Quasior's Home School

So we're officially back to study!

2011-02-21T23:55:00.000-08:00

Times they are a changin'

Well, this is new, the layout of blogger, and I must say I like it!!

Today was our official day back to study after a 3 month sabbatical. The children took it easy today, by writing, but it's going to be hard work all around this year.

I gave Dante and Kai a scenario to write about: You are a leader of a lion pride. You are tranquilised and wake up in a zoo. How are you feeling what do you see. Well, almost immediately, Dante turned on tears and didn't want to do any work at all. It took him in the end 5 hours to do one paragraph, once he finally realised we were not joking and we expected him to get over it and begin working. Kai, though not wanting to, did a good effort.

Labyrinth put on hysterics about not being able to find the book we brought for her as an easy getting her into the groove. I've written in my other blog about her learning disabilities? Well, basically she has GLD (Global Learning Delay or an IQ of 72), auditory processing disorder, and this is why her learning has been so slow and frustrating. She is now at school one day a week so she can access a speech pathologist and other specialists (if we can actually get her into one). It's all been a little, ah... problematic, to say the least.

Raven and Monika, as always, love to do their work and did a fantastic effort. Oozing pride.

I am also back at university, after sitting last semester out with major depression. Somehow I snapped back out of it and I am back to some decent semblance of my former self. The exciting part is I made up my own subject and I get to do it, only two other students were approved. I am going to write a hypertext narrative about trains and death. I am also doing German 101, as an easier subject, but I am keen to finally get qualified with it. And finally Film: Style and Story for a really really easy subject, however it got upgraded somehow I found out today. Whatever that means. And I'll have my degree by the end of this year, and I'm weighing up what to do next. I'll certainly have the numbers to get into honours, that might be fun OR really kick in my heels and be boring and have a post grad in education by the end of next year (you so can have a ed qualification in a year, I was shocked!)

Wouldn't that be a shocker for someone like me? Die hard homeschooler selling out to work in an enemy camp!! Well, I might for a while, but I would absolutely LOVE to work in alternative educational institions like Lambert, or Steiner, or even better found a FREE School! That would be really fantastic, and I am so excited. That would require money though, I imagine. However, I stumbled onto a near perfect building method, so it could be fairly cheap to make the structure at very least. Then grants and funding - but it usually comes with a price tag such as handing more control over to the funders. So really, not so much a sell out, so!

We also did the mentos/coke experiment with the children. That was interesting. We will let them do it themselves at a later date. Other changes to the homeschool: Raven is of age so he has to be officially working. Monika is easily up to his standard, not saying he isn't bright, not at all. He is. She just shines, she recognises whole words now, and can say for example (we were watching a documentary of David Attenborough Life of Mammals) and she comes out with "This is what was happening in America pre-dinosaurs, wasn't it?" This is typical for Monika. It might not have been totally accurate, but it still shows through.

Oh, and my secret? I've become a witch. I have embraced my pagan heart, I've come home.

December 2010 Advent Calendar:

2011-01-05T00:52:00.000-08:00

This year I made this advent calendar, it was in the workings before I became a pagan. However, Andrew doesn't believe in my new beliefs, so we'll continue with Christmas next year, we'll just do both!! Every night we drew the appropriate number, it might have simply been a treat, I included Litha into it, or doing a fun activity like cooking, painting or writing letters to Santa. On the 24th, after nan and pop had come for dinner, we organised a treasure hunt to bring in the Christmas spirit of fun! Monika's clue was the fridge, where she found a little present full of chocolate and a clue addressed to Raven which led them to the bbq, then to Kai to the van, then to Dante to the big Tea Tree, and Labyrinth the the rabbit hutch, back inside to a present under the tree, which was a big box of lego to share!!! Q.

Christmas 2010: We hope you had a great day!

2011-01-05T00:22:00.000-08:00

Our beautiful Monika after the festivities Christmas night, all tucked in bed surrounded by Tinkerbell bedding!

We love Christmas here, I just wonder how to paganise it!!! Will celebrate Yule at the proper time next year... but for now: A very happy Monika with Dora doll, Tinkerbell dolls and bedding!

A happy whole family with Nerf Guns and an ammo box full of fun foam bullets.

Labyrinth with a Silvermist doll, she also got a 14 pixel camera, and a Twilight Doona/Duvet cover.

Boys will get into their toys and make such messes~!

Above is the children on Christmas Eve, all excited for the big man in red to terrorise neighbourhoods everywhere!

Labyrinth's Doonah above, and below the boys have a new decor to their room: Dinosaurs!!

On Christmas Eve we had my parents around for honey and herb glazed ham, (made by me - it was absolutely gorgeous thank you Matt Moran!), salad and new taties. Mum brought pav with home grown berries for dessert! For brekkie the children enjoyed gluten free lolli... I mean choc chip cookie cereal for breakfast (so sweet and soo sooo bad!) For lunch we had the ham, a roast turkey, and roasted lamb on the bbq. I got witchy stuff like books, candles, incense and wooden boxes for Christmas, while Andrew got lots of models... We had a great Christmas, I hope you all enjoyed Christmas too - but best of all the happiness the children all enjoyed was the best! OH! This was our first year of getting up before the children this year, YAY for us!!

Litha: Our Summer Solstice!

2011-01-04T23:44:00.000-08:00

Well, its that time of year again, ahhh... not for us! We are still celebrating Christmas this year, but we're incoporating the pagan holidays into the mix this year. So Litha, is of course, the celebration of the Sun, and in some ways pagan father's day. We celebrate and show gratitude for the sun, the God is in his prime and fatherhood. celebration of life when the Goddess is giving in all her abundance with the summer harvests, and as such a special day of having fun!

This is the Sun Pinyata I made this year, in secret for a surprise for the children (and for all but two days, Andrew):

Inside was gold coins, representing the golden sun and the darkness it hides.

This is the children lining up to do the Pinyata thing:

Our humble Litha Feast:

We had watermelon stars, and melonade, greek salad, sun cakes (they had chunks of chocolate through them see gold coins above, same concept), chargrilled corn, bbq meats, GF treats! The suncakes ended up being not as nice, I sourced those from the Circle Round: Raising Children In Goddess Traditions book by Starhawk, Diane Baker and Anne Hill. We also used their fairy money idea (good for hugs, kisses and time for activities one on one with mum or dad), gifting our representative father and the pinyata.

After we sang and danced around the backyard and we had a really good evening, no I didn't stay up all night! Q.

Rite of Passage: Labyrinth's Menarche

2011-01-04T22:39:00.001-08:00

The stories of so many women I've talked to about their own menarches have been, quite frankly either terrorising for a young teen or just plain pathetic. Mine was just plain humiliating. I had a small bleed that lasted maybe a day or two. No one had explained a lot to me, just what I'd read in some 'not like reality' scientifically based puberty books I'd read when I was 5 or 6, so I wasn't expecting a little one to come, and then two weeks later a full on one to appear when I was in class with 30 other people! The blood had soaked through my school dress, and onto the seat. The class was the worst possible choice for such an incident - wood work. My teacher actually laughed along with all the other students. He was probably embaressed and didn't know how to react, but..!! My parents made me go back to school same day and face the humiliation that can only be dished out by pubestants penned into cages can. A girl who I thought was my friend actually threw tampons and pads at me in front of two grades worth of people.

Well needless to say, I want my daughters experience not to echo anything I had to experience, but be a beautiful, welcoming into the world of womanhood. I had been thinking about this for months actually, since Labyrinth had already started Thelarche I knew it was coming. I had guessed it might happen around Dantes birthday and had started to plan for it. I was never expecting it was going to happen roughly a week before Christmas!! (I had also begun preparations for Litha too - now that I'm pagan.)

So she told me that morning it had begun, she was excited about it, we'd actually discussed preforming a menarche ritual and having a lovely meal, I wanted it to be a party with other friends, but that wasn't to be. So, to begin with Labyrinth enjoyed a bath with rose petals through it, and some incense oils infused into the bath. I put around her white, pink and red candles. I left her to enjoy that (I was flat out working on the meal), then I painted her with the best thing I had - face paint! I made goddess symbols, spirals around her body, and I told her she had gone into the water innocent, now she rose as a full maiden. She wore red silk shirt (that went to her knees) for the rest of the night so some of the marks were visable.

I read her a dedication, invited the goddess and again welcomed Labyrinth to womanhood in front of the family, and we enjoyed non-alcholic red wine as a toast. We then ate a red meat roast with salad, with red onions, fetta, red lettuce and tomotoes and fetta. The colours of white. pink and red where echoed through out. I had prepared the cupcakes above, a beautiful red velvet cupcake I can't take credit for - it came from the Zombie Cupcake book by Zilly Rosen (totally recommended.) I just made red icing and put strawberries on top. We later gave her a gift, it was a doll, and a bouquet of red flowers.

Its a memory she can cherish forever, knowing she has parents that love her enough to try and make positive and lasting memories for her!

I Thought I'd add this

2010-11-21T02:52:00.000-08:00

I can't abide homeschool bashing by people who don't know what homeschooling is really about. I found such a thread on the new government site called "MySchool". I had to reply. (Here's the link.)

I'll put my words here though, in case they go missing...
This seems to be a bit of an anti-homeschooling and a school bashing thread.

Firstly, I homeschool my 5 children. I could never imagine sending them to school. Why? Because school has never and doesn't seem to have the ability to address the needs of all students. People forget that homeschooling existed BEFORE school was institutionalised, and it is very natural and a reasonable choice for a parent to make. Yes, orginally I had my daughter and son in school but I regret it. They picked up bad habits, and my daughter was bullied, 6 years on still not fully recovered. But I digress...

Natural learning/unschooling is the term you are looking for Alana. This is a valid path, but one of many paths a parent who homeschols can make. There is also school at home, Charlotte Mason, Steiner, Ready to go Curriculum, Internet based, religious based and eclectic are all choices one can make.

Obviously, you are all uninformed and making assumptions about something you really know nothing about. Alana, two homeschooled children do not represent the homeschooling community as a whole. Marion, sadly you have a picture of homeschooling that is lacking. Yes, the education system is failing, it is doomed to fail as is, or make children into mindless workers who don't think outside the box.

Don't take my word for it read celebrated ex-teacher from New York John Gatto Taylor's criticism of modern schools
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Taylor_Gatto

Marion I'd also like to ask why you didn't tap into the huge homeschool communty of Qld? I've lived there and I know there are many homeschool activities and communities of varying styles all around, easy to google, find on Yahoo groups. Sure its lonely if you don't socialise, but the people are there if you want to meet them. When I was up there were two informal play groups meeting in North Brisbane, one of which met in various parks weekly and had a lending library and are so willing to help newcomers, very lovely community. Of course other groups run excersions and science classes and all kinds of interesting activities. Theres a Sunshine group, a christian group, Briby Island group that all meet and support one another, and that's just off the top of my head.

Of homeschooling children I know they are beautiful and individual people, they aren't socially backward, some like to be introvert but that's natural in any setting, school or no. Homeschoolers tend to be more able to associate without barriers of sex and age, they are tolerant. School settings are the ones which I have found to be the unnatural setting, putting children same age together they tend to have some rather nasty interactions (rarely this happens with home educated children). Teenagers don't have the same peer pressure to conform or consume or go through fads.

And Glenn, I'm not bashing the people involved in schooling, its just the system, the teachers themselves have been 'set up' to perform their roles and have been educated to think in one way. Teachers do seem to be critical of homeschooling (it is their means of income). I know a principal very well and he is open minded enough to 'wait and see' how my children turn out.

I think the government/education system could do better by opening their minds. I rather like the model (I can't take credit, but I can't recall it's name) where its an open education system, where the teacher has a more facilitator role, its age open I believe, ie adults and children can learn in the same class. It onus is on the self, you go research and work on individual or group projects and learn what you need as you complete it, the teacher is a sounding board and various discussions are the means of communicating ideas. There is a communal learning space that is rather like a library with computers and there are spaces set aside for various activites cooking, science, technical learning like sewing/metal work/wood work etc. No one is forced to learn anything but encouraged to discover, naturally learn and to interact with others as they learn. I believe some split off and learn a trade (which they presumably have experience with already) at age 12, where they take an apprentiship.) Not unlike how it used to be in the past. The theory is one can base their natural predispositions into become really really good at one thing, something they can have real pleasure in and not worry too much about a shallow attempt to learn everything and come away not really being great at anything.

An Explanation and an Apology.

2010-11-19T03:18:00.000-08:00

Hey !

I am sorry I haven't been around, I keep kicking myself, but there are some pretty good reasons.

I will endeavour to change my wicked ways and keep up posting because I have enjoyed it in the past so much.

Several things have prevented me from posting. My familie's health and my own. Yeah, sorry excuse maybe, but true nonetheless. I myself have been recentlyish been diagnosed with Sjogren's Syndrome of the secondary variety, something I've lived with literally for years and never knew that it wasn't normal. It's lovely to have some relief from that... It's obviously secondary to my primary condition of Coeliac's Disease. See my other blog here. That alone would not have stopped me from communicating in the intricate web of eminds.

Labyrinth was recently diagnosed with two definitive problems: Universal Global Developmental Delay and Phonetic Processing Disorder. These do NOT complete the puzzle that is Labyrinth. She's had to take epilepsy tests twice now, and they are undertaking further genetic testing. If nothing shows then we'll be seeing her pediatrician late this month to see if she requires further testing, she does require further treatment, this is a known fact. The government now approve her for having a disability. This is going on while she is experiencing the pains of Thelarche, while she sometimes can seem still like a toddler. OK, this isn't Labyrinth's complete picture at all. She's off charts for her age with Bodily-Kinetic and Spatial (See Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences), considering she's got a small weight problem (which is now changing as she matures and is getting a little slimmer), its a little odd. Add to the fact she is ever hungry, cannot be filled up, only gets what the other children eat, plus is quite fit, her body does not 'fit' with her current energy levels/eating levels.

I had to drop out of university this semester. This hit me like a bomb, I was aware of Labyrinth's symptoms, of course, but... I went from first stage depression (which I was only aware of for two weeks) to borderline third stage in under two weeks. I didn't even realise there were stages. I tried Cognitive Behaviour Therapy for those two weeks and was needing to be medicated very quickly before I completely lost it.

That's the tip of the ice burg. Dante looks to have major childhood depression (worrying early, so he might develop bipolar as a teen - poor darling). Kai has become incontinent in his bowels. Monika and Raven have thier dietry issues. Then there is Andrew, he's suffering very badly from headaches, literally constant since early this year. He's got them except when hes asleep it just varies to what degree. Of the tests completed his MRI came back negative, but somewhere along the line he has had his nose broken with swollen sinuses, and he has badly impacted wisdoms. These wisdoms aren't painful at all, unless they are causing the headaches. If it's NOT these reasons they need to begin looking at other reasons, like environmental. He's convinced its not his nose, and doubts its his teeth as it's extremely rare for just headaches. Its making him depressed.

I just want to move, the space is crushing my spirits, there isn't enough room to live here with 7 people, all wanting to pursue different avenues of interests. Argh... But the view is amazing. I need a sea change. We need a new car, preferably a Land Cruiser/Rover so we can have a trailer.

I am having a change of religion too. Positives for another post thought, coming soon!

Some photos I'd like to share:

2010-05-23T02:29:00.001-07:00

The above are some pictures of our darling Monika, and below, gee how she's grown the darling!

Here we have the lovely Ella and Monika, sweet cousins together.

