Going Against the Flow: Term One: Week Two ~ Returning to Homeschool Group

This blog post feels slightly disjointed to me because the pictures are not in chronological order. Some were taken on my DSLR camera while others were taken on my phone, and rather than try to put them all in the right order, I just decided to leave them as they are. If nothing else it will mean people have to pay closer attention to the written portion of my blog post so they know what is going on...

Week two went really well... I'm still rather astounded at how smoothly this year has started out, as generally we have lots of grumbling and complaining and trouble adjusting to the "routine and schedule" of school again after the long six week break. I take the smooth transition to mean that the boys are maturing and also we work as a well oiled machine now that we are starting our eleventh year of homeschooling. I am loving it... for a variety of reasons... but especially because it means we can get down to the business of learning which is what I love most!

I like to occasionally show a couple of photos of how I juggle life with the demands of homeschooling. I am trying to do more batch cooking and advanced preparation for meals. These photos were taken Sunday afternoon/evening and show how I was prepping for breakfast and lunch for the coming week. In the top photo you can see my Phillips All-in-One pot working away. He is cooking a delicious ham, zucchini and cheese slice which the boys LOVE to eat for breakfast, lunch or just a snack. In the bottom photo I am simultaneously cooking chickpea (garbanzo bean) burgers on the back burner and protein pancakes on the front burner.

Munchkin now has use of my old Nokia mobile phone (as I have a new Samsung) which he can use for his allowed game time (instead of the computer). He is also allowed to use it to draw, listen to music, or look up information for school. In this particular instance he is playing games to distract him from his super itchy mosquito bites. Saturday night/Sunday morning a mosquito feasted on both of his arms and also bit him twice on his cheek. That is an ice-pack he is resting his face on while he plays.

Our La Nina summer continues... for Australia this means LOTS and LOTS of rain, cooler than normal temperatures, and humid weather. Not so good for growing crops, drying clothes outside on the line, or spending time at the beach... but it means a VERY low fire danger.

I only photographed Munchkin's notebooking page this week for some reason - though Monkey did one as well. We read about Japan and they filled in the information on their sheet using the book and also the spare mobile phone. The book series was published in 2017 so they look up the current population and sometimes the current leader of the country has changed since then as well.

Friday was the MOST exciting day as we FINALLY returned (in a new way) to homeschool group for the first time since early June last year. We have three families that we are really close to from our homeschool group. All the children are close friends, and the four of us mothers love visiting together as well. Our very first get together was Friday this week, and was held at the house of one of our friends. Her youngest son celebrated his birthday on the Friday, and Monster's birthday is coming up on Sunday, so we did a combined birthday celebration.

The weather was rainy and overcast but as the backyard includes a HUGE covered veranda there was plenty of room for the 13 children to play together. They had big chess and big Jenga set up outside and also the grassy area to run around in when it wasn't raining.

I am so incredibly impressed by all our children. They range in age from nearly four years old to nearly sixteen years old and they play together wonderfully. These guys hadn't spent more than 5 minutes together on a handful of days since June 2021, but it was like no time had passed. They picked up right where they left off as if they hadn't spent over eight months away from each other. They behaved beautifully (only needing a couple of reminders about not being too loud) and really enjoyed their first chance to play together in AGES.

Homemade pizza for lunch... our hostess was in charge of rolling out all the dough

Monster was put in charge of spreading sauce on the first three pizzas bases and then the other two mums and I took over with all the toppings. We had chicken, ham, pepperoni, various kinds of cheese, pineapple, olives, mushrooms, and basil... it was DELICIOUS!!

I no longer buy balloons so my boys were happy for the chance to enjoy them for an afternoon... though some of the children decided it would be fun to pop lots of them!

These three created a "band" with Monkey playing a toy guitar, and the other two boys using balloons to accompany him.

Some of the younger children spent time in the playroom with cars and then Lego...

