was to get Merry's very cool dragon activities laminated before he killed them. He was a bit taken aback today when he asked for them and saw their new state. 'They're TRAPPED!' he said. LOL! I was super surprised when he was quite ok with them being trapped when I explained that now they couldn't get destroyed and would last 'forever'. Score one for mum.

For Sam & Frodo, I have been geeking at This site, thanks to Kylie at Our Worldwide Classroom. They have some great materials that you buy in pdf form, then print off & laminate yourself. Certianly cheaper than other options for us down here! Last night I made up the solar system nomenclature cards (although I do hate the pretentious sound of nomenclature... we're talking 6yr olds here lol) for the boys and this morning they have already been matching & defining to their hearts content. Here' Sam busy at work :)

He really enjoyed matching the unlabeled picture cards & the proper label up to the control card (which has both the pic and the word). He even sounded out a couple of the starting sounds, which we have been working on lately. This was actually a team effort, as Frodo read the matching definition card and put it with the matches as Sam made them :)

They totally loved being able to work independently, which was nice for me as well! I was able to get the laundry in without multiple trips back into the house to assist with schoolwork lol.

I picked up several other thing from that site, a moveable alphabet (that will NOT get done until I have a paper cutter, as that is just TOO many small squares to contemplate cutting!!!), a living/ nonliving things activity, one on the layers of the Earth (as Earth is our next science unit study) and a 'research guide' for Frodo. Each guide gives a list of questions to answer in a short 'paper' the child writes on the topic... the sun, a planet of their choice etc. The idea is that the child can write the paper all by themselves using the guide to help them know what to put in it. Frodo is going to pick his favourite planet and have a go at that later this week. I won't expect a thesis, but it will be one of his first attempts at independent writing, the only others have been the couple of letters he's written his pen pal.

So lots of new, fun and independant activities for the boys to get stuck into!

Another week gone

2010-04-24T13:51:00.004+10:00

Not sure how that happened? Doesn't SEEM like a week since I posted, I'm a very naughty blogger I guess ;) It's been a pretty mellow week here, although a fair bit was accomplished.

Frodo's week

Maths: Frodo completed lesson 20 of MUS Beta, multiple digit subtraction (not regrouping yet) as well as how to check his answers for accuracy. He did 3 lesson pages during the week & a systematic review.. just 'cause he likes those :)

Language arts: Grammar once a week - was on how to begin questions (ie, what words usually start a question); Catching on to Comprehension was on classifying this week and had him classifying pets by various characteristics. Spelling matters was the beginning of the 'magic e' words (a_e words). The spelling was a bit easy for him but he got a bit of a challenge out of the extension activities though ;)

Frodo also wrote a letter to his penpal on the weekend using his flash new dragon stationery and posted it off Monday. He did a couple of pages of his cursive writing workbook as well.

With our history study for the week he did a couple of word activities, a word unscramble and a castle themed alphabetizing worksheet.

Sam's week

Maths: Sam did lesson 20 in his MUS Primer this week, he really could have gone ahead to 21 half way through the week but he enjoyed doing the review pages. This lesson was on adding hundreds (100+200=) and he blew it out of the water by Wednesday. Sam has a thing with coins lately, and did a bit of practice adding money as well (a 50c coin plus a 10c coin is 60c)

Language arts: He did a few lessons of Reading Eggs this week, as well as a starting sounds activity (castle themed to go with history hehe) and got probably half correct. Not the best, but a good start, so we'll keep working on that. I printed out a nifty uppercase/lowercase alphabet matching game and I may print out some beginning sounds pictures to put on back of the cards before I laminate them. (The typical A=apple, etc)

Sam did a couple of pages of handwriting practice in his workbook and also spent a lot of time writing 'notes' to me (mainly drawing love hearts and writing his name hehehe...but very sweet and any practice is something!)

All Of Us

History: We read a chapter of Story of the World about the Glory of Rome, and had a lesson in Roman Numerals. Our main history reading for the week was 'Adventures in the Middle Ages' and it was a great book that the kids thoroughly enjoyed. We also had porridge for breakfast, as that was a pretty typical Medieval times fare for your average villager. The boys also poured over their new 'See Inside Castles' book about a zillion times. I tell you, seeing what's under the flap will never bore my boys lol.

Our craft for the week was getting a start on the boys Medieval style costumes. The basis of those is going to be dark long pants, dads 'hippie' shirt (loose Indian cotton with toggles) and a belt. Everything else we will be making with instructions from Days of Knights & Damsels. This week was our peasants pocket (they didn't have pockets built into clothes, so they wore external pockets on their belt!)

Science: We read our books on Jupiter this week, and worked on catching up on our lapbook mini books. We did the Jupiter one, plus a few other ones that we had run out of time for last week. I found a cool constellation activity, on Draco even (keeping with the history theme lol, even if on accident!), that the boys did and they also spent a fair bit of time on THIS website. Lots of great educational games, animations and info pages courtesy of Nasa!

Merry's week

Merry spent as much time outside as he could possibly get this week. He's a much happier kid when he gets a few hours of outdoor time every day, so this works for me. He's still loving his dragon games that I made for him and plays them for a while each day. There was play doh (which took about .13seconds to draw the big brothers from where they were at) that was enjoyed by all. He did a lot of drawing with colour pencils this week, and coloured in on a planet picture. He will be a Picasso when he grows up as he has zero regards for 'the lines' and the idea of staying in them (not that I encourage it really ;) and just gleefully fills his paper with colour.

I tried a nursery rhyme with him (Three Blind Mice) but he immediately started saying don't sing! stop singin! as he always does LOL. It doesn't matter what we sing, he does.not.like.IT! I don't think my voice is THAT bad!

Next week will be a shorty, as Strider has a 3day weekend! (yay for 3 days off.. boo for not getting paid for that day LOL) We'll have a 4 day wrap, but I'm sure there will be plenty going on in the Hobbit Household to share!

Our week of learning :)

2010-04-18T19:20:00.007+10:00

Squeeking in here at the 11th hour on Sunday night to post our weekly wrap up ;) We had a fairly busy week, no days out this week as our home ed network is still on break between terms, so we got a lot of stuff accomplished.

Math: Frodo & Sam both did lesson 19 of their MUS (Frodo's was on rounding, estimating and adding up to the 10thousands place with regrouping ... Sam's was skip counting by 10's which he grasped really well.)

Language Arts: Frodo learned about synonyms and statements vs questions in Grammar once a week (he already knew the latter but synonyms were new), using context clues to work out what a word or phrase means in Reading comprehension and did a LOT of reading. He also wrote a fairly long letter (for an 8yr old) to his pen pal in the US.

Sam did several lessons of Reading Eggs, but when he got to lesson 10 he didn't pass the 'quiz' to go to the next map so he's doing the first lessons again :) Which is fine by him, he enjoys them! I'm going to be printing him out a 'moveable alphabet' so he & I can work together on cvc words and such as well.

Science: This week we started a rockin' lap book project to go along with our Solar System study! I've been a bit lukewarm about lapbooks in the past, but now that the kids are able to do more of the cutting and such, it's MUCH less tedious for me! lol You can find the 'space explorers' lapbook project FREE here! I've linked her main lapbook page, because there are several more. Some of them have more religious content than others (the space one has none) but all in all they are fabulously put together! And FREE, which we love right? ;)

Here's a shot of the lap book thus far. We've done the 'inner' planets as well as the books on the sun, stars as we've studied them already.. and one on the moon phases that the boys had to do. Good little luna loving boys that they are ;)

Sam will tell you that it supplies heat & light, of COURSE MUM. lol (sun mini book)

Sam was very proud of his answer to this last one one... he probably could have written it, but he thought it was MUCH more fun to draw it ;) (the pics show it closed and then with all four 'points' opened)

History/ SOSE: Our books for Medieval times finally arrived, as I posted earlier in the week (well, still waiting on one straggler!) We got stuck into reading the intro to the Middle ages, about castles & knights and had a brief look at Roman Numerals. We'll review those here & there as we see them (clocks etc). We watched a documentary called "Ancient Mysteries: Lost Castles of England" which was about the Motte & bailey castles of the early 500yrs or so of the middle ages. The boys were fascinated that there used to be WOODEN castles! I also printed them out a Motte & bailey castle colouring page to occupy their hands while I read aloud, that was a big hit. Sam added knights to the tops of the towers on his castle hehehe.

Art: Nothing formal here this week, but there was lots of drawing and such going on as usual :) Sam has worked out how to draw a very nice love heart, and has delivered many to me sealed inside secret messages lol.

Preschool: This week Mr. Merry joined in a bit, he had his very own simple castle colouring page which he loved, and he built with the '25s' (what he calls the math u see blocks). The big love of his life this week, is his new dragon & castle shape matching game, which I posted about yesterday ;) I'll be adding to that repertoire as I find cool stuff that he'll enjoy!

And that's a wrap!

Cutest preschooler activity EVER!

2010-04-16T20:37:00.003+10:00

Mr. Merry has been getting VERY disruptive and cranky when the bigger brothers & I try to do any organized schoolwork lately! So I've used playdoh (the brothers end up distracted wanting to play as well lol) and crayon colouring (works well enough, until he wants to reach over & scribble on one of the boys work!) with marginal success. My recent replenishment of my printer toner brought to mind a very cute pdf of early educational activities I purchased a few months ago... with a castle & dragon theme!

TOTALLY adorable.

So, despite not having cardstock to mount it on, OR a laminator to run it through... I printed out a few of the activities anyway. I'd link them... but sadly they are no longer listed on the site :( Boy, am I glad I didn't wait to go back later to buy them! But here's a shot of one of them...

I didn't plan my picutre taking well, as there is no picture of both pieces.. ah well. Underneath those stinkin CUTE dragons holding shapes... are castles with the same shapes. The files are abotu 60odd pages long, so there are TONS of activities ranging from alphabet matching ones, to size sorting, to shape & number matching.

Merry already knows his shapes & colours, but he was just GIDDY at having mummy make a game just for him. We were all required to take multiple turns playing HIS games with him.. which just delighted him to no end!

Here's the little wizard playing his game (for about the 100th time I'm sure!) I kid you not, he played this game on the rug for at least half an hour.. it was wonderful. He was happy, the bigger boys were able to get a bit of writing done and such...and I was able to sit and laugh at Merry being so funny with his new activity.

Yesterday he was asking repeatedly to do school with his brothers... Today he was doing just that, well, as much as I would ever expect of a 3.5yr old! And judging from how overjoyed he was to have his OWN 'school' to do... I'll be burning up the toner cartridges this weekend.

And shopping for a laminator.

Books in the mail! books in the mail!

2010-04-15T20:21:00.005+10:00

I don't often order books, but I needed a few for the boys new History Odyssey as we have moved on to the Medieval times, so I decided to test out Bookdepository . I usually go with amazon, but these guys do FREE worldwide shipping so I figured I'd save a fortune. I ordered on the 8th.. and all but one of my books arrived today! And I ordered in the evening on the 8th even. So exactly one week to my door, not bad from the UK really.

Frodo has already had a good browse through a couple of the books and is chomping at the bit to get into This one, which is a King Arthur story just for kids about his age. I'm hoping he'll be able to manage it independently, as it looks like an easy read and it isn't too long.

The activity guide, with all the neato crafty stuff, for this level of History Odyssey is Days of Knights and Damsels. It looks VERY cool, if possible even better than Ancient Egyptians and their Neighbors! ( last levels' book) There are instructions for creating your own middle age costumes and many other things. Seriously, middle age shoes made out of felt or scraps of heavy fabric with laces... we're talking very awesome stuff! We are going to have a LOT of fun with this.

The other book I was really itching to get is an Usborne book (I'm a huge Usborne fan) called 'See Inside Castles'. It's a FLAP book, and if it is anywhere near as good as the 'See Inside Space' book in the same series the boys will just drool over it constantly :) (I actually checked that one out.. and renewed it. The sadly had to return it, but the next time I was in the library.. a whole week later, it was there .. so I snagged it again LOL) The Castle book was sadly NOT in the mail today...I'm hoping it will arrive tomorrow, or that there's a slip in the mailbox because it was too big for the postie on his little bike to carry around.

Our Medieval history study just got a whole lot more fun!

Holiday Over!

2010-04-12T21:25:00.003+10:00

Thankfully. After 10days off, the boys get a BIT stir crazy and want to do dumb things like as me to play the Wii at 6frickin15 am *insert scowl* and then repeatedly ask me all.day.LONG!

So today we got back in the saddle and EVERYONE is much happier for it. I'm working on a routine where I watch Frodo's MUS lesson dvd with him, then set Sam up to do his Reading Eggs (independently!) while I 'supervise' Frodo in case he needs help. Then Frodo works independently on one of his language arts workbooks (today was Grammar Once a Week, which he loves oddly enough lol) while I do the MUS dvd & lesson with Sam. Seemed to work out pretty well and got Both of their math & language out of the way for the day in under an hour :D

After that we had a snack and then we all read the intro to Medieval times in the UILE, and Frodo defined Latin. We're still waiting on some of the books needed to get really going on this, but we have a fair few library books that will keep us entertained until then :)

Frodo also spied a printout on my desk of an "Idioms" game. The idea is to read the sentence and decide what it really means when someone says 'it's raining cats & dogs' .. among others. He had QUITE a chuckle at those. It was actually intended for another time, but hey, he was interested then so get it while it's hot ;)

This post would be much longer, but yours truly has not learned that Blogger cannot be trusted and that all posts really MUST be written in word and then C&P'd into the post form... so blogger had a tasty snack of half of my post. If it weren't late, and I weren't tired, I might try to rewrite it. Not, I think, today though! :P

M.I.A

2010-04-09T18:55:00.003+10:00

Is what I have been for the last week or so, sorry about that! We had a houseguest for about 5 days, and while it's nice to have company... it's also nice when they go home and you get your house back. lol We didn't really 'do' anything for Easter...our rabbits & bunnies holiday occurrs in the Spring, so this Autumn thing just doesn't work for me! (not that it FEELS much like Autumn.. still 29C here!) We did, however, buy a few cadbury's creme eggs.. and a chocolate buzz lightyear for each of the boys ;) Who can turn down a good excuse to have chocolate? My DH swears that *easter* chocolate tastes different to 'regular' chocolate, so it had to be done.. just in case he is right!

