Posted by Sarah in Uncategorized on April 9, 2012

Alanah and Lillian chose to have a medieval tournament for their shared 10th and 7th birthday party. Their choice was fuelled by their shared love of the TV show Merlin, Lani chose to dress as Arthur and Lilly as Merlin.  

We asked the guests to dress to fit the theme, it was so great to see the effort they put into their costumes. As well as knights, druids, princesses and peasants we had a dragon show up to challenge good king Arthur.

We set up a craft to keep the kids busy as we waited for stragglers to arrive. I bought packs of plastic wine glasses and spray painted them gold a few days before the party. On the day the kids decorated their goblet with stick on jewels and glitter paint. They looked really effective when finished and my kids loved them, I’m not allowed to throw ours out.  

some of the littlest kids rushed through their craft and preferred to do their waiting on the trampoline. 

Once all the kids arrived and finished their goblets I told them that for them to become real knights they needed to tame a wild horse and make it their noble steed.

I had small toy horses hidden all over the backyard. Once they found one I gave them a felt badge that I had sewn to look like a knights shield. The badges broke the kids up into two teams Red for Lani’s team and Green for Lilly’s.

The two teams then competed against each other in a Jousting competition. During the week before the party we made a short lance out of a length of dowel that the girls painted and decorated with electrical paint to look like a mini lance. I also made two hobby horses by cutting out the horses heads with a jigsaw. The girls looked up horse colours on the internet, choses their favourites and painted their team’s horse to match, they even added googly eyes.

It was a very exciting race.

The kids were all so enthusiastic, it was such fun watching them.

Even little Sabi had a turn.

The joust ran as a  relay race, you had to mount your horse, take your lance and gallop up to the target hit it with your lance, then turn and race back to hand the lance and hobby horse to the next team member.

The next competition was target practice. I was a little nervous about giving a bow and quiver of arrows to 25 kids so instead the children threw small stones into a bucket.

Then we counted the stones in the buckets to see which team had the best aim.

As the girls invited a few little biddy kiddies I set up a play area for them so they could watch but not get bored, we even found some castle toys of Eli’s to help them feel like they were participating in the theme (not that they cared, it was more the 10 and 7 year old who cared about that)

The last competition for the day was the sword fight.

• I made swords out of pool noodles from this tutorial 

They were quite a powerful weapon and so much fun to play with.

I wasn’t sure how popular sword fighting would be at a girls party but they really got into it.

Especially when we put siblings in the ring against each other, don’t be fooled by the photo the little one was just giving herself space for a running hit.

Lani and her Best Friend From Birth as they call each other.

Poor Sabi couldn’t convince any of the other little kids to do battle with her and was getting a little upset thinking she would miss out till big sister Lilly stepped in.

Eli and his friend Sam gave quite a performance with their very theatrical fighting even jumping over the blade. 

Then Lilly released all the pent up energy she had retained fighting a three year old by totally smashing Sam from one end of the yard to the other (I think he may have let her win, but don’t tell her I said that)

After the kids had a go the call went up for the dads to fight. This is Glenn and Steven…

and Glenn and Steven showing the kids how its done. (it’s easier if you pick all your friends with the same name, less to remember) 

The kids cheering them on, I actually think it’s refreshing to have a chorus of “Fight, Fight,Fight!!!” cried out at a girls party. 

Next came the banquet, the kids all drank out of the gold goblets they made when they first arrived.

some of the banquet food on offer.

Present opening. Lani loved her creeper card.

Lilly with her new lego friends, she loves that stuff.

Lani very excited to get a lead for her ferret, did I mention she asked for a ferret for her tenth birthday crazy girl. 

The girls with their sword in the stone cake.

and with Merlins help Arthur was able to pull the sword out and claim his/her crown.

Happy 107th birthday girls Mummy and Daddy love you with all of our hearts and are still amazed everyday that God gave us two such beautiful spirits to share our lives with. 

