This is why.....

Yesterday my gorgeous daughter decided to take it upon herself to teach her little brother to write words.
This is one of those ah-ha moments, which make this whole journey we are on worth it for me.  To see her love, patience and pride when he did it, and to see his pride and adoration of his big sister made me so proud of both my children.
How clever is my little boy :)

Sterryn :)

Samantha instructing..

The finished result.

So proud but still shy about his accomplishments :)

School is in and my children are curious......

All our local schools officially started back today.  I have seen numerous comments on my Facebook news feed from parents that are thrilled to have sent their little munchkins off to be dealt with by teachers after a long holiday.

Well, in our house no little munchkins have been sent off to school to be dealt with by a teacher, but we are celebrating. 
For us the start of school means that we now have beaches and parks that are empty, and are at our disposal during the day.  It also means that our Home school groups are starting up again, so we have Art groups and Play groups to look forward to.

We took full advantage this morning -  by getting out for a walk to our local shops, and taking the time to wander back past the local Marina.    The kids were thrilled to meet lots of the locals walking their doggies and were able to say Hi and pat everyone on the way past.  (Patting happened to the four legged variety only of course).
We ended up having a discussion about the tide and why it comes in and out each day.  It was the first time my two have seen a 'King Tide' and they were interested to know why the water was so far up the rocks.   This discussion ended up with the them showing me how fish can fly after we watched a good size fish jumping out of the water trying to catch the bugs on the surface.
It goes to show, even though we don't officially start school until next week in our house, learning never really stops when you have curious children. 




Blessings,
Sterryn

Having a rest.

The view from our rest stop :)

The water is normally about 10 feet from the top of the piles here, today maybe 3!

Love our local walks!

Wordless Wednesday - Tinkerbells retirement?

Samantha's 'Tinkerbell' (right) has been with her since she was 2.  Meet "Sophiebell" (left) who has joined our family in the hope that poor old Tinkerbell could have some days off (believe it or not they are the exact same toy!) - the reality is now we are carting around two toy cats everywhere we go ;)

Laminator's anonymous???

My hand is up, I can freely admit I have a problem!

I have an addiction to laminating. 
...
...
..Seriously!  


I even find myself wistfully wishing the slot was wider so i could laminate bigger stuff.    Probably lucky its not, because I tell you - even hubby's sandwich's wouldn't be safe from my addiction!

The worst part about this addition - I have actually run out of things to laminate now!  Nope, not joking!

The best part - our home school room is ready for the 2014 school year to start....

Everything is labelled with a plain (laminated) name tag and ready to go.  Only slightly annoying thing is that the walls seem very empty with all of last years things off them.  I am positive it won't take long to fill them up though - with something I can LAMINATE! 

See our cute little labels - awwww :)

Even the new Coconut Tree hasn't missed out.

So there are some new additions to our currently bare walls this year.  Some great ideas for Samantha.
I still want to do a word wall for her this year - for her sight words, but that will come as the year progresses.  At this stage she has a brand new spelling wall, and a Spanish section that will change each week.

Our spelling lily pads and Samantha's purple frog that will leap from pad to pad.

Spanish Words wall and one of our new inspirational quotes :)

And for both kids we have our 'I choose virtues' wall this year.  I have a programme that we will be following for this section and we will highlight a particular virtue for 3 weeks at a time.  The hope is that I can actually instill some lasting values as well as having some fun.

Virtues wall.

And much to his delight, Anthony has a wall this year.  We have our preschool wall for him.
It has a Calendar, yesterday, today, tomorrow chart, seasons and a weather chart.  It also has a special place for the letter and bible verses for the week.  All of these come from www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com.  Either free downloads from the site or part of the Letter of the Week curriculum that we are using with my big boy this year.

Calendar - loving the Velcro dots sooooo much!  (another addiction - sigh)

Preschool wall.

Anyway, that's all for now.  We are just waiting on our parcels of Start right books, stationary and Singapore Maths workbooks before I can complete Samantha's timetable (Anthony's is ready to go) and we are good to start.
Ooooh, I just had a brainwave - I should laminate Samantha's ballet certificates from last year.......

Sterryn

.......*skips away gleefully to the laminator*

Summer....

Funny that I choose to do this post when we have the worst weather of the summer happening outside!
Tomorrows forecast is for cyclone winds to hit in excess of 100kmph.  Sounds like a perfect day to be inside finishing up my laminating - or finding more to do...hehe.

We have been having a gorgeous first few weeks of 2014, and spending most of it outside in the sun.
Not counting our compulsory walking to and from bus stops, we are trying to get out and about each day.
It has helped hugely when I discovered this little gem last week.  Turns out part of our local marina development was to build a beach - yes I did just say 'beach'. 
So thank you Marina people.  We now have a beach less than 300 metres from our front door :)  The kids are loving it!  Still not 100% sure about swimming there yet, but we are making full use of the sand and opportunity to run around, build sandcastles and paddle!

Its quite steep - but doesn't seem to bother my monkeys :)

Perfect for digging in..

Our house is right through the trees...

Loving it!

