Term Two: Week Four ~ The Germ Invasion Continues

There are few photos to share with you this week. The germ invasion continued in the house with Munchkin coming down with Monkey's cold Sunday morning. He and hubby stayed home from church and the older boys and I attended alone asI was serving coffee hour/morning tea and couldn't arrange a replacement at such short notice. Then I deemed it a sick week for Munchkin as he developed of disgusting cough with his cold. 

For anyone who might be wondering, my rule for sick days/weeks in our homeschool goes something like this... Fever, vomiting, or the runs require NO SCHOOL and no leaving the house until those issues have been gone for a full 24 hours. Colds are a bit different, but effectively, if I wouldn't send them to public school (due to sneezing, snotting, coughing) then they don't do written work in our homeschool. We continue with reading aloud and when they were younger I often showed documentaries or other educational TV/videos. Munchkin chose to read and rest and I focused on math with Monkey for the week.

We still did reading aloud but the focus was on literature and LONG non-fiction so no books were finished this week.

The other excitement this week was I thought they were going to prune (or possibly remove) the beautiful giant plane tree next door. The leaves are a chore to deal with in the autumn and winter but I love the tree. Thankfully they were there to prune some other trees near the street. It made for a noisy morning but we were glad that the trees are being properly looked after.

I achieved my 1000 day streak with Duolingo this week.

I thought I would get some great reward, but as I already had a 3 day Super Duo going from another milestone I hit earlier, I got NOTHING! Except this cool screenshot to share!!

Even though it hasn't rained for well over a week, and things have dried up a bit, there are still some beautiful mushrooms to be found. I spotted these during a walk to the shops and couldn't resist photographing them. They really are rather gorgeous.

Friday morning my library book tub was full to overflowing. Monkey, Munchkin and I left the house just after 1pm and headed off for an afternoon of fun. We dropped a bag of items off to the Salvation Army op shop, spent about 30 minutes in our old library returning all these books (I forgot to count how many) and picking up 43 more! After that we stopped at our chemist/pharmacy to pick up some medication we needed, and then the boys headed to their friends house. We parted ways at the train station. They went to their friends for dinner and youth group while I jumped on the train (with the pram full of new books) and headed home.

Looking at this photo, I am thinking I may need to graduate to the larger tub that I have - if it will fit on my bookshelf!!

Our happy library bookshelves! Top left are junior non-fiction titles on a variety of subjects. Top right are the books we are currently reading. Bottom left are fiction books that Monkey and Munchkin are reading independently. Bottom right now houses our technology items from one of our "back-up" libraries. We are happily borrowing a Nintendo Entertainment System which even I'm looking forward to using over the coming weeks. 

The two books you might JUST be able to see to the right of the plastic container are books of Munchkin's that he owns. These will move to our bookshelves in our "playroom" area as I spent time Saturday afternoon reorganises our stuff that is in storage there at the moment so we can access our personal bookshelves better.

I restrained myself and only borrowed three books this for this coming fortnight. I got introduced to the No 1 Detective Agency books by my mother so borrowed the second book in the series after finishing the first book (which I owned) during the week. This is a HUGE series of books and our library doesn't have all of them, so I won't worry about trying to read them and will just enjoy the odd title here and there. Detective books are a new read for me (out of my comfort zone) and I'm thoroughly enjoying the adventure.

Surprised by Joy is another C.S. Lewis book that I have been wanting to read and it is also on my LONG library TBR list! Finally, I remembered to borrow Henry & Banjo to accompany the learning the boys are doing on these two wonderful Australian writers. In the coming week we will finish reading a compilation book of their poetry (one book for each of them) and we'll start a  book of short stories written by Henry Lawson. I will enjoy learning more about these men and their lives as I wrap up the mini unit with the boys.

My walks for the week. I'm still trying to walk more (Munchkin mentioned he wants to start walking every day so that will motivate me more) but considering we were in our second week of dealing with illness, this isn't too bad.

Term Two: Week Three ~ The Invasion of Germs

Week Three wasn't anything like I expected.

Sunday night Monkey came down with yet another head cold - severe runny nose, sore throat, and eventually a cough. So aside from our daily combined read alouds, he had a full sick week. I didn't even read his history to him, and only read his literature to him towards the end of the week when he started feeling better.

One day this week, on a regular shopping trip for groceries, Munchkin chose to spend his birthday money on a Lego set he has been wanting for quite some time. It was excellent motivation for him to work hard on his school work this week - but particularly on the day he bought it as he wasn't allowed to build it until all his work was done.

We got a lot of reading done. With Monkey sick I focused on some junior non-fiction that was specific to Munchkin's unit studies. You will see in the selection here that I read several books on the topic of food and farming. This satisfies several content areas for his Food Technology elective...

I highly recommend the Migrations book... this was a read for both boys and we really enjoyed it. All DK published books are wonderful and this one was magnificent. Thorough information and beautiful photography. 

I also finished the last book in the selection of reading we did for Munchkin's Ancient Egypt unit study. He will now write two research papers: one on Hatshepsut and one on Cleopatra, (his chosen people to write about) and then we will move on to the next ancient civilization.

This is a good little series that satisfies lots of science content for both boys. We have one more book to read during week four to finish off the series.

We started an Australian poets unit study in which we will read selections by Banjo Patterson and Henry Lawson so I kicked off the unit with these two wonderful picture books highlighting two poems by Banjo Patterson. There were no picture books for Henry Lawson, but we'll extend our study of him by reading some of his short stories as well as his poetry.

Once done with his schoolwork, Munchkin enjoyed assembling and playing with his new set. He is pleased with his purchase.

While on an afternoon walk Munchkin and I discovered this tree with strange fruits (we assume they are fruits anyway) hanging from the branches. I need to get some better photos with my DSLR camera but I think you can see the weird shape of the fruit even with the blur. I need to do some research to find out what these are as we are quite curious.

Later in the week, during a walk to the shops and back, we discovered the resident Rainbow Lorikeets busily eating crumbs from the front wall of this house. They let me get quite close for photos which I always enjoy.

Finally, Saturday afternoon Munchkin helped me prepare a blueberry upside down cake for morning tea/coffee hour at church. This is one of our favourites to make and is super easy as it cooks in my all-in-one pot (Aussie version of the One Pot).

Some good walks this week, though I should have got out on more than three days.

Term Two: Week Two ~ Another Week of Rain

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.