Having a Week Off

We've all got some degree of school burnout currently happening at my place, so we're taking a week off.

We've done 19 weeks, so yes, time for a little rest.

In the meanwhile, this week I will be preparing to move Phebe and Hannah over to AO { or my idea of a modified version of it }

I've already made a good start selecting what they'll be reading:

I'll do a walk through as soon as I can with all the books that I've decided upon.  I just need to have it all concrete on paper.  I'm nearly there, so yes, look for a new AO post before the end of the week.  :)

One for the Bookshelves

Fantastic World of Animals

I happened to be out at an op shop weekend sale and found this little gem sitting amongst the animal books on a shelf:

I thought....ohhhh.... that looks nice.

It collects similar animals and lists them on the left with their illustrations on the right.

They cover over 1000 animals!

Can't wait to put this on the table for the littles.

So many animals...... so little time.

Busselton Jetty

We took the remaining children { those that didn't go camping } out to see the Busselton Jetty.

We actually took their little train out there.  Otherwise it would have been quite the walk.

Charlotte enjoying her train ride.

Absolutely gorgeous and perfect weather for a day out.

Hannah enjoying her train ride out too.

Under the jetty..... through the window.....

That jetty is quite a distance from the shore.

Another one to tick off from the bucket list.  :)

Butterfly Jigsaws

Do you remember those Bird jigsaws that I showed you a couple of weeks ago?  Yes, guess what?  I found a boxed set of Butterflies by the same company at K-Mart.

A bargain buy for only $5.

They actually show you what the butterflies look like assembled on the back of the pack.

So the hubby and I sat down and did a few while we had a chat about life.

I always like jigsaws.

They are a nice way to get calm and relaxed.

Spotlight on Castles

One of the little read alouds that I've read with Charlotte for her Middle Ages course this year.

It's an older book, so I don't know if it is still available.

But I loved that it had beautiful labelled illustrations.

It also had some photos of REAL castles towards the end of the book as well.

Montessori Multiplication

Something new that I thought we'd try out:

{ Montessori Multiplication }

It has the same set up as nomenclature cards.

They do do them a little different from what I am used to though.  They say, "10 taken 6 times" where I would normally teach, "6 groups of 10".  Little Miss didn't have any problem though.

And in the same download they also included clip cards as well.

There were actually quite a lot of varied resources included, but yes, these are the ones that I printed and laminated for a bit of use.

Some of the pages I'll just print and then we'll use.

If you are interested in this particular pack - you can find out more about them HERE.

Sorting by Color

Here's another little Montessori activity you can put on your shelves.  It's just a color sorting activity.

I sourced the cubes from a $2 store - they are actually meant to be used as frozen drink cubes { ice cubes in your drink }.  But I figured that they'd make a great little sorting activity, with a small set of tongs for Noah.

Just have some little plastic bowls available.  Tip all the cubes out into a messy pile and have the child use the tongs to sort them into their colors.  He also had some little white rocks in his initial pile. 

He really enjoyed this activity.

Noah is 3 - so if you have a 3 year old, give it a try.  :)