December 2nd

Well, we have finished school work for the year but there will still be plenty of learning going on. I have found this last term very tiring and have finished early after discovering that when i thought i only had 1 week left i actually had three. I am planning for us to do a bit of work in the holidays but for now i need a rest.

Yesterday we had a homeschool excursion to the fire station to learn about fire safety. It was good fun but unfortunately was cut short due to a fire somewhere in town.

We have started doing an advent thing from my friends blog:

http://www.mustardseedbeginnings.org/p/resources.html

THe next few weeks are going to be busy with musical theatre rehearsals. THe concert is next weekend. WE have two long (5hr) rehearsals this week in the evenings which will mean late nights and grumpy kids, WE have tried to prepare in advance for this and will prepare some meals tomorrow (Sat) and have scheduled sleeps during the days.

Other things we have been doing:

Making Christmas biscuits

Christmas cards

Practicing ball skills

Watching Steve Irwin the crocodile hunter

Planet Earth series

Christmas pageant is tonight

Kid club service is this sunday, Josiah is playing a sheep.

22nd November

I am counting down to the holidays. I keep forgetting to blog about our school days.
We finished our science course today and only have two weeks of maths and phonics left, next week will be revision.
Today Josiah spent a long time reading a graphic novel i borrowed from the library for him. Reading is definitely his favourite thing at the moment and looks forward to reading in bed with his light on at night.
He also spent a bit of time playing lego by himself.
This afternoon we had a presentation of awards for the "make it a fresh snack" poster competition.

Josiah won first prize in the poster competition that i blogged about : http://hardinghomeschool.blogspot.com/2011/10/yesterday-i-was-feeling-very-very-tired.html

Receiving his prize

In front of the winning entries, his is top left.

The certificate

His prize was a $200 voucher for the local surf shop, not really an ideal prize for a 5 year old. We went there to see what we could buy but couldn't find anything suitable or that we were willing to pay money for. We made a deal with him that we would buy him some lego and that we will buy some things that we need from the shop in exchange, he was very happy with this arrangement.

I was suprised and very proud that he won. i

November 15th

We had a day at home today preserving, we made pasta sauce, tomato paste and onion marmalade. Well, actually i did most of it and the kids came and went, did a bit here and went back to playing.

This is Josiah at family night last night.

Josiah had his first piano lesson today, i taught him after we had done some phonics. Initially he was resistant to the idea and now he wont leave the piano alone. I don't want to force him to learn but i think it will be a good skill to have. He seems keen at the moment so we will run with it for now.

Josiah watched the crocodile hunter vol 11, he still loves Steve Irwin. He also finished a small kids novel he has been reading about chocolate. We will go to the library tomorrow and get some new books.

14th November

Well, obviously i haven't blogged anything for a while, I was sick for a while and got a bit overwhelmed by everything. Last week we went to Adelaide for my friends wedding.
Here are some pictures with the bride and groom, Anna loved the wedding and has been looking forward to it for such a long time.
The other photo is Josiah at playgroup a couple of weeks ago, a great action shot that my friend Kate took.

Today we had my final Breastfeeding Association meeting and the kids tagged along as usual and played in the creche and joined a play group in another building at the centre.

We had a good school day and Anna had musical theatre rehearsal.
Tonight we had the kindy family night, the kids put on a bit of a concert and there was face painting and balloons. A good night out.

3rd november

Yesterday we didn't do any school work, i can't even remember what we did all day except go to the library in the morning. By the time afternoon came round, i was exhausted. Have been that way for days, so I went to bed and Josiah watched Finding Nemo and had musical theatre.

Today we didn't do any bookwork either. I am feeling a bit better today but decided that i might buy some chooks with the birthday money i recieved from my MIL. So today we spent the afternoon modifying and preparing the chook yard for some new chookies. Josiah helped with this, we still have a bit more work to do but once again i got exhausted and had to stop.
This morning we went to playgroup.

I have a busy couple of weeks coming up and am not expecting to get school done every day, it will be especially hard if i don't start feeling better. Hopefully i can get on top of this tiredness quickly.

1st November

A better day today, a bit less tired and a bit more motivated.
This morning Josiah wrote a letter to his Nanny on a piece of brown paper covered in drawings he did.
He was very helpful to me this morning with the housework and actually did a lot of the tasks that i asked of him.
All the kids helped me make a second batch of orange and date pikelets for snack time, Anna in particular enjoyed mixing and spooning the mixture into the hot frying pan.
Today i made a wordsearch for Josiah's word list, which was something new and different to help learn his words.
He had a good attitude throughout school today and we achieved a lot.
We spent a bit of time in the garden today planting peanuts, corn and carrots.
We have been putting shredded paper mulch on the existing plants as we don't have any straw.

