First Aid, Pottery, Dancing & Samurai's

We've had a somewhat topsy turvy week here with the mess of the break in still being sorted. So we certainly didn't get to everything that was on the list, but you know what, that's life and life happens. Everyone has had many valuable learning experiences regardless.

At the beginning of last term B joined our newly formed local Emergency Services Cadets, so far he has thoroughly enjoyed the experience and is learning heaps along the way. Towards the end of the term he had the opportunity to sit for his First Aid Certificate, these were presented at this week's meeting. Loving that we now have someone in the house that is First Aid qualified!

Scratch got more of a workout this week, he began designing a Hobbit game. Typing practice is a regular thing here, yep even for my boys, just a great skill to have I think! He is very close to being done with MUS Fractions and has already made a start on Zeta, working in both books gives him a bit of break when the lessons get a little heavy going.

We reconnected this week with some lovely art teachers that we used to go to classes with a few years back. Their studio is a little out of the way for us but B gained so much from his time working with clay I really wanted the younger two to have that experience.

He began work on a report about Genghis Khan and continued to munch his way through The How To Train Your Dragon book series. He's nearly done, I think he will be heart broken when there are no more. We also started IEW's Fix It Grammar program this week. Grammar is a bugbear for me. I do see the value but really dislike the dry, drill and kill way that most programs teach the concepts. It's too early yet for any thoughts about Fix It so I'll save those for a few weeks time.

Miss K is plodding along with her academics, things don't come easily for her in this area, but she is making slow and steady progress. There's always read aloud practice and phonics work, she is working through MUS Beta at the moment and decided that she would tackle a Draw Write Now book I had here on the shelf. Not sure how long this interest will last. We have also recently begun Writing With Ease, to help her work on oral narrations.

Creativity is absolutely her thing, for the full 2.5 hours we were at the clay class she didn't flinch, complete focus. We were lucky enough to be given yet another hand designed bouquet from the garden this week and she literally spends hours upon hours on the trampoline.

C6's academic time is still very laid back and I try as much as I can to allow him to take some of the lead. I prepare items that I'd like him to look at and have a go at but he generally makes the choice on what he will actually do. So far he is grasping concepts with relative ease so this approach is working well for both of us.

The pool has well and truly gotten a work out this week. It's still quite chilly but you know kids!

We spent our entire last term with a focus on Knights so I really wanted the kids to understand some of what was going on in other parts of the world at around the same time. We began a brief intro to the Samurai by reading the applicable chapters in SOTW Book 2, checking our world map for place reference and printed off some of the mini booklets available here.

The Qld Fire & Rescue Service brought their smoke house (van) out to us and gave the group of 30+ kids an excellent Fire Safety Presentation.

Seriously I cannot believe it is this close to Christmas! We started a Christmas Around The World unit and will work on that once a week for the next 7 or so weeks. I needed something that had ALL of the prep work done so I headed to Teachers Pay Teachers and found quite a few different units on the topic. I ended up choosing two, one of which had a powerpoint included and the other had super cute journal pages that I knew I wanted to use. These units are aimed at young children, but we are still having fun with it.

Each week we talk about the different things that kids do from that chosen country, traditions that may be different to ours. Find the country on a map and look up Google Earth, listen to and sing traditional carols. We complete a journal page and a couple of simple crafts to go along with it all. A nice way to round out the year!

Last night we helped celebrate a special friends 40th Birthday at our closest German club. We had a blast and the kids had a fabulous night. Lots of dancing, massive meals, loads of people and lots and lots of noise!

And that about wraps up another week for us.

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