I've also spent a bit of time doing some school paperwork. I am changing how we are registered soon, so I'm re-writing our program and such. If you remember the massive amount of paperwork that I posted I had to do on the 'Regulations for HS in your state' blog hop, you'll be pleased to know I won't have to do that anymore lol. It came down to drama, and a 'higher up' in the organization I was with having a bit of a God complex.. or power tripping.. or something. So, I'll be registered with the state shortly and have to do significantly less reporting and have nobody in my business most of the time.

I ALSO have been on a decluttering kick the last couple of days. My closet is clean, I'm donating toys & clothes (from all of us) to charity, we're taking the old dining set & sofa that are in the garage to Lifeline tomorrow.

Coming up next week, is Treasure Map time again...( a brief summary of Treasure Mapping is you make a collage or other visual representation, of the things you want to manifest into your life in the coming year.) TM's are done in the Aries new moon, as it's the time for beginnings/planting seeds. In the time before the new moon, the idea is to clear the clutter! If you want to bring new things/experiences etc into your life.. there has to be ROOM for them! It might sound a bit hokey to some.. but I've had a TM hanging over my dresser for the last 3 years (new ones each year) and I've manifested some interesting things during that time. And 'things' is a broad term... new friendships, relationship changes, new hobbies, experiences etc all qualify for a spot on the Treasure map. I look at my map daily when I get up and focus on it, only briefly, to remind myself & the universe what is on the way to my life. I think it also helps a lot to keep my goals firmly planted in my own mind :) I can't work toward something that I can't identify & visualize!

I think the night before TM 2010 starts, I will sit down with my map for the past year and list off all the things I have brought to be in the last year... it'll be quite a list!

The boys are on 'holidays' at the moment, so we're not technically doing any schoolwork... although this morning Frodo came in and ASKED to do Math U See! LOL So back to work Monday I believe.. he's getting bored. I ordered our new History Odyssey books, and got a slew of great ones from the library as well.. so we're fully stocked on awesome reading material!

Pumpkin soup & DIY workshop fun!

2010-03-31T18:03:00.004+10:00

Tonight I made my epic Thai Pumpkin soup for dinner. Well.. I think I did.. but what may have happened is that I planned it and gave incidental assistance as DH made it LOL. You see, chopping up a whole pumpkin requires far more muscles than I have.. but when he did that much he just kept going ;) I sought a brief moment of solitude (and quiet!) down the hall as I checked my email.. and THIS is what I came back to! LOL

Isn't my hunny just the silliest? (that'd be sour cream btw :D

Merry even had a few spoonfulls of soup.. which is REALLY something for him!!! (He really has a VERY limited number of things he will eat.. soup not often being one of them.. as it does not resemble a sammich!)

Yesterday the boys & I had their Bunnings DIY kids workshop with the homeschool group we are part of. This month the project was a wooden bird feeder. It went fairly well other than the usual wood being far too hard for kids to hammer, pilot holes way too tiny lol. We grown ups ended up helping a LOT with the hammering.. but at least they got to paint it all on their own.

Here are the boys very studiously working. Merry was VERY put out that he didn't get to do one (not that he could have) so he was very happy when Sam asked if he wanted to help paint his :) Funny thing that they all ended up in blue that day! (makes for a nice pic though hehe)

Here is Frodo showing off (ok squinting at the flash) his finished project. There is mesh screening nailed onto the bottom to hold the seed and a loop to hang it with. MUCH better than the elasticy cord in the last bird feeder project they did there (about a year ago).

We WERE supposed to go to the Art Gallery a bit later for a workshop there.. but Merry decided ENOUGH and completely melted down into a screaming puddle. I nearly lost my mind as nothing would calm him and he acted like I was beating him! But in the end, it was simply overtiredness rearing it's ugly head... as he crashed out in the car on the way home.

Earth Hour 2010

2010-03-28T17:18:00.003+10:00

Last night the Hobbit household joined millions of other families and businesses around the world in flipping off ALL electricity for one hour. One measely hour reduced the city of Sydney Australia's power consumption by 6%... could have been more, but alas people were not as enthusiastic in their participation this year :(

This is our 3rd year, I think, being part of Earth Hour. I don't harbour any delusions that this one hour will save the world by any means. But what this one hour does, is makes a statement. It says that we CAN do better than what we currently do. It says that MY family can live without artificial lighting, noise and entertainment far more often than we do.

We actually cheated, and held OUR Earth Hour at 730pm... mainly because the Hobbits are without fail in bed by 8pm on a regular night and they REALLY wanted to stay up for it. They are very aware of energy use, and turn off lights (still working on the tv *eye roll*) and such all the time. They were super excited to go around and help us turn off all power points, flip off the light switches and grab their torches (those are flashlights). We had candles going around the living & family room. We EVEN turned off the pump that operates our rain water tank... that flushes our toilets! lol So everyone had to go before we went dark hehehe.

We talked a bit about why we turned everything off and what the point of it was. The kids played with their torches in the house (and found a huntsman spider in the closet and insisted it had to go... thanks to DH for dispatching it) and then DH & I sat on the veranda with our iced coffee (premade and in the fridge waiting for the hour.. the fridge/freezer were the only things left on in the entire house) and of course the kids followed. Despite the nearly full moon, we managed to show them the constellation Orion, as well as the Southern Cross. Frodo pointed out that "HEY that's on our flag!" lol The kids played games trying to scare each other in the semi darkness of the moonlight.

At 830, we tucked the boys into bed (still with their torches lol) and watched a movie (nothing like a bit of Interview With a Vampire while enjoying the darkness! lol) The only things we turned back on other than our tv (for the movie), were our water filter and our tank pump. Flush toilets are a modern convenience I'm not quite ready to give up lol

Dh & I talked about the fact that for a lot of the world, the hour of darkness is pretty much a nightly thing. We also talked about our waste... we got our power bill last week and it was 600dollars (for the quarter). It was only slightly higher than last summers bill, most likely due to our filter/pump system for the kids swimming pool running for 3months. But we can do better than that. Too much air conditioning use (I don't like being hot in my own house, so I won't NOT use it.. but I WILL use it more judiciously next summer!)

Obviously our power use in Autumn will be a bit less than it is in summer lol... so I'm shooting for about 300dollars for the next quarter. Pool is put away, air con used far less (only in late afternoon when the sun is coming in under the veranda) and the heat.. well that's a long way off yet! Wish us luck!

Weekly Wrap

2010-03-27T15:18:00.004+10:00

The last week has been UNbelievably busy in the Hobbit house! We only had 3 days worth of 'formal' school time this week, as we had the last of our art & gymnastics classes for the term on Monday and then Friday was our ALL day long excursion to Dreamworld & Whitewater World! We still squeezed a fair bit in there though :)

Math: We had our M&M math graphing lesson, which was an EPIC hit. The boys also spent a bit of time on Mathletics & Rainforest maths, and there was plenty of daily 'incidental' practice (especially for Sam) Frodo wowwed me with his money skills on Mathletics!

Language Arts: Sam did a bit of Reading eggs and we practiced the sounds he's covered with flash cards (the cards have a picture on them and he has to say the word, concentrating on the starting sound and match it to the letter that makes the sound). Frodo had a reading comprehension lesson (fantasy vs. factual writings), as well as worked through Grammar once a weeks' next lesson (which was on making plural by adding s). Both boys did a bit of handwriting practice also.

SOSE/History: For history, we covered the last of our lessons in ancient history, which was the Aztec/Inca. Frodo did his vocabulary definition and map work (his favourite part of the whole thing) After learning that the Ancients in the Americas were a whizz with gold/metalsmithing, the boys created their own Aztec pendant. (very simple project involving rolling out a 5mm thick slab of play dough, playing a circle of foil on it and 'embossing' your design in with a pencil just hard enough not to poke thru the foil. Then wrapping the foil over a circular peice of cardboard.) They were pretty proud of their projects, but I could not get a pic to save my life. Reflecty foil and all that :P We also watched a documentary on Machu Pichu, to wrap up the unit.

Sose this week was mainly online ;) Our Skwirk memberships came through so the boys have been after me to get on it a lot.. so I gave them a list of which things to do and turned them loose. Sam learned about community and family groups and Frodo learned about Australia. He named all of the states & territories (including the ACT, which I ALWAYS forget lol) and created his own word search using terms from the reading..

Science: We finished up the rocky planets this week, with Mars. Sam has decided Mars is his favourite now. The boys both made 'books' from enchanted learning. Frodos was quite a big book and had a couple of quiz questions on bottom of each page, Sams was a simpler book, with big lines for handwriting practice. They learned Mars has 2 very small moons, is about half the size of Earth (boy I hope I remembered that right LOL, bad form if I did not!) and is considered the most Earth like planet. They thought it particularly cool that scientsists think that over time they could actually create an atmosphere and humans could possibly live there! (this would obviously take a VERY long time lol) We also caught a program on ABC about Stars and Space that was very interesting.

Art: Monday was our last art class with Miss Liz, until May. Frodo created a 3d face sculptured plaque, which Liz will fire and have ready for them to paint next term. Sam made portrait prints using his very cool 3d face 'stamper', which was made last week. I don't have pics of the prints, but I do have a pic of the stamper! Isn't he CUTE!? I had to help him with some of the cutting, as parts of it are done with heavy upholstery fabric. But he did all the selecting, placing & gluing of parts. He even came up with a decent way to make a nose :)

HPE: Gymnastics class finished up on Monday for the term as well. One day this week, the boys built an 'obstacle' course around the backyard using plastic stepping stones and other bits for zigging, zagging and balancing on. Friday we walked like umptymillion miles.. sorry kilometres.. around Dreamworld!

Technology: Both boys spent a bit of time on skwirk, Reading eggs and here. Lots of great learning activities and games there.

I suppose I should have put this in science ;), but that felt oddly organized for me, so it is going here! We had our excursion to Dreamworld/Whitewater World on Friday. All in all, the day went fairly smoothly... the boys had a safari talk where they got to see a Ringtail possum and a Children's python. (scroll down a little bit for that one, interesting that it's name is NOT for the reasons you'd think!) Mery was stoked as he got to pat Kangaroos and drive an antique car (on a track.. and with help reaching pedals lol) We also got to see a rather LARGE saltwater crocodile in an enclosure that rather squicked dh out by how CLOSE we were. Until I reminded him that croc's cannot fly, nor can they climb glass walls ;)

After the educational part of the day was done, we had FUN, and lots of it! Bumper cars were ridden, as was the Big Red Car in Wiggles World, and remote control crocodiles were cruised around. The kiddie water slides were a big hit, as was the Nickelodeon water play 'thing'.. I have no idea WHAT to call it... but it was a massive, multi-level waterplayground! There were water cannons, dumping buckets, sprayers and every so often, a HUGE bucket at the very top would DUMP about 1000litres of water down on everyone below lol. There were also cool waterslides off each side that the kids loved.

Merry's favourite was Wiggle Bay, which was basically a shallow pool (deepest about .5m) with water sprayers and a few waterslides for the younger set. Frodo was quite put out when they wouldn't let him slide down because he was too tall!

Of this excellent and adventurous day, I have zero photos! When we got there, we discovered that the memory card was NOT in the camera.. I'd left it in the sd reader on my computer when I emptied it for the trip! And I was SO organized otherwise! lol We did take a few on our mobile phones, but haven't found the cord to upload them yet.

A great week, but I'm totally looking forward to a bit of a break! We have a friend up from Sydney at the end of the week so we'll probably have just over a week off. I'll try to pop by blogs then, and maybe blog hop on Monday, but otherwise it may be quiet here at Hobbit central.

m&m Maths!

2010-03-24T09:35:00.003+10:00

Not too long ago, I was reading blogs and saw this idea and it stuck in my head. Unfortunately the person who I borrowed the idea from, did not lol. I've seen it a few times though, so I don't think I'm stealing any intellectual property here ;) M&M math.. man when *I* was a kid I'd have loved to learn to make & read graphs in such a cool way!

Supplies required: 2 small bags of m&ms, plain or peanut is your choice though lol!, small bowls, crayons, and graph paper. I made my own graph paper using a website I stumbled across, then promptly forgot to bookmark!!. Oh you also need kids.. well, not REALLY, I mean I suppose you could do this yourself and eat the evidence... but as a home schooling project.. the kids are helpful ;) Here are Frodo & Sam hard at work (ok, not so much.. especially if you notice the lego creation which appears glued to sam's hand lol) I was hoping that Sam's orange m&m's didn't end up totalling more than 10 or he'd be out of room!

A bit better shot of the graph... well, an attempt at one anyway ;) After all m&m's were on the graph, the boys wrote the # of each colour down and then pulled out their crayons, put their m&m's back in the bowl, and coloured the graph in to save in their notebooks.

Here are two boys working VERY studiously on their math, because after all is said and done, SOMEBODY has to eat all those m&m's! They also had a short questionaire about the graph, basically which colour had the most, which the least, were there any 'ties' between colours. And most importantly... did you EAT any before you got them counted? LOL

For all the fun involved, it ticked off a math outcome for Frodo ;) And now the boys have a basic idea how to read a graph!

Merry was involved as well... I gave him a small bowl of m&m's and a muffin tin and TRIED to get him to help me sort them by colour. Total flop LOL. ALL he wanted to do was eat m&m's, of course! I attempted to get a pic of him, but they all came out blurry.. I guess he was moving pretty quickly. What, with the sugar high and all LMAO.

