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.

Young Raven turns Four!

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.

10 Days of Sheer Bedlam

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

But wonderful, amazing bedlam...

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

This is their impressions of drawing the fire/heater:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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