Caz
Monday started 2 weeks of school holidays, so I have all three of my hobbits home and wanted to do some fun stuff.  In my last post I shared a few things I have planned, today was to be Sea World.  And then, last night,  the weather turned dicey.. and this morning ... the sky fell. It's still falling.  It's actually predicted to keep falling and finally start letting up on Thursday.  So, mother nature is officially off my christmas card list this year!  

This morning we all got geared up, packed a few snacks and while it had been cloudy all morning,  the rain started almost the minute we got into the car.  So we detoured to the local coffee shop where we had coffee (ok, hot choccies & minicino's for the kids ;) and discussed alternatives.  We could try to book into the planetarium, but that is iffy without trying to book in advance.. or we could head out to the Ipswich Art Gallery for their Wild Thing exhibit and workshops.  The art gallery won out  :)

Amazingly we got a parking spot just out front, which was great as it was really raining now lol.  They had a rock climbing wall set up .. outside.. lol.  We took a pass on climbing up the wet rock wall, but the cupcake decorating workshop was pretty popular with the boys!   Then we went in and managed to score spots in the balloon animal workshop.. we made dogs hehehe.  The boys were a bit meh! that we didn't get into the one after.. THEY made pirate cutlasses!  *sigh*  Such is life.

 Merry showing off his creation.
Merry's mini 'wild thing' hehehe

Balloon animals!

It was a fairly popular activity, which I'm sure the rain helped with ;) so we actually had to wait about 10minutes before going upstairs to the children's gallery because they were at capacity.  They had a great 'hill' built in on big corner of the room where the kids could climb, roll down, bounce on these big squishy things, wear costume bits & pieces etc.  Then they got to make their own mini 'wild things' out of paper cups, straws, crepe paper streamers and all sorts of things.

After we got home, some baking was in order so Merry helped me make corndog muffins.. which are entirely gone less than 6hours later!  The weather is supposed to continue along this dreary vein for at least another whole day, so I'm planning a day at home tomorrow.  There may be fort building, movie watching, and popcorn making :)  And probably a bit of mom looking longingly at the wine cabinet before the day is over LOL!
Caz
So it's been a fairly quiet week or so on the home schooling front.  I had my Uni exams last Friday & Monday, and am pretty sure I thoroughly rocked both of them.. but I particularly owned the math ;)  Feelin' great about it, so I can't wait to get my results!   Study for all of that took up a fair chunk of time, so if Frodo wasn't doing schoolwork, *I* was!  

Frodo has done a lot of work on Skwirk.com... he's thrilled because he is up to over 500 points :) He's been  learning about rain-forests and electricity, among other things.  In math he's been working on improper fractions & mixed fractions on skwirk, and division with MUS Delta.  We've continued on with a bit of space investigation, since Frodo was so impressed with the Transit of Venus earlier this month.  Comets and Meteroids and Galaxies, oh my! ;)   

Frodo also learned abit about how light reacts to water and spent one of his mornings up every couple of minutes to do a new experiment lol.  The old spoon in a glass of water, to show how water distorts how things appear when you view them through water.  Here he is doing another one... he was to put a coin in a clear, flat bottomed bowl and then back away until he couldn't see the coin.  Then his trusty lab assistant (me ;) was to pour a cup or so of water into the bowl to see how it affected his view of the coin.  He had a good time testing all the different things the site told him about.



He also got the urge to cook something new, so he got out the kids' cookbook and decided zucchini fritters was the go!  He made his own grocery list (and I made mine for the week lol, might as well kill two birds with one stone!)  When we got to the store, he was in charge of getting his ingredients & ticking them off the list.  Once home in the kitchen, he grated all the zucchini & cheese, mixed in the other items and cooked them himself.  I had to help flip them, some of them were tricky little suckers and he flipped a couple out onto the stove hehehe.    They were QUITE tasty little snacks indeed.


We also did some rice crispy treats, but no pics of those.. they weren't around long enough lol.  

The younger boys started school holidays today, so it's two weeks of freedom :)  I'm looking at a visit to the Ipswich Art Gallery, for their Wild Things children's exhibit.  They've got some fun activities on that the boys should enjoy.  And I'm planning to book in at the Sir Thomas Brisbane Planetarium for one of their cool kids shows, and since it is located at the Brisbane Botanical Gardens we'll make it a day and wander the Childrens' Hide & Seek Trail and maybe pack a picnic.   There also has to be a Sea World trip, probably this weekend!, as the Dino Adventure has opened and we must see it before our VIP passes expire on the 30th!  LOL  Hopefully there will be a day or two of down time in there as well!


Caz
Last week was pretty awesome... and nobody lost any teeth even lol.   Monday & Tuesday were pretty typical days at home.  Would you look what I found under my desk? Two little piles of cute!