Home School Blog Hop #7

2010-03-23T19:42:00.004+10:00

Hi fellow Blog Hoppers :D This weeks topic for the hop, courtesy of Kylie over at Our Worldwide Classroom, is state regulations/laws, etc pertaining to home educating. What does YOUR state require?

What does MY state require? Well, for starters, I live in Queensland Australia... just so we all know where on the map we're looking! I'll be perfectly honest and say that I'm not *exactly* sure WHAT this state requires exactly. My first year as a home educating mum I elected to fly under the radar ;) and last year (as well as this year) I hooked up with a great distance education school that helps me make a LOT of awesome stuff available to my boys that would otherwise be difficult to access. But on the the state requirements that I DO know about...

I know that you have to send in an application to home educate, with a VERY detailed individual learning plan, listing all curriculum & plans, for each child you are intending to home school. I mean so detailed that I remember reading it going, seriously? Teachers don't have to do that for each kid in THEIR classes!?!?!

It was a little daunting, but I was also a newbie homeschooling mum, so I'm sure I could kick it's proverbial bum now that I have a few years experience under my belt ;) Then, after you've sent this small tome in, and possibly go back & forth a few times with your 'supervising' person to clarify and such, you get a letter in the mail authorizing you to home school for any time period up to 2 years. I've heard some cases where people were only licensed for 6mos due to the HEU (Home Education Unit, part of Education Qld) personnel having 'concerns'...but I think most people come away with a 2yr cert.

But since I tossed the ENTIRE pile of papers (ok, so I downloaded it from the web, so I *actually* sent it to the recycle bin... same end result though!) and skulked about the fringes for a year... I have no idea what happens after that lol. Another mum I met, who is registered this way, said something about writing the annual 10th month report? I'm guessing that's a narrative summary of what your kid/s have learned & covered over the year...but all I can do is guess ;)

Since that entire answer was almost totally a NON answer.. I'll share what *I* have to do to be all legal and square with the distance ed school we use. We choose our own curriculum, which was very important to me, and I write up ILP's (Individual Learning Plans) for each of the boys at the start of the year. This is really just a list of what resources, curriculum, external courses and such that we plan to use during the year. Easy enough!

Each term, or about every 10weeks, we have to email off assessments of our childrens learning for the term. We use the same forms that the state uses in schools, which are broken up into 8 Essential Learning areas (think math, science, technology etc etc) Each of these areas has a list of expected outcomes that covers a 2yr period. So grade 1 has it's own, then it's 2/3, 4/5 etc. They are incredibly basic, IMO. I do NOT teach TO the objectives/outcomes though! I find that a huge percentage of the outcomes are easily covered by every day 'stuff' and discussions/questions that ALL children ask. And the rest, it's easy to pick them out as we move through our chose curriculum and activities :) Honestly, I'm doing our assessments for term one... and I'm having to pace myself to have objectives left to cover later on!

Looking forward to seeing what everyone else has to get up to in order to enjoy the wonderful world of home educating!

Ack, week in review! lol

2010-03-20T21:17:00.004+10:00

Ok, so I am SERIOUSLY slack about doing my weekly wrap ups on Fridays.. but at least I AM doing them right? lol And this week it's ONLY Saturday night, not Sunday evening ;) One of these days, I'll post this on Friday night and the world might just blink out of existence! We had 1-1.5days off due to food poisoning ripping through the house, but the rest of the week was pretty productive.

Math: Both boys did a couple of pages of review on their lesson 18 in MUS. Frodo is working on column adding up to the 1000's place as well as rounding and estimating. He's having a bit of trouble with carrying 10's to the next place *immediately* and he forgets to. So I figured a bit of review was good :) He also spent a fair bit of time on Mathletics and did really well with it. Lots of money skills came up through his questions and he did GREAT with them!

Sam is working on adding 10's (as in 10+ 50=60.. with MUS that reads 1T + 5T= 6T or onety + five-ty = sixty) Sam and I also practiced his skip counting by 2's by singing the skip counting song from MUS and by counting coins. After he counted them, he identified them as well.

Merry has been watching 'Count Us In', which is an ABC program with muppets all about counting. He loves it and counts all day long after it's been on lol.

Language arts: Frodo did his Catching on to Comprehension all by himself this week, cause & effect was the theme this week. He also did Grammar Once a Week and Spelling matters as well. He's been doing a fair bit of our reading for history & science as well as reading small amounts of The Belgariad to Sam in the evenings. He did a couple of his cursive handwriting workbook pages independently as well. I intended to get around to having him write a new letter to his pen pal, as the last one got coffee spilled on it before it was mailed and DH forgot to inform me that he'd had to throw it out! (sorry Liz, I didn't know it never went out!) We'll get on that tomorrow afternoon or Monday after art!

Sam went through a couple of lessons on Reading Eggs and he and I worked on the letter sounds he's covered so far. But honestly, he's only half getting it. I'm thinking he's just not the cerebral type and might be a little later of a reader. Which is just fine with me because he's pretty on target everywhere else! He finished a couple of handwriting pages as well, and practiced on his whiteboard.

Science: This week we read up on Mars, which Sam has decided is his FAVOURITE planet. I'm quite surprised by that actually, as orange is his favourite colour so I thought the orangy yellow of Venus would win his heart lol. Frodo is still working on his tab book as well, each page has mini quizzes about the planet in question that he does as we get to it. Science was light this week as Tuesday is usually a science day and we were dying.

History: This week it was reading on the Aztecs and Olmecs, the ancient cultures in the Americas (both north & south). For some reason we did NOT get the map work or vocabulary definition done, so those will roll over to Tuesday or Wednesday coming up. At the moment we are just wrapping up the Ancients so that in a couple of weeks we can start Medieval history! Now THAT is something I can't wait to get into!

Art: The boys both had their art class on Monday and finished up their self portraits! They are really good, especially as their first art ever actually of a face :) They were quite proud of them and i think I may find some inexpensive frames and hang them up.

I'm not sure what the second part of Frodo's class was.. but I know Miss Liz had clay! So I'm sure they'll get into that this week. Sam started a printing project. It's another portrait, this time done in 3d with fabric samples and twine and buttons.. and well, just about anything else bumpy or lumpy! This week they will roller paint onto it and 'print' it in their art books. The goal is to do several prints in different colours ala Andy Warhol sorta!

This is Frodo's self portrait. With a bit of an abstract background going on there. He did quite good, his only issue was that his ears appear to be up a TAD high on his head hehehe. But a VERY good first go at a realistic face!

Sam's portrait is all dressed up in a police costume and looking awesome. In the pic up there, he's busy giving himself hair.

Health & PE: Gymnastics class on Monday. Both boys went very well in their classes, but you can tell the teacher is not happy to be teaching the classes :( This monday is the last class for the term, and in May when the kids start up again (long break unfortunately!) they will have a teacher with a lot more experience dealing with kids. ALso swim class on Sunday morning, Sam is ALMOST ready to move up to the same class as Frodo yet again! Frodo moves up and I think it motivates Sam to bust his butt to catch up! lol

Social stuff: Tons of time on the playground before & after Monday classes with their mates. Trip into the shops to hang out & have a bakery treat and visit the playground there. The boys also had their cousin over for a small birthday celebration and spent time introducing her to their pet rats hehehe.

ICT/Technology: Both boys used their various online membership websites (mathletics, rainforest maths, Reading eggs) They also played a bit of wii as Sam got a very cool new underwater diving game for his birthday. And a bit of Age of Mythology was played as well hehe.

I know there is more I'd usually write here, but it's been a busy day & my brain is frazzled. So I got nothin' people.

Happy birthday Sam :D

2010-03-20T13:19:00.005+10:00

*** Total epic fail, I wrote most of this post last night, but got called away and forgot to post it! So here it is, slightly amended, and slightly late!***

Pic: Sam with a great big cheesy grin as he cut his cake!

Yesterday was Mr. Sam's 6th birthday. It's hard to believe he's 6 already. He's done so much maturing over the last year and has really made the leap from little boy, to big kid. He started the day off with his card from me & dad, complete with accompanying Captain Jack Sparrow birthday badge hehehe and pancakes for breaky.

The boys decided to dive into schoolwork to make the day go faster, as they knew there were presents for Sam and Nan was coming over after dinner for cake! Well that failed, because by 10am they were done lol. Sam & Frodo hatched another plan, CLEAN! They announced they were going to clean a few rooms up, so that by the time they finished it would be lunch time, dad would be home, and presents could be opened! Fabulous, have at it boys! I'll just make a cuppa and locate some bon bons LOL.

Amazingly enough, their timing was spot on too. They tidied both kid bedrooms, the toys out of the family room and pottered around the lounge for a few minutes when they heard the door & saw Dad's very noticeable orange (high visibility) shirt through the sidelight at the front door. They went NUTS! Presents were opened like almost immediately. LEGO!!!! Atlantis theme lego at that... very cool under sea vehicle and a funky shark thingy. There's even King Neptune and divers.. WICKED.

I totally amazed myself, by putting together a particularly difficult looking kit. Faster than dh got the one he was assigned put together. Normally the kids would help, but the spaz levels were just too high for sitting down long enough to do that! So we adults cranked them out.

After dinner, Sams VERY favourite fried ride & yum cha, Nanny & grandpa rocked up with cousin L in tow :) Coffee was drunk, cake & ice cream consumed (NOM was the raspberry swirl cake I baked!) And MORE lego were opened lol. Nan got him an undersea diving game for the Wii, as well as a little lego kit from the Toy Story collection. It's a little Jeep with 4 'little green army soldiers' like out of the movie. They totally rock too. Sam & Frodo were stoked at being told they could stay up as late as they wanted... and they made it till 855pm before asking to go to bed LOL. Not that they really wanted to SLEEP or anything, but Nan also brought them very cool giant (like 3 inches tall) lego men.. when you squeeze their middle, their feet light up. Lego man torches.. is there much cooler in a 6yo's mind or what? Not likely!

There was much giggling and silliness for at least another hour after they went to bed but eventually, silence! Hubby & I watched a cheesy romance movie and just generally enjoyed a nice quiet couple of hours to wind the day up.

Next birthday up.. The Teen!! But his is the end of April, so I've got a wee bit of time!

A very Ordinary Day..

2010-03-17T20:19:00.004+10:00

And I mean ordinary in the Aussie sense of the word "somewhat inferior or below average; mediocre." ...so sayeth Dictionary.com anyway. Moving to Australia kinda gave that word a new meaning... back home ordinary simply meant plain, everyday, basic. But ordinary is SO much more discriptive here lol. Our past 36hrs have been Exceeding ORDINARY!

Just after I posted last (and reported we were having our favourite teryaki chicken burritos), those same burritos tried to kill us all. Seriously people. I am never eating chicken again! Frodo woke up at stupid am vomitting and continued to do so until the sun rose, at which point he slept for 4hours and reported he was MUCH better (and could he play age of mythology now since he was still a little sick? lol) DH... oh my.. poor dh. He was SO dehyrated that he looked pale.. dude has the olive skin of an aborigine descendant, so pale is scary on him! Me.. I was very ordinary (there's that word again) I managed to hit the shop for gatorade before the worst of it hit me, but it caught up with me. I spent no more than an hour upright twice during the day. I slept from 11-2pm.. and from 3-6pm..and really I never got up except briefly, until 7am. And needless to say there is NO way dh went to work, and NO way any schoolwork got done.

Our coping mechanism of choice? The Wii! It actually gets put in a bin and up on the top shelf of our closet during the week, else Frodo would think of NOTHING else. But we deemed this enough of a crisis that we hooked it up. The boys were exceptionally good, considering the fact that both of their parents laid around all day like they were dying (in our defence, we weren't sure that was not the case!)

So Tuesday was a total wash. Do-over. Mulligan. FAIL!!!!

Fast forward to Wednesday: The kids were quite obviously BORED, because this morning Frodo pulled out his Catching on to Comprehension without any suggestion from moi, and proceeded to do the whole exercise about cause & effect. Go Frodo!

I was, and still am, slightly dehydrated, thus not feeling 100% yet so I informed the boys it'd be a mellow day. Next thing I know they BOTH have their handwriting practice books and are going at those. *Who are you, and what have you done with my children??* LOL Then they brought their current science books, which were about Mars, to me so we could read them.. this is after I heard Frodo reading a book about the Earth to Sam down the hall even! Frodo did his Mars page in his planets tab book that he is creating. Since they were so amazingly motivated, I rewarded them with a bit of Reading eggs and mathletics time. They totally love these sites.

And then dad came home just in time for lunch. Frodo read, just to me as Sam was off building with lego, the UILE pages on the Americas ancient history. Aztecs, Mayans and Olmecs, oh my! lol And even a bit of outdoor time in there. Not such a good idea for me though, watering veggie pots = breaking out in a sweat!

For a 'mellow' day, it sure seems like a lot got done? How'd that happen?! DH & I are still not up for eating anything substantial, so it was soup & toasty cheese sandwiches tonight to the boys delight. I was THRILLED to see Merry dip his sandwich in tomato soup and EAT it. (you'd have to know this child to know how exciting it is. He doesn't eat ANYTHING except sandwiches, yogurt & spagetti.. and cookies @@. So ANYTHING new is good!)

Speaking of Merry, he'll be making a lot more appearances here since Friday is his LAST day at kindy! He won't be 'formally' homeschooling, since he's 3.5 :P But I will definitely have to organize activities for him to do while his brothers work, so that he feels included. EEK no pressure! (suggestions are good, if you've got cool ideas, hook me up in comments!)

This day hasn't been THAT ordinary I guess, the kids got a lot done... the majority of that without much effort out of ME it seems!

HomeSchool Blog Hop #6

2010-03-15T18:03:00.004+10:00

YAY! It's time for another blog hop, courtesy of Kylie over at Our Worldwide Classroom ! I'm loving these because I'm finding TONS of great new blogs to waste time reading... I mean.. to get awesome new ideas from! (gotta make it sound productive ;) and I DO get great ideas from so many blogs I read!)

