Term Four: Week Two ~ Cocoons and Reading

First off for the week was the discovery that the caterpillar had well and truly finished spinning his cocoon.  but the stick he built it on was laying on the ground so we opened the bug catcher and cleaned away all the leaves that were no longer needed and propped the stick up against the fake leaves in the catcher before putting it all back together again. 

 Monster and I finished off two more books in the Our Australian Girl series that we are enjoying.  This has been a really fun way to learn more about Australian history.

The Pokemon obsession is strong in this house.

These are Monster's independent reading selections for the week. 

Monkey continues to power on with his reading.

He is finishing up the purple reading level from the library and beginning to branch out into the green reading level - though his selections for this week were all purple.

Term Four: Week One ~ Laryngitis and Backyard Science

The first week of the new term was an interesting one!

All three boys were slowly recovering from horrible coughs - with two trips to the doctor in two days the last week of the holidays.  On top of that I came down with laryngitis and had almost no voice for the whole first week.  

Therefore we deemed the first week of the term a natural learning sort of week and went with the flow!

Legos are a wonderful form of natural learning... I hazard a guess that the boys play with Lego at least a portion of each and every day! 

A friend came over for a cup of tea and a chat mid week so it was time for an impromptu black and white photo shoot - silly faces and all! 

Munchkin enjoyed some puzzles... 

And I found a science experiment while hanging up the laundry.  This wonderful caterpillar was munching away on the weeds in the backyard so I quickly scooped him up and put him in our bug container in hopes that he would spin a cocoon and we could watch the lifecycle of a caterpillar... 

 Laryngitis or not there is always a way to get some reading done!!

School Holidays

Aside from the fact that we ended the school holidays with all three boys sick with bad coughs and myself sick with laryngitis, we had a glorious two weeks holiday from structured learning.

Here is the selection of photos from the two weeks where we enjoyed less structure and more free time.

I found glucose syrup in the grocery store so we took the opportunity to re-do our blood cell experiment.  It worked MUCH better with clear syrup so that you could see the components of the cell! 

All three boys LOVE playdough so we made a batch right after finishing our blood cell experiment.  A new batch of playdough equals hours of fun! 

The boys enjoyed MORE playdough and lots of games with their best (homeschool) friends during our school holiday play date!  It is tradition now to have an all day get together every school holidays. 

The boys spent one morning at a science event with their father so I took the child free opportunity to clean, declutter, and reorganize the wardrobe/closet in our bedroom as it houses a lot of our homeschool equipment. 

A box of coloured modelling clay from Kmart was another afternoon filled with fun!  The boys worked quietly on lots of different creations while I read aloud to them from a few library books we'd been meaning to finish. 

Munchkin has been enjoying building with the train set. Sometimes he asks for help and sometimes he sets up what he can all on his own!  This particular track was his own creation. 

All three boys (though only two were photographed) enjoyed finger painting for the first time in their lives! 

Drawing on the whiteboard is always fun. 

More play date fun! 

A spring arts and crafts day at the local library. 

And we finished off the holidays with a long play at the park near our new church! As you can see from these photos all three boys LOVE the sand and water section of the park!  They pretty much spent the entire two hours we were there in this one spot!

 Last but not least... holidays or not we are ALWAYS reading!!