Follow the Leader

I have recently taken up riding my bike of an evening. Not only does this mean I get some much needed exercise but that I get to see the changing countryside up close and it gets me out of the house and schoolroom. It is something I have chosen to do for me because taking a little time for yourself is an important part of keeping your sanity or so a wise lecturer once told me. Life's experiences have also told me this.

The other day while out riding I came across some 'missing' horses. They obviously decided upon seeing a human that it was high time that they were let in with everyone else so they hurried across the creek to follow me to the next. I had four horses lined up behind me, the first with its nose nearly on my back. What a photo that would have made. I stopped to take a photo of my followers who then decided that this meant they should beat me back. All four trotted on past and kept heading up the road. When I eventually got back within view of the house paddock gate who should come trotting out of the bushes but my four followers who were greeted at the gate by the rest of their mob.

Unit 1 ... Check :)

Well we did it, we have finished the first unit of years 1, 4 (doubled) and 7. This meant that today we got to open the brand new packets of work for unit 2, well those that we have. You wouldn't believe how excited we get about getting to rip the plastic off the outside of our papers and stow them in the folders.

Last year our school work we were working on was stored in sets of drawers to make it easy to. This year that doesn't work so out came the folders that have been collecting dust in various cupboards around the station to be used to store our papers, which are no longer in booklets. The last unit I spent the time trying to work out what was the best way to go about storing our papers to make them easy to access. We have sheets with them that get sent to school so now we are trialing putting the sheets into the drawers and the finished lessons/ papers into the back of their folders. Hopefully this will cut down the rifling through to find the sheets to scan in to their teachers. The saddest thing however about starting unit 2 is that means we only have that long until the school holidays. The year seems to be speeding by already.

During school the kids have been creating and practicing assessment pieces in the last days of their units. Mr Yr1 has been practicing a book report, Mr and Miss Yr 4 have written and been practicing poems and Miss Yr7 has created a multimodal presentation (using different forms of communication: visual, auditory and written) on a video clip she has seen. Very full on I have to say but we seem to have made it through with sanity intact ... just.

Stormy sky this afternoon.

Sunday

Now this is how we all should get to spend our Sunday evenings ...

and I have to say the best way to watch a sunset is floating, in its reflection, in a tyre tube, ahhhh.

shhh don't tell

Shhh don't tell anyone but we didn't touch one school paper yesterday ... that's what I said not one. Instead we had fun ... yes fun that thing that has us laughing and smiling, the kids bouncing with excitement and do you know what else we still learnt, we hopefully bridged some knowledge gaps and, dare I say that word again, we had fun doing it.

As I am sure you gather from this, the new curriculum hasn't left a lot of room for downtime during the day and after 4 weeks of slogging it out until the kids have complained of having mushed brains and after I inhaled consumed over half a block of chocolate on Thursday, I decided we would have a low key, laid back day in school to save mine and the kids mental health (and my waistline lol). We deserved it. The great thing about distance education is that you can do that.

This is not an 'oh pity me' post as there are many others in this same place whether they be teachers, home tutors, teacher aids or students. I just hope that like us they are able to down tools every once in a while to give those poor mushed up brains a rest and let that frazzled hair smooth back down.

So yesterday the kids played, an adding game using dice, snap, fraction dominoes, number bingo as well as wrote nouns, verbs and adjectives on sticky notes and did writing using them. They had a go a drawing different fractions or numbers and did a typing program.

Rock? Paper, Scissors



The Flying Whizz yesterday afternoon

The kids are just walking out of the schoolroom after they have ... nope scrap that they are back. Anyway the kids finished school around 3pm and have spent the last 1/2hr - 45min creating with paper. We have had the good ol' snow flakes, pictures for Mum, pictures of the sea at sunset and of cause paper planes. As I write as Mr T comes up to me asking for me to make him one then Mr E tells me I need to make him one to.

Paper Snowflakes / Windows
Need:
Paper
Scissors
Instructions:
1. Fold the paper into quarters or more.
2. Cut pieces out of the folded paper making sure that parts of the folded edges remain uncut.
3. Unfold and view the master piece.
Optional: You can put pieces of cellophane or tissue paper over the cut outs so that when stuck to a window you get a stained glass window effect.