This week we have a fun hop...10 Random questions!

1. What time is it right now? It's 6:05pm

2. What are you wearing? My favourite sorta hippy-ish sundress :)

3. What is your mood? Great! (hubby is going with us on a homeschool excursion next week, and we're stoked about it! Dreamworld here we come!)

4. What is one thing your children learned today? They had art & gymnastics classes today. I know that Sam learned about adding detail to pictures and is learning how to use textured items to make a picture (of a face) to make prints with!

5. What did you (or are having) for dinner? Teryaki chicken burritos with way more veggie stuff than actual chicken.. at least for me ;)

6. What's one book you are currently reading? The Clueless Vegetarian and One Magic Square (Aussie gardening book, it's terrific)

7. What behaviour (in people) is the most common but also the rudest? Lying... it just sucks.

8. What can you see out of your nearest window right now? Our little swimming pool, whose days are just about numbered for this year.

9. What are you currently praying for? I'm not exactly a 'pray-er' but I'm really really hoping to be able to get my 2nd son down here this year :)

10. What is your favourite hot beverage? Well, duh.. COFFEE!!!!!!!

Look forward to reading everyone else's random stuff!

Some people just rock

2010-03-13T21:59:00.002+10:00

Yes, I know I just posted about 5 minutes ago... but today a person I know did something so awesome that I thought it just DESERVED it's own post. Every year the Leukemia foundation of Australia does what they call 'The Worlds Greatest Shave' and this year the owner of my very fave coffee shop was participating. For probably the last month or six weeks, every time I went in for my weekly coffee, I would drop any gold coins in my wallet in her donations box. (usually about 4bucks a week, not a fortune, but hey it adds up!)

At the start of the fundraising the plan was for Jacqui to colour her hair, but IF she got 5k in donations/sponsors, she would make the move and SHAVE! Well, Thursday I went in for my regular coffee sans children and one of my other favourite barista's asked if I was coming on Saturday? To what, I inquired? Jacqui had made the decision, despite hitting only 3k in donations, to shave her hair off. WOW. Hell yeah, I'll be there for moral support!

So today I left the hubby home with the kids, and I went down to the coffee shop. Jacqui just happened to serve me at the register and I asked if she was nervous.. She laughed and asked if she looked scared? Absolutely petrified I replied lol. I told her it's only hair, it will grow back. She was SO nervous and was near tears a few times during the lead up to, and during the actual clippering. I told her how when my mom's hair started falling out from chemo, she finally shaved it off to take control of the situation in some small way. And here she was shaving hers off to raise money to help people who have a disease that may never affect her at all.

After the shave, she was beaming and laughing. We aren't like best buds or anything, but afterwards she grabbed my hand and thanked me for being there and sharing my story (well, moms story). No, thank YOU Jacqui. For being just awesome.

I am.. or will be, the HERO!

2010-03-13T21:32:00.003+10:00

I'm sure I mentioned my Sam being VERY upset that his turn in the maths workshop ended before he got the opportunity to have a go with a certain item that he had become enamoured with. He was really REALLY sad. And I felt really bad, because he had waited paitently for the workshop organizer to get to him to answer his questions on other games.. and a couple of times it took SEVERAL minutes, which really ate into his fun time!

I hate that he missed out on something that he wanted to do, merely because he had to wait around on a grown up who was actually there *to* help him. (mild grumble in that she spent a lot of time showing games to other adults that IMO should have been spent helping the children, or at least showing the adults so THEY could help the children ya know?) So, I commenced to searching the web for this particular item. Not knowing the NAME of said thing really didn't help lol. But it's amazing what typing ' magnetic geometric construction toy' can come up with! Almost immediately I found it! Then I set about finding it HERE in Australia.. again, located it straight away.

Google, I love you.

THIS is the object of Sam's affections ...

And I am going to buy it for him. His birthday is this coming week, and he will be ecstatic that mum would not have him miss out because some lady was too busy to help him. Thus making me the hero!

It can be found here . (and various places on the web in the US, as well as evilbay, of course!)

I think... that I may just have to slip one of these onto the order as well. They have challenge cards that you can work through to build some pretty incredible things! Frodo had a ball with those yesterday, so they'll be a winner around here as well.

I'm a tad concerned that my house may start to look like an educational store soon LOL.

Our week 8-12 Match 2010 (long)

2010-03-12T21:18:00.008+10:00

***Apologizing in advance for the horrid formatting on this post! It did not look like this in the post preview so I have no idea what version of computer crack blogger is into tonight. I also apologize that I am just too darn tired to be bothered trying to fix it :( And I simply promise to try not to do it again! lol

FINALLY, back to normal! We've sorta slipped back into our groove this week, after our run of illness. It's nice to have a little bit of routine back in the house!

Monday was our weekly day out with our local homeschool group for art & gymnastics (for some reason I have no pics of those this week) The boys started work on their culminating project of Self Portraits! They did really well for not being there for 2 weeks of how to do faces. I can't say that their portraits look much like THEM... but they DO look like people lol. They are really quite cool. I'll post pics to share after they complete them. Gymnastics went well, the instructor has sitting duck syndrome I think, there were... issues... and the classes for our group will be done by a different coach next term. I think in the end it's an issue of maturity and the ability to work with groups of children.. that's something you either have or you don't. The boys had a great time hanging out on the playground despite it being a tad dreary!

We also had a couple of days of NICE weather, so there was a bit of THIS!!! The boys were stoked to get outside. That's Merry stomping along side his stepping stones while announcing what colour each one is lol.. and Sam is scoping out the cucumber plant to see if there are any snacks in the making there (not today). Merry has been getting into doing a few little activities while brothers do school... check out his 'man' that he made with the tap a shape! he had no help at all and did a pretty decent job of it. He was none to happy about having a photo taken though lol.

Then we filled in the middle of our week with typical schoolwork..

Frodo's week: Math U see lesson 18 (estimating & adding into the thousands .. with regrouping), Grammar once a week (commas and to, too, two!) which he zipped through. In reading comprehension he learned about predicting outcomes and did really well with that lesson. He really enjoys the book I picked out for that. He reads exceptionally well, but I think has a bit of an issue with comprehension so we're concentrating on it to help him ENJOY what he reads more! He did a fun spelling exercise as well, all the words were easy for him but he got a lot out of the enrichment part for sure. He poked around on Mathletics as well, always a hit.

Sam's week: He also did MUS lesson 18 (adding 10's) and some skip counting by 2's practice with the cd of songs :D. He did a few pages of his handwriting practice book... and his q's were awesome if he did say so himself lol. Reading eggs was done a few times, and enjoyed. A bonus is that the lessons dont' SEEM so long (even if they actually are) because they are broken up into different sections.

Together we read a book about the Earth! for science.. we're heading for Mars next week. We were supposed to get there today, but with the sickies last week our scheduled got bumped ahead. This week we had our extra curricular day, so all other Friday activities were skipped! So we stopped at Earth for now. In history we did the mapwork for Ancient Africa and started on the Aztecs & ancient America.

Today, Friday, was our fortnightly extra curricular day with our distance ed group. It was a great day for it, although mother nature kept trying to blow my gardening magazine out of my hand lol. The kids had a 'Hands on Maths' Workshop in the morning, and OH my what a hit that was! Sam was VERY upset when their hour was up because he was enjoying the math games so much that he wasnt' ready to be done! It's been alleged that he tried to slip back in for another go, but he vehemently denied it and got very upset that someone suggested he didn't do what he was supposed to! Not that we'd have been upset at all... who can get angry at a kid that WANTS to do more math!!!! hehehe They also had dance & played outdoor group games. Oh, and snacked... A LOT! I swear they want to create the impression that I am not feeding them except on those days ;)

In no particular order, here are pics of the boys fave stuff from the maths workshop today!

The big news this week, is that I'm done with kindy. Merry has attended twice a week for about a year now (although he missed a LOT due to my bad health last year!), mainly to make my life a little easier as the bigger two needed a lot of help 'getting' the group activities thing when we were out. But it's become very apparent that he's not liking it as much as he was at the start.. he throws almighty fits when dropped off and has now started not eating much at all when there. (ALL of this is new stuff, so please don't think I'd have him there for a year that upset!)

SO starting the first of April, he'll be home pre-schooling hehe. The group we do our art & gymnastics with is adding activities for the little ones and the distance ed group has a story hour at the library (our days are held at the same park as the library) for the little ones as well! So hopefully the activities will be enough fun that he'll not feel left out. I hope he'll be happier to go along (and not throw a tantrum) if he has his own 'school' So stay tuned for updates on that!

And with that, this very tired mama is signing off... I hear my pillow calling me.

The Solar System

2010-03-09T20:57:00.004+10:00

I think I mentioned previously that I created my own science set up for the boys this year. We do science together, so I basically beef up activities for Frodo's lvl or lighten them a tad for Sam. Currently we're doing the Solar System, and as boys usually do, they're loving it! We usually do science twice a week, unless we have a LOT on in a week, so this unit will last us at least the rest of this term! (term ends Easter time I believe?)

We use Magic School Bus books as the initial jumping off point because they're such fun, and pack a lot of info into one book. So far we have read about the Sun, Mercury & Venus, at the rate of about 2 topics/planets per week. Today was Earths big day :) Since the Earth & Moon get their own ENTIRE term, today was just a quick fly by covering the same info as we have for the other planets. The boys & I get comfy in our little reading corner in the family room and they really enjoy all the satellite photography in the books, and Frodo does most of the reading for us.

I thought I would share the framework of my little 'curriculum' on here, as I've had a few people enquire if I was going to make it available (either free or for pay, really flattering!) At this point it's just a framework, I'm always adding in new resources that I run across. For some things I simply have the url and every weekend I check for things that will fit in nicely during the week, and the boys do many of the web based games/activities during 'non school' time whenever!

Without further adieu... Here it is :D Caz's Magic School Bus Science of the Solar system!!!!

(I hate to have to say this, but I guess I need to these days. This is the property & creation of Caz Milton. Feel free to copy it for your own personal use, but if you'd like to share a link to it, please share the link to THIS post instead of posting this on your own site. I am offering it here to SHARE it, not for it to be 'stolen'. This isn't anything award winning, but I put a fair bit of time into it, and still do daily almost to improve it. So in short, it's not nice to take credit for other people's work, please don't do it!)

*STarter book: The Magic School Bus Lost in the Solar System
Guide to using ‘Lost in the solar sytem’ in the classroom (if I can find it!)

Field trips/projects
*Enchanted Learning solar system book
*Planetarium visit for *Passport to the Universe
*Saturday night ‘Live’
*create a solar system mobile/model
*web resources for photos of planets, the sun, nebulas, stars etc (nasa.com)

*book 11 planets: a new view of the solar system Aguilar, David A (ISBN 9781426302367)
Beyond planet earth [interactive multimedia] from library

***Starting with the Sun/ Sol go through each planet using the solar system book.
-What is the planets name sake?
- What is the length of their day & year?
- How much would you weigh and how old would you be there?
*Blast off! :Mercury by Orme, Helen ISBN 9781846960499
*blast off!: Venus Orme, Helen I SBN 9781846960482
*Eyewitness Mars Murray, stuart ISBN 1405312653
*Lets explore Mars Orme, Helen ISBN 9780836881264
*blast off!: Jupiter Orme, Helen ISBN 1846960568
*blast off!: Saturn Orme, Helen ISBN 1846960533
* Uranus and Neptune and the dwarf planets Mist, Rosalind ( ISBN 9781845389659)
*Gas giants Knapp, Brian ISBN 1862143676
* Briefly discuss the asteroid belt and comets.

* Lesson Pathways *** excellent resource, free, lots of net based games & activities to supplement with! I’ll be picking from these as we go, so feel free to choose any that look cool.

*solar system ‘cloze’ sheet from EnchantedLearning
*solar system ‘quiz’

Magic school bus sees stars
Magic Treehouse: Midnight on the Moon
*MTH guide for space

It doesn't LOOK like a lot, but I'm amazed at how many extension activites I find here & there. We're on week 3 and only just now hitting Earth. Thursday it's on to Mars & the Asteroid belt.. after that it's on to the Gas Giants and Planet Fart (LOL thanks for that Wendy & Gavin.. I laughed SO hard! Only a mom of boys would understand I think ;)

I hope you enjoyed it!

Homeschool blog hop #5

2010-03-08T16:06:00.006+10:00

This weeks theme on the Homeschool Blog hop, is Style... homeschooling style of course ;) (Yes, I realize I haven't done all 5 homeschool blog hops, but I thought I'd number it for continutity sake with the rest of the blog hoppers.)

I have no idea what I'd call my/our homeschooling style honestly! I try to be very relaxed, and open to natural learning opportunities when they present themselves. I like to use hands on things that are engaging, as well as FUN for the boys to learn with.

We use classical STYLE history (the 4year chronological cycle that repeats) and are just going to start our Medieval period year, but we are not classical homeschoolers. That just seems like far too much work for me! Although I like the *idea* of it.

I tested out Waldorf in the beginning.. and while I like the gentleness of it, the philosphy and such behind it is *just* a little too unusual for me I guess. But we do still keep a nature table and decorate it seasonally :)

Currently we use a hodgepodge of stuff... Math u see, History Odyssey are both pretty hands on. Then we have workbooky stuff for grammar and such. We do outsourced classes for art and gymnastics as well as some outsourced LOTE (Japanese) , dance & music twice a month. Some stuff is done via web based programs as well. So I really do think I qualify as pretty damned eclectic lol.

