Term Two: Week Five ~ Snails, Gaming, and Time With Friends...

Sunday after church Munchkin found this tiny snail on the church building and excitedly asked me to photograph it. I'm not sure he has ever seen such a tiny snail, hence the fascination with it.

Then we discovered this normal sized snail in the garden bed and had to take some photographs of it as well.

These are the photos Munchkin was able to take on his own using the camera on my phone. The photographs above were taken using my DSLR camera.

I only took photos of Munchkin working on his schoolwork this week for some reason. Both of these photos (though taken on different days) are pictures of him working on his math for that particular day.

The weather is cooling off dramatically as we creep closer to winter, so it is time for quick and easy hot lunches in my Phillips all-in-one cooker. This particular day I pressure cooked a bag of macaroni pasta with some frozen peas, carrots and corn, then stirred in equal amounts of Greek yogurt and sour cream, added some shredded ham and grated cheese, and the boys enjoyed a hot, delicious, and filling lunch.

The older boys enjoyed some online gaming time with their friends this week... Along with their usual "fighting" game that they play, they arranged an additional online gaming session to play four player chess.

Saturday afternoon/evening I went out for dinner and dessert with one of my girlfriends... When I arrived home I found Munchkin and Monkey enjoying a game of Monopoly with daddy.

Munchkin and the boy who lives behind us enjoyed an afternoon/evening playing together and watching Wreck It Ralph together...

Munchkin enjoyed a mammoth crafting session during one of our read aloud sessions this week.

A homeschool friend was desperate for some time with his friends after his one week of COVID isolation, so when he was finally free to leave the house, he walked to our house and enjoyed a couple of hours with the boys. He and Munchkin spent a good deal of time pouring over Munchkin's Minecraft Search and Find book together.

We ended our week with the After School Craft Activity at the library... Munchkin is LOVING that his best friend and his two siblings are joining us for these events every Thursday. This week they used magazine cut outs to decorate rainbow picture templates. Sadly I have to photos of their finished products.

This was the only non-fiction book we finished this week as we had a shortened week this week. We ended our school week on Thursday as we had a funeral to attend on Friday. It was a 90 minute drive each way and the funeral was at 1pm so we took a personal day.

I was blessed with a nearly five hours of child free time Wednesday evening as my husband and the three boys went to the stadium to watch the Australia versus Barcelona soccer game. I spent a good portion of my time reading and finishing these two books. They had some similar themes so it made sense to read them together. I would highly recommend both of them as they were well written and easy to read and understand.

Some of Munchkin's many independent selections for the week...

Monkey finished off this book (the last in the series) as part of his Premier's Reading Challenge reading...

The remainder of Munchkin's independent reading for the week...

Read Aloud Book Selection ~ Term Two: Week Five

Sunday night here and time for the weekly post that gives you a sneak peak at the books I'll be reading aloud to the boys in the coming week. As you could see from my Weekly Review blog post, we finished a stack of non-fiction books last week, so it was time for a full refill of books this week. I'm super excited to dive into all these books and learn lots of new stuff...

We started reading this book last term, but didn't get much read with all the medical dramas, and I decided the best thing to do is just start from the beginning again. There is a LOT of information in this book and I don't want to skip over anything by assuming that we fully remember what we were trying to read in the midst of constant interruption last term.

We continue with our Biology theme in science... all three boys have a biology focus in their science curriculum this year which is really helpful as it allows me to cover more material together as a group.

We'll start the last two books for Monkey's Ancient Greece unit study. This means I'll need to start seeing what books the library has on offer about Ancient Rome, as we will move on to that time period next. Researching book titles for unit studies is one of my favourite activities so I'm excited to start my search this week.

I am really enjoying learning more about the history of some of the most commonly eaten foods around the world. It is interesting to learn where each food originated, as well as how and why the food travelled around the world.

These are two new series of books I discovered at the library in the past week or two. Recently the library reorganised some of the books and thankfully all the junior non-fiction titles have moved to a large bookshelf very close to the children's area of the library. This means Munchkin can be attending an event, or sitting and quietly reading, and I'm able to browse books and also keep an eye on him. It is BRILLIANT!! I've quickly scanned through these series and they look amazing so I'm keen to start reading them and learn lots of new stuff.

I chose two new titles from these series as we continue to work our way through all the books. Again, both of these series do a good job of ticking off lots of boxes for Munchkin and Monkey as far as their curriculum content is concerned. But beyond that, both series have many titles that are of great interest to myself and the three boys, so the fact that it satisfies government requirements is just icing on the cake for us.

Finally, this is the second to last book in this interesting new series. This is the third time through studying and learning about the human body (as it is part of Munchkin's curriculum) so it is always nice to have new books and newer information to read about.