Week Five - January 29 - February 4

This week was letter E week.

~*The boys did the usual worksheets and colouring in. We also did painting with our hands and feet (no brushes!) which the boys loved. After they'd done lots of hand and foot prints and finger painting, I painted out their names with my finger for them to copy. Liam did his name really well and also did some letter Es - one that he is going to keep to give to Ewan on his birthday too!

~*We went swimming this week for our Thursday playgroup - although none of our friends turned up we still had a great time. The boys just love the water. It was our off week from our homeschooling playgroup so instead we went to visit Nonna Lucy and Nonno Peter (the boy's great grandparents). They always enjoy seeing them which is good. Liam and my grandfather had an interesting conversation about school - I wasn't in the room but could hear them and just let Liam handle it. It went like this -

Nonno Peter - You going to school now?

Liam - No

Nonno Peter - How old you?

Liam - 4

Nonno Peter - So you go to school next year?

Liam - No

Nonno Peter - Yes you have to go to school next year

Liam - No I'm not going to school!

Nonno Peter - *laughing* yes you go to school

Liam - No I'm staying at home

I came in at this point so got a couple of questions about it too! I didn't want to tell them too much so just said that he would stay at home this year and next year and then he might go to school. The were rolling their eyes at this, while Liam piped up with "I am never going to school Mum!". Oops! I felt awful for saying that with him around - I didn't really realise how much he wanted to stay with me. Just goes to show that honesty is the best thing - even if it means being criticised. I think it is really important for Liam to see that I'm confident about this and that I believe in it. That has been a major theme of this week too - seems like everyone is asking us about schooling and even Ben and I have been discussing it all. Ben is still not totally convinced if this is the best thing to do. We have agreed though to try it for a couple of years before reassessing. I am really proud of Liam though and his ability to be confident and assertive. I really want him to keep those qualities and I think to do that he will need good role models so that is something that I need to work on! It has certainly been an interesting week though and we have all learnt a lot.

~* In other learning, the boys have started getting back into their craft again. Liam had a break for over a month but yesterday started creating again and has made some wonderful things. Yesterday he made a computer with a mouse out of a box and some other bits and pieces for the mouse and the cord connecting it. He also made a special headband out of straws and Scoobies (plastic strings) for Ben to use when he's mowing - it's to keep his hair out of his eyes....... Liam obviously hasn't learnt about receding hairlines yet......
The boys also had fun with Blu Tack - I gave them each a ball and they made miniture people, aeroplanes, and animals. We have a bag of little plastic pieces that they used for eyes, arms, legs, and wings.

~* I bought some posters last week and had them laminated this week. There is one of the alphabet (with both upper and lower case letters in Queensland script), one of the solar system (Liam's choice!), and also one that counts to 100 (it is in black and white and has the numbers set out so that it is really easy to see the pattern with counting through the 20s, 30s, 40s etc.). We have done a lot of talking about the solar system and counting how many moons the planets have. We aslo talked about which planets are hot and which are cold - the boys are able to tell which are which from their distance from the sun. We also talked about the number board - we looked at how old each of us is and also our grandparents. It really helped Liam to "see" the years and look at the difference in ages. We also did some races and running to touch numbers. The alphabet poster has been good too - It's good to have a visual there all the time so that when they ask what a certain letter looks like it's easy to see it straight away.

~*That's about it - I'm sure there are things I missed - like the cleaning up we did, the running races, our trip to the Op Shop and the Library, the mountain of books we read, and the million games of Star Wars that were played - but that's just life and all this stuff is just the extra that we do and stuff that I feel like writing about.