Mother nature has a twisted sense of humor!
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!
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Wrapping up term 2
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!


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An Outta This World week!
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!

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