They ended up lovely friends after the initial visit. And here are my children and Michelles together.

A very nice shot of Dante.

And another very great shot of little Eric.

Just thought I'd share some strange little details about Monika. She resembles her grandfather very closely, she began life with black hair and very near black eyes, they have mellowed a little. They were both born on the 20th of September and they both can have their way no matter what!

Mother's Day, my birthday and our homeschool month!

2010-05-23T00:10:00.000-07:00

Above are a few of my gifts, these were what I recieved for Mother's Day. I'm Babushka Doll mad. When I was growing up we loved visting a certain older couple who used to fill me up on wonderful stories of their lives in old Europe before immigrating to Australia, and these Bubushka Dolls sat on her mantle, some from 'the old country', some Inga had collected over the years. They used to fascinate me, just as much as the stories they told. I remember Villy being very surprised when I told him the story he was 'reading' to me had different words than the printed ones! Yeah I was a nerd who could read before I set foot in school.

The teapot is such an awesome replacement for the second tea pot the darlings have smashed over the last few months. It's really nice Hello Kitty kind, the plastic seems sturdy though I'd prefer no plastic, and the glass mouldings and the strainer is just perfect. I mean that, it doesn't let any real residue through!

The stamp is a present I brought for myself, I've wanted a Raven stamp like forever and this happened to be going cheap on Ebay, so I thought I'd snap it up. I can certainly add it to Raven's scrap pages, I want more of them, can't ever have enough stamps I'm afraid. Ahhh, the Scrapper's Lament.

I did get some more scrapbook project boxes, a table I can set up in front of the telly to scrap on (hell, nothing expensive), a new tool tote and a scrapbook bag. I'm actually downsizing. I'll be putting four project boxes together and doing them on the couch (with new table) or at the kitchen table, and getting a tall boy for sensible storage for clothes as opposed to taking over my bedroom with scrap storage and desks....at least that's the theory. My mum brought me Cadbury Chocolate (plain which is Gluten Free) and a purple skirt. She gave Michelles children an Ocean candle to give me. She's getting better at guessing what I'll like as an adult. Andrew keeps ribbing me about the Independance Day Boardgame she gave me the year they met him (we were already married! That was a story I might deluge one day).

Andrew and I have struck a more structured homeschool, we do four lessons a day, and by god he's taking half of them! We evenly divided up the lessons, giving ourselves a day off a week, plus a weekend which for us in Friday/Saturday (we never school on Friday's anyway because it's pay day and we're oftten busy). Sundays are English creative writing, Blogging (for the children and me - find them in the About Me link), Maths and Japanese. Mondays are Art apreciation, German and double science. Tuesday is English Grammar, Craft or Cooking, Maths and IT (they're building web pages atm), Wednesday is Music, Craft or Cooking, and our playdate with other homeschoolers, this would also be the time for trips to museums and art galleries etc, and Thursdays are English, Reading aloud, Maths, Watching language shows like Muzzy or Japanese Anime. The lessons are done in a fashion that we either take all morning or all afternoon which has left me time to pursue my dream of losing weight, getting fit and doing my university work in the daytime! This was all good in theory till I pushed myself too hard and pulled a muscle in my lower back, and I was doing so well! I might have taken nearly 5 months but I've lost a dress size.

Tuesday's lessons haven't happened yet, it turned into a playdate with their cousins from Perth, my sister Michelle who is now a doctor brought the beautiful bright cousins over to play! Ella also visited on Thursday and we ate tea at my Mum's where they were staying. Michelle was attending a Women's Health Conference (she was doing it for some kind of credit? on her medical knowledge somehow). So this week with me injuring my back on my birthday and Michelle and her children, I've been flat out busy (as has the rest of the family). We've not been able to go to a homeschool playdate since last week, but it's only one week and they got to spend a day with the cousins who they really get along well with.

There are fewer knots and bruising on my back today, but yesterday was painful! I brought some Solopas from the Chinese Emporium which help amazingly, Andrew slathered my back with Arnica and Comfrey mix (which was for my broken arm long time since). I had a long bath with a little Monika intruding for a bath at the end - hey she can have a bath now and she doesn't suffer from eczma anymore.

Finally, we spent four and one half hours with a the very Dr Donahue at the hospital on Friday, which is all about finding the results to the children's various illnesses, all of which I will blog on my other blog Quasior's Recovery From Silly Yaks. He accepts I am a celiac, and Raven is too! After all this time it's nice to have a doctor agree with me. I will be joining the Tassie branch of Coeliac Australia soon.

That's about all for now in our little corner of the world. I'm sorry I've been absent so much, I've just been crazy busy, Q. I will add in photos of more scrapping soon.

I know, I know

2010-04-27T22:09:00.000-07:00

Above: Dante and Kai have painted Wall-E, and Raven has done a night time Plants Vs Zombies painting. Below: Labyrinth had done a still life of our fruit bowl, and Monika has done a wonderful colourful picture!

It's way past due for blogging, and I apologise but I have been super busy...

I've been to Armidale for a Residential School for Intro to Preformance and Presentation (Drama), that was fun and a big stretch for me as I haven't preformed on stage for a long, long time. I've been doing my best to get fit, keep the studies up, both the children's and mine, and get on top of all my other needs... basically this came not quite last as my scrapping has that honour. Yes, I'm pining for the time I can sit down and just do some fun stuff for me.

Last week on Thursday I got all my mid semester essays in, a week since getting back in the state, I had three assignments due on Wed/Thurs last week, one was fun, that was a workbook for my drama subject which meant designing a stage and drawing up a scene ready for designers/actors to go. The other two essays for the same subject (which could have been a great subject) Reading Pop Culture, which was about Steve Irwin and Micheal Jackson. I mean come on, it could have been Princess Diana - I figured I'd do the lesser two of three evils...

I've also been sick, trying to get the children prepped for a mini gluten challenge (which all the details will be on the other blog.) I've also got my Mental Health First Aid certificate, my Mother has had complications from a bowel operation, Andrew has been recovering from a nasty foot injury from Dante's birthday. On the up and up now personally for health, which got a huge boost from my four day Res School, which was quite physical. I've barely had time to scatch!

During this time the lessons haven't exactly been um... consistant. However, they have made huge bounds in reading/writing and maths, which are the subjects we have been mostly concentrating on while I've been otherwise occupied. Monika and Raven have been learning the phonic alphabet, learning new dancing song combos like Incy Wincy Spider etc.

About a week before going to Armidale, we went on a homeschool excursion to the Molesworth Enviroment Centre, learning about Aboriginal history right in the area with a bushwalk and building temporary huts, complete with mini lecture to begin. They have had lots of play and they chat online with cousins, so they haven't been lacking for social contact.

Naturally, they have had access to painting/drawing. We've also been enjoying the interactive WII that has been brought so I can do cheap Yoga, I get the WII Fit tomorrow, we got it on special, it beats paying for the gym. We also do SingStar which has substitured for music lessons for now. Dante has been getting into modelling, we keep fish, still eating out of our garden but it will have to be settled for the winter months coming up...

Current Books:

Labyrinth: W.I.T.C.H. no 3

Dante: The Spiderwick Chronicles - The Field Guide aka no1

Kai: The Strange Museum - The Royal Switch

Raven & Monika: If you're happy and you know it - song'n'action book.

Me: Sookie Stackhouse Books, Rereading No.1 Dead Until Dark- I've read up to No. 9 (Andrew's and my Anniversary present to each other - Yeah we had one of those on the 7th of April, it was our 12th!)

A week that seemed like a month...

2010-03-20T16:06:00.001-07:00

Raven's picture of Eric, that's after a family vote we decided to call our kitten.

Above: Our primary and secondary colour lesson. Below: cute Kai!

Dante's birthday on the 19th - below is the RC Smasher Destroyer, one of his favourite presents...

Above is Dante's Transformer - it transforms into a tank. Below Labyrinth and Monika all dessed up and read to go to a birthday party.

So this week there was 3 birthday parties involving our children, and one birthday - Dantes! We've also been very busy doing a whole lot more. I'll begin with the parties first. Monika's lovely fairy friend turned 3 and had a tea party at Kingston Beach. Unfortunately Monika was unable to enjoy herself too much as she has been suffering even worse of late with her diahhrea. I'll be blogging about that in my other blog. That and the lovely early autumn warmth had us leaving early. I only took the time out to go put my free spotlight $10 voucher to good use - I brought choc making moulds for Easter this year because of all the allergy/intolerance in the children means it's safer to make our own - and hopefully cheaper too... and to exchange some clothes for Labyrinth. Monika slept a lot in our travels and over the next couple of days enjoyed hydrolyte icy poles.

Next party was for thier cousin George (My sister Tania's lad) who was turning 4 - a HJs pirate party. There isn't a single food on their menu that's GF, so master Raven had a LegsNBreast chicken and chips meal - but they managed to contaminate it and got him and me sick for the evening/next day. Never going back there! But at the time it was a good evening for them, and I reaquainted with many mormon people including my brother and sister-in-law, whom I never see because I don't believe in it anymore - and purely business when it comes to Michael's Mob... how enlightening and such a sense of freedom I have that I'm definately not giving up now. But it was nice to see them. George has grown tall and thin!

Friday, the day of birth for two cousins, Dante and Micheal's son Rueben. Ironic in a way as I had two friends who were inseperable long ago in a past life by those names. Dante was born 12.5 hours before! Anway, it was a day of shinanigans. Firstly the timing was off with appointments for me to take back and get another sleep apnoea machine, put off so much we couldn't get a parking spot near the pool on the domain so we went to Glenorchy Pool, it was booked out by a high school.... so we gave him his first present, the RC ship pictured above. He had a great time playing with that until a change over of batteries and lack of connection seen Andrew diving into the highly polluted water to retrive said ship only to rip a sizably deep gash into the sole of his foot. It bled for a long long time and so we went straight home to lunch and phoning around Doctors... so it was a huge boring wait before being seen and being told that it couldn't be stitched with a high likelihood of infection, most of the gunk taken out, script in hand and off to Rueben's Mini-Golf party. Dante over ate on the sweets and made himself ill, he came home to Kai who was also under the weather with high temps and a sore neck (a few moments of menigitous concern - but then his temp fell as quickly as it came. Cupcakes were his birthday cake of choice with underwater animal lollies. He felt a little sad and ripped off, but he'll have an unbirthday to make up for it later. As with all birthday traditions the birthday boy gave a small gift to each sibling - it really does work as an antidote to sibling rivalry! This is what was given:

Labyrinth - A new dress Kai - A model tank Raven - Transformer ship Monika - a Littlest Pet Shop Monkey Plushie (he had his eyes on that gift for weeks! Monika and her Monkeys!)

So some of the lessons we've squeezed in are: The primary and secondary colours, and how to make them, making and decorating cupcakes, gardening, McDonalds math (it's pretty good for free), singing, parts of speech, 3 lessons of Japanese, a lesson of Spanish, Monster's We Met Documentary, some new books, reading aloud/chapter books, PE, forming an argument, and drawing.

The Annual Home Education Picnic and A New Addition To Our Family!

2010-03-13T01:54:00.000-08:00

Above is the new addition to our family, as yet unnamed The Cat is asleep with Monika. He's a pretty lad, isn't he? We did it the responsible, and ultimately the less expensive in the end way. He's had his vaccinations, vet checks, a voucher for desexing, and microchip all for $130. He has blended into our family rather nicely. He's got a very sweet nature, and of course lots of kitten energy when he's not asleep! We brought him from the Cat Centre having decided very early on we didn't want to buy kittens from pet stores, who are pretty irresponsible when it comes to cat/dogs.

OK these are the only photos we have of our picnic at Ross with the other registrared home edders from around the state. Really shouldn't have went along, but I didn't want to disappoint the children, they still had a good time, I made muffins the day before. I was unwell that day and hid most of the time in the car.

Last night was the first night I had with the Sleep Apnea machine... and wow what a difference one night makes !! I got about twice as much as I usually get done, I didn't have to wait the obligatory 4 or so hours to wake up properly. Really. I have a nickname "Zombie". So a four hour time slot where I was already fairly awake makes a huge difference! The experience was slightly uncomfortable for a while, and about twice the pressure was literally painful, but it's an easy thing to just turn it off and back on again and it resets itself. Its the machine that reads my responses so they know what settings it needs when I get my own machine later on next week. I think it is going to be great, as I felt like my lungs hadn't opened up that much since probably before Raven was born and I got asthma - so it might do even more things for me. They told me I was moderate to severe, having 31 small sleep apnea's an hour, thats about every two minutes! I think I've got a bit of work to do, but I'm going to be healthy soon! I feel like I might be a real human at some point this year, won't that be different? Anyways, things are looking great here at the moment, until next time, Q.

Hand Art

2010-03-11T02:19:00.001-08:00

Kai felt rather inspired by the Rainbow Serpent Aboriginal art he did last week, and today he drew the above picture. Its a hand drawing with his favourite animal, the elephant, at a watering hole. I was so impressed I used it for inspiration to get the children to all do an ink print of thier own hands and see what might emerge. I was happy with the results!

Above top is Raven's Raven. He chose the black ink, and he knew what he was going to create before he began. So cute! Below Raven's is Monika's face. There are distinct eyes in there, and an oval face too, with a wide smiling mouth! She had a lot of fun creating this.

Above is Labyrinth's Jelly Fish. I love her interpretation! Her colour choice is also very pretty and suits her subject matter. Below is Kai's man in chicken suit. He has put baby chicks around the man too. At first he thought he had done it wrong, but then Andrew gave him some inspirational humour to work with, and it was OK. I think he did a wonderful job.

Last, but by no means least is Dante's Rooster with baby chick. It is very much the way he is with Monika, he really loves and looks out for her, almost parental in his relationship. This picture he made was great. I was so pleased with how organic it all was, a natural progression, and they really enjoyed doing the art activity.

We have been studying Monsters We Met a BBC documentary series. So far we've covered the first two in the series, and they've been making a 'natural' science journal, where they draw a picture of a chosen animal from the episode, and write a few sentences about the animal. We've covered a few so far: Demon Duck of Doom, Red Kangaroo, Caribou, Saber-tooth Cat, the Woolley Mammoth and the Devil Dragon. I've been grabbing various information sheets and pictures of each off several sites and printing them off. They read aloud to each other a paragraph from each animal - such information as diet or anatomy, and we talk a little about what they've learnt. Much like what we've done with the Life On Land series. We will be completing the Dragon Myth lapbook and unit shortly and revisiting and making a lap book about Greek Myth next. It's been great discovering different cultures with them, and we have been discussing Aborigines a lot in the last week or two. That will be nicely highlighted with an Aboriginal excersion that's been organised by a fellow homeschooling mum.

I might not be so tired after tomorrow. I finally get my sleep apnea machine and might have some good sleep so not be so dopey. One of the benefits will hopefully mean more bloggin! And lots more other kinds of things. We have also done music lessons, language, reading, writing, lots of other natural learning.

The Rainbow Serpent

2010-03-03T16:14:00.000-08:00

Raven's drawing and writing above on The Rainbow Serpent, below is Monika's drawing.

Above is Kai's interpretation, below is Dante's drawing. I am very pleased with Kai's - he seemed to transform the ideas of the Rainbow Serpent and Aboriginal art into something rather personal. Dante's done some wonderful interpreting himself, with rock art drawings and waterholes too!

Above Labyrinth has drawn the Rainbow Serpent into a water hole, surrounded by trees, animals and people. Aboriginal dreamtime talk of how one must be respectful of the Rainbow Serpent while he is present. He can make the day turn out well or bad, accordingly to the behaviour of the people.

