Week Six done and dusted and the end of Term Three looms ever closer. We continue to remain in lockdown and at the end of this week we got news that restrictions were going to get even tougher with a curfew being put into place from Monday next week and exercise being limited to one hour per day. This does not affect our family at all so we will just continue as we have been for the last eight weeks. We are working hard, learning lots, and getting outside for exercise any day that does not rain - which of course is MOST days for us in a typical winter. Please enjoy my selection of photos from our week of learning, working and living together.
I'm continuing to make a concerted effort to work on my photography skills. So Sunday afternoon I got outside and tried some different points of view of the flowers/plants I chose for my Facebook Photography challenge from a week or so ago. Again, I'm not 100% satisfied with the shots I took, but now I have some new ideas for still other aspects so let the experimentation continue...
These beautiful flowers grow all around our neighbour's mailbox and I will often take the opportunity on a sunny afternoon/evening to photograph them. I'm still working on finding a vantage point that gives me the view/perspective of these flowers that I'm looking for.
In the early hours of the morning (left photo) if Munchkin has food, a drink, and a pile of books he is a very happy boy. The right photo was taken later in the day when he was working on his handwriting page for the week.
Monster has discovered the Duolingo app... he now spends his free time in the morning working through language lessons on his phone. He started with Latin and once he finished that he got started on German.
This is a new flower that has recently bloomed in our front garden. I'm not pleased with this photograph at all, so I'll be experimenting some more in the days and weeks to come. But I do think the colour is just beautiful.
Multi-tasking... Monkey reading while riding the bike (left) and Monster working on Latin (or German) while doing his bike riding (right photo)
I am FINALLY refreshing my Spanish skills. Over a year ago I purchased Getting Started With Spanish with the intention of working through it last year. But I got a bit distracted with the initial outbreak of COVID and simply put it aside. No more excuses now, and I want to surprise the South American couple that attend our church when we are able to return, so I'm now working through the written exercises daily and also using the Spanish portion of Duolingo on my phone.
Monkey worked hard writing a paper about houses and religion in Ancient Egypt.
Our chosen Mark Kistler drawing lesson for the week was this cute little monster... The top left photo is Monkey's drawing, the top right photo is Munchkin's drawing, and the photo above is my drawing.
Munchkin HUGE selection of independent reading for the week... thankfully he is still content to read and re-read the library books we have, as well as books in our home library. It is looking like we won't be able to get new books from our local library until sometime early next year.
Two wonderful read aloud selections we finished this week... I read The Scarlet Letter aloud to Monster as part of his literature this year and I read The Tale of Despereaux to all three boys.
Still more independent selections for Munchkin...
Finally, some bonus photos that were taken on my phone this week... I was gifted a beautiful colouring book and a set of wonderful pens/textas from a generous friend. So I am making a concerted effort to make some time to sit quietly and colour - something I haven't done regularly since I was in university. Hubby bought us a paper cutter that is a trimmer on one side and a guillotine on the other. Munchkin was super excited to discover that the paper trimmer does three different actions... plain cutting, wavy cutting, or perforating. He got straight to work crafting...
Munchkin is my exercise buddy Monday to Friday and on this particular day he opted to ride his scooter rather than walk along side me. I like it when he rides the scooter because he ends up getting more exercise that way. He will scooter as far ahead of me as I give him permission to, and then backtrack. Since the beginning of COVID last year, when the government decided to put in this footpath, we have met and gotten to know quite a lot of families that live along these two streets of our block. The all know me, and the boys well now, so I'm quite comfortable for Munchkin to scooter the whole length of the footpath at his own pace as I will eventually catch up with him or at least have him in my sights.
As we are now relying on a LOT of extra computer and TV time for online learning (since I would NORMALLY rely on library books for history, geography, science, health, etc.) we have decided to remove our Friday Night Movie night and replace it with Friday Night Games Night. So this week we played Exploding Kittens with all the new expansion packs we were recently gifted. I played two games with everyone and then daddy and I bailed out leaving the boys to play some games of chess against each other until their late night Friday bedtime.
Whenever we ultimately get our library books that are languishing on the reserve shelves (be it through a click and collect service if that can be established, or when we unlock finally), we will resume our Friday Night Movie Nights and continue watching the remaining Disney movies we have yet to watch.