For some reason this activity never grows old, secretly I think it because of the mess all the little cut out pieces of paper make. I pulled out the fancy craft scissors today to add some interest it was great as they were met with excitement as they tried out all the different patterns.

 



 Some more of our school day ...

This is what you call frustration.

Mr T tracing around paddle pop sticks

Mr T made slippery slides and seesaws

Mr E doing a count on activity on the computer.

Yr 4 Maths today.

Taken when I reached the halfway on my bike ride this evening.

One of the enormous frogs hanging around

Power Down

Zzzzzzip ...the air stilled and the email I had been working on for school disappeared from sight as the screen went blank. "The perfect excuse to stop work" was my thought. "Powers out" I told Mrs R as a wandered into the house with my bag slung over my shoulder. "Is Mr R fixing it?" was her reply.

I decided this was as good a time as any to start moving some of my stuff to the new and nearly finished quarters. As I shoved my swag under the bed I heard "have you seen the red electrical pliers?" After a quick look around through the piles of tools still laying around the quarters "No" was the given response.

Boss R must have found those pliers as the generator grumbled to life. Turns out the old crank still has a lot of life left in it unlike the newer bigger mate sitting beside it that has packed it in yet again. I guess the time to replace it has unfortunately come.

As I sit here thinking back over the last few days I am stumped about what to share. The tiredness, short attention spans and difficulty learning things way above current understandings as well as the power outages, Internet disappearances and phones going down doesn't sound very positive or interesting to me. So instead I will leave you with this ...

Miss S cooked choc chip biccies solo

YUMMMM!

A Valentines Day Sunset

Busted! A piglet that got a bit stuck in the feed tin.

'sh' words ... Mr E came up with 'shoulder'

Mr T loves the puzzles

Miss E having her reading lesson

Mr E learning about subtraction

I got finally got to go to town last weekend and was able to spend some time with Sparky. We had a great time walking on The Strand, having fun with his mates and going to the Men's Toyshop ... hmmm

Creek crossing

Lake Buchanan is pretty full

Swim time

An interesting gate

A creek crossing closer to the house

Can I have a go?

Surf lifesavers and the kids practising



Stinger Season

Good Morning

Good morning to you and may your day be beautiful.

Exciting news ... the mail came yesterday. According the Stretch our mail man it is a bit wet out there. 'Don't drive off the road' is his warning, as he told us that there is water everywhere. Apparently the road to school is washed away and unusable.

Our mail delivery service.



Yesterday afternoon Boss R and the Flying Whizz went to check out how far up the road in the opposite direction they could get without getting bogged. Apparently they didn't get bogged, good thing to as the wise men didn't take a uhf with them.

Also Boss R and Boss H finished the veranda rails on the schoolroom/quarter,s which is brilliant even though they did keep shorting out our power with the saws, grrr. Not very handy when doing on air lessons.

The schoolroom/quarters with the front veranda rails done.



Yesterday morning the flying whizz went for a whirl in one of his wonderful flying contraptions. It had the kids running from one veranda to the other to check him out. Mr T was pretty excited, he loves anything that flies, making the Flying Whizz his idol.

The Flying Whizz ... much more interesting than school.



The day before yesterday, we had our Munchy Monday and this is what we made ...

We used a recipe sent out in the school work for Gingerbread Men and I have to say it is a pretty good recipe. I think next time I would put in more ginger but they turned out beautifully. Well done little bakers.

Cutting out our gingerbread people.

Yumm! Smells so good.

Icing our gingerbread people.

In more school news Mr E (yr1) has been learning about addition. He uses an addition mat where he makes the 2 groups and then moves them down to the answer area to count how many there are altogether. Yesterday he got to write the 'add' sign in his work and thinks himself rather clever.

Mr E doing addition.

Mr T keeping occupied making trains.

Mr E and Mr T playing with the puzzles that came in yesterdays mail.