I encouraged the older three to write a poem about the Rainbow Serpent from our readings and the video presentation we were able to find. Labyrinth decided to go alone, whilst the boys worked together. This is Labyrinth's Poem:

The Rainbow Serpent

Goes across the land

River to River

If happy he stays

If mad he goes

And if he's not mad he'll stay there

Because he is happy.

The boys came up with this together:

The Rainbow Serpent

Crawls across the land

Shaping it as if it were a sculpture

He jumps from a water hole to another

He never dies, he leaves a rainbow in the sky!

We've been madly working on finishing off our dragon myth unit, completing bits and pieces and working on our overall unit presentation which is a scrapbook file book (it needs to be ready by Saturday so I can have it presentable at the statewide home education picnic).

Just our happenings in brief: We've been doing lessons everyday but one a week, we've been learning about myth, language, math, art (including painting and modeling), reading of course, cooking, walking, lots of science, our garden is growing!! We've been enjoying basil, tomato, cauliflower, brocolli, lettuce, a few berries that aren't gotten by birds (raspberries/blackberries/strawberries) and peas. We're waiting on spring onion, pumpkins, zuchhini, capsicum and more of the above - oh and kale!

More to come I know I need to be doing more blogs! I'm getting worse = zombie, but hopefully that will turn around when I get this sleep apnoea machine on Thursday. I will do a final post of the Dragons, with pics of the scrapbook file. Until next time then, Q.

2 Little Fairies tend the Flowers....

2010-01-14T21:59:00.000-08:00

My daughter, Monika, and a friends daughter play fairies in her garden, they are tending the gardens... It was so cute I had to break the silence, I've been way too slack. I've actually been enjoying my holidays! I've read the Twilight Saga, almost finished my Halloween off the page album, which I'll post pics of on here soon. Yes, I feel incredibly guilty that I've not done anything so I'll have to begin posting again!

Who Killed Dave?

2009-12-19T22:24:00.000-08:00

Who Killed Dave? you'll never guess By Linda Cockburn.

In the beginning, I noticed the clunkiness of the character introductions above the story itself. I am cool with this, many great writers have clunky debut novels so I was not put off (read: Neil Gaiman, Kim Wilkins). There was quite a few characters, many of which had a large amount of backstory which was needed, and as a result this made for a clumsy beginning. I need not have worried because Cockburn's story has indeed been told well. The plot and the story flowed naturally and very nearly told itself.

It was narrated by a psychic woman in her late twenties, Robyn, who has some connection with everyone living in her street, Kaos Court. She was totally believable, as her version of the events of a short week is told as she experiences them, interwoven with her personal insights, recollections and reflections of the residents and people connected with her story. As the events happen, almost unbelievably so as so many things happening at once; but builds itself to a natural peak. Dave is hated by everybody in the street for varying reasons, and his death is as bad as his life to the residents of Kaos Court, all of which have motivations to want him dead.

The humour is natural, I would compare it to ZigZag St by Nick Earls. I found it much more belly aching than ZigZag St, the fumbling romances are much better played out in Dave and the sequence of events lead to a much more enjoyable read. I know many people love ZigZag, and if they do they should really give Who Killed Dave? a go because there is a similar tone of humour to both. In my opinion though, Who Killed Dave? is a much better story though (even though ZigZag is based on a true story - and they say truth is stranger than fiction!).

Her discriptions are hilarious, her insights marvelous. I recommend this book to anyone with a sense of humour! Julie Hyatt-Harris.

This is what the children have been modeling!

2009-11-29T16:33:00.001-08:00

As this is what my husband is doing I was going to just put it in as a guest blog. On second thoughts I'll be just posting links. Rather than trying to capture all the pictures and uploading again (the words are easy, it's a simple cut and paste but all the pics - and there is rather a lot) I'll just put a permanent link on a side bar, and put a link in right here. I'll mention if there is anything you should check out in my general posts.

You can find his "posts" (it is actually a thread dedicated to it in one of his modelling forums) right here. All excepting Monika are working on models, its one of Andrew's hobbies and they are all interested in doing it so he has come to the party and sharing his knowledge/talents with them, which is all good. Hope you enjoy, Q.

Dragons Are Good!

2009-11-28T15:03:00.000-08:00

We studied Asian Dragon myths in the last week. I accessed some myth stories here, and we then coloured in these Asian dragons in the colours of The Four Dragons. Obviously there are five children and no one wanted to miss out so Monika's dragon is an added bonus. Its a shame that you can't see what the images really look like! We did this in stages, we first used water colour pencils, then painted water into them, added highlighting markers in silver in some, gold paint in others, then we put a shimmer paint over the top of the dragon's bodys. They are really very iridescent! Anyways, Raven did the Black Dragon at top (by choice - they all chose which dragon to do from the story), next is Monika's lively dragon, followed by the Pearl Dragon by Labyrinth. Below is the Yellow Dragon by Kai and lastly but not least is Dante's Red Dragon.

Above is Raven's picture of a man outside his house with a dog, and Monika's picture below.

These are the big three's western dragons. Labyrinth has gone for a firey dragon perched on mountaintop, while Kai's is up to some practical cooking of birds before consumption.

Dante has opted for a free standing dragon, which had much more detail before he 'coloured' it in! But still great! While we haven't looked at any more myths from the west, yet, we will this following week, and hopefully be making little FIMO dragons too. We did rewatch the Mockumentary Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real. It is amazing and well worth a watch!

Dragons and Flightless Birds!

2009-11-27T20:39:00.000-08:00

Labyrinth was rather taken by the Moa, which she has drawn above. Below is Kai's Kiwi picture, he loves them too. Dante far below is amazed by the Kakapo!

Yes, we've been studying dragons again, or rather, we haven't stopped! At the request of the children, we have decided to interlace the Life On Earth series with stories of myth and legend. So we are. So we are watching the next series, Life of Birds. It's fantastic! We've watched one so far, which focuses on birds in New Zealand, quite remarkable and interesting ~ and they say animals in Australia are wierd and strange! So, we did some worksheets that looked a bit more in depth of the above birds, and some worksheets too.

As for dragons, a later post will be dedicated to those.

Other things we've been doing: going to homeschool picnics/get together in the park, maths, drawing, gardening (we've harvested some lettuce and will harvest some Kale today to put in mashed potato!), english grammar (covered nouns, pronouns and adjectives - may not look like much but it includes all the little things like superlative and comparative adjectives, and the four types of pronouns! We go over and over them so they don't forget), they've started learning Japanese formally, they already use spanish, sign language and a touch of environmental. Other non formal learning goes on all the time, naturally, like cooking, fixing things, going to the library - the boys have discovered comic books, its great. Labyrinth had discovered anime comics a long, long time ago! We still read to them everyday, they read to each other and to themselves. Currently Dante and Kai are reading books on militaria, while Labyrinth is reading Coraline and anime still.

We've been going on walks to, along the foreshore tracks that have been made this year. Its a lovely walk, right along the Derwent River, its been really cleaned up and we see many native birds, such as black swans, sea hawks and harriers. We even caught an echidna baby living in our hedge and getting into our vegie garden to hunt out bugs! We have a variety of birdlife living around here, some in our roof, and we've noticed big bumble bees are currently hanging around the tea tree in our front yard, close to our front door - have they moved in?

I've been flat out really, I had one day off after getting in my last assignment, but I've been doing a fair bit of organising and cleaning (boring), have lots of scrapping to catch up on and applied for Advanced Standing finally.

In our immediate future for home edding, we are looking forward to stopping for a holiday soon! We are tying up loose ends, like finishing off our Dragon Myth unit, and doing some fun Christmas activities as well. We will go to about 5 Christmas parties, two of which are homeschool ones (with any luck our family one won't clash), and one of our own to officially end the school year, which has never been done here before, usually we just keep going til Christmas and then have a few weeks off. I'll be posting a bit of scrapping and holiday news over the hols, and anything remarkable that happens, but we're still at it for another week and a half. I just want a holiday!

Until next time, Q.

~BOO~

2009-11-02T03:07:00.000-08:00

Its Halloween ~ Trick or Treat?

Oh, we do love our Scaries in this family, and what better time of year to get your freak on than Halloween! This Halloween wasn't about parties though, we had a quiet one as all of our other ideas fizzed out, unfortunately. Not to be perturbed, we decided to go Trick Or Treating, and have ourselves our Pizza night and a little party too. I haven't been wonderful lately as I've had more and more headaches and pain. I'll put that in the other blog. Teeth are wonderfully painful at times.

So here we have our Princess Monika first up, she's our resident fairy, Labyrinth wanted to be a witch, Dante is the swamp monster again, Raven is Batman and Kai our resident zombie, and there they are all together just before we went Trick Or Treating. It was indeed surprising how well that went, lots of people were impressed by them dressing up, one woman who had no treats gave them money~ how that made them pleased!

The second last picture is them over the 'loot' as they called it. There is quite a bit of Gluten Free there, so Raven was indeed happy. The last is of their pizzas. Raven ate the most I've ever, ever seen him eat, hell he ate more that I did that night (and he was in pain thought he was going to be sick after). His appetite is certainly improved greatly since going GF. And no, they didn't get to eat all that, they ate two little lollies and one big one, and we'll spread it out as far as we can.

We had a wonderful time, everyone enjoyed themselves, and Diego soundtrack in German is so Rammstein !! We let them watch Halloween goodness all night after that, and had some spooky dancing after. Q.

Who Do? ZooDoo!

2009-10-28T05:11:00.000-07:00

I have been unexcusably slack on this blog, and I apologise, and will be slack over the next week to 9 days as I have my three final assignments for uni due and I haven't begun a single one. I am crazy but somehow I always seem to pull it off with decent if not good results. I have been reading all the set texts though so maybe it is a little OK in regards to Uni. For this blog though, I have been naughty. I have got a lot of housework done, managed to complete one scrapbook page (which I won't share due to it being a bit personal) and begun another. And we've had a wonderful Halloween as well as going to ZooDoo on Tuesday.

I've admittedly questioned my decision to stick by Andrew and his mental illness, and this of late has had some bearing on my stress levels. He has in the last 3 weeks gone completely of his meds, gone back onto one of them and completely withdrawn from that and begun a heavy dose of Lithium. This has been a very difficult time as he's not so much been depressed (he hasn't), he's had one single symptom - incredible irritability. The normal children playing noises was enough for an explosion.

So, I very nearly had enough, was just about ready to clear off but he went to the GP now he's on Lith and he's doing much much better. He didn't go on the slow approach about it either, he copped the harsh physical side effects to get better faster probably because he knew how I was feeling about the episode. But two of the best memories of our married lives happened this week, one being ZooDoo, and the other was Halloween yesterday. Just a simple family day but a good one. I'll put a post up especially on that later.

We loved ZooDoo, we were taken by the baby Marmoset with mum, the Tigers and Lions were sleepy of course, but it was nice to see them, the baby animal nursery was sweet as the children interacted nicely with goats/sheep/guinea pigs etc but the younger two enjoyed the native Australian animal area much more. They were shy to begin with.

The tour was good too, but Raven was quite freaked out by the Emu who snatched his food bag right out of his hand and it made him nervous of the whole lot after that - especially the Ostriches which were surprisingly quite gentle.

The black swans can be found and enjoyed right out our window, so they weren't very special to us, but we loved the albino and coloured peacocks (there were even matching peahens for both!) Peacocks are lovely as they embody my favourite colours of purple and turquoise, so beautiful.

It was really a great day, but I'll be looking forward to a return visit when they have the lizard enclosure up and running. The children got a token stuffed toy of course: Monika a monkey (she loves them), Raven a Koala (he became quite taken with the Koala there, so passive and sweet - I think it was the only animal he touched whilst we were there), Kai got an echidna (he loves the oddest beasts, his all time favourite is an elephant because he thinks they are cute. As an aside it is the strangest thing I've ever seen given away on freecycle - an elephant - true!), Dante got a Tassie Tiger and Labyrinth got a Kangaroo with a Joey in its pouch (she's obsessed with baby this or that, scary).

We took along our own BBQ. As you may be aware I have to eat Gluten Free as I'm a Coeliac, you can see the dramas of that in my other blog. I am only really recently diagnosed by diet and blood, relatively speaking, and Raven shows the classic symptoms/appearance and has the double DNA markers so he's GF too. So I made our own burgers, which I'll probably post the recipe on the other blog as I do quite a few of the recipes we make in the other blog also (however I must warn I update that even less).

All of the children have already blogged on ZooDoo (go into profiles and those links are there) to those blogs.

I have to go as Monika is crying and won't hop off my lap... but one last thing, I included the ZooDooLoo as I was so impressed by it, I love Jasmine, was quite something as an outside toilet, it rekindled my desire to build my own home on a farm. Thats it for now, Q.

Crazy last two weeks!

2009-10-18T16:29:00.000-07:00

These two pictures are what Raven and Monika get up to. They are most of the way through the first workbook of Reading eggs, and they love it. above is Monika's and below is a particularly good example of how well Raven can write, albeit a poor scan.

Above, Dante's picture... I'll let you the reader decide what he's trying to say (in other words I'm still confused). The picture below is Labyrinth's trippy cat.

This is so cute I had to share. She's changing so very fast! I wish I could remember to be more snap happy, but with everything that's been going on its been a bit difficult!

So this has been our fortnight, we've completely rearranged the whole house, reorganised and reshuffled everything, so far its on a whole been working.

I have my study in the master bedroom whilst Andrew has his in the loungeroom. This has not been ideal for Andrew as the children like to try and use his computer etc while he and I are still asleep! Solution? We're going to have to lock them out and give them a new TV for the boys room.

Yep, that's right the boys have a room, and the girls have a room, both have functioning computers and desks to work at. Friday we'll have a set top box in the boy's room so they can have access to TV in those very wee hours of the morning.

Other than that, we've cleaned out the kitchen/laundry/bathroom. All the bookshelves are now at maximum so we need another of those. No nook and cranny has been left undone... OK we still need to clean out the fridge/main food cupboard then well be done.

As for homeschooling. well for a week that didn't get done, but I did use it to organise the homeschooling much better in anticipation of the THEAC (Tasmanian Home Education Advisory Council) visitation last Wednesday. Well that didn't happen. I was glutened that morning and feeling rather worse for wear, and the inspector was ill too. So it's been put off until tomorrow. We've done weeding and kept the watering up to the garden as needed. We've got Raven on a dairy free gluten free diet and keeping a food diary up to keep on an eye on progress/problems. More on that in the other blog.

In the last week we've been back at normal schooling again. This is our daily routine:

Writing, Reading a chapter from a chapter book and reading aloud to the youngest two, Mavis teaches Typing, Clue Finders (for spelling/eng comp etc) and Volcanic Panic/Garfield for Math. That's our morning. About once a week we do a written draft and they blog it, they all have their own active blogs now but only have a couple of posts each. We also do IT lessons, science, cooking, and they see the glenorchy homeschoolers on Fridays for a play in the park. We are still doing our mythical creatures, but I'm going to intersperse that with continuing our units on Life On Earth now that we seem to be going so well. So, that's once a week, as is mythical creatures. Last week we attempted to make dragons from air drying clay, unsuccessfully - so I'll get some Fimo on Friday.

I'm rather pleased that all is going so well, we seem to slowly be overcoming some reluctance (translation: slow writing - hell I know it isn't stimulating but they know good things happen ie they get to play PS3 or surf the net if they get it done well and quickly).

