Awards We've Received

The Sunshine Award is awarded to bloggers whose positivity & creativity inspires others in the blogworld!!

Awarded By:

My Bilingual Boys

CreativOnline wants to reward friends blogs with a lot of creativity and love to share all their works.

Awarded By:

Miescuelita Montessori

The Lemonade Stand Award is awarded for being a blogger who shows great attitude and gratitude.

Awarded By:

Chasing Marcus

My Bilingual Boys

Counting Coconuts

Crafts and Art for Children



Many thanks to all of you!

Places We've Been Featured

Places We've Been Featured

Captain Crabclaw's Crew Lapbook - Part 2

Today we made our own aged treasure maps, firstly by scrunching paper, then coating it with a used teabag, allowing to dry and then finishing off with the map drawing itself. Whilst the maps were drying we looked on the internet at various treasure maps and discussed the symbols used.

We made pencil flags, such a simple little print, colour and stick activity but the kids love their new pirate pencils. We found this activity here. B7 then proceeded to tackle a few mazes, spot the difference, a counting in 5's maze and a joke decoder, which he enjoyed.

B7's finished Treasure Map


K4's finished Treasure Map

We made a start on the Alphabet Treasure Hunt activity that was in the activity booklet the kids received at the book launch. They had to hunt for words/images from the story to go along with each letter of the alphabet. This will no doubt take a couple more read throughs to get it completed. We began with them listening for appropriate beginning sounds and then tried having them say stop whenever they felt like it and telling me the letter sound of what they stopped on. A simple activity for B7 but quite a challenge for K4 so that was somewhere in the middle there.

We also spent some time coming up with their own funny animal crews for their pirate ships. I won't share any more details on that just yet as I plan on building on that activity a little.

Neil Gaiman's Blueberry Girl

Captain Crabclaw's Crew Lapbook - Part 1

Yesterday we had the opportunity to attend a book launch at our library. It was for the new book Captain Crabclaw's Crew, by Frances Watt and David Legge. The authors themselves did a live 'performance' of the story for a very large group of children. The launch was put on in conjunction with The Little Big Book Club.

Sorry for the photo glare, it's nearly dark here. I'll try to remember to take another shot during the day.

The kids received an Activity Book each, put out by The Little Big Book Club. So we decided to make the most of it today and began work on a Captain Crabclaw's Crew Lapbook.

We began by reading the story yet again! Whilst I read B7 and K4 drew images from the story. They then painted with watercolours and this has become the cover page of their lapbooks.

B7 sketching.


B7 painting, his attention to detail is developing nicely.

B7's finished lapbook cover.

K4 sketching whilst I read.

K4 finishing off with some water colour.

Her finished lapbook cover.

We then made pirate hats and patches and played pirates for a while.

B7 made a start on a word search that was included in the activity book.

We brainstormed a list of Pirate Words.

These will be made into a Pirate Word Bank to go into our Writing Center for future use.

After brainstorming our list of words we decided to write a. "If I Was A Pirate" story.

We made glittery pirate hat shape book covers.

And completed the pages of the shape books.

B7's story reads as follows:

If I was a pirate I would sail the seven seas.

If I was a pirate I would drink beer with my crew.

If I was a pirate I would look for treasure on an island.

If I was a pirate I would buy lots of Lego with my treasure.

The End.

K4's Story reads,

If I was a pirate I would wear my eye patch and my pirate hat.

If I was a pirate I would go looking for treasure. I would look down in a hole on the beach.

If I was a pirate I would drink lemonade and eat cucumber and ham sandwiches.

If I was a pirate I would go to bed on my ship to have a sleep.

If I was a pirate I would play with my pirate fairy toys.

The End.

We'll keep going with some pirate related activities next week.

In the meantime, check out these sites for pirate stuff:

First School - Pirates

Scholastic - Pirate Activities

Books, Books, Books

We had a mini bookfest today whilst Cbub napped. He obviously slept for a while as we were quite surprised how much reading we had gotten through. Or should I say how much reading aloud mummy had gotten through!