However, a blog I read, and the one that hosts this hop even lol, has a fair few links to Montessori information. I find myself thinking that some Monti materials added into our homeschool would be a good thing! I like the idea that I can make/get materials that are tied to things we are studying, and can make them available so the kids can choose to pull them out to work with whenever they want. So I'll be looking into adding a few bits here & there, as soon as I score a laminator and paper cutter :)

So, while I'm not EXACTLY sure what my style is, I can tell you very much what it is not. I do not what my kids to feel like they are in school... just at home. We're too non traditional in so many ways, that it would feel weird for us! (ok, for ME maybe. I think it would just feel to 'stiff' for the boys).

So, in a nutshell.. We're classical in our history, traditional in our grammar type stuff, kinda unit studyish in science & social studies and looking to add some Montessori influence here & there in all areas of study to give the kids more self direction.

Look forward to seeing everyone else's posts!

Weekly wrap!

2010-03-07T21:06:00.004+10:00

This will be short & sweet, because due to everyone being sick (and mum utterly sleep deprived) for the entire last week, sweet bugger all got done!

Math... I think both boys got one page of a Math U see lesson done, and they checked out our new subscription to Mathletics and Rainforest maths . Frodo is up to estimating and adding in the thousands and Sam just did adding doubles, 4+4, 5+5 =)

Language.. Our subscriptions to Reading Eggs also came through, so the boys both had a go at this. Even though it said they had levels for up to grade 3/4, I'm thinking it's a bit easy for Frodo. He enjoys the games though ;) Sam really likes it, I'm thinking he enjoys it more than Headsprout even, so we may let it take over from that. Frodo did the high temp & headache thing so he wasn't really up for a good deal of reading so we gave it a miss.

Sose.. we watched a documentary dvd called 'The Kimberly: Land of the Wandjina' as a family, I think dh & I enjoyed it more than the kids lol, but they stuck it out with us.

History.. none this week.

Science.. We did read a couple of our solar system books during the week, and the boys are in love with one of the Usborne books (it has lift up flaps, what's not to love?). They spent a bit of time on the couch flipping through it with Frodo reading the captions to Sam & Merry.

ICT.. the boys spent a bit of time on the web, when they were feeling better (thanks to nurofen for sure), navigating web sites, playing games and doing other activities.

There was also a fair bit of lego building, with a lot of intricate designs that were quite impressive. And mum baked yummy things, but booted the sickies out of the kitchen for health & hygiene reasons! Maybe next week boys ;)

Everyone SEEMS much much better, although Frodo still had a headache earlier today, he hasn't complained any this evening! So I have high hopes that we will make it to our Monday art & gymnastics classes tomorrow, which would be nice since we had to miss 2 weeks now.

This coming week, we'll be back to it. I'm not going to try to 'catch up'.. we're just going to move last weeks' plan ahead a week and call it good. I don't think trying to do twice as much in a week will do any of the kids any good, and honestly, being able to take time without pressure when we're sick is a huge bonus of homeschooling!

It's the simple things!

2010-03-06T16:17:00.003+10:00

I really do think it's the simple things in life that make me happiest :) Today hubby & I were cleaning, since not much of THAT has been done while everyone has been sick (and we've been sleep deprived!). There are a few places that NEVER seem to be tidy.. one of those is our bedroom lol (but no, I did not tackle it today), another is the kitchen bench where the phone & water filter live. I have high hopes of getting a couple of bar stools for the family room side of the counter, but the MESS that lived there would have made them pointless. I'm kicking myself for not taking a before picture, but oh well. There was a fruit bowl there, without fruit... but it DID hold massive piles of CRAP! In it were: a zillion tiny letters that went to a business stamper, a WAD of christmas ornament hooks (don't EVEN ask how), and those were tangled up amongst an old mobile phone usb cord and one of those silly vertical blind chains! Add to that many pens, a few crayons, a random spare key and more absurd little bits of paper than I cared to count.. and yeah. It was a mess.

THIS is what it looks like now! The area on the right side of the counter was the offending corner. Now there is nothing there but a phone :D Of course, one of the boys came along just a second before I took the pic and deposited his water cup on the bench *scowl* I left the offending bowl there, but rest assured it will be finding a new home so that it can't play black hole again, and suck in any surrounding items!

If you enlarge that pic, you'll see my very favourite Fat Cat cookie jar... He's got a tiny crack around the rim, so he doesn't get used. But he DOES get loved. I have to smile every time I look up at him hehehe. Also there are the awesomely cool medieval style wine goblets mum gave us for our anniversary.. love them! I feel like I ought to slip into one of my renaissance costumes when I bring them out ;) I think they definitely call for something 'wenchly', don't you?

This is another simple thing. When you have 3 sickish boys, you will do almost anything to stop the whinging and make them forget about being sick... even for a little while! Nick Jr. to the rescue!!! As you can see it had everyone rivetted, 'cept Sam, who had to cheesy grin for me. Oh.. and all that crap you can see on my desk in front of the boys? THAT got decluttered today too. Yeah, what can I say, I'm on a roll!

The most exciting simple thing though, at least for today, was not so simple lol. I have tried numerous times to add a related posts function to this blog but it never worked. I've been through numerous tutorials on how to do it and could never figure out what went wrong. Well, after attacking the kitchen AND my desk, I decided to reward myself with a little time wasted on the web. I stumbled across another way to add related posts and grudgingly tried it.. and it worked!!! Go Me! lol I thought it would be neat to have so that some of my new blogosphere friends can, if they have time to blow ;), can read other posts and get to know me and my Hobbits a little better.

So please, have a wander around! With that.. I do believe I'll crank out a cuppa and go reading some of my favourite blogs myself.

Autumn... Bring It On!

2010-03-04T22:59:00.005+10:00

I'll let you in on a secret, I love Autumn! Ok, so it's not really much of a secret lol. It's rather odd that I am such a fan of the dark/cool times of the year, and yet I end up here in Queensland... land of endless summer. Oh I love the things that summer brings.. swims in the pool, iced tea, beautiful blue skies that can darken to thunderstorms almost as fast as you can blink. But about one month of all that is enough for me. Here in Queensland, that means I make it to about November... not even INTO the 'official' summer season, which begins on December 1 in Australia. By the time Summer Solstice comes around, if it weren't for the silly season and all the wonderful family gatherings, I'd be well and truly DONE with old Sol for the year!

Autumn officially began on March 1. I've been yearning for it since the New Year rolled in though. I'm ready to take down the pool for the year, and wear jumpers and jeans. I'm ready to drink coffee on the veranda in the evenings with my hunny (if we try to do that now we are confronted with the late afternoon sun glaring in our faces). I'm ready to rug up on the couch with the kids and read stories, or for them to pile into my bed in the morning for giggles without being so hot we can't stand the idea.

I'm ready for the REAL veggie gardening to begin (such as mine is, in pots ;) I'm ready for all those lovely things that autumn and winter bring here in Queensland. I'm ready for soup in the crock pot weather, and baking without having to turn the air conditioner on! I'm oh so very ready to be able to go to the park with the kids... and stay all day without wilting in the heat (ok, we'll still have to slip, slop slap though!)

This is what Autumn is like here in Oz. The grass is greener, the trees may get a tinge of colour... depending on where you live. Most stay green, as many are Eucalypts and thus evergreen. But even here in the subtropics... there's something about the air that changes. That crispness somehow makes it's way even here, where the rest of the year the air feels heavy and soggy. Autumn has always spoken to my soul in a way that the rest of the seasons don't touch. And for the last 10 years that I've lived here, I've missed it so much. But I suppose I just hadn't looked hard enough.

***btw, This is what happens while a sleep deprived mama waits for the sick little dude that fell asleep in late arvo decide to go to bed. I noticed a chill in the air and just followed it....

Why thank you universe!

2010-03-04T09:50:00.003+10:00

Don't you just love it when things seem to be a little crappy, and then you get a sudden burst of good news? I do! That's me today... I've been feeling rather sorry for myself this week. I'm exhausted, and tired of dealing with sickness. My house is a bit of a mess, I have laundry coming out my ears (both dirty and clean as it takes a zillion years to cycle it through the dryer. Just a few clear days is all I need!!!), we're relatively broke, oh and did I mention that I'm TIRED??? lol

Well sometimes the universe just takes pity on us in some small way, or not so small even. This morning my lovely DH, who spent half the night with a cranky, unsettled 3yo laying on his chest, called from work to let me know that the boss pulled him aside for a chat. He thought he was about to get grumbled about for who knows what, but instead he was told he'd have a letter in his mail slot detailing a nice tidy raise PLUS a 35$ per week 'bonus' because he is one of the drivers in the top 20% productivity wise. All total that's a nice tidy 140bucks a fortnight!

Can I get a great big WOOT!!!!!!!!

And starting next payday it will show up. Let me tell you, the budget is planned out for the next 4months and it's so tight it squeeks.. so this is a very welcome bit of news! *ponders* Which also means I can squeek the toner cartridge for the laser printer AND the laminator we need to make some homeschool material into the budget next fortnight! *SQUEEE~!!* lol

Ok.. I'm hiding in bed under my blankets

2010-03-03T11:29:00.002+10:00

And I'm just not coming out until everything that is harassing me goes AWAY!!!!!!!! Sam managed a lot better with his cough last night, but Merry was up and in our bed rockin a nasty temp again at midnight. He blathers on and on when he's like that.. and he couldn't lay still to save his life (or my nights' sleep for that matter) In a game of musical beds, dh retreated to Merrys' bed again leaving me to battle it out with squirmy butt.

This morning it's raining it's arse off again.. no signs of stopping. I had to rig up a bodgy lint filter replacement for the clothes dryer (we never use it except in dire circumstances... like weeks of rain) so I'm pleased to say when I pull the car out of the garage today, it will not snow little fluff balls of lint as I drive away LOL. And yes, it's a SAFE bodgy substitute lint filter.. never fear ;)

At 1245 the boys and I are off to the docs. I think 3 days & nights of a fever that won't stay down is quite enough. And Sam is supposed to have a follow up anyway, so they are sharing an appt. Dr. Kenny is pretty good about that (odd, but down here doctors generally prefer to be called Dr. First name ... especially in GP offices. I'd imagine your avg neurosurgeon might warrant a Dr. HoityToityLastName)

School got cancelled today, not by me, I was up and ready to go... when I checked my email. I'll interrupt here for a little backstory, as I thought I had posted about it on my blog... but apparently it was my FORMER blog. Which no longer exists. Long story relatively short ;) In 2007-8 we had an electricity provider than proved to be utterly incompetant. I spent months calling them fortnightly to try to get a bill, and finally had to bring in the Industry Ombudsman to get them to do their job & bill me (how eff'd is that??). It took NINE months. So not surprisingly, the bill was $1297!!! I set up payment plan, told them to stuff it and changed providers. Last March I gleefully paid the last installment and considered the bill done with.

Well the company went into recievership (bankruptcy basically) and I got a call recently about an alleged 183 bucks owed. I said no worries, I have documentation of every payment I made totalling up to 1297bucks, which I sent him by email. TODAY, I get an email stating the last 3payments were never credited to our acct, so would I still be making those payments? UM HELLO WTF?!?!

*DEEP cleansing breath* So I hit internet banking, cut & pasted the lines from my statement showing the bpay reciept #s (bless you bpay, because *I* lost our paperwork in the move!) and informed him that here was proof that the money left my acct, and went to their acct. That I did my job, it's just too bad for Jack Green that THEY did not do theirs! (I closed with, 'In short, no the payments will not be made *again*, as they have already been made and I have proof of this' ... just for a little snark). Then rang dh who rang the dude and gave him the run down of the situ, then rang the Ombudsman who can't do much, and am sitting here considering ringing legal aid to find out what my rights are! I know it doesn't sound like a big deal... but I stressed over this for 9months trying to GET the bill, then paid it off dutifully, and am getting harassed a year later over it. The amount of stress at the time was immense, and now it's coming back all over again.

So yeah, school is out for the day due to mum having her guts completely tied in knots *sigh* and doctors appts. The boys DID, however, find a sweet lego airport set in a sales ad. Upon my telling them that no, we would not be rushing out to buy it, they pondered for a minute... then ran off saying they could build one, but have to design it first! So they sat at the table with paper & crayons and sketched out an airplane (complete with individual blocks in a grid) and then proceeded to build something that looked VERY much like their design. Now they are wii bowling while mum pulls herself together. This could take a while....@@

SERIOUSLY!?!?!?

2010-03-01T10:44:00.003+10:00

I already have Sam sick and not sleeping well, due to coughing his toenails up. But was it really necessary for Merry to spike a ridiculous fever at 2am last night, just because I was already half awake?!?!?! Even the bottoms of the poor kids FEET were burning up. We did manage to dose him up and he went right back to sleep (something about being in dad's spot on the bed has a sedative effect lol) but poor Strider had to go down to Merry's bed, because bub was just all OVER him in the night. As he made what he thought was his escape, I told him I'd handle THIS sicky, and he could handle the other one ;)

I'll pause here a second, and make note of just how LUCKY I am when it comes to my DH. This is the dude who had to get up at 415am to leave for work, yet he still got up to help me get nurofen into the feverish one. THen he was up twice with the coughing one giving him water and making sure he could breathe etc.

I think it must be the weather.. it's incredibly dreary here, and probably will be most of the week. We're expecting some 200+mm of rain in the next 2 days as well. That, combined with the sickies, ensures that we're looking at week #2 of not leaving the house.

Sam is off the hook for any 'required' schoolwork until his cough is better, especially his Headsprout as it requires talking which is absurd when you can't stop coughing. He will probably sit in while I read a bit of the Pawn of Prophecy to Frodo though, because he loves it ;)

Frodo will do his usual work this week though, and Sam is free to join in if he's up to it. We're up to Earth later this week, in our solar system study and we'll do a quick once over as we've done with the other planets... and then AFTER we're done with the rest of the solar system we'll do our indepth study of Earth. It's almost a unit within a unit, but it didn't feel right to pause the solar system to go through the entire Earth unit, ya know? Plus, I guess I like to think our planet is special enough to get it's own term of study ;)

I shall wrap this up, as I have been interrupted about 20 times to 'reacha cuddle' by Merry, and at least that many by the non sick, sickie running after his brother up & down the hall lol. I think they require something organized to do before they come undone!

