Day 17

Whew, long way behind now. Things have gotten busy here and I will have too do a biiiiiiig catch up now. :)

I learned a good lesson about not walking away from the laminator when I tried to make Olympic medals and do something else at the same time. :/

Taffy and Gretel used the medals and made a sequence, all by themselves.

The girls having morning tea, picnic style.

Some of our artwork from last week.

We had an Olympic Games Day and here is Colt on the balance beam.

Karys competing in the waterbomb toss.

Lining up in front of the target area with their waterbombs.

Proud moment on the winners podium!

Colt concentrating intently on the stick, one on already!

Gretel's got this one down pat!

Soapy skating fun!

Legends in the making!

Colt doing the underwater ring dive. Great test of lung capacity, this sport.

The kids miss the Breakfast Club at their old school so we have decided to make Friday mornings our own Breakfast Club. We set up in the art room and had hashbrowns and real hot chocolate! It was a big hit.

 

Science. Finally. It has been a struggle to fit it in to our day for no good reason that I can think of. The first bunch of flowers perished while waiting to be turned into a rainbow.

The kids were really pleased with the end result. How many kids get to use real crystal in their science experiments? :)

I made these groovy playdough number mats for Taffy, just before the printer ran out of black ink and we ran out of laminating sheets. Sigh.

All in all, it was a good week last week, and we are settling into a routine. Hopefully, I'll get to update on Friday before hubby and I leave for a cruise. I am spending this week teaching the older kids to help the younger ones with school work and chores. It will be interesting to see how well they cope without parents for a whole week! :)

Day 13.

Ha, I am slipping again, lol!

This week is flying by and the kids are doing reasonably well. We started learning a new Bible verse and had a small Bible Study on Monday morning. Colt is improving on his maths and I am changing methods as much as possible, as well as giving him the repetition. Tomorrow I'm hoping to introduce a times table CD to help them learn without feeling like it is a chore.

I still need to add in things like music and drama and health and science. One of the kids removed the science book I was planning from and that makes it difficult to do anything, grrr! It is one of their favourite subjects too, silly munchkins!

 Today we did a serious art lesson and made our own colour wheels, then I let them paint what they wanted and that was fun too.

Dart and Colt helped with dinner on Monday night and I shall get the little girls to help on another night. Tonight, Ingrid and Jacquie made dinner and learned a lot about making white sauce. 3 attempts, and it still wasn't great. I shall have to teach them how! Pipa made it well on her first attempt, last week.

Swimming lessons today went much better in terms of everyone getting to and from the car nicely. They are enjoying the lessons and behave well for their teachers, I am pleased about that.

Tomorrow, after Colt's ice skating lesson, we are going to have a mini Winter Olympics, Aussie style, in the heat, haha! Hopefully, there will be some great pics of kidlets having fun. I still need to make my podium. I was planning on painting something fabulous, but I have left it too late, so I shall print and laminate instead! I have some Wagon Wheels to turn into yummy medallions for them for when their fun is over.

Day 9.

Today Colt had his first ice skating lesson and he enjoyed it very much. There is another 8yr old, a girl, in his class too. I should have taken my skates and got some exercise in while watching his lesson. Oh well, next week I definitely will!

This week, the kids have been getting through their workbooks and worksheets quite well. Karys has had trouble with following instructions and having melt downs, but they have decreased as the week progressed. I am really looking forward to a whole day without meltdowns. Who knows? Maybe then she'll progress to 2 days, and hopefully a whole week! I truly don't know how she learnt anything in a formal class setting, she must have been a source of complete frustration to her teacher.

The kids USSR is going much better than I expected and Karys is chewing through books better than a bookworm! It is great to see her enjoying herself in a quiet manner. She is reading books way ahead of her age group too. I am very proud of her! Colt was having a problem with accountability last year, so I have addressed that with a sticker chart and a small prize box for the end of the week. That is going well too.

This week we have been looking at the Winter Olympics and they are making a scrapbook about it. The boys are researching the origins of the Games too. Rob has made a podium and I will paint it this weekend. One day next week, we shall have a sport morning and a winners medal presentation. It is a little disappointing that we are in a different timezone to the Olympics as it's on TV in the middle of the night.

Valentine's Day didn't turn out how I wanted it to, so we will do some activities and crafts over the weekend.

 
We made a little ice rink for the lego men. Shakespeare looks a bit nervous, don't you think?

I made the kids pink pancakes with choc chips for breakfast on Valentine's Day, with Colt and Karys' help.

Day 7.