We hit it off with a retell of Hans Christian Andersen's, The Little Mermaid, followed by a few picture books K4 borrowed from our recent library visit. Some of which were quite good, like The Happy Prince and The Baby Dances and some of which were awful. I'll leave the titles of those out though shall I ;)

Also got in a couple of chapters of Roald Dahl's, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the entire Animal section in The Puffin Book of Fantastic First Poems, some of these are really very funny. Although K4 wasn't impressed by some of the authors messing with traditional nursery rhymes.

K4's Underwater Little Mermaid Drawing, complete with Jellyfish.

B7's Little Mermaid sketch.

Don't you love his little crab!

Getting Into Montessori

Well very slowy anyway. I've been doing loads of reading on Montessori lately. Even though I have been aware of Montessori and the philosphies, I haven't looked much further than that. I'd like to implement some of the concepts into our home.

Even the simple ones like Tray Based and Floor Mat Activities to help keep an ordered work/play space. We tried many Easter themed Tray Activities this year and they worked very well.

This morning, I had the kids help me empty our Children's Picture Book Shelf. It is far too small now anyway for all of the books we have, they are always piled high on top of it and on various tables around the house as the shelf has just become to small. (I am waiting for some floor to ceiling book shelves ;-) ) So for now the Picture Books are hiding in various spots we could find available around the house.

I wanted a shelf area for Cbub, now that he is well and truly on the move he can at least choose items from the lowest and possibly the second shelf for himself. Plus it won't be long before he is up and walking and by having this routine in place now he'll be so used to it by then that the shelf will (should) be second nature to him.

These are items taken straight from his toy box, but there is more than enough on their to entertain him for a day or so. I will change the items around every other day depending on if we have spent much time at home or not. (with 2 bigger kids, we are out and about a bit with their activities)

It allows for a quick and easy tidy up as well, each time he goes down for a nap. As opposed to having the majority of a very large toy box tipped and strewn out around the house.

As soon as he woke from his morning nap we showed him the shelf and he is content to go there now when looking for something new to do. He particularly loves the basket of wooden cube blocks, they are very fun to pull out have them crash onto the tiles.

Our favourite book at the moment is Froggy Green and K4 particularly likes it as she can read it to Cbub.

Now the next big one is to set up a similar concept for the big kids in a spare linen cupboard I have here. That one will take me a while, but I will come back and show you when I'm done.

Playground Fun

We played at the park this afternoon with a nice size group (about 8 families in all). We've been so busy this term with organised activities that we've really missed our park play. The kids climbed, ran races, had bike and scooter races and even organised (or at least tried) their own soccer match.

Happy Mothers Day 09

Gee whizz I really am the luckiest mum in the world.

Aren't they just a gorgeous bunch!

It was lovely day today, beautiful weather, a yummy breakfast with Grandma and the family then we headed off down the coast to Kingscliff to see Nanny for the rest of the day.

The kids made the most of the glorious weather and spent some time on the beach. My guess is that was the last beach trip for the season. However we did little C a play as well, so that was his first real beach experience. The sun was a little glary for him and it doesn't help that he won't leave his hat on, but he really had fun.

Weekly Wrap Up - 9th May 2009

Week 2 of dance lessons saw us with a change of teacher. K4 was ecstatic as now we have a lady, B7 not so, but he still had a blast anyway.

We revisited the rock climbing wall this week, after nearly a year (wow how quickly that has gone). It certainly pays to keep this activity up, both of them had lost some confidence but they did regain it as the afternoon progressed.

Soccer, our regular Saturday morning thing, now that the season is in full swing. Thankfully B7 just loves his soccer games and so far we have been very pleased with the club and the way they handle everything with the children.

Our dear friends have this super cool billy cart (be watching for some videos) and we had a whole bunch of friends here on the weekend, did they have the best time or what on this thing! I think we'll have to put our order in for one of those billy carts *wink wink*