School Holidays: Week Six ~ Last Week of Freedom

The last week of school holidays arrived quickly this year. The boys and I made a point of spending this last week of "freedom" enjoying the various activities that we love.

As I headed to the car early Sunday morning I discovered this beautiful rose. I feared it would be wilted from the heat of the day by the time we returned home in the afternoon, so I quickly took this photo. I was correct, and the flower looked very sad later in the day, so it was good that I took the time to capture the image when I could. 

I also submitted it to the Photography Challenge I take part in on Facebook. The first theme for the year was "red" with an additional growth theme of "complimentary colours" so this photo fit the bill for both the standard theme and the extended theme.

At church that same day I discovered these beautiful flowers and I'm very pleased with the outcome of both photographs. I submitted the photo on the left to my Facebook Photography challenge as the second theme was "weather" and the administrator of the group liked it so much he chose to showcase it as the banner photo for the group page. I have never had public recognition for any of my photographs before so that was pretty special.

The boys get extended screen time over the school holidays ~ so Munchkin enjoyed his last week of 60 minutes of computer time per day.

Monkey displayed his feelings about the last week of holidays well with this facial expression one early morning during the week.

Munchkin enjoyed working with the Blender program on the computer to try his hand at animating. He was really pleased to hear that using Blender won't count towards his 30 minutes of screen time during the term as computer animating instead counts towards school through his technology curriculum.

I decided it was HIGH time I work on a puzzle again since I haven't worked a jigsaw puzzle for AGES. I looked in the cupboard (where we store our MANY unbuilt puzzles), chose a picture that looked nice (didn't take into consideration how difficult it might be), got one of my puzzle rolls so I could easily store it when I am not working on it, and got started.

Straight of the bat I needed Monster's help with the frame of the puzzle as I put a whole line of pieces in the wrong place and therefore thought we were missing a ton of pieces and would have to get rid of the puzzle. Thank goodness one of the boys is a puzzle genius!!

The above photos show my progress over two or three nights of the week. I watched a LOT more tennis (Australian Open tournament) then I originally intended but it gave me more chances to work on my puzzle.

Monster has begun a weight lifting program and has discovered that Munchkin makes an excellent "weight" for him to hold during one of his exercises. As you can see from the two photos, Munchkin is pretty keen to help. I'm thrilled that they have found a way to interact well with each other. Monster is even showing Munchkin some easy exercises he can start doing as well.

I was on the roster to serve morning tea at church the following week, so on Saturday (despite the heat) Munchkin and I baked a blueberry cake to serve. Munchkin did ALL the prep work - my job was simply to put the cake in the oven and then take it out after it baked.

The finished product - which I dusted with icing sugar (powdered sugar) just before serving. EVERYONE loved the cake so Munchkin has decided we will bake another one when the weather cools off a bit more.

We had some hot(ish) days this week - though still well below what is normal for Sydney the end of January, so I didn't get my walk in every day of the week. 

Finally, Munchkin's independent reading for the week...

He LOVES these books about Ninja cat and was really excited to find that the library finally ordered the rest of the books in the series.

Our Roald Dahl book collection is well loved. I don't think a week goes by when Munchkin doesn't read at least ONE Roald Dahl book.

The Spiderwick book is a compilation of all four books in the series. It is advertised as a series that will please readers who love Series of Unfortunate Events and it did not disappoint Munchkin. He loves it enough to re-read it.

The first two books in a lovely new series by our favourite Australian author. I haven't read these yet, but Munchkin says they are wonderful and he will be begging me to borrow them again I'm sure.

I giggle any time one of the boys borrows a picture book from the library. Further proof that good picture books are timeless pieces of artwork.

School Holidays: Week Five ~ Preparing For the New School Year

The theme for this week should be random. Therefore I think it is fitting that my photos uploaded in a random order and I cannot be bothered to put them in a proper chronological order. Such is the end of school holidays... Enjoy my photo diary of our week just the same.

Monday morning Munchkin attended his last school holidays event for this summer holidays. It was a simple craft (cupcake liner sea creatures) but our next door neighbour attended with him and they both had a wonderful time. Meanwhile I wandered all over the library finding all sorts of new and interesting books to incorporate into our learning this year.

I used my birthday present as a soup bowl this week. I really think it IS meant to be a noodle bowl but as I'm intending to cut my grain based carbs down again I'll have to get creative with this bowl.

I did HEAPS of school planning this week. By Saturday evening I had the ENTIRE year planned for Munchkin, and Terms 1 and 2 complete for Monkey. Hopefully I'll get Terms 3 and 4 planned for Monkey in the next day or two, but if not I'm still WAY in front in terms of organisation compared to previous years.

Quiet early morning work one morning this week - I worked on a blog post (resizing all the photos to start with)...

While Monkey relaxed in the lounge room with his world flag collection...

Munchkin is enjoying his last couple of weeks of "fluffy" free reading before I insist that he read more difficult books for the school term. He is also still working hard to clock minutes for the summer reading challenge at the library as it continues until the 31st of January. He spends every single spare minute he can reading.

I put a TON of books on reserve at the library towards the end of the week. This was the first haul on Friday - the books that are held in our local library. I am now waiting on 60 books to come from a variety of the other eight libraries in our council area (similar to county for my America readers) and then we will be all set to start our learning.

This is a new series of books being written by my favourite Australian author (Jackie French) and Munchkin is LOVING both books. He is keen for her to write another one but so far there is no news of any new books for this series. If you are curious about other Jackie French books I have linked her website to her name.

I got some good walks in this week and also went totally overboard with my exercise when I used the elliptical trainer when it was too hot to walk out in the sun. I didn't do my research to figure out how the trainer compares to my step count when walking. I worked out for over and hour on the trainer trying desperately to get my pedometer to 7500 steps. I gave up when I was nearly ready to collapse and discovered that the amount of time I did work out was equivalent to nearly 18,000 steps. In future, 40 minutes on the trainer will be equal to my walk.