I'll update the blog much more regularly.. there is always something though isn't there? I've got my three final assessments due back at UNE in the next half month so I've actually whenI've got a spare minute been frantically reading to try and keep up! I've read The Changeling by M Mahey, followed by Goldman's Princess Bride, oh such torture, not. I'm loving it, Charlotte's Web is next! But then I've got to go read all the boring academic papers to accompany it... so over that part... but the great news is... next year I'm stopping Uni to write novels and children's books. One of my assignments came back which was a book proposal (genuine one that I intend to do next year, testing the waters so to speak), and I got one mark shy of a HD. Why wasn't it a HD? Because I didn't quote enough of the boring academics (although I included all the readings I had to do anyway). So what! I'm very aware that the overall consensus that the writers who write children's books say about academic writers... and I am a writer not an academic I suppose. (They basically say that its the academic's domain and they have no real interest in it BTW ~ I'll add here my bit... the academics are just making a living squabbling over sucessful writers).

So that's it for now, long I know but I had a bit to catch up on. Q.

There be dragons in these here parts...and Elmer too.

2009-10-06T04:52:00.000-07:00

Above Monika is enjoying Elmer in the Snow with Mummy - pure joy.

These are the pictures of dragons the children drew today. To help them have a really good go at it (instead of just slacking off about it) I was naughty and made it into a bit of a competition. Basically what I wanted from them was to push themselves just a little bit, and these were the results. Andrew and I decided that Kai above won the little competition. I was going to give him and all the runners up (ie the rest of the children a chupa chub each) and the winner, Kai, to recieve a chupa chub and some time on the PS3. He shows his generous heart by sharing his time playing a multi player game with all the children. I was so pleased it worked out well and everybody was really happy, so I didn't get the guilts up about making it competitive - even though in this particular case the end did indeed justify the means - everyone ended up happy.

So next runner up was Raven, he did a good effort but in drawing but lost his edge when it came to putting time into colouring it, Labyrinth next, with her very colourful and creative nose diving dragon, and Dante who usually leads the way didn't seem to have his heart in it at all, unfortunately.

Motivating them has been challenging of late. They do their standard lessons mostly happily, they just don't like doing extras (which they view the myth lessons to be). We will be doing clay dragons on Thursday, with any luck the weather will be beautiful tomorrow and we'll be spending some of the day with fellow homeschoolers in a park.

Backtracking a bit, I thought I might add in Sunday. Sunday was fantastic, we went to the local fair in Blackman's Bay to be with some friends. It was a nice hot day too. We didn't really want to spend a heap of money on the one train ride or the jumping castle, it would have cost $15 for all the children to have a bounce for ten or so minutes. Not bleeding likely. But we did fill a bag with toys for $5 - building duplo blocks, a complete wooden Thomas the Tank Engine puzzle, and a soft toy each, a box of Yowie bugs cost $2 and a large stack of books for $4. Was very pleased. Then we spent some time with our lovely friends Jess and Jade, and their children Jaz and Theo. We had a great time chatting, and her mother and psuedo sis in law Charlotte was there too for a while with their son Noah - I haven't seen Charlotte in years, same with Jess' mum. Also tried out SingStar which is a positive for Christmas.

Still haven't decided on housing options yet. Can't seem to think how we could make this space work with seven, five of which are growing at a phenomenal rate. Raven is now Gluten Free, which I'll have to update the Quasior's Recovery From Silly Yaks soon to explain all that. That is all for now, Q.

Garden Of Earthy Delights... err... I WIsh,,, cont.

2009-10-02T21:53:00.000-07:00

Our Garden is becoming something more now...

So this is how our Garden is Growing! We have salad and stir fry vegies like lettuce and Pak Choy, Cauliflower and Brocolli, Capsicum, Beans, Peas, Zuchinni, Tomato, Basil, Spinach, Raspberries, Blackberries, Strawberries, Kale for starters. We've all enjoyed the garden so much we've all been a bit tempted to stay put, after all we've been offered to buy the place. But really we haven't come to a decsion, we know we don't want to settle here, but we're keen to get a start, and it might take a while before we've got the money to get our own property. I might have an issue with unsteady electricity too, if I do indeed have sleep apnea on top of everything else. That and we all share one bedroom right now, and if we all had a bedroom each we would have to have our studiy spaces (computers and books) in each room. That would equal much sacrifice - is it worth it? Also I'm keen to get out on the farm so more things get established earlier, like fruit/nut trees. Sure we could have them in pot plants for three years and have the money that we make from selling this house to help set us up a bit. Plus experience from making this house work. Well, we have a lot to weigh up. One really, really good thing that was a deal breaker for us and one where we were keen to go get a property in Victoria was the homeschooling/ our kids getting good friends debate. Well, thats no longer a concern, they are making more friends now and they can see them up to twice a week when we all have our get togethers. Much to consider, but right now I'm keen on our little garden, Q.

Dragons: Myth or Real?

2009-09-30T03:43:00.000-07:00

Is this myth or real?

This is the question posed to my children today. We watched the mockumentary entitled The Last Dragon a.k.a Dragon's World: A Fantasy Made Real. It fell so well into learning about myth and legend, and when Andrew discovered it, it definately made its way into our learning environment.

Done so well, my children very nearly believed it was true, the eldest two were skeptical originally, which is good. However it even made me really wish it was true. How wonderfully made! Find the wiki here and the official site here which includes a lot of learning and thinking information.

While the sun has shined, we've been very busy in our garden, which unfortunately meant I didn't get any photos yet - but as soon as I don't have dirt all over my hands/grass through my hair/and the sun is still shining I'll get pics up. I'm really pleased about how we are progressing! We've got real gardens with real plants growing, some of them are th*s big!

Every time I tell the children a mythological story, I get them to retell it in some way. I'll have to get some examples up about that too. Unfortunately so much has been happening and I haven't been keeping up to it on here! Really attempting to do well at Uni has something to do with it, that is changing though. I'm getting real serious and am putting Uni off next year to concentrate on writing a novel/children's books/poetry.

The children are coming along very nicely, and there is a the official THEAC (Tassie Home Schooling) picnic coming up on the weekend too. With any luck we will get there, but Andrew doesn't sound enthused about it, unfortunately.

Raven is a smarty pants, he can write really well, he is beginning to read, but oh so lazy. It's unfortunate. He wrote for me "A Bug" today and wouldn't write any more. The big three are slowly working through their writing workbooks, we have a routine now - chores/maths/writing/english/computing/typing/reading lessons daily as a standard, plus we have myth lessons. Although we've taken off the last couple of days to work outside and the children have been helping or playing, as they will.

I hope there may be some readers still out there! Q.

A tale of two Birthday Cakes and some Mythical Creatures

2009-09-21T00:11:00.000-07:00

Here we have the two birthday cakes. What a story! Lets start by saying, there was a party the day before her birthday at Tolosa St Reserve. We'd invited alot of people, and surprising many said "yes". This is awesome, but it meant that I had to make two cakes to make sure there would be enough. I was also making Fairies in A Meadow too, so initially I was going to make 20 chocolate fairies which had colour (see above pic). Well, I spent one and a half days (which I didn't really have) to make those. Each time I made two, one broke coming out of the mould. I also had an enthusiastic Monika who wanted to eat them straight away. So with the problems I was enduring I made the decision just to have enough for the cake, and to do plain chocolate for the Fairies in A Meadow. Well, I had enough coloured ones to do a fantastic birthday cake, having them all standing in a circle supported by their wings. Monika got into these a few times as everyone was curious and wanting to look and they didn't keep her away! Anyways, I'd saved enough to do the cake and have plenty of plain to do the Fairies in A Meadow. Then on the day of the party I FORGOT both cakes (both Gluten Free and Dairy Free by the way, and the white choc was sweet williams that is GF and Dairy Free, so I had made up a couple especially for the party in case there was a child who needed that). So... that meant she had two cakes for her birthday instead. Below is a Bratz Pixie cake. This was meant to be with Nan and Pop when we visited them at home so she could get her presents from them. Before we got out the door that day, she'd got in and eaten or bitten into all but these two left on the cake. The others were spares of the Fairies in A Meadow. So Above?Below is the result of two days of cooking. Not quite what I was hoping for... but at least the birthday girl enjoyed herself, right?

Below is just before the final eating of the cake (she's grabbed a fairie and started plowing in before blowing out the candles, its has melted a bit onto her face).

Here's a better picture. Look at that mischievous GLEE in her face. HaHa Mum, I GOT IT!

Here is the boys at Nan's place, it was cute so I'm sharing it.

Here she just blew out the candles with the cake at Nans, she was so fast I couldn't actually catch the glow of the flames...

So this is her second go at blowing out the candles!

Getting into her present bag at Nans. This is cute little story. She's a great cleaner upper, (why else would we keep such a cheeky lass around?) Nan's got a toy bucket, and she knows she has to put toys away when its time to pack up. As a gift, Nan had given her a toy with wheels and since a large majority of toys have wheels in the bucket she immediately took the toy from her pressie bag and put it over in the toy bucket.

Nanny has now taken a little something from us. Every time she gives the birthday child a gift she now gives a little gift to the others. Here they are enjoying little lolly bags she gave to them.

We gave Monika a COOL SCHOOL, similar to the DACS (digital art creativity studio) from Fisher Price. She loves it in short bursts. It takes the place of a keyboard for use in a PC, in fact it has a little keyboard, and a place to do 'writing' etc. She also got a Dora CD expansion pack for it, and a Littlest Pet Shop, way too young of course, but she wants to play so bad when the others do, so why not? She's over shoving every little thing into her goblet, so there is no danger there. As per our family tradition, she gave each of her siblings LPS toy each too, with the exception of Kai again, who got a Bee Beany Bear, which he was wrapt in again.

The Party: Here is the Dragon Pinyata, that Andrew put so much effort into making and it was the highlight of the BBQ party! So cute isn't it? Its paper mache and plaster of paris.

And here is the Pin the Tail on the Dragon game:

Here is naughty Monika trying her best not to be caught on camera.

Here is the costumes, theme: Mythical Creatures (I took photos of all the dressed up children, but I won't be posting them here without permission): In descending order, Kai is a Marine Orc, Dante a Swamp Monster, Labyrinth the MerFairy, Raven is a Tengu (Japanese Shape Changer - in this case he is a Raven), and Monika, the Fairy Princess. Monika and Labyrinth have new wings from the fairy shop. Beautiful aren't they? They can do anything to them, sleep in them wear them in the car, trample mud into them and they'll come up good as new with a wash in the washing machine. Great, aren't they?

The Mythical Creatures of course is an extension of the learning we've all been doing. We have not moved on from Greek Myth yet, we are amazed at how much there is to learn, that and it is on top of their other lessons, and sometimes we jsut don't get time to do it. That's all for now, Q.

Belated Birthday Blog

2009-09-20T18:26:00.000-07:00

Firstly: Our Spring Garden. Well this is us weeding it and finding out after our very wet winter what survived. Well, we got ourselves a few cauliflowers and a bean stalk or two still OK, and our blackberry cane is going strong. Very pleased actually, chuffed that we have some hardly plants going, the cauliflower/blackberries are fantasticly hardy. YAY.

My very naughty princess above, after shes been into the gluten free flour, which happens on the occasions the older children leave the kitchen door open (frequently) or on the odd occasion we forget to (like when she's been asleep). OK we are all guilty, but at this stage there is no stopping her from getting into EVERYTHING... just a case of trying our best. But isn't she cute?

Well, it should be the birthday girl first, but blogger won't let me change the photos around without much screwing around so its this way. As I've mentioned in previous birthday posts before, our family birthday tradition is the birthday child gives a small gift to the her (in this case) siblings. So, considering the cute but cheap (in the big toy sales) small interactive animals were about, Monika got a baby duckie (fur real).

Ahhh, the birthday girl. Here is a littlest pet shop interactive toy $2 at Toy World. Makes her very happy, and it doesn't burn a huge hole in our pocket, since we're trying to be frugalish. On the other hand here are her new DSI accessories. These were quite well priced, all under $20, its the DSI that hurt. But we've made the decision to have these little hand held games machines for the older ones during the time we may or may not have electricity (or limited) while we build our new house. It can be recharged off the car battery as we drive!

Obviously this was the After above, and the During below, lovely blogger.

Below we have a wrapt Kai with his gift, a Wall.e PS2 game, he and Dante have played the demo that was free to absolute death, and when we saw this for $10 we thought - Christmas! Then we realised we didn't have a gift for him from Labyrinth, so guess what, he got this to his utter joy. So happy all round there.

Here's Monika with her duckie in a box, she's still not used to the whole notion of birthdays yet.

The best photo of Dante and his Trike, which is from the makers of Fur Real, only labeled differently. Kota and his dinosaur pals, he got the Trike...

while little brother Raven got the T-Rex. Considering that Labyrinth's birthday was late last month, these are still favourites with the children, all of the above presents, I think we chose well. I admit we get it wrong, I'm sick of buying toys which are forgotten in a week or less. These are not worth having! I spent alot of money on the Little People, which got a fair amount of use with the three biggest, but neither Raven nor Monika use them, they might use Duplo/Lego, but it's the rare toy they actually play with. Monika is a bookie kind of girl, puzzles and mischief is her prefered play activity, whilst poor Raven is just too sickly to really enjoy play. When he is up to it, he'd rather play silly buggers, racing around the house, now spring has come along, he's actually enjoying a little time in the dirt outside, and a bounce on the trampoline. Monika is actually fitter than he is, he has the energy of the couch potato many days out of a week.
I must apologise for the long gap between posts. Life has caught up with me and after recovering from my broken arm, I've had a few weeks of assignments, the last of which is due on Friday. After I finished my last one last Wednesday, I've been frantically organising Monika's 2nd birthday party, and had my first breather yesterday for the first time since Labyrinth's birthday. YAY the birthday season is no over, the beautiful weather is making me feel much better and I have been getting out into the garden a little (really must get those seedlings in tomorrow at the latest). I also have a great need to catch up here! So, I'll be doing my best to put up Monika's party, and a big catch up on thier school work very soon, but we're about to lose internet until Friday, so I'll do my best to get as much up today as possible! I've also have my assignment and getting a few last minute online things done. Til later then. Q.

Blogging.... and stuff

2009-08-25T00:04:00.001-07:00

Its pretty nuts around here at the moment, while I have recovered enough to be typing again (Yes, real broken bone, but easily recoverable, no operation/cast just therapy - it was a cracked radial head = LUCKY!), there have been other issues.
I've been heavily asthmatic since breaking my arm, and flu/gastro has ravaged the house. It hasn't been pretty. Raven, as usual, has suffered the greatest and the longest. Poor little tacker.
On an upper note, we have started our myth/legend unit... we're discovering The Greeks right now. How niave I've been not to realise we owe so much to these very sophisticated, hugely intelligent and innovative people. Theatre, style of governance, free thinking, sport, recreation, religion that is intergrated throughout everything and of course philosophy.
I'm yet to get back into scanning/taking pics. That will be sooner than later now. The children are all starting thier own blogs, the youngest two will be doing photo/video blogs while the older two can show off their skills they are yet to learn on other forms of blogging as well as those types. Just set those blogs up today, yet to make posts, but at least they are ready minus pics - which will also arrive soon.
Labyrinth is turning 10 on Thursday, and we'll celebrate at home then on Saturday we'll be having a greater family bbq, inviting the cousins etc. The weather is totally unpredicatable, so we shall see how that happens.
I'm sorry to have been so lame about getting blogs up, but that should now be a past issue now my arm is this much recovered, cheers, Q.

