Horse Riding Experience

We, well I watched at least, enjoyed our first horse riding experience yesterday. Actually first for B, second for K. The kids have all had their fair share of 'party ponies' but real fair dinkum horse riding has eluded us until now.

A couple of months ago one of our very dear homeschooling friends stumbled across Janelle and her horse riding school.  We were lucky enough to spend an afternoon with Janelle and her horses to celebrate R's 7th Birthday.

Since that experience the girls haven't stopped talking about and asking when they could go horse riding again. Yesterday was that day! This time Sig organised it for any and all homeschoolers that wanted to join us. Breaking everyone into smaller manageable groups. Although after yesterday we realised that the groups probably need to be slightly smaller again.

Janelle, is amazing with the children. I guess someone that loves horses as much as she does would find it relatively easy to tranfer her skills used with the horses across to the children.

On arrival they spent a quite a bit of time getting to know their horses, grooming, what's involved in actually taking care of a horse. How to saddle and get their horse all prepared to ride. K mounted hers like a pro. B was excited, but with some trepidation, after all they are full size horses and neither of the children have really been up that close and personal with horses before. They were both all full of smiles though!

They moved onto the arena area where they practised their horse handling skills. Control, stopping, starting, steering and communicating with their horse.

The trot always evoked giggles from all children, their little heads bobbing up and down, thankfully all of the horses knew exactly what was expected of them.

The first words out of B's mouth when we he returned me, "When can we do that again?" I guess that answers any questions I had!

Life Be In It Funworks

Over the past six weeks the kids have been participating in weekly Funworks activities wth the Logan Home Schoolers group.

Initially I was somewhat dubious about this program, we've done our fair share of "kids fun sports" and none of them have been overly brilliant.

This time however, things were different, I guess the fact that both B and K are considerably older now, probably had a part to play. But this experience has been fabulous for them.

So much so in fact that we begged to organise another block in Term 3.

The coach is amazing with the children, firm, but fun. Just what a group of rambunctious children need!

The fun was so varied, with each week being different to the one prior.

They experienced many traditional games, like Tug o War, Tunnel Ball and Sack Races.

This gigantic ball had everyone giggling with delight. 

How on earth are we going to hold that up, is what's surely going through their heads.

Oh well, let's just roll it all over our bodies then, for full sensory experience.

These four person walking planks were definitely an experience, to say the least. Most of the children need lots more practice at this one, walking together, working as a team and taking directions. But still they enjoyed it and always had smiles on their faces. A great way to really get to know your peers.

What about a spot of Egg Throwing and Catching. After they were shown the correct technique for 
safely catching a raw egg, they were set to it. Starting fairly close to each other at first,

With each correctly caught egg, in otherwords, an egg still intact, 

the opponents took a few steps apart and tried again.

Oh well I guess you couldn't keep throwing it forever! 

They really are laughing here, don't be too concerned.

Balancing batons or twirling sticks took a great deal more 

concentration than one would think.

There was so much going on each week, I certainly didn't cover everything with my snapshots. We are all excited to be returning to Funworks fun in a few weeks time.

Four!

Both kids have been enjoying Golf Lessons during the cooler months. This is B's second term and K's first. It is nearly a solid hour of complete and utter focus, except for the odd helping hand from the coach.

All of that concentration has to be good for the body, mind and soul.

Player of the Week

Soccer season is certainly in full swing this year and B is playing his first round of away games, now that he is in the under 9's league.

He is not an aggressive player by any means and does tend to hang around the edges a little but today he was in there, boots and all.

He is quite pleased with himself as he brought home the Player of the Week Trophy to proudly display here until next week's game.

Second season of soccer and it appears that he is still loving.

Highlights From The Week

~ B is 8 years ~

~ K is 5 years ~

~ Cbub is 15 months ~

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Cbub has had a full on practical life week. He's been a cleaning freak! Every single time I had something out, whether it was the vacuum, mop, duster, broom he wanted to use it. He actually did a pretty good job with a few things. He's been fairly proficient with a cloth and wiping up spills for a while now.

He loved mummy's new Enjo cloth. He thought his blocks needed a bit of sprucing up.



B went over the Blue Series beginning blends from Montessori For Everyone.




He whipped up this dinosaur whilst we were waiting at Daddy's office the other day. He's kinda funky don't you think? I could see him in a children's picture book story.



Cbub with the broom this time. He knew exactly what to do and wasn't fussed at all that it was far too big for him. He actually preferred using it on the carpet where it was so much harder to push...go figure!


Cbub finished off this little under water sticker collage, with blue chalk for the water, whilst B and K completed their Ocean Lapbooks we started whilst on holidays. (post to come on that)



He also had his first water colour painting experience this week. The first couple of minutes all he wanted to do was lick the brush and paint his hand but he eventually got the hang of it and completed 2 masterpieces. He knew when he needed more paint on his brush and kept asking for more.


We had our monthly Art Gallery workshop with our Homeschool Network. The exhibition this time around was inspired by all things Tartan. B created the tartan look collage, the photo really doesn't do it justice, all of that shiny card is quite impressive looking.

This workshop didn't really interest K so she chose just to complete a colouring page. They always have simple activities out that are related in some way to the exhibition, for any of the children that choose not to do the workshop brief.


It was a very creative, hands on week as we also had our monthly Bunnings Workshop. This was, however a bit of a let down. It sounded exciting, making treasure boxes. So lots of hammering with nails. However the timner used was very very hard and well let's just say that they didn't go together quite so well. Chalk it up to experience!


At kindy K has been reading Big Rain Coming by Katrina Germein. The teacher left the book out for inspiration and the kids were given these cool sparkly Aboriginal Dot Painting Stickers to create their own pictures.




There's always lots of box construction brought home from kindy, this time it was a rabbit, complete with fluff!



CBub helped B (well tried to knock it down anyway) build this tower out of his large kindy blocks.


He is still completely enthralled by Lego and especially all of the little men. He really feels he's won a prize when he stumbles across some lying around. Can't you tell, just have a look at his face.


We are also completing an ongoing group project with our Homeschool Network. Paper Mache Bucket Heads. This is where they currently are at. I need to try and find some time for us to complete at least another layer this weekend as on Monday we are painting them.

Everyone is eager to see the finished pieces.



Oh look here's my little house maid just finishing off a spot of dusting. Isn't he the sweetest!


And of course B had his weekly Tennis Lesson, he is improving week after week with his skills.

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To see more weekly updates from others visit the following blogs:

Homeschool Highlight Reel: Work and Play Day By Day

Learning Through Love: My Family My Forever

Preschool Corner: Homeschool Creations

Tot School: 1+1+1=1

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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.

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*

Sports Day

Yay! We participated in our very first Sports Day today. One of our nearby, long term home schooling groups has been organising and running a sports day for years. This year we went along with a group of our home school friends.

What a fabulous day. There were grins from ear to ear from both B7 and K4, they participated in absolutely everything and had a blast. I didn't count but at guess I would say there was about 50 children there, big enough to make it a great day, but not too big to take away the fun.

I only have one poor lonely photo to share though, my camera was full and I forgot :( I did borrow camera's though and everyone took photo's so as soon as I get copies I will share.