Term One: Week Six ~ Flowers, Science Projects, Art, and Books

An eclectic selection of photos for this week.

I focused on natural learning and self-directed learning for this week's display.

Our dragon fruit plant is flowering again. We should get three fruits this time. We are watching it eagerly and I intend to try the fruit again to see if I like the taste better this time around.

Left Photo: Monkey finished reading this for his independent reading

Right Photo: We finished reading The Princess Bride as a read aloud. It was excellent.

History read aloud selections for all three boys.

We are enjoying a mini unit on viruses this term.

Munchkin had loads of fun with our volcano kit this week. It worked well and I love that it is reuseable.

He also set up another crystal to grow with his crystal growing kit...

Once everything was done we found a safe place to put it while we watch the crystal grow.

We have a friend staying with us for a few days and he has a guitar. Munchkin really showed an interest in the guitar and is thinking about learning how to play.

Library on Thursday with our besties... craft this week.

Craft...

Craft...

And more craft...

I spent some time on Saturday working on my puzzle again.

Book Selection ~ Term One: Week Six

Our book selections for Week Six - and just to do something different I'm talking about the books I'm reading independently first.

 

Left Photo: The second book in a series by Jackie French that I have been meaning to read for many years. Another member of our homeschool group recommended the series to me long ago and I'm only just getting around to reading them. So far the series is showing great promise (from the first book) but we'll see if this second book sucks me in as thoroughly as some of her other series.

Right Photo: I've waited for ages this year to start this book. I put it on reserve at our library in mid December with the intention of being able to start reading it pretty close to the first of the year as possible (considering library closure during holidays), but it took until late February for the book to finally arrive in the library. I'm looking forward to hearing what this author has to say.

Left Photo: The Sound of Music is my ALL time favourite movie and I absolutely LOVE Julie Andrews so I'm thrilled that she has written not one, but TWO autobiographies about her life. This first one deals with her childhood and early years while the second book (co-written with her daughter) is about her years in Hollywood. I'm so looking forward to learning more about this wonderful woman. Already just seeing the cover has been amazing... I have never known my entire life that she has freckles... but it makes sense since I've only ever seen her with stage makeup on. 

Right Photo: I have never in my life read "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" but it was on my list of 1000 Books to Read Before You Die AND the library had it so I put it on reserve. It was mentioned in another book I just read as being a book that is extremely popular so I hope it lives up to the expectations.

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These two books are for Munchkin and Monkey and fulfil curriculum requirements for science as well as health and development.

History books that are primarily for Munchkin - though Monkey listens as well.

Both of these series are excellent so I know these books will be good.

History selections for Monster (left photo) and Monkey (right photo)

New literature selections for Munchkin (left photo) and Monkey (right photo)

The Lord of the Rings book is the compilation of all three books in the one volume so we'll be reading this book for a long time - possibly the entire school year.

New literature selection for Monster as well - I've never read 1984 so I'm keen to see what we think of this book as it is often labelled as a MUST read.

Term One: Week Five ~ Beauty, Bruises, and Best Friends

My morning routine (because my youngest has converted me from night owl to morning person) is to rise no later than 6:30am (and I do NOT need an alarm to wake anymore either) and usually that means that I get anywhere from 30-60 minutes of peace and quiet before anyone else wakes up. 

This week, Sunday morning, when I opened the curtains, I was greeted with this beautiful sunrise.

Early Monday morning (around 5:45am) I tripped whilst getting out of bed and was only awake enough to respond in the most basic way so effectively stopped myself from crashing to the ground by running my upper arm into the corner wall of our built in wardrobe/closet. These two photos were taken on two different days (Monday afternoon and Wednesday I think) and they don't really do the colours justice. It was a very deep bruise and was quiet sore until Saturday.

After School Activity at the library was Lego this week...

Our besties always give us a ride home from the library and then stay for a bit of a visit. Munchkin and Mr L enjoyed some quiet time together (left hand photo) while Mr J enjoyed watching Monkey play his game on the computer (right hand photo).

We finished LOTS of books again this week... 

Paper was AMAZING. Although this was an adult non-fiction book, Munchkin really enjoyed learning more about the history of paper and he absorbed a lot more of the information that I thought he was going to as the book was very detailed and went quite deep. This author is excellent and I'm excited to read another of his books (independently this time) about the history of milk. 

We also loved reading The Hobbit (it was literature of Monkey so he and Monster listened to it) and we are now looking forward to starting the first Lord of the Rings book.

As I thought when I mentioned it in my book selection blog post, the viruses book was aimed at a much younger audience than any of my three boys. But it still gave a good overview and we will dive into more difficult books in the future.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this aloud to Monster. I know I have said it numerous times already but I am thankful that homeschooling my boys gave me the push I needed to read more high quality books.

Munchkin's eclectic collection of independent reads for the week...

And my walking for the week...