31st October

We had a big weekend away this weekend and are all a bit sluggish and tired today. We had a discussion in the car on the way home yesterday about how I can make my life a bit easier and keep on top of the housework a bit more. I have tried flylady.net before and have decided to give it another go. I found in the past it was very helpful but I would forget about it all or get out of routine and find it hard to get back into it. We are going to try and make it a bit more of a family effort with hubby helping out a couple of times a week so I don't feel like I am the only one doing anything. This morning I did 15 minutes of kitchen/breakfast clean up and 15 minutes in the current zone and I have also added 5 mins in the school room, but am thinking of increasing it on the days I have more time. Hopefully this routine will help to keep on top of the housework a bit more and allow me to feel as though I don't spend all of my time doing housework but feel as though I achieve some each day. I have also included time each day for washing as there is always lots to do. Flylady says that a load a day keeps the chaos away, so I am trying to do this too, by washing, sorting and putting it away on the same day I hope to get on top of it.

This morning Josiah spent a bit of time doing reading eggs on the computer. He was learning about reading rules, capitals and full stops etc.
We had a Fight to get him to give back my phone on which he has been playing games and then we started our school work with some bad attitude. I was tempted for both of us to go to bed because we are so tired but I persevered and Am glad we did. We had quite a successful bookwork time and ran out of time before we hd finished to go and pick Anna up from kindy.

Yesterday i was feeling very, very tired at the end of the day and actually went to bed before the kids did, and so i didn't blog.

Yesterday Josiah's friend came with us to playgroup at the kindy around the corner. It was an open day and there were lots of young children there. It was great. The boys spent a lot of time shooting baskets with a small basketball ring. They spent most of the time outside playing.

Anna was at kindy for the whole day yesterday and so we had a quiet afternoon. After doing a small amount of bookwork, Josiah and i sat down to watch the third episode of Planet Earth which was title freshwater. I fell asleep a couple of times during it and can't tell you what it's about except for fish and grizzly bears.

Josiah also went to play with another friend in our street after he got home from school.

Today we had an easy school day too. We didn't do any bookwork because we had finished it all. I bought home a poster competition entry for him to do. Today he made his poster. The entry form said posters could be drawn, painted, collage, digital imagery or photos. I explained this to him and he chose a collage with photos. The theme of the poster was Make it a Fresh snack.

He cut pictures out of junk mail and we talked about fresh snacks and healthy food as he did it.
He also wanted to take some photos for his poster so we made some fresh snacks:

Traffic Lights

Funny Faces

The finished product

Tonight Josiah had kids club, they are starting to learn about christmas as it is last term. He came home with a sheep that he had made and a shepherd. He explained to me that shepherds are like farmers and they look after sheep.

Today i downloaded a great Christmas resource that my friend Stacie wrote

You can get it from her blog

www.mustardseedbeginnings.org/2011/10/christmas-is-coming.html

26th October

Today we planted some seeds and seedlings given to us by a friend. The kids took it in turns planting the plants. We used some strawberry punnets as mini greenhouses to grow some chinese cabbage seeds. Whilst in the garden we found some peanuts that had started to sprout so we planted them a bit better. I will try to plant the peanuts i have in the shed tomorrow.

Josiah has finished most of his phonics work for the week already. His word list were relatively easy words and so he hasn't needed to spend time learning them. We mostly just have maths to do for the rest of the week.

This afternoon Josiah had musical theatre and he watched the second episode of the planet earth DVD. It was about mountains and the animals that inhabited them.

I recieved a poster competition thing tonight and so i think we will do this for art in the next coming days. The poster is about healthy snacks.

25th October

Josiah had a friend come for a visit this morning and they played on and off. They couldn't agree on something to play, or stick to something for a decent period of time.
When Anna went to kindy, Simon did some maths with Josiah. He has been home sick the past couple of days and has been able to help me with the homeschooling a bit. Josiah really loves it when Dad teaches him school and it helps me feel like i'm not in it by myself.

Josiah's reading amazes me everytime i hear him read. Yesterday after he came into our room first thing in the morning he went and read a whole box of readers that his Nanny had borrowed from the library. His reading is quite fluent and he really enjoys it. We have started reading a book together called Jungle Doctor and the whirlwind, which i bought at the conference on the weekend. I plan to read him a chapter or two each night before bed.

We borrowed/hired the DVD documentary called planet earth and watched the first episode of this today. It was title Pole to Pole and full of lots of migration and other animal stories, starting at the poles and working in towards the equator.
He was puzzled about the difference between a cheetah and a leopard. After watching this, the kids played/acted a game where lion's and cheetahs were chasing an impala. I was pleased to see they learnt the name of a new animal. We plan to watch the next episode tomorrow sometime.

