One could swear it was summer today.  It's not that hot (only about 85F ish), but that'll come in time.  One sure tell tale sign that spring is not long for this world, is when you take a drive and the landscape (fairly urban) is just dotted everywhere with the most amazingly vivid purple you can imagine.  Yep,  Jacaranda season has come to South East Australia.  Brisbane is particularly famous for our Jacarandas apparently (so sayeth the Wiki :) and when I went out yesterday to do a few errands I could see why!   THIS is what I saw everywhere I looked!   

 Isn't that colour just surreal?   They are huge trees.. and they flower naked so there is no green to compete with that stunning electric purple-blue.   Some people moan and whine because they make an equally stunning mess as they drop their flowers en mass (still beautiful if you ask me!) But I say they don't know how to appreciate life.  Jacarandas will be done flowering within a month, and a month or so with purple all over your grass, and the foot paths (step carefully! they get slippery) and then in one fell swoop you can sweep them up and be rid of them.  But for now... why not revel in the signpost that mother Nature has sent letting us know loud & clear that summer is on it's way!?  

The wheel of the year is turning far too rapidly towards summer for my taste,  so I think I'll stop & smell the jacarandas ;)

Today was a good day :D  Gotta love those.  On the 12th (2days ago) I placed an order for Frodo's Math U See Beta program, Sam's Primer set, and a nifty box to hold our blocks... the original cardboard one is a bit dodgy now.  And I like organized,  although I hold no delusion that it will last all that long!   Back to the topic,  I placed this order on the 12th, just after lunch.  I came wandering out of bed around 830 to find a parcel on my doorstep.   I am pretty sure MUS Australia has a time warp or a tardis in their warehouse.   Either way it was cool, because nothing motivates my kids like NEW school stuff.  I could barely get a cuppa coffee into me for all the nagging to watch the dvd and do a lesson!   They both loved it and Frodo had a look through some of the lessons and approved of the new and interesting looking stuff :)   Sam was just stoked to have the same thing has his big brother has!

I was slightly depressed because the spiffy box for our blocks won't be here for a day or two *sigh* The organizing geek in me pouts even as we speak.  *pout*  

Sam did a few pages of the writing readiness program I found, he's really loving it.   It started out with straight vertical lines to trace, then circles, then slanted lines in either direction, then humps, and U's.  It's going a LONG way towards getting him comfortable making the movements needed for real writing :)    After these first few packages of basics, he gets to move on to tracing more intricate things to work on his fine motor skills.  Samwise is all about the LARGE motor skills... he's forever running & climbing & kicking etc... piddly things like writing never interested him until now.  Although he does hoard the play doh when we make it! 

Speaking of doh :)  as part of our Halloween craft & fun, today we made salt dough ghosts!  The uber cool paper bag trees shall have to wait until after my trip to the craft store tomorrow (where there is conveniently enough, a 20% off storewide sale woot!).   We ended up not doing any of our lapbook pages today... we were just too into working with the clay and then painting our creations.  I realize I'm being a fail blogger, because I have no photos of these yet... but they aren't quite done.  Sorry, I couldn't help it.. I had to share the link!  

And TOTALLY not related to homeschooling, although I suppose it is as it's a fortnightly outing I take to keep myself sane lol... I had my nails done today lol.  I had them painted a nice deep purple, and my ring fingers have awesomely wicked spider webs with little redback spiders painted on them especially for Halloween :D   I tried to get a pic of that with my phone, but no dice.  Suffice it to say the web is silvery and the spider is creepy!   And the boys think their  mum is uber cool.

(have I started  a post with that title before? with all the sick this year, I'm not entirely sure.  If so, forgive my lack of creativity ;)  

I figure a few people probably started to wonder. I'm on what I hope will be my last round of antibiotics. I have been sick now for almost 4weeks... I know this because I got sick on a Saturday just before the belly dance school I attend started a 2week holiday, and last night I missed the 2nd class back. *sigh* I fear the mysterious world of veils will be lost on me next Monday (this is me being optomistic that I will even BE there Monday ;D Anyway... if this Augmentin doesn't kill me, (with it's headaches, dizziness & crampy guts), it will surely make me better ... or possibly turn me into a mutant. In the latter case, I have dibs on invisibility as a mutant power.

Schoolwise the monsters are having a good run so far this week! Frodo is doing a review mathbook (well the part he is doing right now is review, it probably gets harder :) until we get his new math program in. He's also been mad libbing like crazy, practicing his parts of speech. This week in science we are learning about Fungi! Tomorrow we start growing our own fungi (damp paper towel in a zippy bag + 1)slice of bread or 2) piece of vegetable) to see which grows mold first. I suppose I could just dig the ever present forgotten something from the bag of the fridge... but that doesn't 'really' count as a science experiment lol. We also read about the Babylonians and how they had the first written laws (the Hammurabi code) and how they worked out that the earth went around the sun in one year. They took that a bit further and divided that into 12 months..and then worked out how many days were in a month as well as that the day was 24hrs of 60minutes. I'm guessing they used different terminology of course, but Frodo thought it was very cool.  

Sam has been cruising through Headsprout episodes and acing the printing readiness program I found online (it's really more a series of worksheets... but program sounds much more flash hehe) It really is helping him though, because the other day I wrote his name and he copied it VERY WELL several times! And he's been practicing on our white board, since mum saw fit to score a package of crayola dry erase markers :D EIGHT colours of low odour, dry erase fun woohoo! He has not stopped writing since I got them, seriously.  

Today we started our Halloween lapbook project (which sadly I cannot find any info on the mama in the states who created it so I can't get permission to share it! waaaaaaaahhh) and I think the kids would have done the whole darn thing if I'd let them. As it was we talked about the history of Halloween & Samhain (and went through the whole pronunciation thing.. although far too many adults mispronounce Samhain so I should cut a 7yo some slack eh?... it's actually Sow-in for the non pagans about.. it's Gaelic I think?) and we learned some of the symbols of Halloween J Heaps of fun, and I have laid the project out so that it takes us right up to the 31st.

And totally unrelated to anything… we just scored a nice bit of cash back from the govt, so a trip to IKEA is in order! This weekend the boys will be spending Saturday night with their Nana & grandpa so we are sneaking to Ikea to buy them a Kura bed (to be used as a high bed, with bed underneath for Sam) and a new ‘theme’ bedding. We’re kinda hoping to find some rockin’ pirate themed stuff, or maybe castle/knight. The idea is Sunday afternoon when they come home, they find an AWESOMELY cool bedroom. I always wanted that bedroom when I was a kid, but mine was always boring and functional… this little bit of magic I can give to my kids I figure! Of course photos will be forthcoming.