Just a very quick update

2009-08-15T06:08:00.000-07:00

There's some changes happening, very exciting!
We'll be embarking on a new long unit concerning Legend, Myth, Folklore and Fairytales from around the world. I guess its partly inspired by Steiner education, partly to inspire the children to be immersed in the wonderful world of story that is part of as many cultures as possible. As we study each mini unit, we'll complete a lapbook, do various activities to bring alive the stories using whatever the story inspires us to do and mark it onto a location on a map, defining it by type, and reference to location of the corresponding lapbook.

The following few weeks will be dedicated to Greek and Roman Mythology. Labyrinth will get a chance to learn about the meaning of her name, however well leave Dante's to modern Italy (Inferno).

The littlest are very much enjoying ABC Reading Eggs (we are using a free trial and brought the first kit). We use Muzzy too. The older children will still be doing the everyday basics the 3 Rs of course, but Andrew has decided they are ready to begin to learn computer programming skills, and start blogging and fundamental web building skills, so with any luck you might be seeing a bit more of them!

Other than that I've been sick probably due to my lower immunity due to my arm, won't find out if I need surgery until Tuesday which will hopefully put many concerns/queries to rest.
I am finding this so slow! I wish I could use a voice recognition for this blog!

Anyway, until nect time, Q.

I feel like an idiot... Hey no different!!!

2009-08-11T03:57:00.000-07:00

I've gone and broken my arm! Never before have I broken a bone, could feel much worse but there you go...

Was walking towards the van on a cement path, must have stepped off the path slightly and whoosh the tire was coming at me then i flopped onto my back and couldn't feel my arm, initially just felt my leg... quite grazed and bruised. Was thinking, didn't bother me as a child, big deal, happens. trying to use my arm noticed it wasn't working at all properly, hurt like hell if I moved it in a particular way but if I nursed it, it wasn't so bad.

I went about my appointments and shopping anyway. Andrew inspected it and decided I needed a doctor... Normal GP busy, so off the after hours dr who examined me briefly deciding I needed X-Rays so off to ER. There I seen an ols aquaintence and her poor preety toddler girl having a good play waiting... turns out she choked on food it got into her lungs, infext and give her pnemonia. Poor lass!

After a brief wait I got X-Rays (without pain relief)... couldnt get a clear image. Much, much, much later (after another suspected fracture goes home without a break during this time), Im finally taken into the after hours clinic to be seen by nurse and doctor who determines that most likely I have a fracture in my Radial head as I have limited movement in my twist and extension movements and no strength in my grip. Go home with heavy pain killers and await the mercy of the orthopedic clinic... maybe a week of waiting! They will do CT and/or MRI to decide if I need surgery then. Otherwise I'm in a sling, uncomfy!

So, please be forgiving if I'm slack, have lots to do like Uni/home educate and one hand typing is very slow! Q.

99 bottles of sand on the wall

2009-08-08T02:16:00.000-07:00

Sand Crafts it was today... Here they all with the fruits of their labours. They all had a great time making them, I didn't help the bigger 3, just guided really... Monika and Raven made all the decisions, I just helped them to do it by holding the bag weight basically. Now I want to do one! (Don't mind Monika, she's just woken up, and frumpy cute). Enjoy...

Awww... the extra photo of Monika, so entreating and irrisistable!

A Week Of Art, Reptile Unit finished, YAY

2009-08-07T18:32:00.001-07:00

Our Reptile unit is now finished. We watched the last two episodes to the Life in Cold Blood, which were Sophisticated Serpents and Armoured Giants. With worksheets, facts etc that were taken from various internet souces incl. Enchanted Learning site (fantastic but limited as they are based in the States). So I sourced Aussie facts on snakes and crocs from various places incl.
tiger snake facts here and other snakes here and croc'n'snappers here... important to know really depending where we might be living in the bush. Below for the next three are various examples of the worksheets completed, first is Labyrinth's sheet which is descriptive words about various reptiles.
Next is Kai's poem and snake picture:

...and his pictures of various reptiles complete with label.

Here Dante was required to label the various reptiles.

The rest is various artworks the children have done over the course of the last week, no where complete. Dante's Flat Lizard sunning itself on rocks (obviously inspired by the unit).Raven's Sack Boy from LBP.

Still into Scary Stuff, this is one cute monster, by Raven.

Above is Raven's Frog, below Labyrinth has drawn a swan feasting on a fish.

Labyrinth's Girl bouncing on Trampoline followed up by an ABC TV inspired drawing of Fish and Seals under the Ice.

Kai has drawn an eye view of a War Zone. He's decided he doesn't really like real war. It's a bit scary (that's an early jump, and thank goodness for that). But he still likes the fantasy of it at this stage.

And here is Kai's Striped Penguin.

This is also inspired by a drawing show on ABC TV. Dante has drawn a lovely fish/light rain/clouds and rainbow scene.

This next one of Dante's is inspired by Ice Age 3, where the T Rex is about to eat the baby Triceratops.

Next two are Dante's ZOIDS... a Death Stinger and a Command Wolf.

Besides this they've been doing BOOST Math on the computer, still doing writing drills in their books, read aloud, usually to the littlest two (makes it a bit easier on Andrew and I - they aren't asking us 24/7) and to themselves from chapter books. Dante's currently reading Extreme Adventure: Scorpion Sting, Kai is reading The Donkey who carried the Wounded, and Labyrinth is reading the last graphic novel to the anime Fruits Basket.

Today we are, after lunch, going to do glass bottle and sand craft, and cooking cup cakes tomorrow.

I've started doing Uni again, as previously mentioned, which has been taking up far too much time just finding the cheapest books. Also we've brought about $200 on various green building methods and bee keeping which has also taken up lots of time reading those, but loving it. It was actually worth a lot more, but there was a huge 30% discount blanket across the store as they were having a huge birthday sale of 30 years. YAY Book City. Imagine building your main house structure for under $1.000 which is fire proof. Yeah, I'm interested.

Also been sick a bit too... and Raven poor lad, was feverish on Thursday night but now seems perfect. Monika is weaning slowly... and as I didn't manage to put up any of her artwork I owe a photo of her next time. As for now though, I'll endeavour to put up at least two posts a week or more. Q.

Garden of Earthly Delights... er...I wish cont

2009-07-31T04:09:00.000-07:00

Bad news first: My tomatoes and basil didn't survive...

Funnily enough we have a thriving pea patch on our hay that we haven't used yet.

Our surviving baby vegetables. I was really concerned about the survival of seedlings in a Tassie Winter, but these have most definately done so and are thriving. There has been alot of rain, some have died from being flooded, or being thrashed about in high winds. So we have around 9 plants still going, plus the pea patch, so we are pretty happy with what we do have. No where near able to see ourselves eating from the garden any time soon because they still are babies, but we might yield some edible food from the vege patch yet!

Our Jasmine, which I haven't gotten a photo of, is growing very well, and I am sad we'll have to leave it behind to be honest. Thats nearly 3 years of growth on those two plants! But they won't be happy to be moved and I couldn't move them interstate anyways. I guess I've grown attached to it!

As for homeschooling, it couldn't happen again today, as it was their day with their carer. As it turns out though I think we won't be needing her services for much longer at all. She's probably losing her best paying job and I feel sorry for her, but we have some issues - and there is the broken feeling to the week and to their lessons that I don't like and have never appreciated. Having a break from them is all well and good but we've done better in the past without that.

So, that is all really, Q.

A bit windy...

2009-07-30T17:50:00.001-07:00

A small indication of how the wind was beating around yesterday morning, only to get worse by night. We had trouble getting a few groceries inside when we got home. When Andrew put the car away, we had to hold back the gates so he could drive the van in, wind was making it difficult even to drive!

I am yet to visit the Garden to see if any of it is left....

I know it could have been much worse, of course... but we do have a contingency plan if the house's roof got ripped off.

Just a quick update and some art...

2009-07-29T17:38:00.000-07:00

First up is Dante's Dragon and next is Labyrinths The Flower and the Butterfly. Dante's was just so good I had to blog it, and Labyrinth's is pretty but that isn't the only reason, it's the type of art she draws for her psychiatrist, is it any wonder he has no clue about her? He probably thinks we are just panic mongering, argh!

Other things on my mind: Just starting to get things in boxes, cleaning the place up in anticipation of making life a bit simpler before we move. That and Tuesday was another day with their carer, so unfortuately no lessons. Sometimes its hard not to resent those two days of lost lessons but they are good (but rarely necessary) breaks. Sometimes its good to be able to put gifts on layby etc so they are unawares, and somtimes a break means I can do my various projects (but Andrew and I are both good for that kind of thing for each other (but still, once in a while it can be good to be just by ourselves... again a rarity as the carer likes to take them out a lot and can't legally take the fifth child...)

Our savings are just under $4500, thanks to the Family Tax Benefit Supplement. Although the green fridge and the eco friendly Sony Bravia TV's looked good, those will be great to get once the house is built. Andrew and I had a disagreement about that actually. I thought he wanted to put the move off for another few years (confused! We sold the big fish tank etc) rather than a few months (the quicker we have the land the larger the grant, naturally). We will do this without a bank loan and construct the house piece by piece, fortnight by fortnight if necessary, but with any luck we might be able to secure a loan and get a larger slice of grant, but really... how much will be offset by the interest we pay?

Off to see a friend who is doing living the dream with any luck on Monday, composting loos and all that, to see how it's working out for them! That is all really, Q.

Things From Today...

2009-07-27T04:50:00.001-07:00

Above: Dante's Titan Below: Raven's Monkeys

Below: Monika's Monkey (eyes and mouth/face area?) She said it was a monkey!

Below: Labyrinth's Littlest Pet Shop

Above: Kai's weapons of choice Below: Dante's weapons and bugs.

A visit from Nan's today while we were doing writing lessons, realising Today is the first day back for Semester 2 for me, and lots of organising and chores around the house!

Really looking forward to this semester... A subject that you get to read children's books like Princess Bride, Where The Wild Things Are, Tombs of Antuan.... etc, another with books I like too, sounds like fun!

Other than that Kai is really not wanting to do his writing at the moment - it took him about 3 times as long as it did the other two, let alone his chores. He just wants to play PSP all the time, that is not an option I'm afraid. I did manage to get all of the art above too, without any being destroyed before I could grapple it from toddlers... The eldest three did BOOST Math and read from a chapter book to themselves and aloud to the littlest two. I read Eric Carle books to them as well, a family favourite author. Other than that I'm struggling with my patience and my tolerance of Kai's Desire To Not Study, Labyrinth's Desire To Question My Every Move and two toddlers Desire to Wreak Havoc Over Clean Just Folded Piles Of Laundry. Not to mention Andrew's struggle with all thing computers (well, just the Media Centre and the Children's Beastie.)

In the Life of a rebelling UnSchooling (with basics) Family

2009-07-26T05:03:00.000-07:00

Photograpy by Mero Today:Capturing moments...

So I can remember these times forever....

Because soon they will be a child no more. That and I don't have the money to go out and pay someone else to take them for me.

As for homeschooling, we're all good. They are doing handwriting drills just because I think they need to be able to do legible writing and in a decent time frame, mainly as it slows everything else down too much. They all seem to enjoy it, even Raven has his own book. Brought them from Big W for less that $5 a piece. It was a necessary expense unfortunatly. With any luck it will solve all the issues.

Did I mention that Raven had his speech evaluation (as he is/has been very difficult to understand), well the verdict is in... he's more advanced intellectually than he is physically and his vocal cords are not mature enough to speak the words his mind is capable of understanding and using. This is all good because now I can 'guess' what he's trying to say (because he doesn't gesture or use body language he just gets frustrated). Tonight he told me he was cwyt... I asked him to repeat it and he did but it was still too difficult then I tried to understand and realised he was saying 'caught' on a basket in the loungeroom and it gave him a scratch (which was another leap of understanding.) Its great, I can now 'get' his speech!

He's also capable of beginning to write and read, as he shows me constantly. This is huge. He only turned 4 this month, but as it goes this is quite natural really in a homeschool environment, he just wants to be able to do what the other older children are doing so he's jumped ahead.

This can be said of Monika who was devestated that I didn't buy her one of the books previously mentioned, but she is happy to be read to everyday. We all take turns (even Raven who 'reads' to her in his own special way - you know how non readers do it for younger siblings?) She also would much rather do a drawing than watch TV or play with toys most of the time. She is an extreme mischief maker too. Just today she cunningly got the bag of sugar off the toaster which is above the counter top. She must have pushed her high chair over to do it. She never spilt any in the kitchen but took the bag into the loungeroom and proceeded to dump half it on the floor and begin eating and 'drawing' in it. Luckily Dante was in the room and rescued it and set Labyrinth to task to clean the mess while he emptied the last of it into glass canisters. How grown up!

Where was Andrew and I in all this? I was in the shower while Andrew was stubbornly refusing to get out of bed (and didn't until 11:40 am!) That is one of the issues of mental health, you can't push him you can only poke and prod a little and hope he'll take the hint or he might just stay there and refuse to get up at all.

We got ourselves some bargain fish, fruit and vegetables. Checked out some chairs we were considering accepting but now am unsure. Reasons won't be disclosed here. Anyways... that is it for now, Q.

Photos & Art

2009-07-23T06:00:00.000-07:00

Here we have Dante's pictures from today and yesterday, above his fish, below his bird.

And below is Kai's asian mountain home and para troops...

And Raven's fish... puffer/heart fish/elephant fish. He told us that and it is obvious once we were told, but I did initially think it was people.

Some photos: Kai, Raven, Monika and Andrew, 3 youngest and dad, group shot of the children outside HJs, Dante, Monika and Labyrinth...

Sometimes its hard to shift Andrew out of bed, which means having to either go without lunch or do as we did today... no not eat at HJs, we just get their free refills and grabbed a parcel of chips from across the road. They don't ever seem to mind. They got a good play too.

Also today we went and did pricing for building materials from Bunnings. I know it isn't the rock bottom cheapest place but its there to give us a good ball point figure (and hopefully save even more). We're certainly not against 2nds and 2nd hand building materials, and using what we can provide ourselves. We are bringing this to a bank too, costings and so forth, to get our little project off the ground much faster.

We also trialled so called Awesome Water for a week. It just didn't taste great and if I'm paying for it - it should! So, we will send it back... Also discovered FaceBook and spent far too long on it. Its a great thing but too addictive. Also reading Diana Wynne Jones House of Many Ways...a third installment to the Howls Moving Castle series. Now time to sit back and enjoy my cuppa chai tea and chill after a busy day (after I got Andrew motivated.)

Happy 7th Birthday Kai!

2009-07-19T20:24:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's the season for birthdays... and everything was cut down alot in order to afford his big present, the Resistance Retribution PSP pack... (we didn't have an activity like a family trip to the movies - that doesn't happen... although he did want to go for a laser skirmish or Zone3 activity, again, this couldn't happen... and the other toys given out were quite small really)

Young Monika above with her new Baby Bratz boy (picked up for $5 at toy world)... and she loves it, I was so happy because I wasn't at all sure how she'd take it?

Dante, Raven and Kai all recieved the smallest transformers, this is intended to be both practical and ensure they'd want to play with each other.

Labyirnth got a Littlest Petshop Pet, its a badger.

Kai recieving a gift from the only grandparents he gets to see/have anything to do with as we're estranged from the others. Reasons too personal to disclose.

