Term Three: Week One ~ Chaos and Celebration

 It was an interesting first week to the new term. We had a decent enough start, and I feel like we will achieve much, but it definitely could have gone better. We had some dramas: an infected finger for hubby and frustrations with replacing a household appliance, but we survived the week. We ended with Monkey's 17th birthday on Saturday and I reflected on the passing of time. It is hard to believe that I will soon have a household of grown men, not little boys.

Despite the loss of our wonderful friends from the other congregation, and the lack of their wonderful gardening skills, the flowers at church are thriving. I took some time after church to photograph some of my favourites. The bees were enjoying the lavender and were so busy with their job that they ignored me and my camera.

We had no errands to run after church, and my batch cooking went faster than usual, so there was time for a walk with Munchkin Sunday afternoon. The agave plant was blooming beautifully and we found this gorgeous orange grevillea plant as well.

Monday was a soft start with reading aloud only. I had plans of starting our newest David Attenborough DVD but we ended up sticking with just the reading. This is the stack of what we started on Monday. The rest of the week was much the same. With some of the other dramas throughout the week, we stuck with reading aloud and on a couple of days only managed the Bible and Book of Virtues. Hopefully week two will go a bit more smoothly.

We're back to spotting and photographing lonely Lime bike helmets. I have actually seen several over the school holidays but wasn't ever able to photograph them. So I was excited when I spotted this one on my walk to the shopping centre for groceries early Friday morning.

We finished off several books this week. The series along the left is primarily for Munchkin and there is one more book left to read. He is doing a unit study on cells (mainly) and body systems (secondarily) and these books are a great place to start. They are below his level, and the humour in them is groan worthy, but they have solid information and we will branch out to more detailed books from here. 

The picture book was a random find at the library as it was on display and the beautiful illustration on the front cover caught my eye. I had never heard of this particular bird before and we enjoyed learning more about it as we read the book and enjoyed the gorgeous pictures.

I finished on Saturday!!

My walks for the week. Two walks to the shops for groceries and the short walk with Munchkin Sunday afternoon. Ideally I would like to extend our Sunday afternoon walks if we can as that was a bit on the short side for my liking.

I had a GREAT Wordle week. I now have a 25 day streak AND I earned that badge you can see above! I didn't even know there were awards within Wordle. I've been concentrating much better with Wordle and not rushing to solve the puzzle. Hopefully I can keep my streak going.

July School Holidays: Week Two ~ Nature and Books

 

Our second week of the July school holidays brought glorious sunshine. I love this tree and never get tired of photographing it. Early Sunday morning I discovered a lone magpie way up in the branches and was able to snap this beautiful photo. If you look in the top left hand corner you will see a little black dot - that is the magpie.

Even on weekends and during school holidays, I still generally wake and rise no later than 6:30am. One of the main bonuses of this routine is that I am often greeted with glorious sunrises such as this one.

Two trips to the shopping centre in two days. The top photo was a solo trip I took on Wednesday. The clouds indicated that rain was returning and my weather app advised it would be raining by Thursday morning. However, when Thursday dawned cloudy but dry, Munchkin and I decided to make another trip, saving me having to do any grocery shopping on library day. Munchkin spotted two Rainbow Lorikeets in the tree, and I always love these daisies that bloom along our route.

Duolingo was happy with my hard work this week.

I earned an achievement in my walking app this week as well.

My solo trip to the libraries to pick up ALL the books for the new term.

All the books carefully but precariously perched on the library bookshelf in my bedroom before I sorted them to their respective homes.

There were three distinct groups of books in my haul this week. The far left photo are all the books I picked up for Munchkin for independent reading for the beginning of the term. He is currently enjoying re-reading various Percy Jackson series as well as the Series of Unfortunate Events books. We own all but the last four books, so when he wants to re-read the series, we grab those from the library. Several of the Percy Jackson books are on the 7-9 Premier's Reading Challenge list which is good because Munchkin still has a few more books to read in order to complete the challenge this year. It is his final year participating so important that he finish on time.

The middle photo shows books I borrowed as part of our homeschool curriculum plans for term three. I've bitten off WAY more than I can chew and there are well more books here than we can complete, particularly because this is going to be a shortened term for us. Some of these books will be returned until term four. I will say that I'm THRILLED to finally have the GEOGRAPHY book which is part of the Big Ideas Simply Explained series published by DK. As my regular readers will know we've read MANY other books in this series. Monkey is also particularly excited about this book as he loves all things geography related.

Finally, the far right photo are all the books I borrowed for my own independent reading. Again, I have gone overboard, but I hope to finish many of these in the weeks to come. There are also three books in this stack that are on the Premier's Reading Challenge list (two Roald Dahl books and a John Green book) which both Munchkin and I will read.

Another view of the books, but this time slightly larger photos for the people who like to look at titles a little closer. This is my "library bookshelf" in my bedroom so Munchkin's independent reading doesn't feature in these photos. He has a separate "library bookshelf" in the front hallway for his books. A bookshelf full of books always makes me happy.

These are the four books I picked up from my "backup" library. This particular library has much stricter rules than our lovely library we've been attending since 2009. Renewals are automatic and when a book is ONE day overdue it locks the particular library card. To contrast, our main library allows manual renewal and an overdue period of TEN days before the cards lock. Therefore, I generally don't renew books until day ten which gives us a bit longer borrowing time. It is a fun little way to cheat the system a bit. However, this means books from this "backup" library often take priority over our main library. As Saturday was our last official day of the July school holidays, I set aside a chunk of time for reading and got a good start on all four of these books. The Agatha Christie book absolutely grabbed me from the very first page and I ended up staying up until 11pm to finish it!! It has been a couple of years since I've finished an entire book in one day!

A little millipede that Monkey found in the yard. Despite all the rain we've had recently the weather was nice enough that the men were able to spend a good chunk of the afternoon working together on some much needed clearing up in the backyard. It is always fun to see what wild life they will find in the process.

I'm pleased with my walking and Wordle progress this week. Two walks to the shopping centre and the library trip which isn't bad considering the variable weather.

Wordle was good and I have a two digit streak again, but Sunday and Wednesday I needed a bit of assistance. Monster helped me out on Sunday (though if I had been more patient I would have got it on my own) and both hubby and Monkey gave me a slight hint on Wednesday. We shall see if I can continue my streak this week. I would LOVE to beat my personal best of 35 days.