This third week of the term was NOT a normal week for us. We celebrated Monster's 14th birthday on Thursday, and since we started our school year a full two or three days before our public schooled friends, we opted to take the entire week off from structured written work and just enjoy a week of natural learning.
After a week of nearly constant, torrential rain, Monday dawned cloudy but rain free. We ventured out to see what flooding was around us. Thankfully, we had no flooding of our property though we knew people who had flooding either in their basements, garages, or attics. However, we do live about 200 metres from a major river and there is a boardwalk and wetlands closer than that. So out we went to check things out...
This little gazebo is less than half a block from our house... we knew when we saw this that getting to the river, via the boardwalk, would be impossible.
Amazingly all this water was gone by late afternoon. A neighbour who lives across the road from this area had a blocked storm drain as well, but Sydney Water came and dealt with that, and again, all the water was gone by evening time. It just goes to show how dry the ground was. Yes it flooded, but once the rain stopped, the flood water was absorbed into the ground super quick. More good news is that the dams have all filled so much from the rain that Sydney will lower their water restrictions from Level 2 back down to Level 1! The drought is definitely not considered over until we see weeks and months or normal or above normal rainfall, but this was very helpful indeed.
One learning activity we enjoyed this week was a potato clock science kit...
All three boys took part! First Monster read through the instructions and worked out the fiddly wiring portions that needed to be done...
Then Monkey and Munchkin took turns inserting the metal sticks into the potato...
Then it was back to Monster to fiddle with it and see if he could get it working properly.
You may not be able to see it well, but the clock is working and the time reads 3:11pm. We were disappointed that we couldn't get it working better and we may even buy some lemons and try again.
Monster did not want to spend the usual long time at the library playing computer games, but DID want to walk to the library to return books, pick up reserves, and say hello to the librarians on his birthday. A good friend who lives a few blocks up the road from us has planted a beautiful native garden since renovating their house, and I got permission to photograph these beautiful flowers!
I also want to take this opportunity to give a big shout out to our librarians! They are super special indeed. We met a new librarian who has joined the team at our local library on Tuesday. She remembered that Thursday was Monster's birthday and she made sure to wish him a happy birthday and she chatted with him for about 10 minutes. This is why I LOVE our library (well libraries in general) and I feel they are so important. Librarians are special people... our librarians love my boys and have always worked hard to make their library experiences wonderful. If you have a library near you... make use of it... get to know the librarians... the experience will greatly enrich your life.
Opening gifts from Nana, his brothers, and his dad and I after a brunch of pancakes and bacon...
I picked up a new drawing book for Monkey when we went to the library Thursday afternoon... these two pictures were taken at about 5pm...
I think it is safe to say I picked a good one and he likes the book!
Chocolate mud cake for dessert after the birthday dinner...
These three drawings above are from the new book from the library...
Monkey used an online drawing tutorial lesson for the ant...
You know there has been a lot of rain when you start noticing the mushrooms everywhere...
We spotted these as we walked to homeschool group on Friday...
A good portion of homeschool group on Friday was spent filming... another family of boys is creating a movie that several members of homeschool are starring in!
As always there was lots of book reading going on... above are a bunch of independent selections for Munchkin...
This is an independent selection of Monkey's that he finished this week...
More independent selections for Munchkin, with the exception of the Beast Quest book which was Monkey's choice.
Read aloud selections... the Digestion book was written almost entirely in rhyme and was a hoot to read aloud to all three boys. Hatchet was Monkey's first literature selection for the term/year! I read it aloud to both Monkey and Monster and they LOVED it! We have now requested that the library order the rest of the books in the series!
More independent reading for Munchkin... he does a LOT of reading first thing in the morning since he generally gets out of bed about two hours before his brothers (as in 6:30am)! How I created a morning person is beyond my comprehension!!
The new craze at the library is VOX books which have voice and sounds integrated in them. The boys chose several when we were in the library but so far have only read and listened to this one.
No comments:
Post a Comment