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Harden Kite Festival 2023

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On the 7th October Grace, Sam, Rosalie, Lorelei and I attended the Harden Kite Festival for 2023, unfortunately work and other commitments meant that their parents could not join us. It took us over two hours to drive there as we had to stop to deal with some motion sickness and I had to drop something off to my Aunt in Cootamundra; she also had a bag of books for us that was greatly appreciated!  The motion sickness was not unexpected and we also have a sympathetic vomiter or two, so preparations had been made in advance. All of the grandchildren had nausea relief bands on and each had a bellybug sick bag at hand.  I was very thankful for the bellybug sick bags and so were two of the children!  They are definitely on my must have list for home and travel! Apart from the motion sickness we had a very good trip over to Harden with the children having a fun singalong on the way.  As we approached the venue we could clearly see the kites in the distance, which elevated...
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Wagga Wagga Spring Jam 2023

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 We recently attended Spring Jam 2023 held at the Wagga Wagga Botanic Gardens and had a wonderful time.  Grace and Rosalie started off our visit by drumming with the Junkyard Beats and thoroughly enjoyed themselves!  Then we did a round of the obstacle course, Sam raced around by himself while Gracie and Rosie teamed up together to complete it.  Lorelei preferred to try some sections and skipped others as she went around the course with me. The support workers for this activity were so friendly and encouraging, adding greatly to the children's confidence and enjoyment. After a quick photo and chat with the Larger-Than-Life florals we were off for the children to try the Circus Workshop where they had varying degrees of luck spinning plates on sticks!  The Games Garden was our next point of call with Lorelei in particular loving the giant chalk board. It was also here that we encountered one of the roving keepers with a baby kangaroo, with Grace, Sam and Rosali...
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Time Flies when you are having fun!

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 It has been a while between posts as life got very busy! Meanwhile Grace, Sam, Rosalie and Lorelei successfully completed the 2023 MS Readathon raising a total of $543.46 and reading 302 books!  They all loved the experience and were very excited to raise this much money for such a wonderful cause. We have big plans for next years MS Readathon fund raising and will be attempting a more ambitious book total too!
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Oranges & Marmalade

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 We have two orange trees that have been providing us with wonderful, sweet, juicy oranges for a number of years now and this week we finally got around to picking this years crop. The children had a lot of fun picking the oranges and investigating the garden.  It had recently rained so there were plenty of slugs and snails around for them to interact with.  Our two trees provided us with three very large bags of oranges, which are just as delicious as past years.  In previous years we have eaten a lot of them, given some away and juiced the remainder, but this year we decided to use some of them to make marmalade as a homeschool activity. After cutting and leaving our oranges to soak overnight, everyone sat down and watched Paddington 2 for inspiration.  Today we completed making our marmalade and it went fairly well for a first attempt, although next time we will slice the oranges finer.  A distraction at a crucial time resulted in a small amount of burni...
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Trying something new

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 We have had a fairly quiet week as a virus has been making its way through the family.  One of the great benefits of homeschooling is that you can adjust learning to cater for situations that arise, if they need a rest day then we have one.  Informal self guided learning still occurs, they just get the time they need to fully recuperate which is wonderful for everyone.  Something new that we have started this week is the Touch-type, Read and Spell program (see here ) for Grace and Sam.  Grace has muscle/joint issues that mean she finds it very painful to write for long periods of time, while Sam’s autism and adhd impact on his writing.  Both love technology and so we have decided to teach them to touch type to assist them and because we know this is an important skill for people to have these days. So far both are enjoying the Modules!  They are smiling and happy as they type and are keen to keep going even when they make mistakes.  Sam learns be...
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2023 MS Readathon

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The grandchildren have begun this years MS Readathon and on day two have already read a total of sixty two books and raised forty five dollars.  They have ambitions to read two hundred books and raise five hundred dollars this year!  They all love books and spend hours each week either reading aloud or quietly to themselves.  Gracie and Sam are both seriously into graphic novels at the moment, in particular the Dog Man and Cat Kid Comic Club books by Dav Pilkey.  While Rosalie and Lorelei are currently learning to read and love the My Little Pony books, Cat by Mike Dumbleton, Thelma the Unicorn by Aaron Blabey and anything with puppies and bunnies.  
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Welcome to the new week!

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Welcome to the new week!  Mondays are a busy day for us as the grandchildren all have dance lessons at different times during the afternoon and so we tend to have a fairly relaxed morning.  We do team clean up of rooms and lots of arts and crafts usually.   Today we worked on our Australia core study unit using the book ‘Australia Country of Colour’ by Jess Racklyeft which I purchased from Big W, modelling clay and YouTube videos.  Each child picked an animal, plant or insect from each colour section of the book and made a modelling clay version of their choice. Once they completed this they showed each other their creation and discussed them. We then watched videos of the animal, plant or insect that they chose and discussed things that we each found interesting about them. A metre long ruler and a grain of rice was used to compare sizes mentioned in the book or videos, bringing Mathematics into the mix of subjects covered.  We all enjoyed this and it was wonde...
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