Our (belated) Week of Learning!

2010-02-28T22:55:00.004+10:00

I rather like this week of learning thing, because even though I may have posted about something during the week... it's rather nice to see it all lumped together. It shows how much we REALLY do, even when we don't seem to be doing much at all.

This has been a slightly wonky week, with Sam having the horrible coughing illness, but we managed to get a bit done. (more on that cough later) Both boys went through a lesson of their respective levels of Math U See, they both were on lesson 17 this week. I think Sam & I may work on skip counting by 2's for a little longer though, he still has to work it out each time. Merry got in on the '25s', as he calls numbers/math, by stamping and stacking MUS blocks :)

Sam did a couple of pages of his handwriting workbook, he rather enjoys it, but his FAVE way to practice is still on his whiteboard. I figure it saves a few trees as well ;) He also plowed through a couple of episodes of Headsprout and after his next lesson gets a new book, always exciting!

He was working on A's and D's this week, and not doing too bad at all... he is pointing out his personal best A there with a big cheeky grin. That was on Monday...as the week has gone on, he has gotten a bit paler and has bags under his eyes now. I'm sure I do as well, as when he wakes up panicing because he can't catch a breath from coughing... so do I! And you can bet it takes a LOT longer for me to relax and go back to sleep than it does him!!

History wise, we read a bit about ancient Africa and checked out the Usborne internet links for those pages of our book. The boys always like those. They also played some Age of Mythology .. ok, so they were the Egyptians, close enough ;)

In science, we've been learning about the solar system. So far we've learned a bit about the Sun, Mercury & Venus. The kids are finding it very interesting and have been poring over a couple of the books we got from the library for ages. Frodo is making a solar system 'tab book' from Enchanted Learning as we go along. Just today I found a free lapbook for the solar system & space here. The site itself contains a bit of religious content (just an fyi), but the space lapbook is just awesome. It does NOT however, come with the answers ;). However it IS based on the Magic School Bus books, which is what we are using as a jumping point for our science. So all the answers will be easily found in the books I'd guess. Now just must get a toner cartridge for this uselessly empty printer of mine!

Anway, the kids are loving the info on the planets. And I often catch myself thinking how much it's changed since I was a kid learning about the solar system (we now have 11 planets, counting the dwarf planets!) There's also a bit of Mythology/ancient religions thrown in there because we are learning about the God/desses that the planets are named for and WHY each planet earned the name it has. (Venus scored that title because it was, and still is, thought to be the brightest most beautiful object in the heavens.)

Frodo has gone through another week of language arts using Grammar once a week, Catching on to comprehension and Spelling Matters. So far it all seems to be review for him though. And we were pretty darn slack with our First Language Lessons last year even lol. He has to really work at some parts of the Comprehension, not because he doesn't comprehend what he read... but because when they ask what do YOU think (or something that requires his own, personal answer) he doesn't quite know what to do! He is getting a bit better though.

Sam was pretty bummed that he didn't get to go to swimming lessons today, but he's just not well (I've had to break twice during writing this to tend to him while he coughed his poor little guts up) So we played some games on this site to lessen the blow a bit ;) Nothing like a bit of coveted computer time without big brother showing you up lol. There was actually a bit of learning stuck in there, completely by accident, honest. He stumbled on a game about internet safety and did very well until I came along and messed it up!

We are lucky enough to have a medical clinic that has after hours coverage, so I called this morning and we had a doctor here by 3pm. Yep, a doctor came to our house. On Sunday. AND apologized for taking so long! *waits for those who have fainted to right themselves* She had a good look & listen to Sams' chest, down his throat etc, and deemed that he does NOT have Pertussis (apparently crackles & wheezes in the chest are not typical with that.. and he does have those) but that it's rather just an annoying chest infection. WOOT, we'll take a chest infection over a major communicable disease anyday thank you! So, tomorrow morning I have to drag the boys out to take Merry to kindy and then we hit the chemist to pick up drugs.

These cutie pies miss Sam something shocking. Rats are very susseptible to respiratory illnesses, so he's had to keep his distance this week! That's Itty (in profile) and Bitty (facing camera.. and really wondering if it was edible I'm sure). They pine for him when he walks past the cage, it's really kinda sad! So the mummy human makes up for it by giving them bits of apple. They won't like me so much soon, because someone is smelling a bit on the nose, and I see a bath in their immediate future lol.

I'm cancelling today

2010-02-26T12:18:00.003+10:00

Due to total lack of interest. Mine that is..

I feel just horrid! I appear to have what a friend has dubbed the 'man flu'. In essence I have a cold, a really nasty one. I ache, my head is a great big cotton ball. My nose is plugged and I can't breath, my ears are plugged & I can't hear. And it sucks.

And Sam... he now has a low grade temp and was up periodically all night with horrible coughing fits. We're talking half awake, gasping for air in a panic coughing fits. So yeah, after the first two of those there really wasn't much sleep to be had for me because I was worried that he'd have another and freak out if I wasn't there pretty quickly. I'm rather concerned, since at the moment there is quite a rash of Whooping cough cases locally, and it's very likely that we were exposed at a function we were at a a few weeks ago. *insert scowl* A family that was also there came down with a case of it about 10days ago. The exposure would have been Jan 23...and Sam's cough started last Sunday.. perfect timing. Might ring the doc for a house call tomorrow so we don't share it with the other patrons at the clinic, just to check it out.

Finally about 3am he seemed to settle down for the night.. and which point Merry appeared wanting in our bed *sigh* Of course, when he is in a bed nobody is allowed to have ANY sheet or blanket covering their body. Period. So this arrangement lasted half an hour before I told dh to redposit him into his own bed for my sanity sake. At least if I was going to be not sleeping, I wanted to do it in peace & quiet dammit. And with my sheet!

I had plans of math, spelling for Frodo, matching Headsprout cards with Sam, a bit of history reading about Ancient Africa and maybe wandering on to the Aztecs, and then a book on Earth! as part of our solar system unit.

But what is ACTUALLY going to happen, is sweet stuff all. Merry went off to kindy remarkably well, but I feel rather like I got hit by a bus, so the older two have spent their morning playing "chess" (in quotes because they have no earthly idea what they are doing lol, and neither do I so I can't show them, but they are having fun none the less :), building with legos, raiding the fruit stash fairly regularly all morning and just generally having a good morning.

So all is not lost.

Home school Hop(ping!)

2010-02-22T19:33:00.003+10:00

Kylie, over at Our Worlwide Classroom, has started a Home school blog hop and I thought I'd make an attempt to join in ;) (Not making any promises that I'll stay joined in.. cause I'm fairly hopeless about these things lol)

This weeks' "theme" is Why? It's interesting to hear how and why different families came to this amazing adventure called Home schooling and this is a great way to share that!

In early 2007 a new, flash primary school opened in the neighborhood we lived in... just in time for Frodo to start prep! I wasn't REALLY all that excited about it, but figured what the hell.. it's what you do. It's what everybody does, it's what is *expected*... it's what is "NORMAL". So we dutifully enrolled him and he loved it. I, on the other hand, was stressed to no end. I woke at a silly hour in order to get everyone ready and his lunch made. Then we walked the 1.5km to school, up and down hills, with me pushing the monster double jogger pram. We left home at 8am..and arrived *back* home at 9.30am, give or take. Then at 2pm we made the same walk all over again. (we were a one car family at the time). It was usually 4pm when we made it home, as we'd have to have a little stop at the park as small legs (and not so small ones!) got tired on that rather near mountainous walk.

It was tough, and I felt like our days were completely eaten up by this 'school' business. We did have a few hours between the walks, during which the little guys napped and I cleaned house etc. But we soldiered on, because it's just what you do. I never considered any other option, even though I *had* heard of home schooling before. Then the sicknesses began, merely a week or two into the school year even. He was enrolled for about 6months total, and missed some 30days of school due to constant illness. I didn't have to worry that he'd fall behind, since he was reading independently before he ever started school. But I did worry about the toll all of this illness was having on him, as well as us as a family. After the teacher called one day, and I had to call DH to drive home so I could pick up a sick kid (can't make the poor thing walk over a km home like that obviously) I said ENOUGH.

Dh wasn't totally on board with hs'ing, but he figured it would be ok for the rest of prep... since Frodo wasn't really learning anything new ;) So, with his teachers support, we pulled him. The summer after that we made the choice that we'd continue for first grade as well.

At the end of THAT year, it became obvious to me that my reasons for doing this had shifted greatly! The mere idea of giving up the freedom we enjoyed was awful! We enjoyed being able to choose the things that he learned about .. and when he'd learn about them. Frodo also has impulsive and hyper behavior, as well as a possible auditory processing disorder.. so the idea of putting him in a classroom where he might be labelled a problem child? No, I don't think so.

The final straw came just recently. I was actually contemplating private school for the boys in a couple of years, so that I could return to University. But it has become obvious that neither public, nor private schools can guarantee the safety of their students to a degree that I, as a mother, think is acceptable. So, we will be at this gig for a LONG time to come! And with THREE 'students' (I think I'll go with the term learners so I intimidate myself less lol) next year!!

Friday ramble...

2010-02-18T11:56:00.007+10:00

(note to Todd: totally stole that from you lol)

Today we'll be getting up to a little math, some grammar for Frodo, some Headsprout for Sam (who is pumped to be nearing lesson 40, the half way point!) , a bit of handwriting maybe... and we'll be making our ancient China postcards & 'puppets' to finish off our History Pockets. Yesterday we did the chinese dragons and they turned out cute. (camera was awol, imagine accordion folded paper with a zigzag tail, and little cut outs about Chinese new year glued onto the flat parts of the fold. Complete with popsicle sticks to 'dance' the dragon and Voila!)

The boys are also going to help me with the prep work for fried rice for dinner. We have an every other friday tradition of having fried rice & yum cha and they love it. Neither of them really has the coordination for cutting.. and both are horribly accident prone lol, so I'll do that bit. But I figure they can measure the rice & water, and gather the other ingredients for me ;) We are also making some delightful lemon bars later on... best plan good distractions for the couple of hours they require to cool/set or I'll have 2 boys staring at them longingly the entire time! Oh... best add DH to that because he devours these as well ;)

We do NOT have our Friday outing today, thank goodness! and I have really enjoyed the 'break' from traveling around. It seems like the last 3 weeks have been go go go! and it's worn me out.

There's also been a fair bit of emotional stress thrown into this week though, so I really need a weekend of relaxed family time to recover. This past Monday, it hit the news that at a 'local' (in quotes as this is a huge city so it's IN the greater metro area, but not particularly close to me) school had a 12yr old boy stabbed to death on school grounds. At 815am. By a 13yr old. I'm sure those parents went about their morning under the assumption that their son was safely in the care of the school... not being killed by another student. There may, or may not have been, bullying involved...not enough information has been released yet. In one of the news articles it was mentioned that this is the THIRD stabbing incident in a school in this city since the year began. Um... the school year is like 3weeks old. Then I read this morning that another teen was found on a schoolyard with a knife quite near where we live. WOW. I have been deeply affected by these incidents.

Why? Well, I had actually been considering temporary school for the boys in the future, as the plan was for me to go back to Uni and get my degree so that as the boys got older I would have something for ME and not feel lost. Now... well there is no way in Hades my kids are setting foot in a school if the Government cannot even provide for their basic safety. I was willing to accept the fact that we'd have to do a bit extra with the boys since the schools' standards are pretty slack.. but risking their lives? Not.gonna.happen! DH & I came to the agreement that no way are any of our boys going to school. Which means I'll have 3 homeschoolers in a couple of years. (I don't think Merry will be ready for prep next year so I'm going to stick with preschool fun for him) Can you see me having a mini panic over here?? lol

SO... the plan at the moment is I may look into distance ed/ external programs and see if anything tickles my fancy. Then the kids & I can study together ;) I really DO feel the need for something fullfilling for myself only... and while home educating the kids is wonderful for them... and usually for me ;), in the end it is something I do totally for their benefit. And it's hard work!

Remember me mentioning somewhere in a previous post that I REALLY want to move? Well, now I really REALLY want to move. Day before yesterday, as I drank my morning coffee even, the peace of the boys arguing over the wii game was broken by all hell breaking loose next door. In the end, I had no choice but to call the cops, as I was scared to death by angry male neighbors voice, and terrified female neighbors very loud crying. I don't know what was going on... and dont' want to, but I could not let my kids hear that kind of thing and think it's ok to 'do nothing'. The cops rocked up and were there a little while, and all quieted down. Now I'm incredibly fearful that angry neighbor man will work out who 'dobbed' him in and show up on my doorstep. I even had nightmares the night it happened about it. YIKES. We're a door locking family anyway, and If I do not know you're coming... I don't open the door (unless I know you of course, then I put the kettle on ;) but I hate the idea of living where I'm afraid of my neighbors!

Ok.. ramble over *sheepish* Baking will take my mind of it all... and no, sorry, you can't have any lemon bars. They're all mine.

Another week underway

2010-02-16T09:43:00.002+10:00

Yesterday we had our weekly art & gymnastics classes, of which I have no pics as I forgot my camera. The boys had a great time, but were a little bummed that the heat was just too much for us to hang around after class for more playground time! I made it up to them with a snack of scones & jam in the car on the way home (enjoying the air conditioning lol) and then a swim when we got here.

While they did that, I managed to crank out plans for the rest of the week. I'm not super strict on making sure EVERYTHING gets done, but I like to have a general plan for where our week goes. Today is dvd lessons in MUS for both, reading comprehension for Frodo & Headsprout for Sam, a bit of work on our ancient China history pocket, reading a book about the Sun, and a page of handwriting practice :D Maybe LOL.