Frodo & I worked on the usual stuff... he's gotten into fractions so we dug out our little bucket 'o fraction circles to have a look at equivalent fractions and how to reduce/simply fractions.  He seems to have caught on pretty well although I think he had a handle on the basics of what fractions are etc from real life math activities. (ie, Frodo you may have 1/4th of the yummy little garlic aioli pizza bread.  and that type of thing :)

He also worked on skwirk.com every morning for a while.. he is motivated by the fact that he can earn points, and after having a certain number of points, he can 'buy' an actual toy that they will mail to him.  Bribery! hehe   He likes to do one or two activities from each section... his favourite this week was the tail end of the unit on Gold.  It had lots of interesting info on the Gold fields of Australia, how they mine the gold (both then & now) and what it can be used for etc.   There was a unit on the safety of the mines and disasters that have happened like the Beaconsfield mine collapse.  One of his assignments was to pretend he was a safety inspector at a mine and to write up the types of things HE would look for.  He also thought they should have sent the trapped miners down some sort of video game to keep them entertained for the 2 weeks they were underground lol.  

Wednesday is when the OUT of this world part started... we ALL went to see the Transit of Venus :D  Sam & Merry stayed home from school to go with us, this is a once in a lifetime chance for them to see it so no way was I having them miss out! Merry was utterly enamored of the giant LEGO telescope.  Pete at AstroPete's Cafe said he brings it, and other telescopes out on their Friday & Saturday night Astronomy nights, so we're definitely going to go over one night and see what's out there.    We got some of the Solar glasses so the boys could safely look up at the sun to view the transit, but the best part was getting to look through the telescopes of the people who set up outside for a really good look!  (Thanks Angie :)   Here's Sam showing off his very cool Transit of Venus collectors card (which his oh so very fashionable solar glasses on his head hehe)   It made for a really fun and interesting day and lots of questions... so we had to hit Professor Google when we got home to get some answers!

 
 Frodo & I had to do a bit of shopping on Thursday, so we popped out for a cuppa (and hot chocolate) and he asked if he could go browsing at EB.  So, off down the hall he went feeling pretty independent hehehe...It's not that far, and I can see the entrance, so I didn't have a nutty about it lol.
See him way down there?

Nothing like the bright red banners of an EB SALE!!! to draw in a little computer geek in the making (and I mean that geek in a good way!)


 We also finished up our unit of History Odyssey on the Ancient Egyptians.  Frodo has enjoyed them, as he really does think all things Egypt are pretty cool, but I think it'll be nice to move on to something else now!  We made a little file folder game of Senet, which ancient Egyptians used to play.  Each person has 5 pieces and you throw the sticks and move depending on how many marked sides are up.  We added a bit of fun by using marshmallows lol (we didn't have black & white beans as suggested).... and when you hopped off the board, you got to eat your piece hehehe.  Whoever won, got to eat ALL the remaining pieces. We elected to put them in a cup of hot chocolate though.

Thursday we had to bake cupcakes... little brother Merry had his 6th birthday! and we took treats in to his class.  Frodo is getting pretty good in the kitchen if I do say so myself!  Nan & Grandpa came out on the weekend to celebrate... and Mum made a cracker of a castle jelly mold!  Hidden in the jelly here & there... were little lego 'dudes'  which were a huge hit all around.  Actually... I think we olds enjoyed the jelly as much as the kids did ;)

 
Isn't that just cool as???


Off to enjoy the crisp winter afternoon & pick the schoolies up!

Caz
Last week was a pretty busy week at the Hobbit house.  DH happened to score Monday off work, so we did a stealth trip down the coast to Movie World for a family day :D  The day was pretty good, not much int he way of crowds at all, which was nice!  There was drama, which I'll get to in a moment, but we had a pretty good time.   Here are me & Strider with my all time favourite cartoon hero, Marvin the Martian hehe. The kids were not interested in walking over to get a photo with the characters soooo..

A very rare photo of me & Strider ;)  Go me, just a smidge under 10kilo's gone! and 7 for Strider!

The characters came to them ;)  Despite his misgivings about people in large headed costumes, Merry got over his hesitance to smile for the camera... sort of lol. 

We had to wander a good bit into the park to get cash for a locker, as the 'banks' atm was out of service... this was probably a good thing (drama reference) as Sam got to check out the Batmobile & Batbikes,  as well as ride the Scooby Doo Spooky Coaster!!!  Hubby said it was very full on, but Sam was just thrilled with it and had a blast.  

Before going to get a locker for our sneaked in lunch ;) we stopped and had a go on the grown up roller coasters... everyone got to drive their own except Merry, who was quite happy to ride with one of us.  