 Beach visits are not the only things we have been up to the past few weeks.
We have also been out bush walking with the kids.  There are some lovely walks around our area.  How lucky are we!
 

 

On the days we don't get 'out and about' properly, we are hanging around home taking advantage of the sunny weather.....

 

And chilling in the pool....

Poser!

So that's what we have been up to this summer.  Hope you have been having as much fun as we have.

Sterryn :)

Our Curriculum 2014...

Its that time of year again and we have been busy planning and getting curriculum together for the coming school year.
Two more weeks of holidays to go, and to be honest if it wasn't for the fact that we are actually still missing a few bits and bobs, we would have started back already.  The kids are excited to start - especially Anthony as this is his first official year of preschool.

This year is all about organisation, flexibility and record keeping!  Last year we were pretty slack about keeping records.   Hence I have my organiser all ready to go..

 I do have a pile of Samantha's books and unit studies from last year which is a good indication, but this year I want an actual record of what we want achieved and where we are in regards to that.  Not just for our own peace of mind, but also in case anyone ever knocks on our door and wants to see it.

So this is what we have so far.  Don't worry I will break it down some :)

So this is the pile.  There is a few things missing as I said, but in here we have a selection of both kids this year.  Going clockwise from the top left we have

Letter of the week Curriculum (Anthony) - www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com

Spelling - Grade 1 and 2 (year 2/3) spelling word lists from www.readingrocket.com

Spanish - Grade 1 spanish from Duolingo.com

Geography/Animal Science - Expedition Earth - www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com

Spelling - Sequenital Spelling 1 (not sure about this as have heard mixed reviews, but we will try it).

Maths - Math U See Alpha

Bible - WWJD - What would Jesus Do.

Science - Backyard Scientist practical experiments

Art/Craft - (Middle) Will be used in conjunction with Worlds Greatest Artist Study - www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com

Reading - Reading Eggs - which admittedly we don't use as much as we should as our sound on the computer isn't working :(

We are still missing our English and Social Studies books, but I will be be placing an order for a couple of the Start right books from ESA Publications this week to help cover those.  I also have some books coming from the NZ Curriculum facebook page to help with English/reading.  

Here is a better look at Anthony's first week of the Letter of the week curriculum :)  This isn't quite ready, but I have lots of things to cut out and lots more laminating to do before we start. 

The first week is the Letter A (funny that), and it has everything from puzzles, colourings, tracing, cutting practise etc. 

On the right I have some very cute workbox labels with Jake and the Neverland pirates on them that we printed from www.1+1+1.com.   I printed My little pony for Samantha and both will go on my lovely new re-purposed filing cabinet that hubby painted for us.  I just need to buy some velcro dots before we are ready to go.  (I saw them at the stationary shop yesterday but nearly fell over at the price!).
The middle yellow drawer of this cabinet is the half way mark, and has plain white paper in so the kids don't have to ask me anymore to get it for them :)

You will get to see all these things in action as we get into the term.  The plan is to re-assess when we get to the mid year point and will make changes then if necessary.  But I am pretty happy with this for now :)

Just a few more stationary items to buy (folders, dividers, paper clips etc).  Other than that we are pretty much organised. 
The school room has had a bit of a clean up and is ready to go, along with our new 100's chart (that the kids and I made last term) and our brand new Coconut Tree.  I can't bring myself to take down the kids art work, but we will replace it as new ones are done this year.

Top half is mine - Bottom half for the kids workboxes :)

Great to have somewhere to store all my stationary supplies :)

Our curriculum is stacked on top today - ready to organise!

The brand new coconut tree - Anthony is itching to start putting on the letters.

100's chart.

All musical instruments (apart from the keyboard) are now in their own corner.
Bookshelf has a mix of puzzles, stationary books, puzzle blocks, Maths blocks etc

Table still in use even in holidays - every day this gets covered!

Geography corner with our postcards from last year - hopefully we can add more!

More storage for paper, playdough toys, keyboard and of course the bird nest Samantha found :)

Art Wall - we will update eventually :)  And the old Coconut tree  - poor thing :(

My new toy!  Just waiting for the laminating sheets to come in the post, then I plan to laminate the World :)

So that's it for now.  In regards to my last post, obviously I have decided to carry on for now.  The plan is to see how it goes and move more towards a more schooly blog for now. 

I am still feeling very hurt by what was said to me (more than I like to admit) and a feeling pretty betrayed as i thought my sister in law and I had a good relationship.  'sigh'.  When you add this to what went on last year with my so called friend it just makes me feel pretty darn yuck!

Anyway moving on....

Sterryn :)

Up in the air...

Just a quick post at the moment.

I'm trying to decide on whether to keep this blog going or not at the moment. 
After being badly insulted by a so called family member about it, I seem to have lost all inclination to write in here.  'Sigh'.  The words Vomit inducing were included in this persons list of insults.
I am finding it really hard to 'get over' what was said to me.  I know that hardly anyone actually reads this blog, but it has always been somewhere I could be honest and put what was in my heart on the page.  Now I feel like that has been taken away from me - and i don't want to write in here if I can't be 100% candid.

We will see..... :(