Week Six ~ Fire Trucks and Other Fun

 I decided to include these "cheat" photos from Sunday afternoon of the boys enjoying the early evening sunshine and some totem tennis in the front yard.

Munchkin's facial expressions are priceless!

 For the first time in a long time we were able to attend homeschool group as a play date was organized at our favourite local park.

The weather improved as the day progressed so we ended up staying all day and the boys really enjoyed the chance to climb and play and socialize with their friends.

 We did a little bit of bird watching on the way home.

 Saturday morning we happened upon the local fire station open day so we enjoyed an impromptu family excursion.

All three boys enjoyed the chance to explore the fire truck, use the fire hose, and ask the firemen a million questions.

 Our selection of read alouds for the week ~ the boys have discovered Peter Rabbit!!

 Just for fun ~ a visual example of why we only use Crayola textas in our house!

Week 5 ~ Evaluating

Week five was spent re-evaluating life and our homeschool journey after a wonderful weekend away at a Christian homeschool conference. I attended with my best friend and we enjoyed a weekend of wonderful speakers, great Christian fellowship, delicious food, and leisurely child free time.  The photo above was taken at the little Thai restaurant where we had dinner Saturday night.  I couldn't resist a photograph of my fancy Coke!!

 The beginning of the week we were blessed with some wonderful weather so we made the most of it and got outside to spend some extended time playing at the park.

 New learning resources are always great fun.

Munchkin enjoyed matching these cards... he was matching the pictures of course and not the letters in the word... but it was still fun to watch the learning processes begin.

 Mathematics is always MUCH more fun when you can involve some Lego!

 Just an example of how we work through spelling each week.

I choose a list that I've sourced online and then Monster is quizzed orally each day Monday through Thursday.  As he dictates the spelling to me I write it down on the paper.

Finally on Friday he takes a written test.

Munchkin is getting used to our system for paper cutting.

I ask that he uses a bowl to catch all the little pieces of paper.

Week Four ~ Lego Excursion

The weather was beautiful after LOTS of rain in previous weeks so we spent as MUCH time outside as we possibly could.  Thus my selection of photos for this week focuses on our outdoor learning time!

 All three boys LOVE playdough so they were thrilled when I set up the table for them and let them have free play for the afternoon.

 The Black Cockatoos were in the neighbourhood so we spent a good part of one morning sitting outside watching them in the large tree across the road and trying desperately to get good photos of them.  They were doing a pretty good job of hiding unfortunately...

 Our week included a trip into the city for Towers of Tomorrow with Lego Bricks at one of the museums!  It is AWESOME to be able to attend events like this DURING the school term as opposed to school holidays.  We were the only people there for part of the time so instead of only getting an hour we were allowed to stay for over three!

 Although Munchkin is very good at building and creating with the small Lego he was thrilled to see a whole section of just Duplos and he spent a lot of time creating!  He was rather distressed that they didn't have certain colours in the right sizes that he NEEDED for what he was building though.

 The replica buildings/towers were AMAZING!

And each one had a sign next to it telling what tower/building it was, the scale, how many bricks were used and total hours it took to build!

There were specialty Legos created for this project because the colours did not previously exist! It was AMAZING and we hope to attend one more time before the exhibit closes!

Monster and Monkey's creations!

After the Legos we decided to have a look at another exhibit called Toys Through Time!

I wasn't sure what the boys would think but they seemed to like it!

Munchkin found the wooden ferry and train set and pretty much spent all his time there.

I browsed some of the displays of the old toys...

While the big boys discovered the magnetic noughts and crosses game!

All in all it was a wonderful week and we enjoyed the opportunities we had to do some learning out and about!!