Term Four: Week Six ~ Nana Visits and Cleaning Begins

This was a bit of a strange, disjointed week.

Nana visited us from Sunday evening until Wednesday morning.

The boys enjoyed playing lots of board games with her, and Munchkin showed off his reading skills as well. I failed to take pictures of them together though, because when I wasn't teaching the boys, I was busy getting started on some deep house cleaning. We have a rental inspection coming up the beginning of December, so I took the opportunity to get a head start while I had an extra body in the house to help with the boys.

 To go along with our mini-unit on food webs and food chains, I had the two older boys create their own notebooking page. I found a couple of food chain pages HERE and let the boys choose the one they thought would best suit them. They each completed the assignment slightly differently, but they included all the information I wanted, so I'm happy.

 Munchkin and Monkey spent quite a bit of their spare time drawing using the Art for Kids Hub on YouTube for inspiration.  Here are a couple of the drawings Munchkin did. If your kiddos are at ALL interested in drawing, I highly recommend their YouTube page - it is EXCELLENT.  You can also find them on Facebook and Instagram.

Munchkin read all three of these books aloud to Nana, and she was impressed with the progress he has made with his reading since she visited us in September. 

We finished off our last ocean book for the year... 

 Picture book selections for Munchkin...

 We are trying to finish the Letty series before the end of the year... I think we will make it, but the library has made it difficult by requiring us to borrow the books through Inter library loan, as once again, our library system has failed to purchase the entire FOUR book series.

Monster and I are working hard to finish up one of his Medieval Europe series before the end of the year as well. Oceans, Medieval Europe, and the Black Plague are just a few of our unit studies that we will continue next year.

Term Four: Week Five ~ Working on Reading

I must apologize to those of you who read this blog.

Sometimes it ends up being used more for reporting than for pleasure.

I seem to have lost my photography mojo, and thus, I'm not all that interested in taking pictures at the moment.

Also, with the new rule that the boys must start school pretty much as soon as they wake up, I have some boys (one in particular) who are often working on math and handwriting at 7am, and I'm just not in the mood to take photos at 7am.

So, please bear with me as we wind up this school year, and hopefully next year my blog will be a little bit more interesting.

Also, the library will be closing for a couple of weeks in December, so that they can move up to the new building, and so we are concentrating on finishing off our learning units for the year and returning our books. 

Over Christmas break we will be taking a much deserved break and enjoying Christmas themed picture books, as well as fun reading for the library summer reading challenge.

Munchkin is doing VERY well with this second level of Fitzroy readers... nearly time to start checking out the third level. 

We won't finish our oceans/marine unit that Monster is in the middle of, so we're just concentrating on finishing the books we have currently, and over the Christmas break I'll work out what direction we'll go in when we pick the unit up again in February. 

This was an AMAZING book... lots of interesting information and BEAUTIFUL illustrations. 

Munchkin is still thoroughly enjoying his Elmer books... good thing daddy and I don't mind reading them either. 

 We are doing a quick mini-unit of food chains and food webs.

All three of the boys (and myself as well) enjoy reading about, and learning about turtles! 

 Monster finished off another Fair Dinkum Histories book (independent reading) and we read aloud the Legends or Lies book - which was interesting.

 Beautiful Australian history picture books that I read aloud to Monster and Monkey... it was a challenge not to cry as I read "Dreaming Soldiers"

 We read the other two books we had from this series... the boys were amazed at how remote these areas were. We are just bummed that we can't get ALL the books in the series. It is quite a mystery to us why our library system doesn't buy ALL books in some series... especially shorter series like this one that only has six books.

Picture books for Munchkin... 

Independent reading for Monkey... 

 I'm so grateful that a wonderful friend of ours gifted us with a box set of Graeme Base books when James was born. They are well loved and read frequently.

 More read alouds for the older boys... I now have other bridges in Australia that I would like to see in person, visit, and of course, photograph.

 Another ocean book read aloud...

Sneaking in ONE Christmas book before December... 

 New picture books for Munchkin...

Term Four: Week Four ~ Saying Good-bye

Our week began with sad news Monday afternoon that hubby's uncle had passed away. Due to extended family being here from interstate as well as overseas, the funeral was arranged quickly, and Thursday was spent saying our good-byes and spending time with family. Thus Friday was simply a "stay at home" day to process our emotions and rest after all the late nights.

Independent reading for the older boys... 

 Two fantastic books I read to the older boys one night... we are excited that we have two others from the series.

 Munchkin continues to practice his reading daily...

 Some of Munchkin's picture book selections for the week...

We read this interesting book one evening... the Plague is fascinating. 

 The remainder of Munchkin's picture book selections for the week.

Finally, Monster and I finished reading this aloud this week... a fascinating book about the Zip water boiling system, and the man who bought and grew the company. Not only did we learn about the water system, and the man, but also lots about some of the situations Australia faces concerning water storage and usage.