This week I am thrilled to say that I do not have to leave the house again until SUNDAY if I really don't want to LOL. It seems like the past 2-3weeks have just been wildly on the go for us and I'm just worn out! So I may venture out Thursday to the green grocer to pick up fruit & veg... but that's it. I forced myself to go to the library yesterday so that I didn't have to go later in the week ;)

In other news, we've tried Frodo reading more chapter style books recently and it seems that most of them were just not a hit. We tried a little Beast Quest book, thinking it might be good to start with.. it was awful. BORINNNG! Septimus Heap is still a little ahead of where he is. So last night we started him on one of OUR favourite series by David Eddings, The Belgariad. The books are about 200pgs each, but they are simply written with entertaining and engaging characters and MAPS! We love maps in books hehehe. He's starting off slowly, but in the beginning it's all about Garion (that's the main character) remembering his early life... very shortly the good stuff gets going..wizards, adventures, travels and lots of other excitement. I hope he will enjoy them, they aren't 'fine literature' but they are good stories, that will help foster a love of reading we hope!

Off to get a move on, it's supposed to be incredibly hot here today (again) so I'd like to get done by lunch so we can jump in the pool for a bit before the sun gets it ;)

The week that was.. in photos!

2010-02-12T21:12:00.009+10:00

And boy was it! I thought I'd follow suit with a couple of the blogs I like to read regularly, and share what we got up to this week. We have had a really busy week starting on Monday with our Home ed network art & gymnastics classes and finishing up today with our extra curricular day!

Well, it's not REALLY finishing up today, because tomorrow it's off to Nana's for a birthday/anniversary cake and afternoon tea, followed by a sleepover (I think mum has ALL 5 grandkids for the night, she's either brave or crazy!). On Sunday we're meeting them at a cousins house where the kids will have a swim and hang out with family before we head home. So yeah.. no rest for the wicked until after Monday here lol.

Blogger is being shonky today, and not letting me format my pics well.. so bear with me :) The distance education 'school' arranged for the RSPCA to be on site for our students with their EMU..which is not, as you would naturally assume, a giant flightless bird... but is their Educational Mobile Unit. Basically a big trailer that is all fitted out with computers, and hands on games and materials for learning all about animal welfare and safety.

Here's Sam and Frodo being 'vets' and taking care of the stuffed animals. Sam is using a handheld scanner to see if this kitty has a microchip, and got very excited when the scanner gave him a response. This is about the only pic of Frodo today as the rest of the time he was at a computer playing the games and totally zones out lol.

This activity was all about native animals and invasive species that are non native to Australia. There were a selection of plastic animals and four 'habitiats'. The idea was for the kids to place the animals where you should expect to find them.. and those that don't belong here at all and damage our environment (like the fox & rabbit). Sam had a good time with this and a couple of other matching activities.

Here is Sam rescuing the kitten that is stuck in the pipes using a little mirror and peeking in. He was triumphant when he reached in and pulled out a cute little stuffed grey kitty. I was shocked that he didn't take advantage of the 'costumes' (work shirts) on the hooks by the pipe lol.

Due to Monday and Friday being away days, we had just 3 days worth of 'school' time. We still got a fair bit done. There was reading comprehension, grammar & spelling for Frodo...as well as Math and handwriting. And Sam worked on his handwriting and Headsprout phonics :) As a group, we worked on our Ancient China study. The boys learned about Chinese numbers and calligraphy, the Great Wall of China, along with things about what the average Chinese persons day would have been like. In our history pocket the boys made a Chinese lantern chain with the numbers & pronounciations on them. They're loving 'counting' their way across the shelf in another language.

And Sam actually did more than just a quick scribble .. he actually stuck with it through all the colouring, cutting, and gluing. Kudos kiddo! Here's the finished product of the entire chain. Yes, someone in this house is a serious Raymond E. Fiest fan, if you look closely lol. This expedit shelf actually houses most of our school 'books' (there are other materials here and there all over the house.. in the linen cupboard, in the dining room hutch, in the computer room and garage even!) So I thought I'd share a little peek. There's a little bit of adult stuff there, 1 cube of Fiest and one of Eddings, but otherwise this is all the kids domain. There are math manipulatives, puzzles, felt boards, crayons, pencils, scissors, glue and such in the baskets. Up on the top row of cubes is where we keep our library books, so we can always find them.. and so Merry (who hasn't yet learned the idea of gentle with books @@) cannot damage them. He still gets to read them... just with mum or brothers 'helping'. He has his own cube with his 'that's not my' books and his own crayons drawing pad.

On the very top of the unit is my prized collection of handpainted Christmas cottages... personally created by yours truly and a very dear friend of mine over 10yrs ago. They are super special to me, so they are out year round, but I would like ot find another 'home' for them around here somewhere! The solar system is due to start sprouting on the top of these shelves any week now, so having the sun parked next to the soda shop might not work out so well! ;)

Just in front of the shelves is a nice area that I'm hoping the rug mum bought us for our anniversary fits in th at part of the room so that it can become a nice cosy reading area. I'd like a couple of big floor pillows for that corner as well. I'm repurposing a picture frame or two that have been gathering dust in my closet as well. I plan to put some of the boys masterpeices from art class in them to really cozy up the corner, and make it 'their own.

And then there were two...

2010-02-09T13:34:00.002+10:00

In one day! lol I'm sitting here taking a break from our schoolwork, as the boys have done everything but Headsprout (sam), Reading comp (frodo) and a little handwriting practice in their workbooks. I may ditch that last bit as Frodo did a lot of writing with our history odyssey stuff today ;) Another benefit of homeschooling that one can decide ENOUGH and move along! We're going to have a google for some sweet pictures of the planets & such this afternoon as well.. always fun.

Anyway, the reason I'm taking this break is pretty irrelevant ;) But while I'm doing so, I'm plotting. You see, our 9th wedding anniversary is coming up in about a week and my MIL sprung on us Sunday that she was going to have a 'do' this coming saturday as it is Our anniversary, her & dad's anniversary and SIL's birthday all in the same week. We weren't too excited about driving across town both days of the weekend, but then she said the magic words... 'oh you don't have to, I thought I'd take the boys for the night so you two can go out'! So, we'll be going over for an afternoon thing on Saturday, and then we have a gift card to a restaurant that we'll polish off, and maybe go out for a fancy coffee or a movie. Wow.. seeing a movie... together even.. IN A THEATRE!?!?! This is a truly rare occurence in the Hobbit Household lol. And.. we can follow it up by NOT having to race out of the house Sunday morning by 9am to get to swim lessons! Life is good friends, really good :D

Now, if you'll pardon me, I think I hear a cup of coffee calling my name from the kitchen ;)

EEEK No posts!

2010-02-09T10:19:00.003+10:00

For a whole week! That'd be the direct result of me actually trying to keep us on track with the routine I've set up for our school days! Mondays are our gymnastics/art class days... every other Friday (this friday) are our extra curricular days with our DE group. That leaves basically 3-4 days, depending on the week, for actual 'schoolwork'. So we get busy on those days! And often at the end of the day the LAST thing I want to think about is the day just finished lol.

Today for example, (we're getting a late start as I slept in a bit ;) we're doing Math U See (both kids), Headsprout (Sam), Reading comprehension (Frodo), some reading on Ancient China AND starting our China history pocket, as well as putting together a Planets 'tab' book from Enchanted Learning. Unfortunately it's on the members pages, so I can't link IT specifically. But seriously, I can't say enough about EL... I find the best worksheets & such to supplement whatever we're studying on that site! So it should be a fun, busy, day. Oh and there will invariably be at least one snack and one lunch break... else Frodo may waste away to nothing ;)

I posted a while back about Homeschool Skedtrack, and while it was a cool program with lots of neat features... I guess I'm a pen and paper kinda girl ;) I need to be able to see a week at a glance and KNOW what is on the plans for each day in that week. I have swiped a nice, basic grid form from This site and am test driving it this week. I've had to cross out /substitute some 'subject' headings but that's not a problem. It's a 2page weekly spread with good sized blocks for being able to fit 'assignments' for both kids in there ... as long as I don't get TOO wordy! So far I like it, I like having more space than typical 1page weekly planners give as well as being able to see it ALL at once.

In other news.. someone please turn off the faucet in the sky... at least for a little while? I have fungi popping up all over my yard... so if I cease posting, I've probably wandered into a faerie ring and been carried away for a nice long holiday with the fae LOL.

Re-evaluating plan of attack.. already lol

2010-02-02T14:18:00.004+10:00

Today was our first FULL day of schoolwork for the year. On the plan for Sam was Headsprout, Math U See, and handwriting practice in his new workbook (which he loved... something about a shiny new book I guess hehe) Frodo had Math U see, handwriting (learning cursive), grammar, science reading and spelling.

It turns out Frodo has zero handwriting stamina.. his handwriting took him a little longer than it really needed to and he kept stretching his hand out. I noticed the reason why later.. the child has a veritable death grip on his pencil! If I held mine like that it wouldn't take long for my hand to collapse into a screaming cramp either. SO, for now we are going to have to put spelling on the back burner (at least written spelling, we can still work on it other ways) I'll also spend a lot of time working with him on a better, more relaxed grip so that in a month or so he might have worked up the ability to write for a reasonable amount of time. For now we'll just have Grammar Once a Week , handwriting workbook to learn the entries & exits of cursive, and Catching onto Comprehension B which will account for most of his writing. (science & History Odyssey have a bit, but not nearly this much).

There was also a crucial scheduling mistake by moi... the Magic School Bus book we were going to start our science year with is NOT the one I thought I had! Nor is it one our library has *sigh* So the one unit of science I've completely written up? Is not the one we're going to end up starting with LOL. So, I best get off my rear and get the Earth unit written up so we can start that at least.. since I actually POSSESS the book ;) Kind of a bummer though, I was so looking forward to sticking my many xrays (including ultrasounds of the kids in utero, hand, chest and hip xrays!) to the sliding glass doors. I'm sure the neighbors will think I'm insane *gryn*

Other than the handwriting woes (although his writing WAS very tidy) and the book that isn't.. the day went very, very well :D

Back in the saddle!

2010-02-01T20:22:00.007+10:00

Well we've had our first official few days of home schooling for the year and we're well & truly in the swing of things now. We prefer to sort of ease into things rather than suddenly have a WHOLE DAY of stuff to do, so last week we started Wednesday with a bit of Math U See for both boys, some History Odyssey reading, Headsprout for Sam and a little grammar review for Frodo. They were both pretty happy to have their usual work to do after a long break.

On the weekend I hit Brodies, which is an educational bookshop, and spent a good hour geeking around at all the neat books, learning games, posters and all those cute bulletin board thingies that teachers use in classrooms. Not that I have a classroom.. or a real bulletin board... but I always loved those :) I picked up all but one of our needed resources, and the other will be arriving from another store for me to pick up in a day or two. So this week we'll add reading comprehension, grammar, and handwriting practice and science back into the mix.

Today we had a full on day, as it was day 1 of the kids' gymnastics & art classes with a local home ed network. I'm having a bit of an insomnia thing at the moment, so it was a struggle to get everyone together & out the door. I soldiered on though, and the boys all had such a great time! Merry had kindy and bolted to the home corner the second we arrived, he always gets angry when I leave if he is outside... but if he can hit the home corner he's a happy chappy :) Frodo & Sam had a great time playing at the play area where the classes were held, along with all the other kids. So much for unsocialized homeschoolers ;) The gymnastics teacher was so great with the kids, and said the kids do much better when parents go off & have a cuppa or something, although we are welcome to have a seat & watch the class....helping ends up not being much help apparently LOL.

Here's Frodo one one of the 4 balance beams tip toeing across :) This is about the only pic that came out, as the gym is HUGE and there isn't much close enough for the flash to bounce off of, so my photos all came out a bit dark... I've got at least 7 more lessons to get it right though ;) There was tumbling, different swinging movements on the uneven bars, and Sams' favourite... trampolining!

Here's Sam with his work of art... today was all about colour & how blending the 3 primary colours produces secondary colours. Sam's favourite colour ever is orange, so he was all about making some of that lol. He was such a trooper too.. normallly he makes a few swipes on a paper and is done, but he was with the teacher right up until nearly the end of class! Kudos little dude!

Frodo was also awesome in his class. He was in with the senior art group (ages 7 and up I think it was) and I was in & out making sure Sam was cool doing what he was doing (and not freaking out because I wasn't around.. which he wasn't!) but Frodo was fully paying attention while I was away according to one of the other mums. He made a gorgeous sunset scene with a city skyline that he's very proud of. Their class was also about blending colours but with an eye towards creating a landscape type image. Note the very stylish 'mums stained shirt turned backwards' paint smock there? lol That's what my decluttering gets me.. I had to raid clothing that I actually WEAR to use, because I either tossed, cut up for rags, or donated all excess tshirts. This one shirt had a freaky greasy shadow from cooking so it was the perfect candidate. I bet by the end of the year it will be a work of art itself!

We headed home from class around 1pm, and would you believe BOTH boys were crashed out in the back seat within 15minutes on the road!? lol It's about a 45minute drive (but very worth it!) so after all that working out in gymnastics, I guess they were worn out. Made for an unusually quiet drive though ;)

Happy Birthday Momma, missing you.

2010-01-29T10:51:00.003+10:00

Yet another birthday post for me.. but not so happy as the last one unfortunately. Today would have been my momma's 56th birthday if she were still alive. I don't even have a good picture on the computer to share, they are grainy scans and horrible :( This March (she was buried on Sam's birthday which is something that will always be in the back of my mind as we eat birthday cake for him) marks the second anniversary of her death from lung cancer.