Birthday party and cake time, with Nan and Poppy, the cake is an army scene meant to 'replicate' the Retribution games ... army mad boy, but he loves yellow and cuddles and he's not violent or harsh, just a great child really, just his interests lie in a place I don't understand, but I accept that it's just him.

That was how we spent the day, just relaxing and slowed right down to just enjoy it. We didn't actually even have a new DVD or anything for him to play with, the only other thing that was special was we all had a steak each for tea, under $7.. Y Bone. Even so, we all had a great time, no one was stressed or rushed and we didn't have to pander to any one elses needs, and Kai went into his birthday fully aware that if he got this PSP that there would be very little else, and a very small christmas indeed. However on the upside, he's got it now and with all our future intentions it will be great during the time we don't have access to the majority of our things and the probable lack of electricity. Anyways, it has to be short today as so much is happening! Q.

Daytrip to Orford and Pizza Night!

2009-07-18T04:50:00.000-07:00

Beautiful Orford, and the first beach Labyrinth ever sat foot on, first beach she was taken to to swim at, and the first and only time she was aftraid of the water! She was just an early walking baby at the time... today had some business attached to it though. We got a whole heap of packing boxes given to us from a fellow free cycler. Thanks goes out to that woman and it will probably take everything we plan on taking with us to Victoria . YAY.

Raven running. Could not believe how many of the little black buggers we seen as we travelled up, but only one on the way back. Omninous or just thier feeding times? Below is little Monika, of course, having a great time.

Kai getting into it!

Dante looks comfortable, don't you think???

Monika loves getting amongst it.... she's an adventerous 1 year old, or 22 month old, whatever your take. She loves sliding too... which had me surprised as she didn't want to today, it was a manipulation thing with another girl around her age, me thinkest.

Firstly the Gluten Free Pizzas... you can get a real feel for how big they are, but how tasty? That is one thing you'd have to try on for yourself. Same again, pizza bases from the LifeStyle Bakery. Hey they should start sponsering me.

They all made their own tonight... Labyrinth decided to be different and make herself a pizza parcel... She ate this and asked for more!

Dante only ate half but he wanted to make it look artsy, so the main ingredients are around the owls eyes...

Poor Kai... he ended up being sick from travelling sickness in the car so didn't eat as much as he usually does. I think he liked the fact he didn't have to do anything once he got home though, just do his own thing on the couch.

Raven eating his little creation! He's getting to be a bit cheeky lately... born stirrer.

Even Monika got her own pizza (helped by Daddy to make).

And tomorrow is Kai's 7th birthday, yeah they nearly all happen at once around here, four in 3 months! Generally a poor time. Its cute though how Monika finds it a little bewildering!

I'm off to relax now as I am tired, Q.

New Toys, savings and comprimises

2009-07-17T06:43:00.000-07:00

Our newest acquisitions, a limited edition PSP3000 to apease Andrew, a new Sony CyberShot, which is to improoove my photograpy with this blog in mind and scrapbooking too. Andrew actually had to talk me into it and told me it was important for me to get something simple as my shots were never the best, and I am so glad he did, it is true, I don't have the best eyesight (astigmatism) and it is for my readers enjoyment as much as my own, plus I don't wish to be trying to figure out shots when they need to be taken asap (so many opportunities lost, and while we endeavour to get our new home built this will be definitive to our story! With this in mind I agreed. Also above is Little Monika's new potty. It has a shell lid too for Raven (yep he still needs to be helped onto the toilet (he's 4! but so small)... and later for Monika. Below is a few shots taken with the new camera, aren't they great? Sigh....

Also put on ACDSEE Pro so I can hasten my conversions to upload (oh, i'd forgotten that joy, done in such a tiny amount of time!)

The comprimise of getting the expensive items (Andrew had to pursuade me), was for the road and the long time between having all of our stuff accessable while we wait and while we build.) Part of the pursuading that took part was we now have $150 savings as of today (stupidly I thought we had over $600)...(OH, I know it ain't much, but by mid next month it will be around the $4000 dollar mark.) Secondly, we'll be putting at least $500 into savings from now on each fortnight, and thirdly and most importantly, Andrew has finally agreed to look into what I've been telling him (and him dreading as he didn't understand) how we can get this off the ground so much faster by ... you guessed it.... living in a tent for up to a few months then into a caravan we own. We could be putting away $1500 a fortnight plus, and seeing some beautiful places like national parks along the way and having a very relaxed wait.

Ideally we could pick up some work here and there like seasonal fruit picking too. Anyone got any other ideas? Work offers? Anything?

Tomorrow is a trip up the east coast for a picnic and to pick up all the packing boxes we need (hopefully)...Q

Reptilian Friends, Scaries, Art and Cupcakes

2009-07-15T07:08:00.001-07:00

Above: Kai's War. Below: Dante's Scorpion Fish eating Bees.

Above: Labyrinth's Fantasy House and Garden.

Below: Raven's Chimera (see Resistance: Fall of Man)...So we're a little bit lax in screening 'violence' from our children's viewing pleasure. They do actually realise it's make believe and fun even if they are a bit young.

Above and Below: Raven's Halloween Book or some parts of. I didn't help him with any of it, I just can't believe how quickly he is picking up writing! He asked for this little book too, so no coersion, totally natural stuff going on here, his chosen genre and his rapidly advancing abilities... It might be a bit hard to see, but those are properly formed words, something on par with Kai's writing about now (he's just about to turn 7).

Cupcakes....

As part of our lessons (and finally getting the right time), we made these lovely Gluten-Free Cupcakes premixed by Basco. Wow, they are nice, and highly recommended, that icing and chocolate flakes come with... It isn't much fun for the kids though, one to break an egg, one to pour in some rice milk, one to scream "when is it MY turn???" not to mention that all five were interested in helping today...

Well, this week has been all about Life In Cold Blood , determined to finish off this learning unit, so far this week we've watched Dragons of the Dry and Sophisticated Serpents, and done quite a few lessons. Naturally since there are thousands of snakes/reptiles I kept it down to just a few to concentrate on... Frilled Neck Lizard, the Vieled Chameleon and the Anaconda so far. I'll be honing in on our Aussie Snake Friends soon. When we move to Victoria, Dante's put in the order to convert his fish tank to a reptile one and have some tiny snake, can't recall what he called it, but they eat ants apparently. I'd much rather a mountain dragon lizard or some such personally. But that's off the topic a bit, can I help it being focused on our dreams???

I haven't even mentioned I'm taking a different approach. Lately they've been a bit restless and bored, so I'm upping the ante with lessons, so they have to read aloud for 15 minutes/to themselves for 15 minutes, do 20 minutes of structured math, do set lessons (in this weeks case it's the reptiles), do some form of art work (usually drawing), and write 5 sentences. Not a huge amount, you're probably thinking. Plus they have to have their chores done before we can start (they've been quite neglectful of that - who wouldn't if given the opportunity). Other than that their time is their own, and given a day they get all that done by lunch (not yet but getting closer) they are welcome to play with computers/PS3s etc. Oh, and they are going to start learning to type so they can blog weekly.

Obviously it was timely today so we got to bake the cupcakes. There will be other bonuses and extras to be given out randomly to help them be happy little achievers.

Just one more thing... had an interesting conversation with the eldest two today. Dante was complaining bitterly that he wanted to be a "normal boy" and not have to be in trouble lots. I asked him what he thought a normal boy would do? He just shrugged his shoulders, so I reminded him. Of the extra stress of getting up early, getting ready, no time for playing games/watching TV just eat and out the door to school, to sit down and be bored and write for ages, and have 1 hour of play and eating broken up by this and that and having no real choices about what was going into his head (they have totally autonomy about WHAT they learn here, as previously mentioned)... then home to more reading homework (and this is only from what I remember from him in preschool (his school was pushing very early literacy he was doing preschool - where's the fun in that? What ever happened to a carefree childhood without homework in primary school?) With mum or dad rushing around to make tea and cut lunches for the next day, an early bedtime so it can all happen again in the same rushed/stressed manner the next day. He brought up the long bus rides and the pushing around and lack of seating (well the bus we had to get on from his school was just that... primary/high/college and uni students in the same space practically, you can imagine.... and if not that the struggle to get a parking spot in front of the school with active patrols of policemen telling you to buzz off and come back later to pick up older students (even if they were due out less than 10 minutes later). And Labyrinth perked up and told me something she'd never ever admitted to before (she used to complain about going back to school until she decided being home was much more fun and relaxed)... "Yeah, and you don't have to be told you're doing everything wrong and not to talk/do that and have the teacher yell at you all the time."

Just made me realise what a wise move it was taking them out of their childhood prisons, Q.

Changing Our Stars

2009-07-09T05:21:00.000-07:00

As previously mentioned, we are hoping to buy a block of land and build our own home. This was a far off dream that was years away, putting our savings away for some years and fulfilling our dream.

Well, this has taken an unexpected turn for I have finally convinced Andrew that waiting may not be the best policy, considering all the bits and bobs available for the FHO right now. So, we'll be doing some radical changes, probably living in a tent to save and doing it sooner. With this in mind we have moved some of our stuff from objects to money, and buying things the children won't be requiring a powerpoint to enjoy, like hand held games etc.

I still don't understand solar power, but we'll get one or two hot water systems for hot water, buy nature loos that don't require plumbing at all and are good for composting and trying to figure out cheap building options. We've decided on getting as much recycled, reclaimed and renewable items as possible.

Now I wouldn't say we're exactly the model green family, my motivations are to go earth friendly as possible, using a grey water system, harvesting our own water and providing our own solar power needs, and relying on passive solar and thermal heating in as far as that goes. Some of my motivation relies on self-sufficiency, self-reliability (growing our own fruit, nuts and vegetables, having laying chickens/turkeys etc for eggs and meat, keeping sheep or goats or both for milk (dairy intolerance and how much space a cow takes up does heavily weigh on this decision), cheese, fetta, and a hive or two for honey (inspired by the woman from my blogroll living the good life etc) ... and some of my motivation is probably a bit selfish, I'd rather have more money in pocket that giving it away to someone else for things I can provide my family myself with a bit of ingenuity, intelligence and good old back breaking hard work.

We'd also love a husky, lots of yummy cosy cats, a reptile or two (prefer a mountain dragon to a python, I think I've finally convinced Dante that is best) and most likely not birds. Though I love them I don't think I'd like to keep them for two reasons 1. Its a bit cruel not to be free when you can fly so far and 2. They are bl**dy messy!

These things are limited by where you live and how much space you have to call your own. Ideally we want at least 2.5 acres or so, and I like the idea of a food forest, the kind of place that is self-sufficient in itself, in that it self-waters. its weed-repressing, and its self supporting by nature.

Obviously this will take time and money, but by heck it will be worth it - financially, emotionally, educationally and most importantly I guess I'm a hippy at heart and I think I belong in the country where my head might not spin quite so much. I want it to be a haven, a place the children will wish to return to after they leave the nest as they may view it as a peaceful soulful and restful santuary, that's certainly my wish.

So we're taking donations... only JOKING! I just wish I could hurry things along a bit and get a piece of land to call my own, things will fall into place after that, I'm sure (as the way we'll be doing it will be quite cost effective. More on this later.

Adieu, Q.

Young Raven turns Four!

2009-07-08T05:15:00.000-07:00

One of my babies had a birthday today, young Raven swooped in to score his fourth year and had a happy, happy birthday! Since his favourite colour is pink, and he loves dinos, that's exactly what birthday cake he got:

As mentioned a few times before, birthdays aren't just special for the birthday child, its for every child in the family, as the birthday child gives a present to each sibling. This year Raven gave out a small bubble bottle and a beanie bear each. So, from left to right in the group shot above, Kai has a Tassie Devil, Raven has his 'dino' big beanie (really Lizzie the Lizard or some such - can't check he's cuddling right now), Labyrinth's pink angel, Dante has a shark and Monika for a rare moment has both her bears - her most loved Red Panda and her new pink dino bear. When she was given the bear she had a strange look on her face, later she threw it down on the floor "Don't want it!" and reclaimed her Red Panda and dragged it around everywhere and refused until this photo right before bed to have any more to do with it (but she is clutching her baby 'iego, as she calls her Red Panda). Labyrinth and Raven also have other Beanie Bears - Raven has T'Rex and Labyrinth has her "Ghost Rider".

Funny little story earlier today: I was getting Raven to get his siblings gifts ready, (he was stickering thier bubble bottles and writing the first letter of their names onto a sticker tag and sticking them to the Beanie Bears). He took keen interest in Monika's bear (two of his fave things as proved by above cake and smile). I tell him, that no, it's not his that he will be giving it to Monika soon, and he looks up at me excitedly and exclaims, "ohhh, Monika's bear will by my T'Rex's girlfriend! We can play!!!" He's such a sweetie. He also didn't need reminding how to shape the M letter, he just went ahead and wrote it. I've never taught him any writing ever, and when I asked the children later if thier child carer teaches them how to write they told me she never does anything like that, so that's a WOW moment for me.

So for the next part Presents! Nanny and Poppy came over (my parents), and in a lovely Diego present bag had a new pair of Victorianox army pants, a colour in book, chocolate (I've never known my mum not to bestow such treats), and two new toon DVDs. Then he gave out his presents to his siblings, then drum roll please. He got the above big Beanie, a colour etch-a-sketch, and lots of activity books/roll of thick cartridge paper - 50 sheets/more art paper/a pencil case full of arty stuff for a young man including glue/sticky tape as well as the usual drawing pencils etc, and for the encore... a DACS as pictured above. Or in other words a Digital Arts Creative Studio. Basically the preschool version of a tablet and photoshop. He already has his head around it and he LOVES it. It was the greatest thing to come along at the perfect moment at the Big W toy sale... just in time for his birthday and the not so brilliant part... we thought we'd gotten him the most amazing bonus, another disc that adds in, dinosaur. Unfortunately it already came with it and I'll have to take it back and worst of all they are all sold out of any others! A Diego would have been SOOO perfect, I'll have to hunt it down off Amazon.com no doubt.

Other than that he had a birthday party lunch, a trip to the movies with Daddy by himself to see Ice Age 3 which again is fortuitous as it included dinosaurs. All of the children with the exception of surprise, surprise, Monika (but she had just sat through another session of Coraline). Topped off with a movie with Roast Chicken and Home Made Chips, as per requested by Raven, singing a condensed version of his favourit book (Sipping Spiders Through Straws)... made him the happiest boy I've seen in a long, long time.

It's nice not to hear, "I won't/can't eat that mommy, it makes me sick/yucky/tired" and just have smiles and cuddles and laugther from him all day. That's the bit I liked the most about today, as opposed to what happened on Monday.

I hope all is well in your world. Q.

Still sick, Pj party and art

2009-06-29T18:45:00.000-07:00

Above: Raven's art, rainbows and monsters.
Below is Monika's 'rainbow'.

Labyrinth's monsters.Following two are Kai's psychotic army dudes.

Below is Dante's fish and rainbow:

PJ Party! Actually, this is quite normal with the exception of Monika who sleeps in mum and dads bed still (AP). The children don't like the idea of having to sleep separately, and who can blame them, that's how they all started, with cuddles from mummy and daddy.

Individual photos of each modelling their new sets of PJs! Raven is a monster (he's monster obsessed lately), followed by Monika in her cat paw sleep set, Labyrinth in fashionable punky pink, and Kai and Dante chose the same PJs, it was two in one set, this is the army set, the other is red with black skulls.

