Schooling 0000m00x m06z

[minor pseudonymising edits during Drupal to hugo migration for all the good that will do now]

Weeks are getting slower as far as socially accepted “schooling” goes and ramping up with Silly Season.

We did our usual park meet and roleplaying and a quick stint at the library this week but missed out on a chunk of the boring every day stuff such as grocery shopping as 4yo has been very 4 lately and taking him out anywhere is more unpleasant than it needs to be.

Potions

[minor pseudonymising edits during Drupal to hugo migration for all the good that will do now]

Week has been flat tack.

But today they made potions. Supervised from a distance as today is a work day. Ingredients included a small tub of yoghurt, jellybeans, cordial (even though I told them no food items they could consume directly when they asked if they could make potions ie before they’d had a chance to gather ingredients, they tried to claim they had somehow assembled these things before I’d told them no food items), citric acid, bicarb, vinegar, hippie lice shampoo (contains only eucalyptus and melaleuca oils) and hippie plant-based detergent.

!schooling 0000L06z-13z

[minor pseudonymising edits during Drupal to hugo migration for all the good that will do now]

We had one day where the smalls played Maths Seeds and 8yo found himself a doco about octopi (or at least the bit I saw of it had an octopus glooping through a “maze” of clear plastic pipes) just because it was fun. We had a kerbside collection recently which meant there were a lot of people kerbside collecting, including JJ who picked up an outdoor setting, three tubs, a shelving unit and two working monitors.

!schooling from whenever til now

[minor pseudonymising edits during Drupal to hugo migration for all the good that will do now]

Due to stuff (some it was the parents coming up to visit for a couple of weeks, some is that business has picked up dramatically), I haven’t been keeping track of the homeschooly stuff. Also we’ve been finding better things to do than sitting and doing bookwork, so it’s a really good thing that’s not the core of our homeschooling program (I need to write one of those for next year by the way, and also a booklist). So here’s some photos of things it occurred to me to point a camera at.

!schooling 0000I18c - I22n

[minor pseudonymising edits during Drupal to hugo migration for all the good that will do now]

We spent most of the last week recovering from whatever plague we had and trying to get back into the bookwork. What this meant was that we stayed home all week and I let the kids do whatever books they wanted which meant 6yo only did Reading Eggs books all week when they are supposed to pick different subjects.

Christmas Island: long photopost and fyn's bad luck saga

[minor pseudonymising edits during Drupal to hugo migration for all the good that will do now]

Back in Perth now and this post is going to be a long one.

The holiday has been great because I was home and crap because in the second week, I got a swollen gland or lymph node that pressed onto the nerve of one of my back teeth and caused a LOT of pain and made eating difficult, and the kids got sick. In the third week the kids recovered and I got sick (two days completely out of action and just general misery, persistent headache and neverending mucous production for the rest of the week and continuing as I type). I am feeling slightly bitter about it and thinking it’s brutally unfair but at least I stayed there the entire time unlike a certain Christmas where I got medevac’d.

Christmas Island: nature trail and Albert the robber crab and friends

[minor pseudonymising edits during Drupal to hugo migration for all the good that will do now]

It’s been mostly overcast with bouts of rain so the last week has been kind of slack and kind of relaxed. We’ve been three times to two different beaches (though I didn’t take photos of the second beach partially because it was late when we went and I wasn’t sure how good the photos would turn out in that light, and mostly because I was going to be swimming as well, could have given it to my dad though), one loopy nature trail (which was slightly longer than I thought but a decent walk nonetheless, and we didn’t go to the lookout because it was probably too long a hike for the kids) and a few epic Minecraft sessions. I haven’t got as much art done as I was hoping but bits and pieces are getting done. The kids have been watching a LOT of Pokemon, a couple of other movies and reading books borrowed from the library (independently during the day in the case of the bigs; they each have a book on dinosaurs and 8yo has one on space and 6yo has a cookbook in addition to books selected for bedtime stories) as well as playing outside on the play equipment Nanny and Granddad are spoiling them rotten with, and looking at the fish in the pond.

!schooling 0000G10n - 0000G15n | Jun 17-21

[minor pseudonymising edits during Drupal to hugo migration for all the good that will do now]

And just as you’re enjoying the nice blissful month of no weekly posts from fyn, we’re starting again! Anyway we’re about midyear so this is part catch-up and part vague plan for the rest of the year.

We had one week of staggered flu (nothing too serious, just lots of sleeping, lethargy and general blarginess) followed by a week of gastro (again not too serious in the grand scheme, the kids were a bit lethargic but not listless, the biggest issue was the washing machine choosing to break down immediately before the gastro hit and it was out of action for a couple of weeks), followed by a short week (thanks to a public holiday) of me taking it easy because I was exhausted from the previous two, followed by a week of JJ catching a really bad flu and then a week of me catching a much milder version of that flu which technically only lasted a day, I just chose to take the rest of the week easy. We did have a few bouts of okay or mostly okay in that period fortunately.

!schooling 0000E25c - F02n | 6-10 May

This weekly stuff is tiring. Seriously who reads this anyway? May just start hiding them as I still kind of need to write them. Anyway.

Bit of a slow week this week as the kids all caught a cold and I spent a couple of days heroically fending it off.

The kids wanted me to teach them how to draw. Actually what they really wanted was for me to magically confer kickass drawing skills onto them. I told them they would need to practise a lot as most of drawing was getting your eyes, brain and hand to cooperate and the remainder was your imagination. I put out a few items on the table including a Duplo block which I deliberately angled towards them. They don’t like drawing things on angles, everything has to be STRAIGHT. Even 8yo who currently has slightly better spatial perception drew it straight, even though he drew all three corners that he could see (in a straight line rather than having the middle one come down slightly as it did in perspective). Almost forgot about maths bookwork. 8yo is at a stage in Dragonbox where it’s stopped pretending it’s a game and has presented him with actual maths, with cute graphics like it’s marker on nicely textured paper. 6yo is struggling with Dragonbox so opted for her book and is progressing extremely slowly with it (getting bored easily and I think it’s s getting a bit hard for her).

!schooling 0000E18c - E22n | Apr 30 - May 3

[minor pseudonymising edits during Drupal to hugo migration for all the good that will do now]

Our garlic bulb has grown quite large but is now looking a bit limp and sad. Got the kids to draw it again (still have to find where 8yo put his first diagram). 8yo’s writing is improving a lot. Got him to work out the perimeter and area (both of just the floor and the entire building) of a building he was making in Minecraft.