Term One: Week One ~ Belated Celebrations and a New School Year

A new school year has begun.

I am ALWAYS more excited about the beginning of a new school year than the boys, so now I'm used to it and I don't let their general grumbling about the loss of free time worry me. I just plunge ahead and assure them that they are going to LOVE learning lots of new things.

Having said that, this is a year to remember as it will be Monster's LAST year as a homeschool student. Time flies. I blinked.

For those who may be wondering, no, Monster doesn't know what he wants to do yet after he finishes high school. He knows he loves statistical and financial math, and he also is passionate about marine life, but he isn't sure yet what career choices he may make. He may take a gap year, he may start TAFE (Aussie equivalent to community college), or he may head to university. We will cross all though bridges as (when) we come to them. In the meantime, he has plenty of learning ahead with me this year, and I'm just going to treasure all the memories we make together along the way.

Our traditional "NOT Back to School Photos" taken the Sunday before the first day of school.

Munchkin - age 10 - Year 6 and Monkey - age 13 - Year 9

Monster - age 16 - Year 12

We spent the boys LAST day of summer school holidays with dear friends of ours. We didn't get to meet up with them January last year because I was sick with COVID. After church we drove out to their house, enjoyed a swim in the pool, a BBQ, gifts (Christmas for the boys and birthday for me) and ended the night with a card game and chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream. It was a perfect afternoon/evening.

This is one of the many beautiful flowers that blooms in their backyard.

The boys' Christmas presents this year were all shared gifts so they opened three of them simultaneously...

which revealed three different card games...

The "men" all played one of the card games while the two women sat and chatted and got started on the dinner preparations.

There was a fourth shared gift (a board game) which they had to open all three together.

We enjoyed an open hand "learning" round of Saboteur before enjoying cake and ice cream in the evening. All of the games look wonderful but these friends of our have a true gift when it comes to choosing presents for people.

Traditional First Day of Photos taken outside our house.

The very LAST First Day Photo of Monster.

We've had some warmer weather (much closer to normal for this time of year) which means the Blue Tongue Lizards are out again. This one is injured - he lost his tail recently and is missing both his feet on his left side - so he is very wary of us. Any sudden moves or noise and he darts back into hiding. I was thrilled to be able to get so many photographs.

Munchkin asked me to skin and chop a slice of apple and the lizard protected his food fiercely as there was a bird on the roof eyeing it as well.

Left Photo: The lizard is living (at least during the day) in between these computers that are waiting to go to the electronic waste recycling centre next week. It will be interesting to see if he chooses a new day time hiding spot once they are gone.

Right Photo: I was pleasantly surprised to find a cicada on the footpath during on of my walks but before I could get a photo it flew up into this tree. If  you can't easily spot it look roughly in the centre of the photo and it is perched on the small bright leaves. It is grey in colour.

I thought an update of Monster's summer project with his dad was in order. This is our new six foot fresh water fish tank. Monster and his dad spent the summer sanding and painting the stand and getting the landscape work done in the tank. Now the fish are in the tank as well and soon the maintenance and care of the tank will be entirely Monster's responsibility. 

The boys still do have free time despite school starting again. Top photo shows Monkey enjoying his 30 minutes of computer time one afternoon... Left photo is Munchkin and the next door neighbour enjoying some computer time together... Right photo is Munchkin helping me prepare hot chocolate which is a Thursday morning tradition during our read aloud session.

Whilst we did a "soft start" to the week on Monday due to a late night with our friends, we got stuck into the work this week. All three boys worked on math and writing, while Monkey and Munchkin also did grammar, and Monster did Latin and typing as well.

Monkey enjoyed playing chess with daddy this week.

We finished four junior non-fiction books this week.

Monkey finished a book he was reading independently. He will start working hard towards his goal for the Premier's Reading Challenge which starts again in March.

I definitely walked more than this through the week but somehow only recorded one day.

I also completed the Yoga with Adriene January challenge this week.

Munchkin's independent reading choices for this first week of the new school year.