Saturday, December 11, 2021

Term Four: Week Ten ~ An Early Finish

Term Four this year is an eleven week term. Our family strongly dislikes eleven week terms, especially when they fall during a first term or a last term of the year. So I told the boys at the beginning of the term that my goal was to finish during week ten. My goal was achieved as all three boys finished up the last of their written work this week. We are officially on school holidays now until the 31st of January!!

We had a beautiful sunset this week... but just in the short time it took me to grab my camera and get outside, it had changed. This picture really doesn't do it justice at all.


Our traditional Last Day of School photographs! I love that all three boys are still happy to participate in this even as they near the end of their schooling days.

Munchkin has been super keen to make some fresh squeezed orange juice, so early in the morning on our FIRST official day of summer holidays... he got to work!


We are having a La Nina summer which means very wetter and cooler than normal temperatures. I know both of these photos look identical but I was playing around with my ISO settings to try to better show just how big the rain drops were. I got home from a walk to the shops, and rescued two loads of laundry off the line, approximately 3 minutes before this hit. Had I been walking out in this I would have been absolutely drenched in mere moments.

We finished off our week celebrating a 1st Birthday party! Because of COVID this is only the 3rd or 4th time we've seen this little guy but he is pretty special to our family. His parents are Munchkin's godparents and their eldest son is good friends with Munchkin as well as they are only a year apart in age.

The birthday boy... he REALLY did NOT like the camera so I had difficulty getting really good photos of him.

Blowing out the candle was a family affair... and tasting the cake and a cupcake was fun and MESSY!!

These are two read alouds I finished with Monster (left) and Monkey (right). Both were EXCELLENT books and the boys enjoyed them.




LOTS of independent reading selections for Munchkin. The Summer Reading Challenge is on at our library and the little prizes are quite good this year so Munchkin is motivated to read even MORE than he usually does, which is a LOT already!!

Two of our Christmas picture book selections for the week... I'm sort of reading in "themes" this year.





More independent reading for Munchkin...






More Christmas picture books... I checked so many out from the library that we are able to read more than one book per day.

More read alouds... all three boys enjoyed My Place as we have been watching the TV series that was made based on the book... we still need to finish the series as we started watching it in Term 3 when we had to rely on online resources for history. We also finished the last book in the Poppy part of the Our Australian Girl series. We will pick up with the next girl (Rose) when school starts back up at the end of January.




More independent reading for Munchkin...



Our last Christmas picture books for the week...

And Munchkin's final independent reading for the week...

Saturday, December 4, 2021

Term Four: Week Nine ~ Another Week of Books

Another week of photographing nothing but the reading that was done this week. The boys continue to wrap up their structured written schoolwork, and we look forward to our summer school holidays. Thus far we are having a stormy and wet summer so getting outside to do things can be tricky at times. Here's hoping that over the holidays I'll take more photographs... 


Independent reading for Munchkin...

We started our Christmas tradition of reading one picture book per day from the 1st of December until the 6th of January... these two pictures do a good job of illustrating that we enjoy our favourite (right photo) and also look forward to new books each year as well (left photo).

We finished up some more read alouds from various unit studies... I read The Happiest Refugee aloud to Monkey and Monster as part of our refugees unit study and our Australia's Asian Neighbours unit study. I had to censor on the fly (for some language) as I read aloud, but both the boys enjoyed learning about a favourite author of theirs. Hatshepsut was the last book in our Ancient Egypt unit study for Monkey.



Independent reading for Munchkin...

Right Photo: I read this aloud to Munchkin as part of his Australian history unit study. There is one more book in this beautiful series which we will read in February when the 2022 school year starts. 

Left Photo: I read Rabbit Proof Fence aloud to Monkey and Monster as part of our Stolen Generations unit study that we did this term. I hope that we will be able to watch the movie over the summer school holidays.


Independent reading selections for Munchkin...

Two more Christmas picture books... Left Photo = old favourite, Right Photo = new book

More read aloud selections... A picture book selection that I read aloud to Monster as part of his WWII unit study, and the Egyptian Mythology book I read aloud to Monkey... we really enjoyed the stories in this book.



Independent reading for Munchkin although both Monkey and Monster are also reading the Avatar books.