Today was crazy. I planned better, but it seems life forgot to read my planner.

We went ice skating after lunch and that was a new experience for some of the kids. We will need to plan that a wee bit better next time. I think we shall watch some figure skating at the Olympics and see if that inspires them. Colt is starting ice skating lessons this week, so he should improve. He is reasonably good, but today he had issues with his balance.

Then we went to the beach for Dart and Colt to do footy training, much nicer!

One little girl being the bravest she's ever been!

Day 5.

Well, today did NOT go as planned at all. We were going to go to the beach and do some missions and wear off some energy before classwork, but a meeting at the bank that ran to 2 and a half hours, put an end to that idea! Some of the kids were self motivated to complete their work without direction and Colt has finally finished his first ever whole week of USSR and marked it off on his record chart! A small victory, but one I am happy to see as he never managed even at school! I have a bag of bribes in the form of cheap Smiggles trinkets that shall be dished out on Monday to each of the kids who filled their reading sheets for the week.

This weekend will be a busy one as Gretel has decided that she is too big to sleep in her cot and I have to do major works to get all the furniture out of the girl's room and put in another bunk bed that will hold all three of the little ones. They will have so much space to play in without the single beds and the cot, which is well timed, as I can move the dolls gear in there so we can set up for the Winter Olympics in the Home Corner. I will post before and after pics on Monday of the Home Corner. Time to rack my brains and thoroughly peruse Pinterest for ideas to make the kids use their imaginations in this cosy nook.

The art room is coming along nicely, I just need to make some comfy cushions for the reading corner and find a hat rack or something similar to hang the wet art shirts on to dry after use. The new art rack is awesome, I'm so pleased I finally found an affordable one!

My bench with all the work books on it is lost again and I bought more second hand books, so that has to be reset over the weekend also.

I booked Colt into ice skating lessons and enquired about singing lessons for Pipa. Dart can't start archery until almost the end of March which he was a little disappointed about, but he is going to footy training this week at the beach, so that will be fun for him.

I thought of an idea for doing RAOK for homeless people. I shall take the kids to the Reject shop and buy stuff to make little packs for people in need. Sadly, there seems to be many to be found not far from our home. I know this concept is not new, but I thought we might make them for kids and adults, and put healthy snacks in as well as toiletries. We will look for kids designs on face cloths and little towels and maybe even a little pair of socks and a cuddly toy too. Maybe we should put the kids one's in little backpacks......

Day 4.

Last night I signed the kids up to a local group's website that is promoting outdoor play for kids. If you live in Western Australia, you might find it interesting too.

You register each kid in your family and they are given an avatar to dress and 52 challenges to complete by the end of 2014. They are age appropriate and educational as well as fun. To begin with my kids were a wee bit blase about it all when I told them that I'd signed them up, but once they looked at it, they got stuck into choosing a challenge right away! Here is the link: http://natureplaywa.org.au/ if  you're a local and you'd like to participate. There's a chance to win a family holiday in Karri Valley, ooh yeah!

Dart made a sundial and I was surprised at it's accuracy, despite it's tiny size.

Colt had to check out footprints in a square metre of bush track.

.....and he made a painting from fruit and flowers found in our yard!

Gretel had a bath outside, complete with rubber duckies! It was so cute!

I wasn't quite so organized for the end of the week, my planning hadn't got that far for all of the kids, so it was a bit disjointed today. I am going to have to plan better next week. 

I love my new way of planning things, it definitely works better than just writing a general plan for all of them.

Pipa did her first cooking lesson and it was delicious! 

I think I'll keep this one..... :)

Day 3

Today I set up an obstacle course in the backyard using things we had lying around. I would love to get some mats and proper equipment one day, but I think it worked out fairly well.

Taffy is learning about the letter A.

During these activities, Pipa did dishes and procrastinated over her favourite subject.... maths! :)

Painting in our new art room.

Next stop, swimming lessons! Yep, it's a good day! :)

And I forgot to get pics. SMH! Kids all had a great time and Gretel fell asleep on the lounge barely 2 minutes after we walked in the door!

Day 2

The kids worked pretty quickly through their work today, except Colt, which I expected. He did finish his quota by the end of the day so that was an improvement on last year! :)

Here's a pic of  some cute frogs I cut out for a busybag for Gretel in my 2hrs of peace at craft. I LOVE Tuesday afternoons!

I can't draw to save myself, so I used a cookie cutter to trace around. I will post another pic when it's completed, and I remember which safe spot I put it all in........sigh!

first day at school

Quick snapshot of today:

Overall, it was good.