Posted by Sarah in Family on April 2, 2012

For five days every year the three eldest kids’ ages run consecutively. This year they are seven, eight and nine.

They have been looking forward the this year’s five days for a long time because of one of their favourite Barenaked Ladies songs (it’s a kids song I promise)

They staged they own Seven ate Nine picture story below.

Miss Seven is feeling a rather vicious hunger, I think poor Miss Nine might be in danger.

Here we have photo evidence that Seven ate nine. Mr Eight is sad that Seven has used him to the determent of miss Nine.

So he decided to take revenge for the sad fate of Miss nine and chop off Miss Seven’s head.

And declare himself victorious and free of all sisters, till Miss Three wakes up from her sleep that is. So that is the story of how Seven ate nine.

Posted by Sarah in Homeschooling on April 1, 2012

For the last gazillion years life in Australia has been all about water restrictions. Dry parched earth, dust storms that blanketed the whole east coast and farm land reduced to a dismal homage to the Martian landscape. Stories of childhood days spend darting in and out sprinkler spray, water fighting with the garden hose, sliding down backyard tarpaulin rivers and bouncing carefree in the midst of an inverted waterfall shooting up through our trampolines have been told to our own children. They sit in wide eyed wonder conflicted with a sense of longing for those days and a righteous indignation for their own parents disrespect of our most precious resource.  

Long days soaked to the skin, clad in our summer uniform of swimming costumes listening to the chorus of click, click, click swish of the neighbourhood automatic watering systems sums up my childhood summers. Endless days of dry unforgiving scorching heat sums up the summers my kids have been living through. Until this year. This year the rain came down.

It has rained every day this summer. Mostly just a steady drizzle from the ever present cloud cover however some days the heavens have opened and literally spilt their guts on all of us. I’m getting quite used to drying carpet tiles as our back room is under water again. After so much time we are finally able to unite our Aussie voices and finish the song “A land of droughts and………”

 

Glenn was between jobs and I wasn’t feeling the best so he decided to run his own school excursion day. As our local dam with its ever decreeing water levels has been the focus of so much water related anxiety he couldn’t miss the chance to take the kids to see it brim full and spilling over. The last time we were up here just a month ago, the section behind the kids, the spill over for floods was bare dry concrete.

Warragamba Dam officially full.

Where once the water level was so low the long submerged houses of the old valley settlement could be seen piercing through the surface, now full grown trees are being consumed by the voluminous water.

The kids sketching the water catchment.

Glenn took the kids for a play at Hawkesbury Park as they followed the flooded river back home.

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Posted by Sarah in Homeschooling on March 7, 2012

To get into the African groove I decided, before we got into any serious learning per se, to YouTube Africa Dance. This led to a brilliant morning of walking, or shall we say dancing, in somebody else’s bare feet.

The kids found a few videos that took them step by step through a dance set to the hypnotic pulse of an African drum. Eli really just got lost in the music, which I kind of feel is true to the style.

The girls took the steps, or twists, a little more seriously.

Lilly ended up being quite the hip wiggler.

Eli found a video that taught you to play the drum, and, as we didn’t have one handy he improvised with a toy basket.

We also read a beautiful picture book called Natemba which is about a orphaned baby Vervet monkey and her journey through the African wilderness to find her family. I loved it because it introduced the feel of the Country, the look of the animals that roam it, but it also had an important conservation message to tell and one that didn’t paint all humans as evil but as part of a chain of helping hands to save a gorgeous little life.

The Author and Illustrator of Natemba is Annette lodge and is a local, yay whoo! for local talent.

Our kids had a go at water colour illustrations like the ones we found in the book. I asked them to choose one particular animal as the focus, then they wouldn’t be overwhelmed by choice and also we can go to the library and research the one they chose. Lilly chose the zebra.

Lani painted her version of the heart-warming reunion when the little vervet monkey found her family.

