Week Two shaped up just like week one ~ with a TON of rain in the forecast.
Sorry if this is difficult to see, (especially for my readers who receive this post via email) but my weather app was NOT giving me good news on Sunday afternoon. After a full week of rain to start off the term, I was definitely NOT looking forward to a second week of the wet stuff. YES - I spent most of my childhood living in Oregon, where it rains something like 100 days every year. But, I am not a native Oregonian and eventually the rain gets to me.
Sunday afternoon was spent keeping an eye on the rain bursts that moved in and out of the area as we have to check for flooding whenever we get heavy rain for any period of time. Thankfully, no flash floods are in the forecast for this week.
To shake things up a bit and do something a little bit different, I decided to showcase our reading first and foremost. These first two books are part of history unit studies for the boys. Munchkin continues to learn about (and enjoy) Ancient Egypt while Monkey is immersed in a year long study of World War I.
I decided to do a fun little introduction to a natural disasters unit study of Munchkin's. Jackie French and Bruce Whatley (illustrator) have this beautiful series of books based on various natural disasters that occur in Australia. A new book was recently released as part of the series so I decided we would read ALL the books. Some of them are repeats for the boys, but we missed a couple along the way so it was fun to "catch up". I read them in publication order so we started with the oldest book in the series which talks about a serious flood in Brisbane, Queensland, in 2011.
Bruce Whatley's illustrations add such an emotional quality to the books.
I hope some people will be able to read the author and illustrator notes that I included here. Particularly interesting to us was that Bruce Whatley mentioned he let his acrylic wash drip intentionally to add to the feeling of wetness.
Jackie spoke about how turning away from the traditional Aboriginal way of managing fire has brought big problems in Australia. Bruce mentioned his use of large spaces of white, which contrasted with the bright yellow and red, along with dark black areas, to help show the drastic visual aspect of bushfire.
For some reason I didn't take any photos of the author and illustrator notes for these two books. But the "Cyclone" book is about Cyclone Tracy which hit Darwin on Christmas 1974 and effectively destroyed much of the city. This Christmas will be the 50th anniversary and so I intend to find and read some quality adult non-fiction books about the event in Term 4.
This is one of the books in the series that we missed when it was first published. Probably because for some strange reason our local library didn't get the book - strange since USUALLY Jackie French books are on automatic order. I alerted one of our favourite librarians and she is in the process of fixing the problem. In the meantime, we borrowed it from one of our "back-up" libraries and enjoyed the opportunity to "catch up"!
I particularly like that Jackie chose to tell the story of the Spanish Flu from the perspective of the children - who worked hard doing all the jobs that the adults couldn't do at the time. Jackie's great-grandmother organised the group of children. It is always fun when Jackie writes "autobiographical" instances into her books.
An interesting note that Bruce Whatley made in was that he completed the artwork for this book while doing a two week quarantine period in a hotel in Adelaide. He had some of his paints with him, but NOT his graphite pencils, so the line drawings in the book were done with a ball point pen that he found in his hotel room.
These are the last three books in the series. Earthquake is about the Newcastle earthquake that occurred in 1989. It is a good reminder that although Australia isn't directly in line with the Ring of Fire, we can and DO have earthquakes large enough to do significant damage.
Plague pointed out some other interesting information in the author's notes. It IS possible to prevent locust plagues without using large amounts of chemical pesticides.
From the illustrator's notes, these three books are interesting as well because it was with Earthquake that Bruce switched to using digital software to complete the illustrations. Monkey and I spent some time comparing the older books with the newer ones to see the differences. Regardless of whether we prefer the pencil/paint illustrations or the digital illustrations, Monkey and I are in agreement that Bruce Whatley is a talented artist.
We read the final two books in this series as part of science and geography for both boys.
Monkey and I read these final two books that we currently had on loan about WWI. We are working our way through an adult non-fiction book about Villers-Bretonneux while I search our library for more junior non-fiction books that I feel we MUST read. As we will be studying WWI for the entire year, I have time to research the best quality books.
