Life in general at Gillamagong

These last few weeks have been really busy - no time for blogging! Art, school work, horses, sports, cooking and quilting activities have filled our days! Unfortunately we can also add sandflies and mosquitoes to our list as we have extensive flooding around our region presently.

Several friends of mine have started their own blogs recently and are putting me to shame - they blog every day!

My focus lately has been getting the kids to do the work, not documenting it.

Let's start at the top - Zach.

Zach has had a rather haphazard few weeks - he's been playing a lot of tennis and has also had the opportunity to go droving with Wayne Sullivan. He has fitted his school work around his extra-curricular activities and is vaguely ahead on most topics. When he's out droving he is learning a lot about animal husbandry and science, as well as animal behaviour. We have noticed a significant improvement in his attitude to chores and school work since he began droving. I think every boy would do well to get out and rough it with a few animals for a few days - there is no place to whinge and whine - the horses and cattle don't care if you're hot and tired!

Zach told me a story of how he was cantering on his horse after the cattle. He was holding Wayne's mobile phone and it rang, so he answered it. At the same time, a car full of locals drove past, so he let go of the reins briefly to wave to them too. Who ever said that boys can't multi-task?!

Zach has been playing the guitar as well as piano and his guitar teacher is really pleased with his progress.

Issie is doing very well with her school work. Her maths work is making more sense to her and I am seeing a great improvement in her comprehension of maths concepts. She has also been out droving, although not as much as Zach.

She is playing the piano and practicing her chords, which is great as they were always a complete mystery to me at her age!

Both of the older children have turned in excellent narratives. They took longer than I would have liked, but the quality was very good, so I don't mind that it took longer to finish them. Next time, however, I will expect them to be a tad quicker! I believe they will be publishing them on their blogs this week.

Hannah is reading! Hooray! Two weeks ago she just "got" her spelling work - she sounded the words out and knew instantly what they were. Life has been much easier since then. She is more confident and happier to try words she's not familiar with, which is a huge change for her.

As always, she is finding her maths work easy.

Hannah is playing the piano and enjoying it immensely.

Charlie is participating in his school work well too. He has started forming letters and numbers and is attempting to write words and names. He is grasping appropriate maths concepts easily. His drawings and paintings are becoming very detailed and intricate.

We have done a little mapping to see where we live and where people we know live. We used Google Maps as well as printed maps, which sit on our wall. We have also mapped Isobel's upcoming trip to America, especially to show just how far it is to America from Australia! We have compared the trip of Walgett to Sydney to the trip of Sydney to San Francisco. Hannah's eyes got very wide as she took it in!

Art classes recently have take in some acrylic painting on canvas, as well as Waste to Art projects. The group as a whole made a stack of pop-art boxes with the theme of sight. All of my kids contributed and are rightly proud of their work.

I have recently had the chance to go through a heap of the outcomes for the KLAs for each child. Talk about a weighty tome! Thus far we are on target or ahead.

This week we have art classes again, possibly drama class, piano, the tennis competition in Coonamble, school work and horse work.

Week 4

Here I am again, at the end of the week - feeling like I'm sure I missed something, but being totally exhausted from the busy week anyway!

This week the kids all did their work without as much complaint - which is nice!

Hannah hooked in to her English work and even looked to extend her knowledge a bit. She finished her work when she was asked and all we have left to do is a bit of Maths if she is up to it.

We have looked at verbs and agreement this week. The kids had a bit of trouble with some stuff, but generally got the idea. This week we took what we've been learning for the last few weeks and put it together in the form of a narrative. Both older kids have an excellent use of rich language and the idea of what a narrative is.

Zach did his work but I am yet to mark it, so I'm not sure how he went. I expect that he did pretty well - his narrative was coming along nicely when I last heard about it. He has covered a lot of maths this week and looks like he is understanding it. At least I know that, no matter what happens in the future, I have at least one kid who gets algebra!

Issie has done a lot of her work very efficiently this week, mainly to give her more time to do what she wants to do! She has been at the library a lot this week, which is a happy thing for her. She is moving through her maths work and I love to see her eyes light up when she actually grasps a concept. That's one of the best things about teaching your own kids!

We have cooked a lot this week - bread... and lemon meringue pie was especially popular!