Term One: Week Seven ~ Gameschooling and Gastro

Monster and I enjoyed playing a few rounds of Codenames this week. 

We also played some Mastermind and Super Mastermind. Mastermind (the blue game) was a belated birthday gift from a dear friend, and Super Mastermind (black game) was a $2.50 score at the local Salvation Army store!! 

I got interested in pulling out some of our card games so we played Phase 10 and Dutch Blitz which are two of my favourites. 

We did do some written work through the week... Monster continued working on his birthday thank you notes. 

Monster and I played a round of Make Five to see if we think Monkey is ready for this game. 

And we gave Othello a try, but we got very confused and frustrated, so I think I'll be searching for some "how to play" videos on Youtube to help us out. 

 Munchkin took his Term 4 test in his Year 1 math book and got started on his Year 2 math book this week.

Two evenings this week Monster worked on his newest puzzle... see his progress the second night down below!! 

Tuesday night took a dramatic twist with Munchkin coming down with a gastro bug at 10pm... so Wednesday he spent much of the day swapping between this chair and the lounge while watching numerous DVDs.  I cut a few things from the older boys schedule as well simply because I couldn't focus on them for long periods of time... so there was NO math for either boy Wednesday or Thursday... not that they minded!! 

 We managed a bit of notebooking Thursday morning... Monster wrote these notes after we read about how the water treatment system in Australia works.

The two older boys also did these nice notebooking pages about the Philippines after we finished reading our last information book about the country. 

 I only photographed one of the pages, but both boys are also filling in this page as we learn about each of the countries that are considered neighbours of Australia.

 Both of these books are lovely. I particularly like the book on the right... which can be read forwards AND backwards!!

Monster and I enjoyed this 4th book in Jackie French's Secret Histories series. 

 We finished up our last book about the Philippines, and another book in our Water for Australia series.

 The older boys have decided they need to read Pokemon books again...

 I finished this book about Aboriginal Peoples with Monkey as part of his Australian history unit. Now in the last few weeks of this term he will do some writing assignments using information from this book.

 Lovely picture books for Munchkin that count as Premier's Reading Challenge for him as well.

 The older boys LOVE that these are quick easy reads... it gives their brains a little break in between the meatier reading assignments they have to do!

Term One: Week Six ~ Gameschooling

I have recently joined a Facebook group called Gameschooling Australia, and it has been really good. Basically the philosophy is that you can use games to do a majority of your teaching in your homeschool, and/or use games to enhance the structured book learning you are doing.

I choose the second idea... thus my boys still do a MAJORITY of their learning through traditional textbooks, structured written work, and LOTS of reading.

But we are blessed to own a LOT of wonderful games so I'm using the Gameschooling site to remind me that we can include our wonderful games into our learning day and week.

 We gave Word Yahtzee a try this week and it was rather successful for all of us.

 One of our dearest family friends came over for afternoon tea one day and to give Monster some belated birthday gifts as she was unable to attend his party.  He was blessed with two new games (YAY) and a new 1000 piece puzzle to add to his collection!!

Munchkin was thrilled to have to use the pan balance for a maths page this week. 

Monster finished his puzzle he's been working on for AGES!! 

Friday we spent a couple of hours at the new park we love with our homeschool group. I didn't manage to get any pictures of the boys on the playground equipment, but this tree is proof that we were indeed outside!! 

 Munchkin's favourite picture books for the week.

Monster read this as his silent/independent reading assignment for the week. He received Diary of a Wimpy Kid written in Latin for his birthday, so we borrowed this from the library to help a bit with translation!!

Term One: Week Five ~ Grammar and LOTS of Reading

To start off our week, the postman rang the doorbell bright and early Monday morning to deliver a special care package from America. My mum sent this beautiful and creative blanket for Munchkin. Now all three boys have special blankets knit or crocheted especially for them by my mum.  She also included a book from my childhood, and some origami paper. It was an exciting morning for sure.

 For grammar this week we had to show that we knew how to properly use the words we had learned about so far. So we each got to write some sentences and a paragraph.

This is Monster's work above...

 Monkey's work...

 And mum's work... a friend who lives in Queensland and homeschools her boys, corrects the work for us.  Her boys are a few years older than my crew AND she loves all things grammar and diagramming!!

Monster FINALLY got back to work on his puzzle. He is KEEN to finish this and get started on puzzles he has received for Christmas and his birthday. 

The older boys and I are enjoying a fairly detailed unit study on water... we are focusing on Australia to start with, but will soon expand to other countries of the world and the challenges they face when it comes to water scarcity/abundance and quality. 

 Books about koalas are a big hit at the moment...

There are LOTS of new books pouring into our library and Munchkin is enjoying sifting through all the new picture books. 

I continue an "Australian Neighbours" unit with Monkey so this week we started studying the Philippines. 

 Our read aloud chapter books we finished this week. The older boys and I are a bit sad to be done with "A Series of Unfortunate Events" as we LOVED it!

Monster and I continue with our depth study of Ancient China. This book was chock full of information about the time period, but in short little sections, so it was easy to digest. 

 

LOTS more beautiful new books... the only one we've returned so far (as it was a bit too out there) was "Cinderella and the Fuzzy Slippers" - sometimes you just need to leave the classics alone!! 

 The older boys are always THRILLED when new Minecraft books arrive at the library.

 Munchkin's current favourites... he likes to hear them over an over...