SOTW Volume 1 Round 2

The past few days has seen us reintroducing Story of the World Volume One for Kangaroo's Prep/ Grade One history program. Kookaburra is loving doing it again too, fortunately!

Here we are right at chapter one, wondering what makes history. It's pretty simple stuff really. We read the section designated in the Story of the World Activity Guide and then Kangaroo narrates to me while I record his thoughts into the free two day a week lapbook we're using. Combined this with some great ideas from the self proclaimed OCD Story of the World using Mumma at The Chronicle of the Earth Blog and I might stand a chance of finishing this program with my boys and they getting so much more out of it this time.

This has been a hectic year. We've had so many opportunities to be involved in the community in various ways that I'm so glad and immensely appreciative of, but I find myself feeling very relieved to be saying goodbye this week to our latest 'job', a nearly three term stint as volunteers and visitors to one of the local private schools Art class on Fridays. I'm glad because this will aid my attempt to stem the flow of lost time in our home. I've also clamped down pretty tight on visitors and outings in the mornings and do not answer the phone, the calls go straight to messages so if it really is important I'll catch it. Every week we have several great reasons to be out and about and although I really miss catching up with friends and having my boys play with their children I've found that as Kookaburra is getting older I need to be very committed to my priorities. For us, for various reasons, homeschooling does take up a lot of our time and if I let a few hours slip through my fingers in the morning (read that as, this week my washing machine is in pieces so we'll have to make time to get the washing done at our local laundromat. But hey! We can at least enjoy some reading together!) inevitably our afternoons are sacrificed.

Today I managed fine. We had swimming lessons first thing this morning and got our language arts and math done before lunch so in the arvo we enjoyed A Dirty Dig. I buried some household items like tools, pencils, pot, toy car etc things that symbolise our present society into our sandpit and armed with trowels and paintbrushes my little archaeologists carefully excavated the site.


We also got some inspiration on how to exactly carry this out from here.




Kookaburra sifted the sand to find any stray artifacts.


Meet Elvis. We're babysitting him for two weeks whilst my cousin is on holidays with her family in France. Lucky girl :) he's a Dutch barge dog whom apparently has no idea how to play... Well, Minna and Thor have sorted that out and after two days, Elvis is running around chasing the kong right along with them. I think he'll be fine!



Kangaroo gently brushes away the sand from his treasure. A silver serving dish therefor, he concludes, that these people were rich!


Kookaburra and Kangaroo happily pose for a picture after their successful dig before taking their final bagged items upstairs where they reflected on the culture that left behind these buried remains, another narration for Kangaroo and some writing for Kookaburra. We also used this table to record our findings.

Thank goodness for the internet and clever blogging homeschool Mummas! A quick check on my some of my favourite bloggers for inspiration on how to approach each chapter of SOTW and I know that this program will keep on being interesting again for my boys a second time round and it leaves me with less head scratching for ideas and more time for being with them.

Kids Big Day Out

The holidays had nearly passed us by and we were yet to hang out with our Cool Cousins in what has fast become our holiday tradition. I wasn't sure if it was going to happen as Kangaroo has become quite sick since last weeks visits to the water park, coughing and spluttering and now sneezing and wheezing. Kookaburra too has caught whatever nasty illness this is and has begun the deep wet bark that according to the Doc is croup. It would have been nice if she had of diagnosed that in my younger son last week rather than three doctors visits later. Unfortunately my wee men are now taking steroids and ventilam to end this horrid bug. But I digress. Our holiday tradition is to have, what I've coined, 'A Child Led Day' or in their terms, 'Kids Big Day Out'.

The gist is that the kiddos take one supervising adult and mosey on into town, usually on foot, with their backpacks on containing plenty of water, morning tea and pocket money - enough to buy odds and ends from the op shops, cheapy stores and pool their money together enough to buy some lunch. They have the option of going pretty much anywhere they want - the pool, park, museums, cinema, shops, lolly store, op shops, garage sales, river, anywhere they can calculate they can get too and still be able to get home. This is a fledgling idea that is still developing. The first time it happened was brilliant! The kids dressed up as ladies and gents and played tourist through our little town visiting the museums and even stumbled upon a workshop for some foreign dancing (I don't recall which now *such a terrible memory sometimes!) which they had a ball participating in. The following occasion we were down one crew member due to illness and then the kids independence was impeded because of torrential down pours and unfortunately, in my opinion, it became a bit of a bargain hunting spend fest. Great for their math but not really the point of the exercise. I want them to discuss and make decisions and eventually be able to, very independently of me but still with supervision, be able to leave home, plan together what they'd like to do with their day, problem solve on the way and then find their way home, whether it be by foot, bike or bus. I'm giving them a chance to safely practice their independence.

