Term One: Week Nine ~ Fun With Pink Eye

Just because two weeks of dealing with gastro wasn't enough fun, we kicked it up a notch and in week nine, mum had conjunctivitis/pink eye!!  LOADS of fun let me tell you. We still did our scheduled written work, but I dialled read alouds down to the bare minimum, and took as few photographs as possible early in the week while my eye was weeping and gooping.

 Monkey was thrilled to have a capacity page to complete in his maths book.

Thursday night we had a treat.

Family dinner night out. 

We have a new cafe in town that specializes in traditional Filipino food.

Since Monkey is studying Southeast Asia right now, we took the opportunity to enjoy a night out together and try some traditional food. 

We shared a plate of traditional "street food" style chicken skewers. 

Daddy enjoyed Pork Sisig... 

While I ordered Pancit. 

Friday afternoon Munchkin and I went on a nature walk.

First we had a look at all the fish in the river... 

Then we walked the boardwalk in search of spiders (and any other creatures we could find)! We were NOT disappointed. First we found this gorgeous Orb Weaving Spider... 

Followed by this Leaf Curling Spider (who sadly was tucked deep inside his leaf)... 

And finally this beautiful red dragonfly. 

 Daddy read these picture books to Munchkin and the older boys and I watched episodes of Masterchef Australia for our evening routine while we waited for my eye to heal.

Term One: Week Eight ~ The Gastro Continues

Friday night of Week Seven, Monkey came down with the gastro, so the weekend was a VERY quiet one.  No one else got sick over the weekend, so Monday morning we started a fresh week of school. Sadly Monday night straight after dinner, Monster got hit with the bug and went to bed early with Munchkin.  I called a FULL sick day for everyone on Tuesday and by Wednesday we were all feeling ready to tackle more learning.  This was the slowest moving gastro bug I had ever seen, and we were sick and tired of it by the time it was done with us. Thankfully the adults remained healthy, though I felt queasy off and on while the boys were sick, I suspect that was a just a psychological response.

 Munchkin worked hard on his math. He had to do some hands-on measuring using paper clips (left hand photo) and then some adding using tens frames (right hand photo).

Monster works hard highlighting relevant and interesting information for his IEW paragraph. 

 Munchkin and I played some Blink...

And some Sleeping Queens!! 

When Monster was feeling better he did some good work on his newest jigsaw puzzle. 

Monkey has set himself a goal to draw all 800+ Pokemon characters!

This photo is full size so you can click on it to see the drawings better. 

 I bought some mini magnetic games at Kmart quite some time ago and decided that our sick week was as good a time as any to dig them out.

 We had a robot squiggle draw kit I wanted the boys to build. It came without instructions so Monster found a video on YouTube to watch and quickly put it together.

The boys enjoyed watching it draw after it was assembled. 

Life is good when your older brother agrees to play Snakes and Ladders with you. 

Term One: Week Seven ~ Gameschooling and Gastro

Monster and I enjoyed playing a few rounds of Codenames this week. 

We also played some Mastermind and Super Mastermind. Mastermind (the blue game) was a belated birthday gift from a dear friend, and Super Mastermind (black game) was a $2.50 score at the local Salvation Army store!! 

I got interested in pulling out some of our card games so we played Phase 10 and Dutch Blitz which are two of my favourites. 

We did do some written work through the week... Monster continued working on his birthday thank you notes. 

Monster and I played a round of Make Five to see if we think Monkey is ready for this game. 

And we gave Othello a try, but we got very confused and frustrated, so I think I'll be searching for some "how to play" videos on Youtube to help us out. 

 Munchkin took his Term 4 test in his Year 1 math book and got started on his Year 2 math book this week.

Two evenings this week Monster worked on his newest puzzle... see his progress the second night down below!! 

Tuesday night took a dramatic twist with Munchkin coming down with a gastro bug at 10pm... so Wednesday he spent much of the day swapping between this chair and the lounge while watching numerous DVDs.  I cut a few things from the older boys schedule as well simply because I couldn't focus on them for long periods of time... so there was NO math for either boy Wednesday or Thursday... not that they minded!! 

 We managed a bit of notebooking Thursday morning... Monster wrote these notes after we read about how the water treatment system in Australia works.

The two older boys also did these nice notebooking pages about the Philippines after we finished reading our last information book about the country. 

 I only photographed one of the pages, but both boys are also filling in this page as we learn about each of the countries that are considered neighbours of Australia.

 Both of these books are lovely. I particularly like the book on the right... which can be read forwards AND backwards!!

Monster and I enjoyed this 4th book in Jackie French's Secret Histories series. 

 We finished up our last book about the Philippines, and another book in our Water for Australia series.

 The older boys have decided they need to read Pokemon books again...

 I finished this book about Aboriginal Peoples with Monkey as part of his Australian history unit. Now in the last few weeks of this term he will do some writing assignments using information from this book.

 Lovely picture books for Munchkin that count as Premier's Reading Challenge for him as well.

 The older boys LOVE that these are quick easy reads... it gives their brains a little break in between the meatier reading assignments they have to do!