These final three books are all Munchkin's books. The Female Pharaohs Wore False Beards book was a hilarious way to look at some of the information we hear about Ancient Egypt and determine (if possible) if it is fact or fiction. The Timeline of Australian Food book was full of information about the history (and changes) to food in this country. We both learned so many interesting things through the reading of this book. Finally, we finished another book in the Borrowers series and look forward to beginning the next one in Week Three.
My only photo of structured written work is a lonely photo of Monkey's math book and my notebook (as I work through the textbook with him). Both boys are less than enthusiastic about having their photos taken and although I don't like it, I have to respect it.
Side Note: The chapter we finished up this week was a trigonometry chapter which involved solving equations to determine side lengths and angle sizes of triangles. I had NEVER done this level of math before. However, I not only successfully taught the chapter to Monkey, but we both got 100% on the three tests at the end of the chapter.
My weather app informed me that we would see the sun for a bit before yet more rain arrived!
This is the beautiful view out my kitchen window - complete with the bit of sun we were promised! I love enjoying this view as I wash the dishes every day. The view out the kitchen window at our old house was boring - the concrete backyard, our colour bond fence, and the neighbour's brick wall. This view is MUCH nicer.
When we get a long period of rain we get mushrooms. Munchkin and I spotted all these various (and rather beautiful) mushrooms while walking to the shops. He wasn't impressed that I had to take so many photographs!!
I got rather obsessive about checking my weather app EVERY morning to see when (if) the sun was ever going to return! Thankfully, by Wednesday and Thursday I could see the light at the end of the very rainy tunnel.
Our two shelves devoted library books was looking a little bit depleted with all the reading we've been doing, so it was time for a trip to the library.
(SIDE NOTE): As we finish reading books devoted purely to school work (top shelf) I move them into a large plastic tub in our bedroom to wait to be returned to the library! These books sitting on the shelves are yet to be read (top left) or are in progress (top right).
The bottom shelf houses the junior fiction books the boys are reading (they don't move to the tub until the day we go to the library) and on the far right are the Atari system and the Makey-Makey kit that we have borrowed from one of our "back up" libraries.
Waiting for the bus to head off to the library (and youth group) Friday afternoon. As I mentioned earlier (and is rather blatantly obvious here) neither boy is particularly interested in having their photo taken. But I insisted as I periodically need photographic proof that they DO socialise.
SIDE NOTE: Monster travels directly to youth group from work on Fridays now and then the family that takes the two younger boys with them brings him home.
A much happier library bookshelf now! I didn't get all the books I wanted (somehow managed to forget to reserve a biography for myself that ties into a literature unit on poetry that I'm going to start with the boys) but it is a start. We returned 44 books and picked up 23 which isn't my best effort. But we will be returning to the library in a fortnight and I intend to borrow 60 books at that time! (the maximum I can have on reserve as I'm allowed 10 per library card)
Photographic proof that the boys arrived at our friend's house for dinner and youth group. After our trip to the library and a stop off at the chemist/pharmacist, we parted company. The two boys walked themselves to our friend's house and I headed straight to the train station.
A rousing game of "Exploding Kittens" before dinner.
A fun drawing game and a dinner of sausages and salad before heading off to youth group.
Photo credit: our friends mum
This is photographic proof of why it isn't a good idea to feed the native birds (this is my own humble opinion mind you). This house (I walk past it every time I go to the shops) feeds bread daily to the Rainbow Lorikeets. I think they have come to depend on this man for food and protection. It was raining on Saturday and at least 60 birds (yes I counted them) were huddled on the windowsills of his house. They should be sheltering in trees. I love this picture but it makes me feel a little sad as well.
Did I mention I was obsessively checking my weather app all week long? I am so thrilled to see numerous days of sunshine ahead. Especially since Mount Washmore is erupting in the bathroom and laundry room! I can't wait to be able to sit out in the sun on the front veranda!!
Some excellent walking this week - top left was a walk to the shops but we had to ring for a ride home due to pouring rain and forgetting the umbrellas. The other short walk was from the trip to the library on Friday.