24th October

We have had a really big weekend at a Missionary Conference which was excellent. They ran a children's program with a group from OAC ministries at the start of a tour of the Eyre Penninsula. The kids had a great time with this and Josiah attended all sessions, even those at night. I am not too sure about specifically what was taught but they were very active and very loud! Josiah was the youngest of the group and they looked after him well. He enjoyed himself very much and enjoyed playing with the bigger boys in particular.
Today being Monday, we started a new word list for Phonics, but we are all a bit tired and patience is low. We finished Phonics and Maths for our bookwork but didn't do any science. I have decided that this weeks science is stuff we have done many, many times before and am altering it a bit. We are growing alfalfa sprouts.

A book called lets teach Art came in the post today along with a new science book for when we are finished our current science course. I ordered the Art book because i don't really know much about it or how to go about teaching it. It was written with homeschooling parents in mind and i think will be a useful resource. It is a year 1 book.

Josiah and Anna spent much of this morning creating things out of some special scrapbooking type paper that Anna got for her birthday. The creation is still in progress and currently takes up the kitchen table. Not sure what we'll do with it for dinner!

20th October

Today Anna had kindy in the morning and Josiah's friend Christopher came over. We walked to the kindy around the corner for play group. The playgroup is actually for under 5's and we went mostly for Rachel's benefit. Josiah and Christopher are both too old but we are investigating if they can join in too.


Whilst there, they played on swings, hit balls with golf clubs, and made a drum out of paper and a tin. They also had reading time and healthy snacks. Today's theme was red food so they tried grapes, strawberries, tomato, capsicum and radish. Josiah ate everything in his bowl.

The playgroup called this afternoon and said they would make an exception for the boys age because it will be another socialisation opportunity for them.

We didn't have a very good book work time this afternoon, it ended in Josiah in time out. Hopefully tomorrow is better.

19th October

Today is Wednesday, and on Wednesday we usually try to go to the story time at the library. The children really love this because the toy library is on at the same time and there are lots of toys to play with there.
At Story time, the library lady sings songs, says rhymes and reads a story to the kids. The kids then do a craft activity related to the story and have a word to learn each week. I think this is a great school like activity to do and i don't have to organise it or clean up! It is also another opportunity for socialisation with other kids. Today's story was The Green Sheep, a favourite in our household. The kids made crazy coloured sheep collages afterwards, sticking all sorts of mediums to their sheep.

When we left the library, we noticed a tent in the middle of the park and went to investigate on our way to the post office. It was delightful to discover a solar car and a team of solar car drivers showing off their vehicle. The world solar challenge is racing from Darwin to Adelaide at the moment and this team were going ahead showing a car to promote solar cars. Most of the information about the solar car went over the kids heads but i think this is something we can follow up on later.



They also displayed a solar oven in which they were cooking bread. The kids were interested in this and i suggested we should attempt to make a solar oven sometime soon.

Josiah had musical theatre this afternoon, and is learning a dance for the end of year concert.

18th October

Not much extra school work done today, Josiah helped me to clean the house this morning which was very helpful of him. The kids also helped me with the grocery shopping, I asked them to choose the cheapest loaf of bread and they had to compare the prices of two brands of bread. Josiah correctly chose the cheaper one.

We also looked at some labels on some skin care products and listed the ingredients in them. Anna was most interested about a face cream which contained mud.

We had a guest for lunch so we didn't have as much time for school work this afternoon. Josiah decided that he would try to do twice as much work today so he wouldn't have to do school tomorrow. I thought this was clever of him and let him try. He didn't quite get 2 days worth of work done today, but he will only have a small amount of work to do tomorrow.

October 17th 2011

This is not a very interesting blog, rather a place to record all our homeschool activities. Much of our school work is done out of the books and i thought that this would be a good place to record it.


This morning Josiah made us porridge for breakfast. This was the first time he has done it, he had to work out how many people were having porridge, how much to put in the bowl and he learnt how to use the microwave.



This is a great action shot of Max our dog that Josiah took this morning. I just sorted through 190 photos that he had taken on our camera, there were lots of good ones and lots of photos of grass.

We made fruit straps this morning from Strawberries, tinned peaches and tinned pears. The kids took in turn using the stick master to blend the fruit together, they really enjoyed this part.

The straps turned out a bit dry and crunchy, i think we left them in the oven too long, they are still yummy though!

Today was the first day of term 4 and Anna's first day of proper full time kindy. So while Anna was at kindy and Rachel was asleep we did our bookwork.

Everyday we do LEM phonics, Maths and Science. This term i am hoping to incorporate art, design and technology and Society and Environment/History into our school week. We have a good routine for phonics, maths and science. I think i should be able to include one subject each day for the others, but it will depend on how long it takes.

We do school in the afternoon when Rachel is asleep, which is much less distracting for me and Josiah. Whilst Anna is at kindy, this gives us about 2 1/2 hours to do all our school work. On some days we can resume when we get home if we haven't finished but on Mon and Wed the kids have muscial theatre and we run out of time.