SSR: SILENT SUSTAINED READING on WEDNESDAY'S

One of the small changes I made to the timetable last week, was changing SSR to a Wednesday. So this is what the kids are currently doing, I love that Ben reads where he falls after lunch or stay's where he was with book he was reading at lunch and the world passes him by while the story takes over.  I love that Polly loves SSR just as much not only because she loves books but also because of the sense of accomplishment she gets from reading a book by herself ... this independence of learning is so good for her self esteem in general.

Reminder for this time next year, to have lots of fun activities to partake in when the weather is miserable outside and it makes the class feel a bit down beat and gloomy :(

ONE SICK LITTLE GIRL AND A NEW FAVOURITE AUTHOR

Get better soon Pollyanna

For the first time in our schools history we had a child away sick :(  Poor Pollyanna has a cold and a sore throat so stayed in bed most of today, hoping to be better for school tomorrow.  She woke up and said "if i was still in Room 4 I would be staying home today" so it seemed fair enough that she should stay home given how she was feeling and be without school today.  However, just before the rest of the class started school, she burst into tears and declared she wanted to go to school today.  However, this time I wrapped her up in my arms and put the hot fevered little girl back to bed and said it was probably a better idea if she stayed in bed and if she was really desperate for some school work, I would bring her in her reading and some Grammar, which seemed to soothe her.  Poor little thing, just didn't want to miss out!

In other news, Ben has found a fantastic new favourite author and luckily this author has written a number of books, not all long novels but enough to keep us going for the next couple of weeks.  His name is Michael Morpurgo and he has written some awesome advanced reading novels plus a whole lot of other books from picture books, to early chapter books, to story compilations.  Ben has read 5 or 6 of them over the last week and really enjoyed them all.  They are also really inspiring stories, that make you think about things.

Happy working!

I thought it would be quite hard to motivate Ben today, give the rest of his class was off sick, but to my amazement he was more than happy to do his school work and applied himself so well. You are awesome Ben!

THE SIGNS OF SUCCESSFUL GROCERY SHOPPING

A sweet treat for being $18 under the budget!

This is the defining moment, when the kids get to reap the rewards of meeting their grocery shopping budget .... the treat at the end!  They love this simple gratitude for doing a wonderful job of organising and shopping to budget for the fortnightly grocery shop.  Thank you so much you guys for making the supermarket so much fun :)

PREPARING FOR THE GROCERY SHOP

The List

While the kids work on their phonics (Polly) and Sentences to Paragraphs (Ben) worksheets on a Thursday afternoon, I prepare the grocery list if we are doing the shopping the next day.  This is a brief look at it, it has each item the house needs for the upcoming fortnight and then a budget for that item.  I don't specify how mush one gets that is for the kids to work out within that items budget.  Ben is very good at saving money early in the shopping round so there is a little more he can add to the cereal budget where he and Polly like to buy according to taste as opposed to according to budget ... they are getting to be shrewd little shoppers and it is a wonderful learning tool.  For me, I stand back and watch and drive the cart behind them and that's all I do, the rest is on their shoulders!  Over the holiday period I do take pity on them and fend for myself and do the shopping while they do the traipsing ... but boy is it totally not worth it, I always spend over the budget and don't seem to get the quantities right, gutted that at 5 and 8 they are better grocery shoppers than I am ... its true what they say, BEWARE OF THE SPECIALS :)

MINOR ADJUSTMENTS TO THE SCHEDULE

Our Term Three Schedule

One of the major things that I am really proud of with our home schooling efforts so far, is the schedule that Steve and I put together for the Ministry of Education for our Exemption from Enrolment proposal (that went through without a hitch, yeah!).  It has worked really well and at the end of term when putting together the curriculum for term three I did a couple of adjustments to allow for some of the different curriculum strands new learning themes.  I also made adjustments due to the fact for this terms Art strand (Drama) we have outsourced to a drama school and we have included other learning activities outside the school hours (our school hours!).  hence the reason the kids get Friday afternoons off unless we are on an excursion~!

The timetable works so well for us because even though my children are 5 and 8 years, their personalities rely on a schedule and it helps that we all know what is coming up for the day ... that doesn't mean that I'm not flexible according to needs, but the schedule is the core of our expectations of what home schooling is going to provide each and every day.  It is a relief to be well organised because it is also what I rely on for my personality ... it is an understatement that I don't cope well in chaos!

A BEAUTIFUL DAY

It was such a gorgeous day today, it was almost (almost) too nice to be inside learning, but there were things that needed to be learnt as always.  Lucky the kids had Science today and were happy (for the most part) to be inside doing science worksheets.  Today's space worksheets I got off Kaboose for Polly, Ben was doing something that was a little beyond where I want Polly's space learning to be, she loved the wordsearch and it was a great way to finish off the day for her.  They had a great start to the day as well, they are almost at the assembling stage of their Space posters for English and today was all about verbal communication and listening.  Ben had to instruct Polly with regards to printing and downloading images to go with her space questions.  It was a really interesting interaction that paid dividends, Polly had to listen (not her strong point!) and Ben had to be patient (definitely not his strong point!), to achieve the task they had to work on communicating and there wasn't a single disagreement :) It could be because the task was exciting for both of them anyway but, nevertheless, I was proud they were able to work together, taking turns finding the images they needed to print off for their space posters!

REFLECTIONS ON THE STARDOME

In the reclining seats of the Stardome's theatre

The kids had a wonderful time at the Stardome and loved the show we went to about The Night Sky ... its amazing how much you can keep learning!  The Stardome seems to be under construction at the moment, so there are limited (nothing) things to do unless you take in a show, however, the shows are totally worth it and really not very expensive at all ($35 for a family).  So part of today's writing was about reflecting on their experience on Friday night going to the Stardome.  They loved the domed roof theatre where we took in the show and both had things they learnt about the night sky that they have keep with them ... a sign of a good learning attitude or at least a willingness to learn from others I reckon!

Ben working on his reflections about the Stardome

SQUEEZE IN ... a photo of us at Burger Fuel