10 Days of Sheer Bedlam

Dante's Amazing Shark (who is thinking about his next meal)!

But wonderful, amazing bedlam...

Wednesday, Thursday and Friday I did an essay for uni about Creative Arts in the Classroom. It centred on making arts the centre of the curriculum, as opposed to Language Arts and Maths. Well, naturally, I took it liberally and very much got immersed into it. Of course I read to the children but little else. I did set them to task. They made little books, and here is a selection of the images from those books:

This is their impressions of drawing the fire/heater:

Friday night they went to a birthday party for a Young Monkey. It was great! Great talking to friends my age while the children played and rampaged through the house. There was games and laughter and much happiness. I learnt a friend who once homeschooled now is the bus driver for her school. A Bus! I don't even have a car licence! I am a bit of a dreamer so I wonder if it would be a great idea anyway....

Saturday. We went shopping for things to make a paludarium! A paludarium is both an aquarium and a terrarium, part land and part water. Its going to be Andrew's and my gift to each other for being married for 10 years.

Well, just the tank set up a bit so far, and don't have all the bits, but its a beginning. We are also thinking of getting a pure white budgie for the set up also.

The children also enjoyed a craft activity after a play at Bunnings. They made pet rocks and painted letters. Labyrinth met a special little guy at Little Monkeys party, and made hers for him. Heres some pics:

1. Raven's work. 2. Kai's work. 3. Labyrinth's work, and 4. Dante's work. That really took all day, the shopping and such. Also, Dante was teaching Kai how to read in the back of the van!!! Labyrinth loves to read to the other children as well and lately she has read Meg and Mog and Dr Suess to the children. It's great. Both Dante and Labyrinth has read Diddy the Dinosaur to Raven and Monika.

Other news: Monika is now crawling very competantly! It took her 6 weeks to coordiate moving arms as well as her legs but she got there! Raven is now recognising colours and shapes! YAY! We have new neighbours who seem decent, a boy called Toby who is Dante's age, and a toddler girl, they also have a baby? Unsure but I think so. Labyrinth and Dante have good friends now, and I am happy for them. Kai is really scaring me. His broken leg does seem a little longer than his other leg now. We find out 6 days after my birthday and a little over a month before the anniversary of his break whether it is going to need to be rebroken surgically. Believe me, I'm dreading the thought. Poor bugger! Not sure if I described it before, but it was literally a long diagonal break from one side to the other, over 2/3rds of his femur bone. They told us it was the type of break one gets from a parachute or car accident, and he did it in a stepped hole at Tolosa St Reserve. He must have come down hard onto his knee and snapped it. It really is a parent's nightmare to see a child's limb in a grotesque position! I'll catch up further tommorrow, as I said there is a lot to say! We live a busy life, and we love it.

Who ever said a homeschoolers life was slow and boring????