Day of the Dead, Drawings etc

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

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

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

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

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

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.