Eli painted a giraffe. We then looked up each of their animals on YouTube just so we could see them moving around, hear their sounds and in Eli’s case watch them fight, he now thinks giraffes are really hard core.

They all wrote down observations from the footage as well, only I have misplaced it at the moment, never mind this post is long enough and Eli’s mostly said “….and then the giraffe whipped his neck around and they bashed their heads again….” and so on, you can imagine.

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Posted by Sarah in Homeschooling on February 22, 2012

I lead a preschool group at our church called Junior Jivers. It was a big decision for me to take it on, bearing in mind I have four children tagging along with me wherever I go. Four children for whom I bare the sole blame if they grow up to be uneducated heathens.  It may have been more sensible to decline, I’m sure no one would have thought any less of me for saying the work was too much and I didn’t have the time. But groups like this are so important, I really believe that.

My three older children grew up in this same group and they learnt so much, not just physical life skills but they learnt of the love of their own creator, both taught to them in weekly themes and expressed to them through the caring attitudes of a gaggle of loving mothers/grandmothers/dads/grandads. I wanted Sabrina to have this too. Who was I to deny her something the older ones still talk about just because I was a little busy. So I took it on, I was hoping to have another leader by now but God will provide in his own time. To get by I dragged my Mum in and I beg help from the leaders of the second Junior Jivers group run on a different day. 

In the meantime God has taught me to see that a ministry that I once thought could really interfere with our schooling is actually benefiting it.   

Each term we choose a theme, at the moment we are working through the days of creation. This week was day two: the sky and the sea. The kids in the above photo are catching falling feathers, that were blowing in the wind, while the playschool song ’Like a Leaf or feather’ plays. The big arm is Lilly showing the little kids how to put the feathers they have caught into the bucket. I have noticed that both Lilly and Lani are learning to become servant hearted, they help me set up, pack up, hold signs for me and love looking after the babies.

After singing and dancing to water and sky songs we ended the morning with water play which the big girls refused to be left out of even if they barely fitted in the paddling pool. 

There is always a craft too, this week we brought home rainbow clouds.

Eli doesn’t come with us unless its a week he thinks is really cool, like when we went to the fire station. Instead he goes to Granda’s house and learns wood working. Granda is building his own shed (it’s as big as my house and so very cool) and Eli is very proud that he cut and put in some of the noggins.  We got Eli a set of working tools scaled down to kid size for his birthday so he could be just like his Granda. Last time he went there he also came back with a wooden Zombie that he designed and made himself. 

Anyhoo back to Junior Jiving and schooling. Instead of trying to jam too many different concepts into their heads I chose to work off what we were doing in the first half of the day in the pre-school group. So till the next theme is introduced we are looking at the sky and sea for our science unit as well. Today we focused on clouds and the water cycle.  

I could see Lilly especially just wasn’t getting it so we headed into the kitchen for an impromptu experiment.

Our pan became a water catchment and the hot plate the heat from the sun causing evaporation, turning the water from its liquid state to a gas.

Then I held the pan lid (so cool that it was glass and we could see what was going on) over the steam. I asked the kids what was happening.

“Nothing…nothing…oh oh water, look I see water!!!” (gotta love their excitement)

We talked about the water vapour condensing in a cooler environment then Eli calls out “that’s what happens in the clouds, then the droplets get bigger and heaver till they fall out”

“Yep that’s it, brilliant, can you remember what it’s called”

“It’s rain but you want me to say….cloud preparation?’”

ooo so close but he’s getting it.

So we waited to see if our cloud/lid would produce any precipitation, and if you look closely it rained!

We have also listened to and made up a groovy wavy arm dance to go along with this really cool song. The songs they write introduce so many amazing things to kids and are so fun to listen to, this one shows the three states of water. They Might Be Giants are just the bees knees really.

We’re not finished with water yet but it’s a pretty decent start.  