Nearly recovered from our nasty 'flu. No, not the wiglet 'flu, just the nasty one that's doing the traps at the moment. We got the new pj's for them and they were all so excited, roughly all cost about the same, less than $20, but it all adds up when there are 5. Monika got some new skirts too, she seems to be outgrowing everything and all her trousers are either too little or too wide around the waist (Raven had this problem too, inheriting from Kai who was very fat, while I'd never say Raven's been fat, he was definately wider around the waist than Monika. So while I'd love to save money and be eco-friendly with hand-me-downs, its isn't all that practical.

We also had a pizza night, and have been loving the new movie we have (not yet released in Australia, just the US) of Coraline. Seriously, Monika has never had the time of day for any movie, sure she watches In the Night Garden or Dora/Diego she wont sit still long enough to watch anything else. She is only 22 months, of course, and each were different at this age, Raven loved TV as a toddler, and Labyrinth was soothed by RAGE when she was a wee 2 month old. But Monika is very different. However, Coraline has most certainly changed this. Its a longish movie, but she sits completely enthralled by it over and over again, we've only had it since Friday and she's watched it with the same enchantment every day plus twice today. I don't know what it is that is so fascinating to her but there you go. All of the other children love it too, hence why it keeps getting turned back on. They first watched in Saturday with their pizza.

Raven has been suffering, and they are concerned enough at the hospital to be bringing forward tests and so forth, so he has to go for the bloods and stool samples again on Monday so the test results will be ready by his next appointment. He has some kind of autoimmune disease, (probably coeliacs - though we could all be wrong and it could be more serious... whatever he has I have and everything points at Coeliac's Disease, really. Taking into account the changes I've had since going GF.)

Other than that, I've been reading Coraline by Neil Gaiman chapter by chapter to them, immersing them with singing and reading picture books to them everyday, doing random maths and they've done some art. We've gardened, cooked, done chores, and recovered from our illness. Why is it our holidays seem to be when we're all sick???

We also invested in a Swiss Diamond fry pan with lid (on sale at Habitat right now the Swiss Diamonds are well worth it) and a George Foreman griddle/grill to avoid using dangerous fry pans - we had a sunbeam banquet fry pan that had non-stick which just lifted off, nasty. We'll get a wok if it doesn't work out for stirfries, but a real one, seasoned. We are determined to eat healthily and that includes our cookware. We've long since came to the conclusion its worth saving up and spending the extra money on something that doesn't need throwing out every six months. They really do pay themselves back, in countless ways, like less waste (good for ol' mother earth), financially eventually, and of course, our overall health!

Reseaching lots at the moment and we might be able to move along faster in our attempt to become hippies living naturally off the farm and building our own home. YAY!

We're all sick with that cursed flu

2009-06-25T17:53:00.000-07:00

So here's some photos, above, Raven in a Basket, below Monika with Labryinth's Red Panda.

Labyrinth and Monika together.

Dante and Kai together. Ironically I tried catching Raven and Monika in that basket together but she'd gotten herself out by the time I'd gotten that camera!

Besides the 'flu, there are other health concerns. One day at a time.... with luck next time the post will be full of wonderful things.

Oh, we did go to a homeschool community activity, which was paper craft, science (such as mobius strips) and paper making. Lots of fun, and lots of socialising!

Drawing and Monsters

2009-06-19T18:53:00.000-07:00

Wow, what a week! We've barely stopped to catch our breath... My mother needed some emotional support this week, after all she's done for me its but all I could do. Labyrinth and Andrew have had psychiatrist appointments, we've done antique shopping and visited the new pet shop in New Norfolk twice, but there won't be another visit. Here is but a few drawings that the children have been up to, and a few of the lessons we did. The next two are Labyrinth's art work, and while we are on the subject of Labyrinth, she suprised me, I asked her a few multiplication/division questions, she got them all right! I don't think she's behind that much at all really. Once the concept of a thing is understood by Labyinth, its just there in her brain, until clicking she just can't do it. Oh, for the lack of formal maths learning we do, it is an amazing testament to natural learning! As you can see her drawing and colouring in are advancing too.
The next four pictures were drawn by Dante, followed by some of his writing. This is true, I tried my hardest to get them writing at the beginning of the year, it was a struggle, they just didn't want to... so I didn't push, now that we've started again it's af if we were doing formal writing lessons all that time. Oh, its wonderful to see them enjoy what they do. The writing is his experience of buddy camp.

This is young Raven's lesson, he wants to learn all things scary, so I've given him work that bends to this theme. Oh, a young goth in the making! Or EMO!

Above and below two are Kai's work. He had hardly put pen to paper without being asked, but he's definately improving even if he hasn't been too interested. (He's main interests are computer games, which he easily plays with the ability of the average adult. He can do stuff I can't do and find things in his army games that Andrew hasn't found, for example).

Next is Monika's work. She does stuff on paper sometimes too! The only issue I have is once drawn she'll rip it to pieces, so its the rare one I get to keep. It's sometimes too late to stop her, she's quick! She speaks well for her age, and I suspect she would be toilet trained by now if it weren't for winter. She can name most things on her body, knows when she wants to go and complains when she has gone. She has done a wee or two on the toilet too, and a poo in Raven's potty once.

The rest belong to Raven. I love how he seems to capture emotions. He draws many monsters.

The last one here shows he is distinguishing between male and female now in his drawings. He deliberately used more eyes on the third and second last as they were monsters (all of them have sharp teeth, some have claws, noticable fangs. The first is sea creatures, the second is of dinosaurs. He loves dinosaurs, particularly T-Rex because he's a RAAA dinosaur. He's requested a T-Rex and art materials for his birthday, which is coming up early next month, he'll be 4.

Monika is even getting into scary. She requests me to read the 'scary' books, such as Sipping Spiders through a Straw and Where the Wild Things Are, Meg and Mog books etc. Then again, if she's not drawing she's got a book in hand. She occasionally gets out her babies - she loves her red panda beany bear and her upsy daisy wooden doll. She also has an upsy daisy soft doll but she just throws her down if you try getting her to play. Her prefered method of play is wrestles and running around or dancing. She'll also dig in the garden rather than use the play equipment but she does love swings/slides. She's a good climber too. Oh, and she loves having nail polish on. To my dismay, their child carer put her in face paint and painted her toe and finger nails one day, and now she loves it. Such a girly girl. We never had one of those before!

Thats it for now. I am going to check on my seedlings tomorrow, we've been watering them but I'm still so worried about them!

Garden of Earthly Delights...er I wish....part 9

2009-06-15T01:26:00.000-07:00

Our little seedlings have grown up and are more than ready to head into the big garden... above on stakes are the snow peas and pea plant experiment. In front are the kale/cauliflower/bok choy.

Kai is pointing out the pea plant experiment, completely his idea and nuturing right from the start. We didn't really think it would grow (it was a seed found in a bale of pea straw hay!) but it was a great learning experience for him!

Of course, this is only a tiny beginning. I'm hoping I won't need to buy much fresh veges at least, but ideally I'd like to be growing all my own veges, fruit and nuts eventually. Its so hellishly expensive to buy decent nuts and real yummy veges, and this is an attempt at starting a new sustainable lifestyle, one that can benefit the children's minds as well as thier bellies *).

Today we did some cooking, we cooked buckwheat pancakes for brunch. Andrew didn't like them but the children ate them up and I liked them too. Later it was Quinoa/amaranth pasta (orgran) with spagetti sauce. The children watched Life in Cold Blood Dragons of the Dry yesterday and have been doing so much art. I'll be dedicating a whole post to just that in the next day or so! Q.

A Camping they'll go... and while the cats away...

2009-06-11T19:17:00.001-07:00

While the big two have been at Buddy Camp and living it up, the younger three have been doing some nice quality stuff with mum and dad. Like antique/second hand shopping, lunch and play at McDonalds, doing collages, watching new movies, and making a new safe recipe of Gluten Free Choc Chip Cookies with mum. (Its a step by step recipe if your interested). The cookies are smaller but really, really yummo. Maybe a touch drier but still melt in your mouth.

Tending our little garden doesn't change. Here is Kai's Pea Plant experiment (obviously a success!)

Below our seedlings are just about ready for planting, but I'm so scared they'll die out in the cold.

Snow peas are looking like they need some stakes so they'll need to be planted ASAP.

Bananna Plant is doing well.

Our resident Picasso/Monika I mean, drawing anywhere and everywhere she possibly can. Way, way advanced. She could care less about toys, but drawing and books she can't get enough of:

Oh dear she's cute! She either bringing me books to read her all the time, or she's off making her beautiful art around the house somewhere, anywhere... She also loves to sing and dance, which is taken care of by Justine Clarke, and singing and dancing together, or singing the ones with movements like "I'm a little tea pot" or "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" or "Peter Rabbit" you get the idea! Oh, and its not a case of playing in the yard with ride on trikes/play equipment (why waste the money - she never uses them anyway), she'd rather dig in the dirt with her spade.

The other's were well looked after, doing art, playing games, having a ball but missing their older siblings. I tried keeping them busier than usual. They also had a holiday from chores so they could enjoy it more. While its been lovely having the break, I miss them dearly. It's quiet without them.

Day of the Dead, Drawings etc

2009-06-08T18:25:00.001-07:00

OK, so it just seemed like the day of the dead with our resident zombies, above is Raven's art, below is his face art:

Below is Monika's art/face paint (this is her first ever face painting, no adverse reactions so all is good:

And here we have Kai's work/face painting. This is a really great photo of Kai! Usually he looks mournful, which would have been appropriate. Hey, his a contrary wise young man...

Dante had to be a bit different. His art/his face, a big cat.

And Labyrinth's work/face painting. She's put real effort into her Africa drawing and she kept this a secret from us for over a week! She does art therapy, and this is a fantastic example of what she can do (but rarely does for herself).

They may look the zombie part, but I sure feel like the zombie-girl lately. Been drugged out on anti-depressants, can't sleep at night, can't wake in the morning, so it makes for some interesting mistakes. That and I've still not weaned Monika so I can't actually go onto another drug. Anyways, lots of natural learning going on but very little formal I'm afraid. We've been gardening, drawing, visiting people, going out to Fit'N'Fun, cooking, using the computer and watching TV etc. We had lots of fun making music yesterday, I brought I Love to Sing, by Justine from playschool. We watched the DVD they danced while I folded the clothes. Then they played drums and made a great hulabaloo! So cute they are, and it was fantastic to see Kai get into music and laugh and smile lots and of course the little two had a ball. We do a lot of spontaneous singing/dancing in our house, I love it! Next I must post pics of our seedlings, pea plant experiment!

Photos and Art

2009-06-02T03:21:00.000-07:00

Labryinth with her Red Panda

Dante

Kai with a SMILE

So cute! They got this all ready themselves and it's so sweet! Monika and Raven.

Labyrinth's Butterflies

Dante's Devil

Raven's Frogs. We've been studying amphibians.

Raven's Trees with birds, apples, bees and farm house.

We're still ill from that nasty flagyl. Monika's always got a bleeding bottom from the heat caused by the big D, we use creams and change her often but it only makes it only just bareable for her. Others still suffering are Dante, Andrew and myself besides Monika. The children have been doing lots of natural learning, watching David Attenborough's Life in Cold Blood, drawing, reading and doing some lessons. Actually, yesterday they went out of Fit'N'Fun with their Carer. They went to the Evolution exhibition a few weeks ago which they really enjoyed.

Personally while I've been ill I've been catching up on reading, I've almost completed the Pliocene Exile series by Julian May, which is the first time I've read it. I've also read this year her Galatic Milieu series and Intervention (first time for Intervention). So I've got about 1/8th of The Adversary to go. The children and I and sometimes Andrew bursts out into song at any given moment. At the moment we're enjoying the various dark versions of well known songs in this lovely book:

Rather cutely, Raven has been telling us he is learning "Scary" at the moment with an angelic glee in his eyes, fallen angel that is. I'm not going very well in the weaning process either. I don't know how to go about it, if I even want to! I get guilts even thinking about it. Maybe I could go without the wretched anti-depressants altogether. Labyrinth and Dante have gotten into InuYasha lately, and Ranma 1/2.... Oh, and enjoyed watching Stealing Beauty.

Not to mention Andrew has really gotten into the idea of getting a block of land as soon as we possibly can!

Some things are really really good right now!

Art, Flowers and Butterflies

2009-05-28T16:50:00.000-07:00

First is Raven's People drawing, followed by Monika's drawing, directly below is Kai's African landscape (we've been discussing various habitats), and Kai's Panda Bear.

Below is Dante's Tiger, Fish and Elephant Nose Fish:

Here are the Butterlies! In order descending, Raven, Kai, Dante and Labyrinth:

Here we have some flowers, in descending order: Raven, Monika, Kai, Dante and Labyrinth.

In short, our week has been wrecked with the havoc of Flagyl. I ended up being allergic, while the first half of the week was fraught with symptoms similar to being glutened, I then woke up with an extreme break out of hives. Needless to say there was less study going on than I'd would have liked, but this was a known possibility that at least tummy upsets would prevent much in the way of lessons. What I can say is we've finished Private Life of Plants and have moved on to Life In Cold Blood. We've checked out Turtles/Tortoises so far. The children have been doing a lot of art, as well as some lessons. We've been gardening too. So it hasn't been a complete write off and their in home carer has to put up with their extreme grumpiness/fragileness/unwellness due to the Flagyl while I catch up with study, blog and scrap!

Pizza Night & Mary Mary Quite Contrary

2009-05-25T03:19:00.000-07:00

Snow Peas and Potentially just Peas
Bok Choy/Kale/Cauliflower Seedlings

Pizza- Not GF

I'll come clean. Twice a week we have a lovely woman come in and take care of all the children, with the exception of one at a time. That was today, and always Mondays and Fridays. This is important to relax, get things done without them. Its the day I get to do some uninterrupted scrapping or painting or uni work. Well, in all fairness we could do without it, and have done, but its nice to have the break and have the government pay the woman a small fortune. She gets $23 per hour each child, she claims about 8 hours a day. She is an artist who'll be showing her work in a commercial gallery next month, so her hours will actually be 8 hours next month.

So today Andrew and I took Dante shopping for shoes, got our shopping and pizza supplies. We got to Ziggy's Small Goods because nearly all of their meats are GF. We got us some Cabonosi and Chorizo for our pizza tonight, we had left over chicken too so it made it kind of special. The kids love Pizza Night because it means movies and fun. Usually happens on a Friday night but last Friday Andrew took me on a date to the Castle where we both enjoyed their Surf'n'Turf which meant I got to tast Hollandaise Sauce for the first time (inherently GF). I'm going to teach me how to make that!

Anyways, so we also brought more cow 'products' for our lovely garden. We'll get that into the garden tomorrow. Now, officially broke. Doesn't really matter because of the meds we're on we'll all be sick for the next week anyway.

As for how our garden grows, as you can see our seedlings are happy and healthy little guys, I'm happy!

Happy Gardening!

Garden of Earthly Delights... take 8

2009-05-24T05:51:00.000-07:00

Still trying! And it ties in so nicely with learning about plants, thank you Sir Attenborough!

So this is the next step, and it is a big one! I've been a bit reluctant and a bit short of dosh to begin. Reluctance born from wishing I could just build a house and garden in the bush... but even if it just does us a short while here is our first garden bed!

