Week three was all about birthday celebrations! We still did a (near) full week of school, but definitely with a party vibe throughout the week. We started with Monster's birthday on Sunday. My first born, my baby who made me a mum, has turned 16 years old and it doesn't really seem possible that he is that old already.
My traditional photo... taken EVERY year at 12:15am ~ the ridiculous hour of the day that he was born. In his younger years (before age 4) sneaking in to take the photo would wake him up and it would sometimes be hours before we got him back to sleep. Then for several years I was able to sneak in, take the photo, and sneak out again without disturbing his sleep, or his brothers sleep for that matter. This year was the very first year the photo was faked. He wasn't asleep when I went in the room to take the photo, but agreed to pretend to be asleep, and in all honesty, he did fall asleep not long after I snapped this shot. Next year might be the first year he is awake and still out of bed at his birth time!!
Some very special photos of Monster with Pastor A taken before music practice and the service. Yes, he IS that much taller than she is now.
It was fun to celebrate at church with our "family" there. Almost everyone has known him since birth and has enjoyed watching him grow to the young man that he is now. I prepared a fancier than usual morning tea and we had white chocolate mud cake as well... the candles on the cupcakes were purely for sanitary/COVID purposes to allow for singing and candle blowing.
Another special photograph ~ this one with Monster's godmother ~ Auntie L, and she, like her mother, is that much shorter than Monster and is shocked at how much he has grown.
Much excitement this week when we discovered that the dragon fruit the landlord planted a few years ago (like before COVID) has finally fruited. We knew it was going to because it had flowers a few weeks ago (I've included photos of the flowers further down in the post) but we didn't realise how quickly it would happen.
We enjoyed a beautiful sunset after one of the many thunderstorms we enjoyed this week.
Wednesday we took the day off from most of school (we still did our reading aloud first thing in the morning) to help Munchkin's best friend celebrate his 10th birthday. Three families together enjoying gaming time, good food, and wonderful friendship... The birthday boy is on the left in this photo and these three enjoyed gaming on their tablets...
...while these four played Smash Brothers and Mario Kart on the Switch.
Meanwhile the little boys were out in the back playroom having lots of fun with the guinea pigs.
A super cute and delicious snake cake for the birthday boy...
Some of the crew enjoying the cake...
Two attempts at a good photo of the "big" boys and I'm not happy with either of them. Clearly my photography suffered during the worst of COVID and so hopefully now I can give it a bit more attention because my skills have definitely dropped in the last two years.
Lots of posing for photographs while enjoying the birthday cake...
Monkey and Munchkin completed their notebooking page for our study of South and North Korea. However, the information they plugged into the notebook page was only for South Korea as there wasn't all that much information in the book about North Korea. Side note, the angry face emojii drawing was an extra addition by Monkey because he had to list BTS as the famous people for South Korea and he doesn't like BTS!!
These photos were taken on the 23rd of January. I intended to go back outside with my DSLR camera and get more/better photos of the flowering dragon fruit plant, but I never did. So this is what the plant looked like BEFORE the green fruits started growing.
Monster opened presents Sunday night (yes my photos are out of order again) and I only took photographs on my phone. Sadly the quality wasn't good, so this is the only one worth sharing on the blog. Both Munchkin and Monkey made special gifts for their brother so I'm glad that the good photo is of Munchkin explaining to his brother what he made him.
One of the big perks of homeschooling is that it allows us to be flexible and adjust quickly to changes in our environment. Hubby unexpectedly needed to use the dining table as a workbench for a couple of days so I just set up written schoolwork on this fold up table that the boys use when they are playing computer games in the lounge room. In the early days of our homeschool adventure I might have scrapped written schoolwork for games or outdoor learning, but they are old enough now that written schoolwork must be done and thus this option was perfect.
Munchkin and I went for an afternoon walk one of the days and found this clever spider. It had made a little home for itself in the curl of this bark and the piece of bark was suspended from the tree by the spider's silk.
If you look closely, just above the black oval I put on this photo you will see a small brown object. That is the piece of bark. When we started our walk, Munchkin thought about kicking the bark as he rode his scooter past, but then he thought there might be a spider inside, which prompted us to stop and take a closer look.
Some more photos from the birthday celebrations on Wednesday. Our friend who hosted the party lives just a 10-15 minute walk from our favourite park. So my boys and I walked up to the park and then she met us at the end of this pathway that runs along the edge of the park to a major road near her house. I had sent her a text message with this photo to make sure we were headed the right way, so thought I would include it in my photo journal of our week.
So much food... for lunch the children enjoyed pizza, chips, garlic bread and cocktail franks, as well as soft drink. There was even leftover pizza and garlic bread for all of us to take home for dinner that night.
Best friends... there might be a nearly nine year age gap between these two, but they are special, special friends. The 17 week lockdown was super not easy for either of them, but thanks to video messaging and the standard mail, they survived. Monkey had lots of fun drawing books for little J and then he would send a video thank you message to Monkey when they arrived at his house. Both boys are looking forward to spending more time together in the weeks and months to come.
Monkey is best friends with Little J and Munchkin is best friends with Little J's older brother, Master L... my boys are blessed to have a few really special and close friendships.
I am still so thrilled that I successfully moved our daytime read aloud session to first thing in the morning. We are getting WAY more reading done each day because we're not trying to cram in into the little bit of time that is left after written schoolwork is done and before I have to start preparing dinner... it is just working brilliantly for us. Above are two unit study books we finished this week... an interesting book to kick start a unit study all about food, specifically different individual foods and how they are eaten around the world... we should be starting that unit study in week 5 as we are waiting for one more book in the series to arrive at the library. The book on the left is an excellent book all about how Aboriginal People have looked after, cared for, and managed this beautiful country that I now call home. This is part of an on-going Australian history/culture unit study that I started six years ago with Monster and have just continued to re-visit in various ways every since.
Monkey finished another book in this series this week. When he finishes he has plans to read the Wizards of Once series so he can compare and contrast.
Two chapter books I finished reading aloud this week... all three boys are absolutely loving A Series of Unfortunate Events. Even Monster listens in and this is the third time the stories have been read aloud to him!! The History of the World book covered Ancient Egypt to the fall of the Berlin Wall and would be an excellent way to start an extensive world history unit.
Our selection of non-fiction books that we finished this week covering topic for geography and science for all three boys.
Finally, I finished book two in the Rose stories and we'll look forward to starting book three on Monday of next week.
I took Munchkin to the library with me this week and he found three new series of books he was interested in reading. So he got started on them while we were there, brought home all the books the library had on the shelves, and asked me to reserve the other books in the series that were in other branches of the library. He will hit the jackpot next Thursday when we return to the library and pick them all up.
