Friday 30th June

Today our focus was end of Financial Year.  This meant I had to be in the office and the kids worked on their own individual projects.

These included playing in their new cubby (roof top of garden shed!!), building a rocket, riding bikes, playing cricket.

Then I had to go to town with Jess as she needed her eyes checked out.  Everyone else had Table time activities.  Josh helped with the younger ones and finished a writing assignment for his history.  Daniel had a notebook page to create on the Prime Minister – Mr Howard.  Josh helped him with this.  Nomi and Daniel both had a nature journal page to do.  Daniel asked what was that bird this morning so Pete and Daniel checked out the bird book.  Daniel drew the bird, and wrote its name in his nature journal.  Nomi created a notebook page on a bird she kept in a cage for a few days until it was ready to fly – it ended up dying but she wanted to remember it by a notebook page / journal entry.  I also had various worksheet activities for them – one they had to finish drawing an underwater scene (showing some great find they discovered while scuba diving), another was a scissors practice – cutting out a dinosaur body parts and then gluing them to make a collage/dinosaur.  They didn’t get to the third one.

Jess’ results show that she is short sighted and needs glasses.  She chose some very classy frames – it is great to see that she knows what suits her and what she likes. 

We then did the weekly chores around town and grocery shop.

I have been questioning myself as we come to the end of a science unit on cells (based on a read aloud) as to the amount of stuff that has been really learnt.  As we drove around town Jess made a comment that if she continues to put moisturising cream on her skin it will take about 30 days before it gets smooth.  I thought she had been listening to advertising until she went on, “It takes 30 days for new skin cells to come to the surface.”  How cool is that!  So regardless of what is in our notebooks I am assessing our success in our “cell” unit by the awareness both girls have of their world around them.  

Saturday – Sport and Friends

Our Friday night movie, last night, was “Ella Enchanted” which was another take on the Cinderella story.  It was a bit more Fairy godmother / spells / giants / ogres etc then we usually go for but we thoroughly enjoyed it.  While we were driving into town we were talking about people making other people do things and it was a perfect lead in taken from our movie.  You can’t make people do anything – it has to come from their hearts. 

Daniel is warming to cricket and not so overwhelmed by the group of unknown boys.  Today he was really disappointed that cricket finishes next week.  He also said a cheerful, loud and confident hello to a boy in his cricket group while downtown.  This was a big breakthrough especially for his speech.  I also noticed that he asked one of the fathers something while playing cricket and they understood him – this is such an improvement in his speech in just 8 weeks as at the beginning of the season none of the dads could understand him.

We had a “Ladies Afternoon Tea” here this afternoon.  The kids helped me clean up the house, prune the pot plants and sweep down the verandas.  The girls helped set out the china and lay the table.  We all sat out on the lawn and the kids played in the cubby with the few kids that came along too.  It was a lovely relaxing afternoon.