I have a lot of regrets... I regret not being able to be there before she died, I regret the anger between us. I regret most of all, that SHE didn't stop smoking when HER mother died from the same disease in 1993. She did, for a while, but started again. I never stopped reminding her that I didn't want to go through what she did with her momma. We hadn't spoken for months when she called in October (on a Sunday, thinking DH would be home to take care of me, he wasn't) to tell me her diagnosis and that she knew what it meant. I knew what it meant too.

The biggest thing I regret is that she wasn't able to be here for so much. She wasn't here when I sat by my sons bed hoping that he lived, I don't think a momma ever needed HER momma more than I did then. I regret that she didn't see him kick ass in his recovery and go back to work less than a year later. I regret that she didn't see fences mended between my ex & I so that the kids (not that they are really KIDS anymore) don't have to deal with the anger that was there. I regret that she didn't get to see my family in one peice at last.

I'll be off weeping over silly stuff like my boys playing Wii, or even just drinking a cup of coffee (something she did umpteen times a day) if anybody needs me.

Ahhh bliss!

2010-01-26T12:16:00.003+10:00

**Before I get into my rambling, I'd like let you all know I'm participating in The Great Australian Internet Blackout this week. Which is why my blog was 'blacked out' with the linking window when you wandered in. Legislation that is working it's way into being will mandate ISP level url filtering that will slow Australia's internet down by ridiculous amounts, which is uncool since our internet already lags behind much of the world for speed. This legislation purports to be about child pornography, which there are already law enforcement organizations to handle, but it will also filter out many websites that have nothing to do with illegal activities.. while bring our usage to a crawl. They claim it's to prevent children from stumbling on x, y or z... well I'm here to say that is NOT the governments job! Ensuring my childs net safety is MY responsibility as a parent and there are a variety of ways to do this without a nationwide ISP filter that is a ginormous waste of time & money. And if some lonely guy wants to google big titted naked women from Idaho... well that's HIS business. Now back to my regularly scheduled bliss***

Bliss is having the entire house to myself for an afternoon. Today is Australia Day, and in true Aussie fashion.. I just can't be bothered LOL. The family organized a get together at our cousins (who hath the new pool ;) for lunch & a swim.... but I just was NOT up for a housefull of people. To be honest, I'm just generally overwhelmed at the moment and needed to NOT have to go anywhere just for ONE DAY. So, my delightful husband... whom I spent the last 18hours being decidedly UNdelightful to :S, has taken all three boys and soldiered on to the pool party without me. Break out the bubbly, it's 5pm somewhere!

What do I have planned for the next several hours? Nothing overly fab.. I'll go out & water my veggies, hang out a little washing and maybe fold the stuff that's on the line. Then I plan to sit down with a homemade iced coffee and spend some quaility time with my cross stitch project. I've had this project in the works for a LONG time, we're talking several years here, but it's been in it's pillowcase in a closet for about 2yrs and I just burnt out! So now that the crafty burn out is gone, I'm going to get working in hopes that THIS is the year she is finished! (She is a lovely Goddess/angel type picture.. very looooong and a lot of work!)

I've decided that lately far too much of my down time involves the computer, so that's coming to an end, as it has become a HUGE time suck for me! I guess there's something about being able to blobb at a screen and do nothing much that is overly appealing to an overwhelmed & sometimes stressed out mum! So with that... I'm outta here to enjoy my peace & quiet!

Chaos! (my word for the week lol)

2010-01-24T22:35:00.004+10:00

Thanks for the birthday wishes for Frodo :D He has had a lovely weekend. The mini cupcakes are long gone and he assisted admirably with bbq'ing (ok, for about 5minutes.. then running around the yard with his brothers won out). He's most enjoyed his Links crossbow training for the Wii as well.

Saturday was our orientation with our Distance education school. The kids had lots of getting to know you activities and DH hung out with Merry while the older two were in those, and while I was doing the boring paperwork end of things. It did not go well for Strider. I came out to find Merry in FULL ON meltdown mode, as he had been off and on (mostly on apparently) during the whole 1.5hrs of my absence. Oh Dear. It finally came down to the wire and I had to leave a msg for the organizer that we were having to bail ont he bbq, because Merry was melting down hard and was going to take us all with him lol. After a doze in the car, and a swim in the pool upon arriving home, he was better... at least for a while.

This morning we had the boys swimming lessons, and Frodo was just beside himself because he was 'tested' and graduated up to the next level class! He got a certificate and everything and has just grinned about it all day. Nan took him out to pick out his birthday present, he had a hard time choosing between roller blades or a bike, but eventually went with roller blades. Which didn't fit lol. Nan will exchange them and if the next size up doesn't work.. they'll go bike shopping I suppose. Which would be cool anyway, as our favourite new park has a neato bike area made up like little roads winding around... with traffic signs at the corners even hehehe. It's terribly cute so we're planning a scooter day at the park soon.

Tuesday is Australia Day, sorta like our 4th of July. Really it's just an excuse for Aussies to get together with mates & family, throw something on the bbq... and quite often imbibe that popular australian love... beer! (I'll pass on the swilll myself, but you guys go ahead & raise a glass if you choose hehe) So in additon to all the madness of starting schoolwork again, our first EC day, trying to bake and decorate a fabulous official birthday cake for Frodo (and having a wee gathering to admire & eat said creation)... we'll also be carting our crew over to The Cousins' place. The entire family (and it's a BIG family lol) will be eating, drinking, generally being merry... and tossing themselves, and possibly each other, into the pool.

Happy Birthday Frodo!

2010-01-22T10:43:00.004+10:00

Today, exactly 8 years ago, I was feeling rather miserable. I was huge and overdue by a week, and just about DONE with this whole pregnancy thing. We'd been in to the doc for ye olde cervical torture routine a couple of days ago, but it seemingly did nothing, and tomorrow would have been induction or possible csection (my oldest was a C baby). We had done everything safe (and I do mean everything ;) to attempt to get this child in motion to join us in the outside world to no avail.

But this morning 8 years ago, I felt crappy. Not contractions, omgI'mgonnahaveababy crappy... just crappy. Hubby made me eat a silverside sandwich around 11am (right about now actually!) and I laid down to have a nap. Hubby played DiabloII lol. I woke up feeling more than crappy about an hour later. I hung out with hubby while he played and we watched the clock timing 'cramps' taht weren't uncomfortable... until they WERE. He called the midwife to let her know we were going to come on over and we headed to the car. I remember having to stop 3 times to wait out contractions just in the couple of minutes walking to the garage.

After we got moving I was just sure we were going to be those people you read about ... ya know the ones that had their baby on the side of the road in the car? It was the most insane 25min trip to the hospital ever, but we made it. Of course, immediately upon stepping into the hospital lobby, I promptly threw that nice silverside sandwich up all over their floor LOL. At which point I was met with a wheelchair and raced upstairs. I really liked the nitrous gas they offer as first line pain relief in labour. I remember arguing with DH when he told me he could see Frodo's head... 'NO YOU CAN"T, NOT YET!' LOL as it was only 15 or 20minutes after we arrived. But two minutes later, I was holding the sweetest little thing with the most gorgeous blue eyes. He settled in for his first feed but never stopped staring at my face. To this day I really do wonder what he was thinking? Was he thinking the same thing I was... hello perfect person, I'm so glad to meet you!? The nurses scowled as I wouldn't let them poke him for vitamin k or give him a hep b shot.. but brand new baby boys are not for poking! They are for cuddling and dreaming about the future.

That future is here now... at least 8yrs worth of it ;) And these days he's moved on to bananas and muffins for snacks... but he's still a pretty perfect person, despite his imperfections. In a few months we're headed to a paediatrician for evaluation of his hearing and such, but for now, we're going into the kitchen to make chocolate mini cupcakes with rocky road frosting. PERFECT! And I'll worry about imperfections another day...

All I want for Christmas is a cold front!

2010-01-18T12:15:00.002+10:00

Ok.. I don't want it for Christmas.. I want it NOW. So if one of you kind people could parcel up some of your freezing weather and send it on down I'd be more than appreciative. Today it is topping out at around 100F, 38C here.. and we STILL DO NOT HAVE AN AIR CON!!!!! It's going to be nearly this hot all week, so if you don't hear from me, I have wilted in the heat or gone stark raving mad and made a break for Tasmania.

I'm pretty sure air conditioning is good Feng Shui

2010-01-13T14:18:00.004+10:00

But the repair dudes are useless and must put in work orders and see what their boss decides to do about our non functioning air con... while we sit here in 34C heat (HOT.. somewhere in the 90s) and wait. My guess is that their boss decides to do whatever is cheapest and gets the unit functioning until the 'oops you are no longer in warranty' date of mid April. If I owned this house, I would be concerned with that.. but as I do not, I just want my damn air conditioner to WORK.

What does fung shui have to do with this? hehe Not a great deal, except that I have picked up a feng shui book by Terra Collins, and have been Feng'ing my Shui around the house this last week (I just made that phrase up, and am hereby claiming copyright because it rocks, can I do that?) I did some hardcore rearranging of the dining /family room (where said lump of plastic that is masquerading as an air conditioner lives) and it seems MUCH less like a bowling alley now. Here's a before and after :D

Before: Behold the bowling alley... this room is 24ft long and 15ft wide., and I hated the way it was laid out as every bit of floor space was a part of the traffic path. Lots of space and all of it useless! There was a big space past the table, but it was a thoroughfare. The energy of this room was of a hallway... and said 'get through here as fast as possible to get where you are going' It wasn't the destination.

After: MUUUCH better! The dining table is in a bit of an unusual spot, it's against the kitchen peninsula counter. The expedit shelving unit is forming a small room divider, because I wanted a place to put my treadmill that didn't feel like it was uglying up the whole room! Walking through this room is now more like a leisurely stroll, whereas before it felt like an uncontrolled roll downhill lol. It also creates several little nooks that are outside of the path of travel through the room.

Just to the right of the blue hutch is a good sized area in the corner where I want to put a small table for Merry to have an activity spot while brothers are doing schoolwork at the table. To the left of the hutch is a nice sized area for reading or playing with small manipulatives and toys. Currently it's got a beanbag inhabiting, but I want to get a small rug and a couple of floor pillows. Just past the table is the large sliding door to our veranda and in the far corner is our ratties home. And just on the other side of the expedit shelf, lives my treadmill. And you can't even see it :D So no ugly. The art still needs to be rehung and I need to do something with the far wall and area.. I'm thinking another floor pillor or a chair for Sam to sit in while he cuddles the rats and such.

The room FEELS so much better to be in already. Strider & I used to take our coffee to the computer room, or the veranda .. but now we'll actually sit at the table and enjoy it because it doesn't feel like sitting in a hallway. The energy of the room says 'slow down, relax, and enjoy' now!

Reason # 438 to love Home schooling

2010-01-12T12:44:00.003+10:00

So today the boys & I finally got around to easing back into our history of the ancients (trying to get powered through it to start medieval times) today. Frodo read to us all about the Celts, my personal faves, and we talked about all the pictures depicting every day life in ancient Celtic lands. It also happens that our air conditioner is on the fritz, we are waiting for the real estate agent and repair guy to get their act together... but for now, we are HOT. So, we managed to do quite a bit of reading and looking through the various books I got from the library, and Frodo even did his definitions (of Druid and Bard are the words of the day ;) before we decided it is just too hot to think, much less work! Later when it cools off a bit, we're going to start a particularly cool Celtic shield craft project from this book.

A command decision was made, by moi, to take a swim break! So at this moment I am listening to the boys splash and giggle outside the window and I'm sure they will come back in MUCH cooler. I love that we can take circumstances into account.. no kid should have to try to learn when they are sweltering, there's just no productive way to go about it in Queenslands' heat! (man I'd hate to be in Melbourne at the moment.. it's been 43C/109F there, we're sitting at a relatively comfortable 34C/94F compared to that!) A lot of schools here aren't air conditioned .. even the brand new school that Frodo went to prep at, had nothing but ceiling fans. Thank goodness they're home, we can veg and read, or watch a dvd or something and save anything requiring effort and brain power until the evening when it's cooler ;)

(*totally no offence is intended to any readers who use the school system! It's just days like this that make me appreciate the choice I've made ;)

Talk me down from the ledge somebody!

2010-01-08T13:08:00.003+10:00

This morning I had quite the revelation. Actually *I* didn't make this discovery, the very nice director at Merry's kindy (daycare) beat me over the head with it like a blunt object. (ok, not *literally*) She was doing the new room assignments for the coming 'school year', which starts January 25th, and wanted to talk with me about it. She knows we home educate, so she wanted to ask if Merry would be going off to prep (kindergarten) next year, or if he would be staying on with them in their preschool room. I'm pretty sure she thought I lost it with the blank stare I gave her.. something akin to a deer in the headlights. At least that is how I felt.

She elaborated by telling me that she had tentatively placed him in the preschool room at the end of this month in case he was going to prep in 2011... since his turning 4yrs in June put him in the age range for it. *insert jaw drop to go with deer in headlights look* My baby can't POSSIBLY be old enough to go to school! (even home school dammit!) He's not even fully toileting yet on his own, and he didn't even star talking using real words until just about 2.5yrs old... just 1yr ago. Emotionally he just is NOT there yet either. He's just a baby... and I like the idea of letting him stay that way until *he* is ready to change it.

DH came home and I shared this gem with them.. he said well good thing he's not going then! ;)

The picture above shows just about what was going through my mind (the caption, not so much, but it made me laugh ;) for a couple of reasons. ZOMG my baby is growing up (he's not really), and then the big one hit... YIKES! This means next year I am going to have THREE home schoolers?! How on earth am I going to keep up with everything? How am I going to give each of them enough of my time? How am I even going to have time to plan for them all?? I think this cuppa coffee that dh made really needs a shot of baileys to calm my nerves.

Is there anybody that stops by my teeny blog that home schools 3? How in the world do you do it?!?!?! Share your secrets please!

Yeah... bring on those desserts sister... I could use a big ass slice of mud cake right now. For purely therapeutic reasons of course. Cause "stressed" is exactly what I am.