And develop their special friendships.

So we headed off this morning on foot to meet the Cool Cousins in town who, like us, had a doctors appointment to attend (this was before it was figured upon that my boys have croup).

There was, of course, the mandatory lolly store stop. Two dollars goes a long way if you're careful! Then Princess Calamity managed to split the bottom of the sole of her sandal so we needed to purchase new sandals before continuing on - she's my sweet Clam' for a reason! Lots of chatting and lolly munching followed. These guys were so happy to be out and all together. The poor doctors surgery was inundated by my crew and my doc was bemused at least with four children sitting on her consult rooms floor whilst she examined the fifth. The nattering noodles go off at tangents discussing the random things that children talk about to the point where our Doc has joined in too. With the croup now diagnosed - I have my doubts though but don't really know what to do :( - we left for the chemist across the road to fill our scripts and chose to kill some time at the cheapy shop. Naturally :S. A few dollars later and we have the best buy of the day, I feel, Princess Calamity's two dollar fifty pair of sunglasses which had me laughing for the remainder of the excursion. Too cool for her own little socks this kid.







They ate pizza in the park and watched a maggie feeding her baby.




But we were still sick and we really couldn't sustain the pace any longer so we all thought home on the bus to watch a movie would be just perfect.




What does Princess Cupcake get excited about?...... 'No Seatbelts!!!!!'

uh, okay :)






It really warmed my heart to see these guys holding hands.





It was still a bit of a walk from the bus stop home and they decided they'd like to call Grammy Bear from the public phone booth for fun.



and as the nursery is just around the corner from our home, we made it our last stop before home. The plants are a surprise for Sunday. Secret squirrel okay.

Before we made it in the door everybody had to say hi ya to our little green tree frog who resides in our mail box.

A movie and a little play and then it was home time. We love our cousins and are so lucky to have them live right here in the same little town.

So that's our Kids' Big Day Out. Independence and new experiences, and beautiful memories. Hopefully, next time, we'll all be well and the sun'll be shining bright on us again.

Living Life Extra-Ordainary

My life as a kid was, well, I have to admit it, pretty dull. We didn't 'do' sport or join in with community events, definitely didn't volunteer or really see too much of friends outside of school. I honestly wonder now how I managed to survive childhood and not die of total boredom. I was happy enough for sure but after living life with my two boys I'm so glad that I've learned that childhood and parenthood can be so much more.

I wouldn't mind swapping our rather busy days over for more quiet and admittedly better quality time but life never works like those happy balance scales. It really is all or nothing in the 'can do' business.


So back when we were involved with the community theater production of The Music Man, I befriended an artist who was working on the back drops and we helped out a little. Now a few months later I'm going to regular art lessons (and struggling horribly too!) and have watched Mr Artist produce a few pieces for community events for free! But what you're seeing pics of now is a commissioned piece at a local private school on their abseiling wall. Not only is the work amazing but the time frame of completion is an expected two weeks. Two weeks! And here it is nearly complete.



And the all or nothing that I talk about in our lives well, the scales are fully tipped into the busy side of things but would you not take your children out to hang out and watch artists in progress and ride the scissor lift if they had the opportunity?


Truly stunning work :)


These were taken yesterday but this isn't all we did. Oh no. There are more hours in a day it seems to pack in life. Mr Artists wifey, The Bird Lady has an affinity with birds and she buys pet mince specifically to feed the Magpies and Butcherbirds that visit their home. She has saved a few from perishing this way too. Having cuppas in her front yard the Bird Lady tells my boys all about her feathered company and how to tell their differences. Who's young, old, male, female and breed. She shares it all with my boys.




Heading home my boys spied the 'new' overpass (it was opened September 2010) and begged to investigate it. Things that we find so ordinary or perhaps don't even see anymore is still exciting and new to them and I love sharing in their excitement.



