Saturday, November 17, 2012

Today in home education...

As Tane and I are still in a quandary about where we are going to live and what Tane is going to do for work/career, we are currently homeschooling the children.

We dropped Tane off this morning at the domain as he was leaving for his basic training with the army for the territorials. So that means its just me and the kids for 4 weeks. On the way home I remembered I had seen a sign which was a public notice and said something about explosives. As one of Joshua's interests at the moment is explosives/explosions/fireworks, I thought I'd go back and read the notice. As luck would have it, the quarry was going o do an explosive on the 16th Nov... "That's today!" Joshua exclaimed excitedly.

So we waited around for the explosion standing from a good vantage point above the quarry. Further good luck was that a worker from the quarry came around and set up some seismographs to measure the earths movement with the blast. I told the kids not to bother him before the blast, but afterwards they just went for it with many questions... "what's that? (the seismograph , "what's it for?", "Why was it just a small explosion?"  etc... they loved that. They found out the quarry was a scoria quarry, which is used as it is good for drainage. They also learnt that the quarry is being prepared to be filled, so the explosion was just required to flatten out some of the hills. And little did they know they just had a geology lesson. As I am just getting to grips with the new camera I did not get a pic of the blast, but here  is a pic of the quarry.


We did our formal school work, which consisted of science (vascular plants), maths worksheets and spelling.
After lunch I put on some 'Love to Sing' songs for Ella to dance to, but it did not stop the bigger kids joining in.



After music-time (Singstar with ABBA and Queen), the older kids went outside to hep Grandpa. He decided to get them to move all the bricks, being used for the construction of the house next door, from the pallets to the scaffolding. So that's what they did... in between climbing up ladders and sliding down the poles like fireman's poles. Then the  neighbour took them for a guided tour of the house... which they liked. Anna-Maria was surprised.. "There is a staircase in there", and Joseph decided be wants to be a builder.



Notice the neatly stacked brick piles with 3 bricks per layer and alternating orientation - maths.

At bedtime Joseph enjoyed cuddles with Lily and Joshua messaged his best buddy Brother James.


Then I tried to get a decent photo of all the kids so we could send a photo to Daddy.



Learning at home is FUN!!

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Ella-Rose wants to go to school

Joseph and Anna-Maria are so funny. Sometimes they dress Ella-Rose when she gets out of the shower, but not in her own clothes, in their clothes. Today they dressed her up in their school uniform. They even put a backpack on her. She is so cute. A mini-schoolkid.

                                      









Saturday, September 15, 2012

Winnie the Pooh performance

Anna-Maria performed at the theatre last night. They did so well. This time Anna-Maria lip-synced the words as she was supposed to instead of repeating them after the fact.
Joseph was Christopher Robin and Anna-Maria was Tigger. They both did really well, but I think Joseph was a bit bamboozled by being on stage in front of an audience.

The recital started at 5.30pm and went on till 9pm with a 10 minute break in the middle. I thought the kids would not want to stay that long (there were 55 dances), but they stayed it out until 8.40pm when Anna-Maria finally started to get tired. Joseph was very excited watching the other performances, often bouncing up and down in his seat. The only one who did get tired was Joshua, who wanted to go home at 7pm, but I suspect more than anything he just wanted to read his books (He is ready the 5th Harry Potter book, the second time round).

Here are a few pics of them moments before they went onstage.





Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Rugby league player of the day


Joseph got player of the day for his efforts at tackling and running with the ball. He is playing rugby league this year and Josh is playing rugby union. Tane will think this is sacrilege, but I don't even know the difference, except that league seems to be more popular in NSW. Also the union teams do not start until Joshua's grade, which is the under 9's so the younger kids have to start out playing league or soccer. That is a little sad that they have no ripper rugby here because that was really fun watching the little kids rip off as many tags as they could sometimes even from their own team-mates.

 Ella-Rose is such a cutie. Here she is when she came to visit me at lunch-time at work.

The three big kids after church, Ella-Rose was asleep of course.

 We took Ella-Rose to the park while the kids were at school. It was the windiest day we have had in Australia. Luckily for Ella, she was wearing a hoodie.

Sunday, July 29, 2012

Ozzie update

We had a great time yesterday. The weather was beautiful - 18 degrees in winter. We went to Crescent Head, and spent time at the beach and the playground. The kids loved it. Ella-Rose and Joseph went for a swim in the estuary, but the other 2 were not so keen, so just played in the sand.
The kids enjoyed spotting Rainbow Lorikeets and watching 3 pelicans have a fight over a massive fish head - and then attempting to swallow it.

Me trying to look pregnant.

Ella-Rose getting herself comfy on the driveway eating a pear.

resisting a smile for the camera

Anna-Maria wearing her '100 days at school' hat and necklace

















Anna-Maria had fun digging a hobbit-hole. We are reading 'The Hobbit' together as a family... and it is amazing to see their little imaginations run wild as they incorporate what they learn into their play.

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Megacrunch

On Friday the kids did Megacrunch at school. I was an event to promote fruit or veggies and water as the snacks of choice at school. The kids participated in a series of activities from making vegetable people, to potato prints, to racing grapes across a table by shooting water at it with a water pistol.
After the activities all the kids (and parents) came together in the cola and we did a countdown and then everyone took a bite into a fruit or vegetable.








They took photos and are submitting it to the guiness book of records for the most people eating fruit or veg at the same time.
When Ella-Rose and I went back home for lunch, she spent the whole afternoon crying and standing by the door wanting to go back to school.




When 3pm came around and I asked her if she wanted to go to school and get the kids she grinned, nodded and ran straight to the door with her Pooh bear. She was in a much better mood.




She is such a cutie!!