Posted by: Dandy in family on
Mar 11, 2009
Today we laid to rest a very dear friend, a surrogate Grandfather if you like. I will share a funny story he shared with me when Ethany was just a baby.
"We only had 32 nappies for the twins so they had to be washed everyday. I decided one Saturday morning to help IB out and wash the nappies. She told me to add just a tiny bit of starch as that helps to fold them. I went and lit the copper, put in all the nappies, washed them well, put them through the wringer and hung them out to dry, it was a few hours work. Later in the day I noticed the nappies swinging on the line, not flapping in the breeze. They were as stiff as a board, too much starch. IB was furious, and I had to wash them all over again. So much for being helpful!"
CSB we never had the opportunity to properly thankyou for the guitar you brought Xavier for Christmas. If he ever makes the big time I know the first album will be dedicated to you. Thankyou!
Thankyou for the awesome holiday in Cairns some years ago, thankyou for allowing me to spread my wings when I housesat your place, thankyou for offering your support when the going got tough at the range, thankyou for being my Dad's best friend!
We will all miss you always!!
Posted by: Dandy in family on
Mar 11, 2009
Please excuse my lack of posting for the last two days. If the stars are not perfectly aligned we don't get any internet, grr. With no phone lines into our VERY old house we rely on wireless internet and being on the outer edge of 'the zone' makes for some unhappy moments at the computer!
And it seems like the venting wont end there this evening, please excuse my rambling.
To the swimming teacher - When you spend all week encouraging and geeing up your son to attend swimming lessons in a happy disposition don't shoot him down!
We have been working VERY hard at overcoming Xavier's fear of water. He has cried and screamed to get out many times since starting swimming at the beginning of the year. About 2 weeks ago Ethany was awarded a Merit Certificate for great effort at swimming. Xavier was in awe so we used this as a motivator for him. If you don't cry during your lesson and work really hard, maybe you too can earn a Merit. I mentioned that to his teacher last week. Today he worked really, really hard. He squashed that fear, never cried and participated quite well in the class. At the end after he got out he went to his teacher and asked "Did I earn a certificate today?" and she cut him down saying "No". She broke his little heart. He came to me crying his heart out. He worked so VERY hard to swim well for her and himself to earn a reward, a Merit. To make matters worse Imogen earned her very first certificate today. I know next week is going to be tough, sigh.
Posted by: Dandy in Home School, family on
Mar 09, 2009
I mentioned this a few weeks ago now so thought I would share more now I am basically finished. I have been busy (on and off) building The Phonics Centre over the last 6 weeks or so. My inspiration came when I wanted to get some salt trays for the kids. Off we went to Bunnings looking for plastic trays when I saw a 4 stack, plastic draw, pull out system and thought that's a winner!
The Phonics Centre now has 2 draws of salt, one green and one orange. I let the kids colour their own salt. The draws are completely removable. We have one draw with very large laminated phonograms, I do plan to make these sandpaper letters but have only got so far as printing out the phonograms and laminating them. The last draw has 2 copies of each phonogram cut up as little tiles to be used to make words.
Xavier in particular has really enjoyed the salt tray. I am looking forward to reviewing with Ethany those tricker phonograms like ough, igh, dge & eigh with the tiles this week.
The Phonics Centre, a one stop phonics place, hehehe. Seriously though at least it keeps everything handy in the one place.
Posted by: Dandy in Home School, family on
Mar 07, 2009
Yippee!! The kids and I have been hanging out to do 'proper' music and today we collected our music book and CD's. I can't wait to get started with them, it will be fun! Here is what we got.
Sing 2009 from the ABC Shop.
I also collected The Leila Fletcher Piano Course (book 1) from my Mum which is what I was taught piano with. We don't have a piano but have recently resurected our old Lowrey keyboard which the kids are enjoying. I'll ask Ethany if she is interested in learning some songs and see what response I get before putting time into teaching her something she isn't ready for.
Posted by: Dandy in Weekly Report, Home School, family on
Mar 07, 2009
I am so glad to see the end of the week. We have had a big week! I not going to give a true weekly report this week because I have blogged everyday anyway.
The morning routine is working really, really well. I have tweaked it a little and added in a couple of extra items i didn't think of when first setting it up. The kids are moving from 1 job to another without much fuss and keep going back to reference the chart so are helping to keep me on track in the mornings too.
The evening routine is working brilliantly. I have read to the kids before bed every night this week as we have had everything else done in good time after dinner. There is no dilly dallying we are moving on to the next job smartly.
Since my visit to Ikea the kids rooms have never looked better. Thanks in part to the routine too the toys are being packed away at the end of the day, yippee! That is an achievement in itself.
We screamed through our work today in just over an hour which was great! We also got in a 1 hour nature walk which was nice.
We ended the week on a good note now for a relaxing weekend? Who knows probably busy as usual, lol.
Posted by: Dandy in Home School, Food, family on
Mar 06, 2009
Bread and Butter Pudding, mmmmm!
We don't normally have cooked dessert at our house although the kids do have something for dessert every night. Normally yoghurt, fruit & custard or icy pole. Today I had half a loaf of stale bread, thanks to the long weekend :-) So I decided to give the old Bread & Butter Pudding a whirl. I had not made one before and it turned out beaut!
Here is the recipe -
Ingredients
7 slices bread
750ml milk (I used powered milk)
3 beaten eggs
110g sugar
110g sultanas
splash vanilla
1/2 tsp Cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
butter
Method
Preheat oven to 180C
Rub butter around a large heavy baking dish.
Butter both sides of the bread and lay into baking dish.
Mix all other ingredients together, once this is done pour over bread.
Make sure all of the bread is submerged.
Leave pudding to stand about 30min to allow bread to soak up wet mix.