So that was Monday. A sample of our days of late. If we're not visiting artists at work, we're making the most of friends being on holidays - although not as much as we'd like as Kangaroo has come down with a nasty chest cough- whilst our poor furry friends wait patiently at home for things to peter out and for us to return to steady days at home.


And there's still time to freeze our toys and fill up balloons in the bath to experiment with and go for big bike rides and play, play, play with a little lesson work on the side.


Commitments to keep.


And meals to be shared.


Everything will settle down again soon enough. Just in time for us to be wondering.... what next?!

Conquering Library Day Madness

I'm not big on routine. I like the idea of it. I've tried to stick to one and I think routine can and has at times worked for us in the past but often life happens and we like to go with the flow and to get out, especially outdoors. Routines can be boring and restrictive to us. We like to be a busy bunch, flitting here and there but unfortunately I'm regularly paying a financial consequence of following my whimsy and not sticking with just a little routine.

Ah Library Day. It's funny how much I've come to dread it. It's trouble of my own making. Every time we haul up our ridiculous load to be returned I sternly speak to my boys telling them something ridiculous like, 'Only five books each this time....', which admittedly, they're really good at sticking to, but me? Ha! Alas, I am weak and when I find myself between those hallowed stacks of information and knowledge and before my boys can squeak out, 'but Mum you said...' to which I quickly reply, 'Hush child! and fill the basket!', whilst furtively glancing around the library, because you never know, Dadda may have slipped into the library during his break and I might be caught breaking what is obviously a sensible agreement ~ borrow only a few books and return them every two weeks rather than when they are due in the third ~ but I feel myself overpowered by a bibliomaniacal fever consuming me to the point where I've lost self-control and find myself haplessly piling up the books at the borrowing desk where I've managed to grind the entire library to a halt. An agitated line gathers behind me and others stop to gawk and stare at what is obviously way too many books to read aloud in three weeks but I'm too obsessively consumed by the book bug to really care but feel self-conscious enough to mutter to any who are close enough to hear, my feeble excuse, 'We're homeschoolers...'.

Our proud self proclaimed history buff indulges in his
obsession by yet again diving into books about warriors
but this time diversifying with a dash of celts or gauls,
whichever you prefer.

The consequence of my craziness and lack of self-control have been regular fines of about ten to fifteen dollars for overdue books approximately every month. I may only be a few days overdue but I tell ya, that many books, sixty to eighty (we have two libraries in our locality that we love to indulge in) past due by three to five days at ten cents a book....

Kookaburra is having another go at his origami obsession.
Paper! What Paper? We've been cleaned out again...

So I'm breathing a deep sigh and am appealing to my saner side that for goodness sake, enough is enough. The damn council gets enough money out of us without giving it away to them too. So I vow, as of today, Monday the twenty ninth of August 2011, I will endeavour my darndest to make it library day every second Monday and save myself that extra cash! Instead of giving it away to that ridiculous money grubbing governing body I will instead visit a lovely cafe with my two gorgeous boys and indulge in a caffeine fix for me and a hot chocolate one for them. Which only serves as an extra incentive to do the right thing, which is to obviously, get those books back before their due date. Seriously, how hard can it be?!

Before I call it a night I have to share how cute my little guy is. Unfortunately a few weeks ago, he left a book out in the rain. Damp but salvageable he brought it in to me apologetically asking for help. We left it out to dry for a few days and for all intents and purposes it looked fine But! whilst I was drooling between the stacks of books trying to maintain control of myself I'm approached by the librarian holding this same book. She says to me, are you.... to which I reply I am she....we both look at the book which she is holding open and shows me, oh dear, mouldy pages! This books is fairly newish, large and hardcover and I hate the thought that the library which I love, would think I tried to sneak it through without being upfront. We are honest sods and even if it hurts, we tell the truth. So I say what is obviously on her mind, but bearing in mind that I suspected yet more fines awaiting me I really wasn't particularly gracious and I'm sure I kind of groaned out that they would like me to pay for it, to which the lovely librarian says something about checking on the price and speaking to her supervisor when my little boy, bravely says in the sweetest clear voice, 'I had an accident.' If I felt remotely cross with him it was totally washed away with that courageous admission.