Biking

What a beautiful afternoon for a bike ride. For some reason, today flowed really nicely, and somehow we ended up with dinner prepped and the house relatively tidy AND schoolwork done (!) so we had time to just go for a bike ride. Gosh it felt good to have the wind in my face and the sky all around. I haven't been getting out for walks too often with my big heavy belly waddle, but the bike held me up nicely. A lovely moment. Even if my bum is a bit sore ;0)

Rugby

This winter, the boys did rugby and absolutely LOVED it. They had a ball (haha) even though they didn't win too many games. It was really good for them in all the ways team sports are and I'm grateful to Matt for giving up his time to take them to games and training and to our tireless coaches who were just brilliant with the kids. Well done boys, awesome effort!

Nature Study: Mangroves to Mountains

This term, we've been learning all about our local area and following the water from the bay up towards its source. It has been great to have all these beautiful days out exploring nature, which is one of the main reasons we home educate. The children have done some academic work but the main thing is immersion and experience and exploration. The dogs who have joined us have had a ball too!

Exploring the mudflats and its creatures:

Learning about local wildlife:

Learning how the bay and islands were formed:

Landscape painting:

Making a model of an Indigenous fish trap:

Spotting birds and crabs in the mangroves:

Playing "Aboriginal Camp" - the BEST day according to all players!

Wild adventuring up the river - we've got fresh water!

A day at the dam; a beautiful peaceful spot.

Kees's swan photo:

It has been a fantastic experience and I can't wait to head up the mountain next term!

Homeschool Highlights

Twas another beautiful spring week here! Here's another little collection of photos to celebrate our last week or more of learning.

The toys did skip counting in cute voices:

We had some amazing creative entries in play dough Masterchef:

We learnt from our local historical society:

We visited Charlie's garden, which we all reckon should be on Gardening Australia!

We met our adorable new friend, Miss I:

And found out a few unpleasant punishments in the "old school". I hope the kids got an appreciati for how good they've got it!

And Jimmy is showing confidence with the "Sh" sound:

Hope you had a great week too! Xoxo

Homeschool Highlights This Week

We had a fun time as usual this week with a variety of activities. Just thought I'd post a few of these to give you guys an idea of what we're getting up to during the week. I've been meaning to do it for aaaages, so let's start now! Xx

Monday: Getting started on our four times tables and skip counting songs. Love "The Four Legged Zoo" on YouTube. After that we went to Osprey House for some great educational stuff about mangroves and rivers, in the beautiful mangrove forest.

Tuesday: Watercolour landscape painting with Jo and our Journey group park play.

Wednesday: TLC co-op sings an amazing four-part harmony song and we learn more about Captain Cook and work on skipping tricks. And off to the beach in the arvo.

Thursday: It's Matt's birthday! We spent the day getting ready then celebrated with the folks for dinner - thanks Nanny! Kees baked the cake by himself and Jimmy decorated it. That's me off the hook for every future birthday 😊

Friday: Some more schoolwork and some crystal-growing science first. Then, to go with our studies on Captain Cook: sailing! And then rugby. And there was lots more! 

Now I'm tired after thinking about all that! I had no idea how much we had done this week. Well, time to get to work planning and preparing next week....

Love Cath xoxo

Our New Caravan! Maiden Voyage to Mapleton

On the weekend, we went to Mapleton to test out our new caravan. We got there at about 3 o'clock and we set up our caravan and Mum and Dad had a cup of tea. We were really excited to have a Milo after the hour and a half trip. We had a lot of Milos on our weekend. We went to a park that had a skate park but we didn't bring our scooters so we pretended we already had scooters and we ran up the jumps and that. 

At night we played we played Uno and Jimmy nearly won and Kase had so many cards because he got heaps of Draw 2 and Draw 4. We had tuna pasta for dinner. Then we had a hot shower and got ready for bed. It was so comfy and cosy in our bed.

The next day we had more Milo and bacon and eggs. After that, we went to play in the leaves and I loved it. Then we went to a boring walk at Kondalilla Falls. The only good part was climbing on the rocks. At least we got to go the pub for lunch. 

And then later, Mum and Dad made us go on another boring walk but we did get to go to the skate park again and we had sausages and coleslaw for dinner. I like Mapleton.

Easter

I hope you had a wonderful Easter! Now that I'm having a little blogging frenzy, I'll post a few photos from our recent Easter which involved lots of cuteness, fun, anxiety about perpetuating a lie (about the Easter bunny) and me trying really hard to be relaxed about the amount of chocolate being consumed. I think I must've had a sort of panicky grimace on my face. And then Matt and me eating lots of chocolate when the kids were in bed. 

Look at these cuties playing hide the eggs and not eating any because they had to wait for Easter. So much joy! And delayed gratification! That's character building, right?

Our decorated Easter table:

Jimmy gets SO into Easter, I just love it.

All the gorgeous cousins:

Our Easter cake. Nanny Alison loved it and raved about it until she found out that Matt had baked it. Then she said, "Well actually, Matt, if I was going to say one thing, it could have been a bit more moist. But other than that you did a good job."