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.

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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. 

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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 :-)

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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 

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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 

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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. 

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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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We had a much quieter week this week.  We laid off the formal stuff a little to give the kids a much needed refresher after the last 3 weeks of hustle and bustle.  We still made it to swimming on Tuesday, A to Zoo on Wednesday and dancing on Thursday so were out and about plenty.

Swimming is going really well for Xavier.  He started the year VERY scared of water, wont go under the shower, hates the hose and never liked the pool.  He has now come around a bit and whilst he wont put his face in or get it wet he is making some real progress each week which I am so pleased about.

A to Zoo was fab again this week.  The facilitator beefed it up a little and the kids learnt  more about the animal of the week.  This week it was the rhinoceros.  Perth Zoo has two rhino's Memphis and Bakarrie both boys.  Memphis is Bakarrie's father.  Next week we will be looking at the Cheetah which has Ethany very excited!

Perth Zoo does a wonderful job of making the environment inviting for the native bird life of the area that are free to come and go.  Whilst there we saw the Australian White Ibis (on top of the wall).

We also saw some Rainbow Lorikeets who were just gorgeous having a bath in a waterfall.  There must have been about a dozen of them.  I couldn't get a pic because the sun was right behind them but they are a truly beautiful bird.

The highlight of our day was watching Tricia the elephant walk right past us, less than 2m away.  The kids were in awe.

Xavier has been on a school work spree completing a 2 page spread of Before the Code everyday this week and also a lesson from 100 Easy Lessons.  Ethany has been working hard too moving into Explode the Code book 2 along with all our normal work.  We didn't 'row' a book this week but got into plenty of puzzles and games instead.  Nothing wrong with 'fun' education ;-)

This week  I set about making us a 'Memory Bank' al-la Simply Charolette Mason.  I am also building a 'Phonics Centre' and will post more when it is complete.  I have been having a major internal battle about scheduling and what to do when etc.  I have decided that for the benefit of sanity I am going to do away with grades/levels completely and work from the kids individual birthdays.  So this year Xavier will be working on 3-4 because he is 3 and Ethany will be working on 4-5 because she is 4 but once she turns 5 in July she will go to 5-6 and Xavier wont move on until his birthday next year.  Maybe a more complicated view for some but it will simplify things for me.  I have been doing plenty of planning for 5-6 in terms of what we will actually do now I just need to work our some sort of schedule.  I'm not very good with schedules but I do need some sort of guide to keep me moving forward and on track so we will see what I come up with.

Amber 

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Yet again, another busy week.  Our friends return to their country home this weekend so things will go back to normal next week.  We have however had an awesome time with them over the last 3 weeks and will be sad to see them go!

This week we completed the post test for Explode the Code Book 1.  Ethany has progressed so well in this book and I have been blown away by her dictation ability in the post test. 

Xavier started Explode the Code Book A at his request.  I am just going to take it very slowly.  He is a very fickle little guy!  He also started 100 Easy Lessons, again at his request and managed to complete 2 lessons for the week.

We have not done heaps of reading this week because we just have not been home :-)  Ethany has completed a few more lessons in 100 Easy Lessons and has listened to 3 audio books, Charlie & the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl, The Fairy Charm by Emily Rodda (this was a compilation of 3 books) and Fairy Dust by Gwyneth Rees.  She listened to these during all our travel time.  She loved them!  The Fairy Charm was a really beautiful girly story and Charlie & the Chocolate Factory is such a classic.

We managed to finish rowing The Story of Ping this week.  We conducted a flotation experiment with general household items.

I pulled out the MUS blocks this week and we played 'banking', which I invented on the spot, shhh!  Basically I give her a bunch of units then she takes them to the bank and changes them for the larger blocks.  So if I give her 12 units then she changes for 1 ten and 1 two, you get the idea.  Next week we will work on changing other blocks.  She has the concepts of addition (no regrouping) down really well so time to work towards regrouping.

I also pulled out some patterning tasks and Ethany worked well transferring the 2D pic to the 3D real life model.  A couple of times she got it backwards but by pack away time she really had the hang of it.

Xavier had to be in on it too, so i gave him some beetles to build.

 We got along to the Zoo twice this week, once for A to Zoo which has it's very own blog post and once just to kill some time whilst up in Perth.  On our second trip we enjoyed an icecream whilst watching the Australian Pelicans prene themselves and have a wash.

Before heading to the zoo for the second time we hit Kings Park quickly as I have been wanting (since it opened) to walk over the new bridge.  This week we did although I don't think the kids really got what the fuss was about.

Just by the new bridge at Kings Park is a Boab tree.

This boab tree is special because it was transplanted from the Kimberley (the far north of Western Australia) and was then put on a truck and travelled thousands of kilometers to be replanted in Kings Park.  Only recently they were able to label the transplant a success when the boab grew its first new shoots since the move.

I hope you enjoyed a good week too :-)

Amber 

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