A Lazy School Day

On Friday we steered clear of the curriculum and had a lazy school day ... okay not so lazy. We are coming up to the end of the school year and have very little work left to do. The count down is up on the board at the children's insistence but I am not really enjoying watching the numbers go down and knowing that this also marks about how long it is until I leave. I like the kids though am happy that the holidays are creeping ever closer.

We did maths worksheets I made up as well as some I printed out.

This sheet can be found here.

 

 

We made cool crab crackers for smoko with Jatz, dip, cheese, carrot and sultanas.

 

We played a dice game called 'roll a turtle' that involved drawing a turtle by the number rolled.

 

We wrote acrostic poems about something from the ocean and made bright balancing crabs.

This activity and printout can be found here

We finished reading the second 'Rowan of Rin' book by Emily Rodda which the kids LOVED and we practised dances for our end of school musical. We then finished the school day on a high note playing computer games and drinking choc banana smoothies.

 

The evening saw Boss Lady H and myself heading down to the house dam to start the pump so we had water (long story short the windmill is broken). Imagine our surprise when we almost walked into a roo and then saw a lone pelican on the very low dam.

 

 As the light faded I got a snap of the three boys perched on a rock watching their Dads bring the weaners back after a day out tailing them.

 

 

Back to School

 

 
The wind is whistling and howling through gaps in the buildings and the wind turbines are whizzing around. Term 3 is certainly off to a wild and windy start and it seems that the rest of the week might be a bit damp around the edges, right when trucking cattle was planned.

Unwrapping the new unit something that everyone finds exciting.

Our first day back in the schoolroom was very full on with all five of the cherubs present and accounted for. All enthusiastic to be back to the school routine (that's not a joke, they miss it) after their exciting holidays. On arriving back on the station on Saturday I was greeted by 5 excited story tellers with many tales to tell. They ranged from Miss E's injuries from jumping onto a nail (went through her shoe and all) to stories of happenings in the cattle yards including Mr R's encounter with a rather nasty white steer, Boss's (the dog) close call resulting in leg injury as well as the crazy heifers breaking the cattle yard fence. Darn it, I missed it all while off having adventures of my own.

Here is a taste of today ...

Yr 4 Maths is MIA so it was back to the notebooks with revision.

ARGH a test on the first day back ... the body language says it all.

Practising numbers and counting in Yr 1

Awesome fractions tool ... makeup sponges are great for 8ths.

The fellas bringing up the bulls this morning.

Schoolroom Sneek Peek

Yesterday got off to a frosty start with an early morning stint down at the cattle yards but more on that another time. We had a busy day after starting school late at the much more respectable and warm hour of 9am. We also had Mr T back in school. He hasn't been around for a while because he has been hanging out with his Mum (traitor) but he was back in full force yesterday.

I was eaten by bugs, lots of bugs...

 

 

...And the Titanic sank in our schoolroom. Pretty cool that a 3 and a half year old can tell me all about the Titanic.

Glug, glug, glug it's sinking

And it broke in half and is on the bottom of the ocean.

  Also happening in the schoolroom was a lot of measuring and comparing.

Measuring snakes on the computer.

Comparing the size of characters in a book.

Comparing playdough sizes.

And I don't know who stole my Yr 4s but don't send them back because these new ones wanted fact family triangle after fact family triangle to complete on the blackboard.

YES! I said wanted.

Fact family triangles - I gave two numbers from a multiplication/ division fact and they found the missing number then wrote out the facts.

How we get our school work

I thought it was time I explained how we get our school work.

The photos shown are in our old, very messy schoolroom and were taken for who knows what reason ... I am sure I had one but I don't know what it was.

The school does lovely parcels up for us with a terms worth or units in it, well that is the plan (units go for 2 weeks). They are then delivered to us either on the mail or at clusters. If you happen to be in at school when the curriculum boxes are ready you are advised politely to take the boot load home.

 Then comes the joyful task of unpacking the boxes and finding somewhere to keep all the units until needed.

Lucky for us we will no longer have the problem of trying to find the space like we did in the old schoolroom.

The year levels are colour coded. We have orange for prep, blue for year 3 and green for year 6. It depends on the year level and the unit what you get but as a general rule you get booklets of the school work and a packet of books to with it.

In year 3 for each unit you get a learning guide, an activity book and a send in book for Maths, CLC and English as well as a handwriting book. Then the books, CDs and DVDs needed are packaged with two units together.

In year 6 however we are still working with curriculum that was put together in 1996. In these packs we get a home tutor guide, an instruction paper (for the student) and an assignment book for both Maths and LAC. We also get a handwriting and grammar book that comes with and answer book.

 Prep has a learning guide, activity sheets, supportive learning cards and feedback sheets. They do pretty much all their work in a scrapbook.

Then after all that we work through the units. I mark the maths, check spelling and try to get the kids to work as independently as possible. Then after making sure I have filled in all the feedback sheets in their various forms we send our units back on the mail or I take them into town with me and drop them in the bin at school.

It is very satisfying putting the unit in the mail bag and sending it on its way, never to be seen again. Well that is until it returns in the mail after about a month with corrections and feedback from the teachers.

The school has a 10 day turn around policy on school work and despite the fact that it only takes a week (or less) for our mail to get to school it for some unknown reason takes it about 2 weeks to get back to us.