I know, I know

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...

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.

Dragons and Flightless Birds!

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.

A Week Of Art, Reptile Unit finished, YAY

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.

Things From Today...

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.)

Still sick, Pj party and art

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!

The Secret Life of Plants, Gardening & Art

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!