Cover with foil and bake for 30mins then remove foil and bake until golden, about another 30mins.
Stand for a few mins before serving, great with custard, cream or ice cream.
We had our heads down most of today and ploughed through LOTS of school work. Tomorrow is looking a little lighter for the end of the week, hopefully we will make it to our art project :-)
Posted by: Dandy in family on
Mar 05, 2009
Since we moved we have been living in a jumble of boxes. This is because we moved from a reasonably big house to a very small one, with no storage, not even wardrobes! Poor Xavier, his room is the storage room and playroom. At the end of the day we normally have to clear a path just to walk to the bed. Not today!
We went to Ikea today and I found some nifty and not very expensive nylon storage bags which fit perfectly under the kids beds. Ethany and Xavier now have 2 each under their beds and that cleared up basically all of the small stuff. All we have been left with is things that are really too big. They have gone into a plastic tub which we already had. His room now looks ...
He told me at bed time, "Mummy I really love my room now." I am so pleased.
We also had our air conditioner installed today, finally. I am sure it will make a huge difference our house is like a pizza oven! Needless to say with all that going on no formal work took place today, but Wednesday is normally our day off for the Zoo so we will be back into it tomorrow.
Amber
We have not really done any formal habit training so far so I decided this week we would make a fresh start and get own to business with habit training. A friend forwarded me her morning and evening routines which I fitted to my family and printed out and popped on the pantry door, very central place in our house. Whilst doing that I decided I would make a makeshift whiteboard so that I could write down what I wanted to achieve for us school wise for that day, week and month, it went on the pantry door too.
The kids responded really well! When their feet hit the floor this morning they were checking the chart working their way down the list. We have included a daily nature walk as part of our morning routine for all of our benefits. Before moving here I used to walk 2km per day to collect the mail. Sadly I don't walk nearly as much now and really need to so I am hoping this will be excellent encouragement. As it was swimming day today and we swim in the morning the walk was only a quick lap of the block, but whilst out we stopped and admired some native birds and spied these snails.
Once home from swimming we got stuck into the 'school work'. Ethany and Xavier made snowflakes which go with our Five in a Row book Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.
We also worked on Explode the Code and a few other things including telling time, +2, more 2 syllable words from Webster's and our memory bank. Ethany has just memorised her first RL Stephenson poem 'Rain'. The memory bank is working well.
Imogen just hung out being her tiny tot self :-) She pulled out the entire contents of her bottom draw in her chest not once but twice. She climbed onto the computer table and was standing up in the high chair at one point calling out for me to 'rescue her'???
Yesterday I found this guy on my window sill when I opened the laundry window. This is a much better specimen than the last one we found, his marking and colourings were very true. I released him under a tree in our yard.
Marbled Gecko
I'm blogging everyday for the next 20 days by request from relatives who are traveling so tune in tomorrow to see what's new with us.
Amber
Posted by: Dandy in family on
Feb 28, 2009
Since our move the kids have been desperately missing a sandpit so over the Christmas/New Year break we decided to build one. Only one problem with that idea, the hardware was out of blocks we wanted to use for the surrounds sooo the project was delayed and became a February job :-)
We started it a couple of weeks ago collecting the blocks from the hardware and then building the surrounds.
You can see from the pic that our land it not flat so getting it level was a challenge but perseverance paid off and the end result was level walls.
Yesterday we headed over the the soil place for our washed white sand. One trailer load and countless wheelbarrow trips from trailer to sandpit saw the sandpit morph before our eyes.
Just now we installed the final item, a shade sail. Whilst we chose a shady part of our yard it isn't shady all day so we are hoping the sail will provide some additional protection. My knot tying practice from Girl Guides came in VERY handy when installing the sail. The memories came flooding back.
The only thing left to do now is complete the sandpit cover. We have something make shift at the moment but something more permanent is necessary.
Posted by: Dandy in Weekly Report, Home School on
Feb 27, 2009
We had a short week this week, only 3 school days. Russell has been working some odd hours this last couple of weeks so his boss kindly gave him Friday off which meant no school happened at home.
Ethany progressed through some more Explode the Code and she has stepped up to 3 pages per day instead of the usual 2 page spread well. Her handwriting is improving out of sight.
She has been working well through the +2 section of Kumon Addition Grade 1 and seems to have the mental working of +2 down pat.
I gave her another reading test this week, have not done that for ages and I was surprised by the jump. She last tested into grade 2 level reading. This week she tested into grade 4. Oh, my gosh! I knew she was improving both in her confidence and ability but I wasn't quite expecting such a big jump. I am so very pleased all our work is paying off. She seems to see the phonics in the words and is looking for clues (rules) as to which sound the consonant and vowel will make. This is resulting in correct pronunciation of new words most of the time. From a whole language learner myself I think this is awesome!!
We started rowing Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening for Ethany this week and Xavier thinks the story is about Santa :-) We also started rowing The Runaway Bunny for Xavier which he is enjoying. It is amazing what he has retained from The Little Rabbit which we rowed last year.
We completed Charlotte's Web as our read-a-loud and I have decided to move onto Brer Rabbit Book by Enid Blyton next.
Xavier took it easy this week and only completed 1 two page spread of Get Ready for the Code.
We got along to A to Zoo on Wednesday and had an awesome encounter with the Cheetah named Tokolosh. She likes to hide in the den at the back of her enclosure which means most of the time visitors to the zoo don't get to see her. The keeper was kind enough to go into the enclosure and entice her out with some milk. She brought Tokolosh right up to the glass infront of the children and fed her the milk, then gave her a large piece of meat to chomp right in front of them. My kids were stoked, what a wonderful experience!
No pics this week, sorry, just have not got around to it.
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