Posted by Sarah in Homeschooling on February 12, 2012

I have been meaning to write about this for a long time, I just can’t seem to find a gap in the doing things to actually write about the things that we are doing. Oh well no point stressing about what I haven’t yet recorded in the words of the ever determined Inigo Montoya "Let me ‘splain. [pause] No, there is too much. Let me sum up."

We have been studying our world. We started last year in a very similar way to the presentation in this video.

This is my globe, it doubles as a bed side light. Eli likes Australia to point to him while he sleeps.

I didn’t quite have the gazillion dollars needed to buy all the Montessori equipment so I made the continent puzzle out of felt.

We also used a wall map of the world from the post office.

After all of the kids including Sabi could easily identify the continents we went back to the first one in the song, North America, and started looking at the individual countries in it. We watched videos, borrowed library books, cooked and ate food, listened to music, attempted traditional dances and finally made a lap book to document our discoveries. It took about a term to visit Canada, USA and Mexico.

Then we moved onto South America and did the same thing only we chose three countries and focused on them after a brief review of the whole continent. One of the countries we chose was Brazil. On top of library books we also watched the movie Rio and researched Carnival. We made our own masks and danced to Brazilian music.

After reading the Great Kapok Tree we spent a fair bit of time looking at the Amazon rainforest. We even built our own mini rainforest in the school room with painted very big cardboard rolls. Other books we read from South America were Up and Down the Andes, My Name is Gabriela and Ghost Hands.

We’ll be heading into Africa next and Lani is quite excited she’s always loved lions, I’m just not sure how I’m going to find documentaries on them that wont traumatise our zebra loving Lilly.

Posted by Sarah in Uncategorized on February 8, 2012

We have four little gymnasts in our family. These are photos from the display day they had at the end of last year, Sabrina chose Grandma as her assistant for the day.

Each child that participated in the display day was given a medal, Sabi was very proud, this is her first ever medal.

Eli and Lani are both in Stages and got to show off their stuff after Sabi’s beginners group cleared the floor.

Gynasticas has been great for our family. It’s a group that they can all go to together. There is enough twirling and pointing of toes to keep the girls happy and an equal amount of daring acts of danger and displays of strength to satisfy the boys.

of course acts of daring aren’t always limited to the males of the species.

and the boys do twirl as well but you know what I mean.

Also the instructors are great with the kids, if you like having your toes tickled that is. In all seriousness they have been wonderful and so accepting of Eli and the oddities he brings with him. He’s had two different instructors since he started and both of them have put so much effort into guiding him and helping him overcome the hurdles that come with ASD. It’s wonderful to see him run out to join his class now, full of confidence, seeming just like all the other boys in his group. I get a little teary when I think back to the squealing, flapping, bonkers boy that ran like a tornado through the gym bawling his eyes out and declaring in a loud voice that his instructor was trying to make him dead.   

Eli was a little self-conscious about getting a medal ( in fact when his instructor put it over his head he immediately took it off and threw it away) But he did let me get one quick photo of it before it was taken off for good.

Sabi was more keen on her medal and showed it off with great enthusiasm.

Then it was Lilly and her pre level groups turn.

The levels kids all had routines that they have been working on. It was a bit like watching synchronized swimming without the water.

I was very proud of her, it was the first time she has ever performed in front of a crowd and she was a little nervous.

She remembered everything she needed to do and finished smiling and that is really what it is all about.

Posted by Sarah in Family on February 3, 2012

I tried to take a Christmas morning photo of all of the kids, but Eli doesn’t do photos and Lilly doesn’t do standing still.

We didn’t start opening gifts this year until quite late as Lani and Eli didn’t wake up. We had gone to our church’s family service the night before, then had a big discussion on the way home because Lani was cross because she felt some of the adults were trying to get her to believe in Santa when she has never wanted to do that and feels its a lie. Eli also was cranky because he is constantly paranoid that people are making fun of him or trying to deceive him so Christmas is tough. I decided to read the story of St Nicolas to them and discuss the history of how the jolly fat man came about.