THEN *it* happened.  Sam has an absolute fascination of all things small and his favourite souvenir ever is the pressed penny.   So we said YES at about 1115 that he could have a bloody penny, so he'd stop nagging us.  Oi vey, was that a bad call.  The pressing of the penny went well enough... but when the penny dropped into the chute Sam hopped down to grab it... and gravity took over.  The crank handle for these things is some type of cast iron, so heavy as... the penny drops out when the handle is at the top of it's turn (bad bad bad!) so just as soon as Sam got his hand in the chute to get the penny, the iron handle swung down and slammed him right in the side of the mouth!  OMG the blood... Frodo came unglued,as he does at the sight  of blood, and I had to pull him up short as he was frantic!   A security guard helped us get to the first aid building where they cleaned him up, gave him panadol at our request, and an ice pack to help with the pain.  After about half an hour, we were on our way... Sam did NOT want to leave despite the bash.  We thought a bit of quiet time was in order so he could gather his wits and recover a bit so we went to eat lunch.  It was then that I discovered his tooth appeared to be sheared completely in two from side to side *sigh*  Called, made dental appt for the next morning but he STILL wanted to stay a while longer so we soldiered on.

Carousels were ridden :D  Even by hubby & I ... Merry was having nothing to do with getting on top of a wile E. Coyote so we rode in the carriages.

After a circuit through Looney Toons kids world, we decided that was about enough.  Here is Sam after his altercation with the Press a Penny machine.  He was upset that he had to miss a 2nd day of school to go to the dentist... but as she HAD to pull that tooth it was non negotiable.  Since the poor kid already went through the trauma of the numbing (and so did I @@) I had her pull the front tooth with the root canal that just would.not.let.go!    He did about as well as an 8yr old having multiple needles stuck in his mouth is going to do I think.  Half an hour later, he was fine and talking about the LOOT the tooth fairy (mum, he knows but likes to pretend hehe) was going to bring him for those two teeth lol.  Thankfully our dentist rocks, and the whole thing only cost me 30bucks... would have been 150 even after the insurance, but they discount regular customers heavily.  Yeah, they know how to inspire customer loyalty!

Amazingly Mr. snaggletooth was ready to go back to school Wednesday! I really thought he should take another day, but he insisted, so I sneaked to chat with his teacher to let her know to call me if he was at ALL 'off'.  But he did fine... which is good since we would have had to miss James & the Giant Peach!

Frodo & I went in to see a theatre production with our home schooling group... I really enjoyed it, but Frodo was a little distressed by all the LOUD bits unfortunately.  So he spent a lot of the show with fingers in ears muffling the noise.. but he still managed to laugh a bit ;)   I now know to get some noise muffling earplugs for future events like this!  For keeping calm, even when I could tell he was having trouble, I rewarded him on the way home with an iced chocolate from Gloria Jeans, and a sushi roll lunch.  

He now wants to read the book (yeah, bad home ed. mum... I should have gotten it before the show but I did not :P) 

Of course, that wasn't ALL that happened in our week.  I have tendonitis in my ankle/foot according to my doctor (how does one get tennis elbow in their FOOT!?!?! lol)  Too much driving and having foot in one position apparently!  I had a massive incident at work which culminated in me going in Friday and putting in my two weeks notice... so OH you bet I'll be hitting the frugal mama blog scene for ideas to stretch the budget!  and on top of all that... my birthday was Thursday :)  Happy birthday to me!  I was given a lovely coffee gift bag my hubby made up,  MIL brought cheesecake, macaroons (OMG YUM), and Lindt ball chocolates (one day off the healthy eating plan won't kill me, right??? ;)  as well as a cool hand-knit scarf that I love, an adorable pewter owl necklace (I lurve owls), and some gorgeous tiny blown glass perfume bottles with lovely essential oil perfumes in them!  Plus cash... cash is always a fun birthday pressie lol (never the wrong size! might get a new pair of jeans for myself since all mine are too big now ;)

So.. it was a mad crazy eventful week for us!  (oh, I forgot to mention the TWO uni assignments that were due!  one being submitted even as we speak... which are the reasons I didn't make it in Friday to post lol) This week will be just as crazy busy... Wednesday is the Transit of Venus... so we're all about science until then, googling, video watching, learning all sorts of cool stuff about Venus and why this is such a rare phenomenon!   Wednesday I think we might be playing hooky from school ;)  so that the other two boys can go with us to the Astronomy cafe to view the Transit through filtered telescopes.. it's a once in a lifetime event ... too good to pass up for school if you ask me!

However, for now?  I have a mild case of the flu that is somewhat kicking my backside... so now that Frodo is all done with schoolwork... to bed with me.