This garden has a layer of cardboard (barrier to weeds - and will be great rotting away down there), a layer of premium soil, layer of pea straw, a layer horse manure, another layer of the premium soil, a thinner layer of chicken manure, finished off with another layer of soil. Going to go get some more of the cow stuff tomorrow as it wasn't enough to fill the whole bed. This was my birthday/mother's day big gift. (And the seedlings, of course).

There is also the plants of course, my Tomatoes and Basil are loving it at the moment, insulated with polystyrene and lucerne hay (and Dante thought they were dead). They flowered recently. Not at all sure what that means (except for what little I know from them needing to be fertalised by another plant with help from a pollinator). I don't really know and can't find it on the net so if anyone will please tell me?

The Bananna Plant is growing tall! Reluctant to let it put down permanent roots (still hopeful we will get some miracle/ home loan for a bush block build) but yeah, its good for a few years in the pot then it will need a more permanent home. But maybe it will be clonable?

Then there is the new addition, the black berry cane. I have raspberry cane ready to be gotten - my Mum's a gardener too and has got some lovely canes that are too much for her patch so YAY! Thanks Mum!

The Private Life of Plants, Gardening & Art

2009-05-17T18:15:00.000-07:00

We got crafty and made a bouquet of flowers, complete with pollinators - naturally!!! The children drew about 5 flowers each and replicated the one they decided was the best to "create" a flower for our little craft bouquet. It ended up being really lovely. Dante and Labyrinth both decided to do blue/purple bells, Kai did a rainbow and Raven did a pink flower and a sunflower on the same stem. Monika and I took the easy option of grabbing one of my flowers from my scrapping stash for hers, but she did the sticking on and the drawing of the leaves. They did it in great detail the older ones obviously more than the younger (as we learnt in a previous lesson about the male/female parts of a flower, so the anther (which is full of pollen) is on Labyrinth, and Dante has put in his stigma/style parts and Kai has included the ovary.

And here is part of my Mother's Day gift. The gift of seedlings for my new garden (the garden isn't ready yet, but the seedlings are growing madly. I am growing Kale, Cauliflower, and Bok or is it Pak Choy?. I also have a little sweet basil that will be a support plant to my tomatoes. Also - an updated pic of my bananna plant.

Forgive me if there is strange things with formatting - this often happens.

And now for some art. This is Labyrinth's art. Tree with animals and a drawing of the characters (in their respective animal forms in Fruits Basket.) She recently brought a Fruits Basket comic book and has all the episodes. She loves it! She's not as capable of reading as her brothers but she has inside her an incredible imagination. She is struggling though with her issues (behavioural - her window of learning is limited and even our in home child carer agrees she would not cope in a normal school situation because of her highly emotional issues.)

Dante's Snake. Dante resists doing much writing, he takes so long to get into it and actually write anything but ends up doing a great job usually. He is reading easily at grade 5 level and loves animals, particularly reptiles/mammals/fish/amphibians.

Kai's Octoman and House. While Kai is as capable of reading as well as Dante, or is better in some cases) he is no where up there with actual writing. He does surprise me though, sometimes like yesterday when he wrote 5 reasons he should be allowed to play computer games *)

Raven's house and T-Rex.

Raven has been learning colours and numbers, and he does an awful lot of drawing. He likes being read to, playing games on the PlayStation, in particular Dora and Diego. He is so absorbant right now - wanting to learn everything he can!

Monika's drawing and a spray art Butterfly.

Monika is so keen to be a part of everything that goes on, she is just so sweet. Her vocabulary and understanding is profound at times. She can understand subtle hints as well as three step instructions, she is also obsessed by shoes at the moment. She loves putting them on and taking them off! She can also put on some clothes without help. She's also a book nerd. She'll sit there and listen to you read all the way through such books as Dr Suess's Green Eggs and Ham or a Thomas the Tank Engine book - the medium sized ones like Harold's Mail Adventure. She's 20 months old.

The Secret Life of Plants, Gardening & Art

2009-05-05T18:12:00.000-07:00

Here is the sunset I snapped from my kitchen window last night. Ahh, the REAL reason I love Tassie so much. It's magic.

Below is our indoor/outdoor gardening efforts. Yes, that is a bananna plant inside, it seems to love the light and warmth of the fishtank, there is also ferns, jasmine, spider plants and giant varieties growing inside until they are big enough to venture to the great outdoors (and hopefully we'll have enough clout to get a loan for some land of our own and build our own shangri-la. ) In the mean time we'll grow a vege garden here and our other pretty plants too. Andrew is much more obsessed about the plants that grow underwater, while I enjoy them I can't eat them or smell them so I guess I am more of a terranium plant lover myself.

Outdoors has suffered a bit. I've put the effort in and weeded the weed patch on one side, gotta do the right thing by the Jasmine though! Then I've got roses and other plants ready to get in there. I'll be layins some Lucerne down for them so they won't be suffering the frost that will be comng too soon.

As for food, our tomato plant has done its bit so we'll be putting some Lucerne around it and keeping it alive over the cooler months. We get 2 tonne of dirt delivered Friday for a big vege patch!

We've also been studying David Attenborough's Secret Life of Plants. As I mentioned before I was unsure wether the children's interests would keep perked up and how they might respond. I needn't of worried. We talked seeds yesterday with a hands on visual example of seeds around the house found in potatoes going to seed, the strawberry seeds, seeds in snow bean pods, in capsicums and sunflower seeds. They ate the strawberries and sunflower seeds and even raw peas! But they really got the 5 things a plant needs to grow... sunlight, air, food/soil, water, love. The particular episode seeds relate to is Transportation.

The top two are Labyrinth's Worm/Garden, and Hammerhead shark underwater picture. These are good examples of what she's been doing and how she's advancing. Its lovely to see her put effort and thought into things!

Dante comes next with his cut out lobster and his fish/shrimp picture. Yes that shrimp is amazingly cute that's why it made the cut. Dante is drawing lots lately!

The following two is Kai's math dinosaur picture and his man with a few outfits. He's been fluffing about with airbrushing and they have all been doing digital images using Paint lately.

We'll be teaching them photoshop during this year since they do so well with that.

And young Monika loves to be involved - she wants to be drawing just like all the big ones. Labyrinth has mis-written her name but its cute.

The main stage stealer today, though is Raven. Here we have his Vampire, and his house with Ravens, including a fruit tree and garden. As we've been doing a bit of plants/trees/seeds/gardening lately it is featuring in his art work. He's just coming along in leaps and bounds, like Monika he wants to be just like the big kids, in doing so he's just about doing on par or better work than some of his much older siblings. He's 3.

The Vampire is inspired by Labyrinth - she's much intrigued by the macarbe, zombies, vampires, skeletons and such... I love his attention to detail here so much... the sharp fangs/the claw like fingernails, nostrils and pupils!

I intend to buy lots more paper to allow him to draw lots more!

Apologies

2009-04-28T20:15:00.005-07:00

I know my posting has been somewhat erratic. We've been very busy, and even though I'm getting healthier I still have issues from time to time. Seriously though, I've just added a week and a half worth of posts below. Enjoy!

Apologies

2009-04-28T20:15:00.003-07:00

Apologies

2009-04-28T20:15:00.001-07:00

Face Painting and Bushwalking

2009-04-28T19:57:00.000-07:00

Monika is asleep after we had a bushwalk and found blackberries along the side of the trail. It was about a 6 kilometre work. We all realised that it was good but we need to do it more often! It is a lovely walk along the derwent river.

I've been dreaming of building a house that generates it's own electricity and supplies its own water, where we can have a big vege garden with lots of fruit too, and a goat and a sheep and some chickens. I've been researching how to do this and best methods of building etc. So I guess we're going green! But we're saving up and trying to achieve our goals realistically. We're putting in a vege garden right here and we've gone and brought a bananna plant (which we're potting until we get our block of land). I'm keen and I'm even trying to look at ways of generating money beyond the pension. (but that is heavily penalised, let's be honest.)

Anyways, as a result of my researches we decided to go to the Building Sustainable Expo at the Derwent Entertainment Centre on Sunday. Although it just seemed like a whole lot of expensive crap and postulating, there was some gems amongst the preverbial ***. Such as using bamboo which only takes 5 years to regrow after harvesting (not to mention 1/4 of the price). The economically soundness of a huge water tank. As for composting toilets, there wasn't any there. In it's place was an amusing toilet that used alot less to flush. I maintained that I didn't wan't his toilet on the grounds I AM prepared to take out the composting matter and use it on flower beds, and a dry toilet is still OK, and environmentally sound.

Of course the chidren enjoyed the free attention in the form of lollies/face painting, as you can see above... Raven became a T-Rex, Labyrinth a Jaguar, Kai a Parrot and Dante who wanted to be a chicken got something else... naturally Monika didn't get her face painted, she's a bit young yet.

Some cute Art

2009-04-28T19:28:00.000-07:00

But first... Monika's naughties!

Raven's House and he's really developmentally jumped! He now draws eyes and includes pupils. He draws fingers/finger nails. What a huge happy surprise!

This is Kai's house, its like a lift the flap picture showing yard/house and inside the house.

And this is Dante's house.

And here we have Labyrinth's impression of Monika and her house below.

Please excuse the formatting. Blogger seems to be doing some strange things.

They are interested in houses at the moment because we are working towards maybe building a green house on a block of land sometime in the next year... if only we could find someone who would lend a pensioner some money!

Finishing off our Life in the Undergrowth unit

2009-04-28T19:20:00.000-07:00

We watched the last of Life in the Undergrowth: SuperSocieties. It was fascinating. Here is an example of the work we did, putting words into alphabetical order. We also did math and science work as well. The next set of documentaries is entitled Private Life of Plants. I've actually seen some of these on TV and found them quite interesting, but looking at the amount of episodes dedicated to our planet's plantlife and weighing up keeping the children interested throughout all of it - plus I'll be making the unit worksheets/activities/lessons to accompany I'm thinking I've got my doubts. I mean it's not quite the volume of work that birds/mammals will be but I am confident I'll be able to keep them interested in that. We'll we will see... I intend to do practical work with them (ie we're about to put in a vege garden and we have roses/jasmine/tomato plants already going - oh and lady finger banannas. So I guess I'll have to be creative about how we go about our next adventure to keep up their enthusiasm and interest. Wish me luck.

Fishing off the Rocks

2009-04-28T19:09:00.000-07:00

Andrew and I decided to spend the day with Dante. We went fishing off the rocks at Bellrieve.

Straight up I caught (and Andrew help get him in - real fighter) the Gurnard. He's related to the Lion fish and quite a pretty boy. Dante's drawn a picture of him while we were having not much luck. Andrew, just before we decided to call it quits caught a cockie salmon on the fly. This is the first time I'd tried fly fishing and kept getting snagged. But it was a really enjoyable day even if it wasn't as productive as we'd of liked. Dante even did his bit for the environment and fished out all the naughty starfish he could find (about a dozen). We also explored the mussells and other shell fish life in the rock pools around about. It was fantastic! Dante really knows his stuff.

As Promised - a photo update

2009-04-18T22:15:00.001-07:00

I promised SIL to post some recent pics of the kidlets. Enjoy!

More Art - They are on a roll...

2009-04-18T22:00:00.000-07:00

Yes, all they wanted to do after we decided to not go fishing was art!

Here are a selection (way too many to blog this time - really!) Top left is Raven's centipede. Top right is Kai's naval vessel. Middle left is Dante's Web. Middle Right is Labyrinth's Rocket and next to this text is Labyrinth's version of the house we should make. That is an attic window of stained glass up there on level 4. Oh, yes it would be lovely to be able to live in a house that tall, I'd not say no! Lots of rooms dedicated to things like libraries and art rooms and conservatories ... oh the possibilities!

Art Day

2009-04-17T18:48:00.001-07:00

Above and Below: Monika's learning fine motor control, plus she has a good time being 'just like the big kids'.

Below: Kai drew a face. He wasn't really interested in doing much today but I was glad he finally drew something, and it's cute to boot.

Dante Above and Below: Another great love of his - Dinosaurs! RRRROAR!!!

Raven Below: He loves birdees! He's forever pointing out when we drive past birds, wether it's black swans, ravens or other avarian friends we happen across.

Labyrinth Below: a picture of her baby sister, Monika, and further below a card she made for her cousin's birthday.

Labyrinth Below: I've been checking out a few websites on sustainable living and wishing I could get the money for a block and dreaming about how I'd build a house - and this is how it's translating to the children - Labyrinth's drawn a farm she'd like to live on! Another obsession of the children is the PS2 and PS3. Because the controller is so big, even Raven has a problem holding it! Let alone poor Monika who so desperately wants to be one of the 'big kids'. So Labyrinth designed a baby controller that even the very young baby could use. Isn't she cute? What an idea! She wants to email this design to Sony so they can begin building them immediately!

The Silk Spinners

2009-04-16T01:21:00.000-07:00

The Silk Spinners is the third part of Life in the Undergrowth. It wasn't just spiders but they were the main theme. Beautiful and amazing, even Labyrinth was fascinated. Here is some of the worksheets they did afterwards, maths and science are there but the language excercises (nouns/verbs and sentence structure). The first 3 belong to Kai, then it's Raven's Maze and his drawing of a catepillar, followed by Dante's and Labyrinth's efforts.

And this is Labyrinth's Rabbit. So cute, so until next time, Adieu.

Quasior's Home School

So we're officially back to study!

December 2010 Advent Calendar:

Christmas 2010: We hope you had a great day!

Litha: Our Summer Solstice!

Rite of Passage: Labyrinth's Menarche

I Thought I'd add this

An Explanation and an Apology.

Some photos I'd like to share:

Mother's Day, my birthday and our homeschool month!

I know, I know

A week that seemed like a month...

The Annual Home Education Picnic and A New Addition To Our Family!

Hand Art

The Rainbow Serpent

2 Little Fairies tend the Flowers....

Who Killed Dave?

This is what the children have been modeling!

Dragons Are Good!

Dragons and Flightless Birds!

~BOO~

Who Do? ZooDoo!

Crazy last two weeks!

There be dragons in these here parts...and Elmer too.

Garden Of Earthy Delights... err... I WIsh,,, cont.

Dragons: Myth or Real?

A tale of two Birthday Cakes and some Mythical Creatures

Belated Birthday Blog

Blogging.... and stuff

Just a very quick update

I feel like an idiot... Hey no different!!!

99 bottles of *sand* on the wall

A Week Of Art, Reptile Unit finished, YAY

Garden of Earthly Delights... er...I wish cont

A bit windy...

Just a quick update and some art...

Things From Today...

In the Life of a rebelling UnSchooling (with basics) Family

Photos & Art

Happy 7th Birthday Kai!

Daytrip to Orford and Pizza Night!

New Toys, savings and comprimises

Reptilian Friends, Scaries, Art and Cupcakes

Changing Our Stars

Young Raven turns Four!

Still sick, Pj party and art

We're all sick with that cursed flu

Drawing and Monsters

Garden of Earthly Delights...er I wish....part 9

A Camping they'll go... and while the cats away...

Day of the Dead, Drawings etc

Photos and Art

Art, Flowers and Butterflies

Pizza Night & Mary Mary Quite Contrary

Garden of Earthly Delights... take 8

The Private Life of Plants, Gardening & Art

The Secret Life of Plants, Gardening & Art

Apologies

Apologies

Apologies

Face Painting and Bushwalking

Some cute Art

Finishing off our Life in the Undergrowth unit

Fishing off the Rocks

As Promised - a photo update

More Art - They are on a roll...

Art Day

The Silk Spinners

99 bottles of sand on the wall