Term Two: Week Nine ~ Wrapping Things Up

Despite our extremely disrupted term, and the fact that we missed three weeks with the funeral and illness, we finished up our written work this week ~ one week early!  So we're calling an end to our term and will enjoy an extra week of school holidays. We will still do LOTS of reading and also some fun, hands-on stuff, but our book work is done.

Monster LOVES his online Latin program so much that he is planning to work on it through the school holidays. 

Monkey enjoyed using our vast marble collection to help him with his page on division. 

We got outside this week!

Will illness and then several days of rain, we were housebound for a couple of weeks and we were all going a little bit stir crazy. But finally the sunshine has returned so we spent an afternoon walking a rather long trail/track that we found recently. We were thrilled to chance upon these funny looking mushrooms, and of course I had to photograph them. 

 Just before heading home we caught sight of this echidna wandering around. He was looking for a way to get through the fence, so we had ample time to watch him and photograph him.

 Another day we decided to walk the boardwalk to one of our nearby playgrounds. On the way there we chanced upon these interesting and beautiful looking birds.

While the boys watched the birds I experimented with some black and white photography. 

 Finally we got to the playground.

The boys played on the equipment while I walked some laps on the footpath, and then we headed home in time for dinner and evening routine.

Monster finished the last book in this Lemony Snicket series... 

 Picture book selections for Munchkin... including some PRC.

 Our electricity/magnetism unit has led us down a rabbit hole about migration. So I read these two books aloud to Monster and we learned which animals use the earth's magnetic field to migrate.

LOTS of picture books for Munchkin... PRC finishes the end of August so all three boys are working hard to finish their required reading before the cut off date. 

 Two PRC selections for Monster that he read independently. I allow picture book selections for him when the content is extremely mature.

 And finally, more picture books for Munchkin, three of which are PRC.

Term Two: Week Eight ~ Back On Track

The boys and I felt like week eight was the first week that felt like we were back to our normal schedule and routine after the funeral, associated family events, illness, and rain.

Monster LOVES Latin. So he was thrilled when I was able to get Visual Latin 1 & 2 for free through a homeschool curriculum website as part of their "summer" deals. Even though we're not in America and NOT on summer holidays, we can still take advantage of online summer deals.  Monster is able to do this entirely independently. I simply print out the worksheets and the quiz for each lesson and then he sits down and watches the corresponding videos and works through the worksheets and the quiz at his own pace. At this stage, the work is easy enough that he is completing a lesson per day. We shall see what happens when it starts to get challenging. 

A new obsession for all three boys is Pixel Papercraft. They print out nets for their favourite Minecraft characters, and then painstakingly cut them out and glue them together. So this is a photo of Monkey working on some Pixel Papercraft during his free time. 

Munchkin enjoying another of our online "freebies" - Doodle Math. 

We welcomed some MUCH needed rain - even though it meant we were housebound for the beginning of the week. 

Monster worked on his puzzle a couple of nights this week while I read aloud to him. 

Munchkin enjoyed a hands-on Maths page where he had to measure a collection of household items (tea towel, textbook, newspaper) with a uniform item... which for us was square Duplo Legos. 

Friday on our way home from the library we found a group of Sulphur Crested Cockatoos congregating near one of our neighbour's houses.  He often feeds them so they are there a LOT. We stopped to take some photos, and the gentleman brought out a loaf of discount bread to feed to the group that had gathered. 

 The boys enjoyed the opportunity to hand feed the birds, and I enjoyed the opportunity to work on some photography.

Munchkin is following in both of his brother's footsteps and going through the 6yr old dinosaur phase!  He liked these two books, even though it presented the information in an extremely simplified way that was really too easy for him. 

 We discovered that Lemony Snicket writes picture books...

 Premier's Reading Challenge books for Munchkin.

We started a landforms/landscapes unit study... 

 I read aloud Puberty Boy to Monster, both because he is starting to go through puberty himself, and because human reproduction is part of the Year 7 science curriculum. I read Voyage to Botany Bay aloud to him as well.

 More read alouds for Monster... the Ben Franklin book was AMAZING!!

 Monkey read all the Minecraft books as his independent reading this week, and Monster finished his last All the Wrong Questions book as well.