Two birthday cakes... cheesecake on the left for the younger birthday boy, and a Black Forest cake for Monster... complete with sparklers so we didn't have issues with blowing out candles.

However, there were issues getting 24 sparklers lit in time...

My (soon to be) birthday boy enjoying an early birthday celebration with his friends!!

My first example of my out of order photography for the week...

This is the assigned writing paragraph for the three boys. As it was their first writing assignment for the year it was an easy paragraph that I picked purely to review some of the "rules" of our writing curriculum. I really enjoy assigning the boys the same paragraph every once in awhile as it is fun to see the different writing styles and also their skill level.

The photo above is the original paragraph. The assignment is to take that paragraph, write an outline of the key words, then re-write the paragraph in their own words and "dress it up" with specific types of words that they learn about using through the course of the curriculum. Look below for each of their rewritten paragraphs... and YES, the paragraph is a satire about eggplants. The "dress ups" they used are in bold and the sentence openers (another part of the learned curriculum) are underlined and numbered.

Left Photo: Monster's paragraph

Right Photo: Monkey's paragraph

This is Munchkin's paragraph...

My Facebook Photography Challenge theme for the fortnight was leading lines... I chose to snap this photo of our footpath as I enjoyed an afternoon walk on a rare day when it wasn't raining.

Munchkin is still adjusting to the increase in workload that Year 5 math requires, hence the somewhat grumpy face, but he is doing excellent work and is understanding the concepts so that is the most important thing.

One afternoon, after written school work was done, we got down to the business of planting his rosemary that he brought home from church. This stalk had been in his propagation station for quite some time and had a good root system growing so really needed to be put in the soil.

Now we wait and see if it continues to grow...

One of the things I LOVE about a La Nina summer is the afternoon and evening storms it produces. These clouds were beautiful to watch as I made my way home from a walk.

Preparation for Monster's birthday on Sunday started the day before on Saturday afternoon/evening. Munchkin LOVES to bake so I put him in charge of some cupcakes to take to church for morning tea. Here he is mixing up the cake batter...

While the cupcakes baked and cooled, and the boys enjoyed their Saturday computer gaming time, I got down to the business of planning the next week of school work. Yes, that is leftover pizza from our homeschool group birthday party ~ energy for the work ahead.

The cupcakes cooling and waiting to be frosted...

Munchkin mixed up the frosting and then spread all the frosting on the cupcakes. The only help I gave him was to put a spoonful of frosting on each cake so we made sure we had enough, and I was in charge of the oven. Otherwise, Munchkin did everything else on his own.

Frosting cupcakes is serious work...

I'm still finding the balance with my walking... just under 5000 steps isn't quite enough for me to feel like I've had a good amount of exercise, but the nearly 10K walk was still too much for me and I needed a full rest day after that little stunt. One month after contracting COVID and although it was a mild case and I was only symptomatic for one week, I'm not fully 100% back to my pre-COVID energy levels yet. I think over the next 1-2 weeks I'll try to hit 6000 steps per day and add in 10 minutes of yoga first thing in the morning and see how I feel with that.

Left Photo: An independent reading selection for Monster

Right Photo: An independent reading selection for me. I borrowed this book from our local library with the intention of learning a bit more about Thomas Jefferson as Monster and I are studying the Enlightenment Age...

Read aloud selections for the boys... the top two books are part of unit studies for Munchkin and the bottom two books are part of Monkey's Ancient Greece unit study.

Independent reading selections for Munchkin... the photo on the right is a compilation book - there are actually four smaller books included in that one large book.

We continue with Munchkin's Australian history unit study by continuing chronologically with the Our Australian Girl books... the Rose stories take place in 1900 on the eve of Federation. Again, this is a four book in one volume and we have finished the first book so far.

More junior non-fiction books (and one historical fiction novel) that cover various unit studies for Munchkin and Monkey... we are blessed that our library is constantly upgrading its junior non-fiction section so that we have beautiful, relevant, and up-to-date books to use for history, geography and science.