We ended with prayer thanking God for the generosity of people who help the poor and asked him to use the joy and excitement we would feel in the morning to remind us of the greater joy and excitement we will feel when Jesus comes again.  

Much excitement over the Doctor Who board game that they got as a family present.

I had ago at Amigurumi this year and made each kid a little animal, Lani’s was a white Chihuahua as she is very keen to have a real one but Glenn still says no. 

We gave each of them a board game as well which caused a great deal more excitement than I expected. 

Sabi really got into the present opening this year, even if she did find it a bit hard at times.

We also got each of the children an Oncology Children’s Foundation bear which they loved because each of them is addicted to soft toys but also because they knew that they were helping kids with cancer.

Lani was confused by one of her labels

So was I when I reread what I had written, I must have been tired. I’m pretty sure I was going for a new world for you to get lost in as the present was a book.

Lillian with her fairy OCF bear

Sabi off on a treasure hunt

Sabrina got a doctor bear, she calls him Doctor Who Bear, because she loves doctors a little too much at times.

The Spider I crocheted for Eli, he really likes it I know because he told me and he doesn’t lie about things like that, he’s very blunt. He does look a little sad in the photo though as the pressure of not knowing if he was going to like what he was unwrapping was getting to him.

I made Lilly a little green frog because her favourite colour is green and she is just so frog like.

Sabrina got a turtle whose shell can come off, he plays very nicely with her.

Glenn got a pillow case which he loved…

Because all the kids had painted it for him. I has characters from Doctor Who, Mine Craft and the Tiffany Terry Pratchett books.

He also got a Pratchett book which Lani as thrilled to give him because they now share favourite authors.

Me in my daggy flannel PJ’s (This has been a very cold summer for Australia) reading my beautiful hand made Christmas cards from the kids.

We then went to church then to Mum and Dads for a family lunch.

Sabi was so funny with her new Hula Hoop, she thought she needed to spin to get tit to work

Then she kept trying to lick it (She is always licking things) but she hadn’t let go off the sides so every time she stepped forward the hoop moved further out of her reach.

Lani thought she was hilarious.

Posted by Sarah in Art on December 22, 2011

It’s so busy at the moment I keep forgetting to post things that I mean to, like this.

Every year the coastal walk from Bondi to Tamarama Beach hosts an exhibition of fun and whimsy, contemplation and reflection, art in the open to open our minds.

I like to post the ones the kids were moved by, I am always fascinated by what sparks their interest.

It is a big walk with many many steps so Sabi chose to take the daddy train for most of the day.

The girls insisted I take a photo of this one for Eli, he was sick at home with Grandma and Granda (thankyou) and they thought a representation of a dead human pointing out to sea from the top of a ladder would cheer him up.

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Posted by Sarah in Parties on December 15, 2011

Our Littlest daughter Sabrina just turned three, along with Fish Berries and chocolate (her vitamins) all she asked for her birthday was Doctor Who. I thought about getting her one of the figurines but she loves to cuddle her toys and I wasn’t sure how well the small plastic Doctor would fit that bill. Unsnugglyness aside I was pretty sure she’d break it too so I decided to have a go at making Mr Eleventh myself. He’s only the third doll I’ve made and I don’t know how to follow patterns, I just wing it so it was anyone’s guess how he’d turn out.

Sonic made from toothpick, some string and a bead.

Dolls clothes are soooo hard! I have never even made adult clothes so that didn’t help and way to late I realized with a bit of tweaking barbie clothes patterns may have worked. I used a pattern for the pants but the rest I just guessed at which is the main reason there are no collars on anything.

Her big brother told me he needed as fez.

close up of sleeve detail, it may not be perfect work but I used press studs so she can totally undress him if she wants to.

One very excited little miss three.

She recognised him as Doctor Who straight away and started a little conversation with him so I know she likes him.