Remember the bookcases I was building? I finally picked up the rest of the supplies to finish them off & now all our books are in their proper places. This has been a really simple and reasonably fun project. I like keeping all our books with like topics on the same shelf, all though I've yet to resort to the Dewey Decimal system. All though, I did contemplate it a few times.. Don't judge me, I'm just being honest here people!


I put up six more shelves to finish off the space I had intended for this purpose. It was just right to get all our notebooks, lapbooks, teacher manuals, & Five In A Row books back on the shelves where we could easily access them. Can you see our small pile of Spy Science stuff under the shelf above? We'll be using that very soon, the boys are super excited! Across the top of the shelves I either have plastic tubs. There's one tub for each child which will hold the books I want them to read over the school year. Another tub will hold our read alouds, & the remaining tubs will holds books we'll be reading during the course of the school year. The rest of the shelves are organised by topic. Laugh if you must, but I promise I can find any of our books in a very short amount of time this way.


I built a shorter shelf on this side wall because of the light switch. It's for an outside light that we don't use very often at this point, but I still don't like covering them up. This top shelf might change to hold more books we'll be using this year, but for now it holds our sticker maker {we love this machine} & Jayden's incredible marble maze that he was given for Christmas. It's so much fun to grab a marble and watch it run it's course when you're suppose to be getting coloured pencils, notebooks, or even if you're just passing through the room.

The school room is nearly complete now. Just waiting on finding a few posters I'd like to hang up on the walls & possibly a bulletin/white board over the boys desks. I really like the way the room has come together, & I especially like my bookshelves!

Last week the boys and I decided it was time to check another item off our Summer Bucket List, so we ran around in a flurry of excitement and packed up to spend the day at the beach. We took our quilt, snacks, books, boogie boards, & our hover craft. It's seriously fun, and if you ever have the opportunity to use one you should!


Despite the picture, the water was relatively calm and still. Which was nice, but we prefer to ride the waves. We go out as far as the kids can swim and then jump on the boards when a wave comes our way and ride it back to shore. This day we spent more time learning the "proper way to effectively splash people" & throwing Mermaid Hair at each other {seaweed}.


I flipped my board flower side up because a stinking saw fly was after me. I was trying to distract it long enough to squash it. Mission accomplished, & I knocked out a few of her fellow companions. Yeah, we had a quick science lesson on the beach that A, saw flies that cut us are female, and B, saw flies hurt because they don't have a needle nose like a mossie, instead they have a serrated beak. And frankly, knowing that makes it hurt even more!


The seagulls came to visit us as soon as we pulled out the watermelon. I refused to share on principle that they didn't eat the saw flies that kept trying to eat me! The Seagulls were unimpressed and screamed at me, so I screamed back and they flew away. My children found it funny, most likely because we were the only persons on this particular strip of beach.


Around the time Mr S was suppose to meet us at the beach the boys decided to build a sandcastle to knock off yet another bucket list item. They wanted a massive moat though and got really carried away digging the whole end dug so deep they hit water which caused a lot of laughter amongst them.


Morgan used the sand from the hole they dug to make this large lego head man. He was about to add facial features to it when I jumped up screaming, "Save our stuff!!" We'd waited about two minutes too long to move closer to shore and the incoming tide hit our quilt which had books upon it at the time. There was a quick mad scramble as we moved managing to keep everything but the quilt dry.


It was a beautiful day, and we quite enjoyed ourselves even if we didn't get much wave riding in. We're looking forward to spending an entire weekend, soonish, at the beach on our next camping event of the summer.

My children own a lot of lego. No, make that a ton of lego. Seriously. They quickly outgrew the little plastic lego box that they received with a small set, and moved up to a basket. That was quickly outgrown and replaced with a plastic piggy toybox, which was also outgrown & replaced with half a clam sandbox/swimming pool which is currently full to the max.

The problem is, all that lego often came with a booklet of instructions on how to assemble the kits. There's much pouring over the booklets and assembling that happens when lego sets are first purchased. Then the books were put in a rubbermaid box and often pulled out to get ideas for how to build the item again, or build a duplicate, or, or, or.. Needless to say lego may be well built but the booklets aren't. I can't tell you how many times a child has come to me asking if I've seen the other half of their booklet. Or just page 10. Or the cover. Or.. Or.. Or.. And, if they aren't asking me, I'm asking them.. "Why is there a lego booklet cover on your bed?" "Why on earth are there lego booklets all over under the beds?" "There's a lego booklet jammed in the vacuum and I'm going to scream!"  You're getting the point here, right?


Over our summer break I've been finishing unpacking a few last boxes, as well as organizing and decorating our humble abode. I started with the boys rooms and when I got to Morgan's, I decided to yank out the box of Lego booklets. I just couldn't take it anymore! I told him to put the box in my bedroom and when I had a spare lifetime I'd find all the booklets on the computer. He kinda chuckled and said, "But you'll do it sooner then that right?" Uh, yeah, sure.. I put the task off for a couple of weeks as I busied myself with other things. I mean look at that booklet, they all looked like that! Except for the half million that had the number ripped off and I had to sort through the scraps to match them up.. I'm not joking here, people!


After scaring our gardner half to death when I jumped up from the table and screamed, "I FOUND it guys!!" at the very moment he was about to knock on my door I managed to locate every single stinking number on every stinking booklet that was in the box! It didn't take as horribly long as I expected it to, but it was no easy task either. Some of the lego structures they have came with multiple books, so I made sure to mark that on my paper. I also, for what ever reason, felt the need to mark the Bionicle figures and Lego Hero figures as such on my paper.

Then the real fun began.. I went to Lego.com and typed in the booklet numbers and waited to see what it would find. For the most part it had very little trouble finding what I wanted. The biggest task was all the clicking it took to get there.



I was really glad that I marked down which booklets were for bionicles because for whatever reason Lego.com couldn't/wouldn't bring up those books! So, I used Brickfactory which still had direct links to those booklets. So simple! Now when we obtain new lego we'll put it together and then immediately download the instruction booklet and reycle the one that came with the kit. Not only are all the instruction books on the computer, they are also on our ipad, and burned to disc. So hopefully we've got it covered. Either way, I'm just really glad there are no more creepy messes of booklets hiding under the kids beds!

Our latest review is up over at The Curriculum Choice. It's another rave, from us, about the Times Alive! Programme. Many of you will all ready know that we truly love{d} the programme and have benefited from it greatly.

If you're looking for a fun way to help your child/student learn their tougher multiplication facts you might want to check out this fun programme which is currently on special for 50% off the normal price until the end of the month!

I decided the new school year called for a new planner. I know we shared a terrific one last year and we fully enjoyed using it the past year and a half, but I like to change things up every now and again.

So, I decided to create a really simple planner for the new school year this summer. I made a really simple cover as well & then used our binding machine to bind the whole thing together. I went with spiral binding because I'm really low on the click binders and don't have the right size for such a large book anyway.

It really was a simple thing to put together, except that I ran out of ink and had to dash out for more. Then, when I got the whole thing bound up I realized I'd forgotten to print on the backside of a few pages. I still need to remove the binding and reprint those pages, but our printed decided it hated the new ink cartridge and I'm waiting for the replacement one to show up in the mail courtesy of Epson.



The actual cover is just a tree and the year on it. Nothing fancy at all. I'm thinking of using our planner as our journal this year to see how that goes after reading a really interesting article here about planning. We'll see how we like it compared to our normal journal.


The fanciest part of this planner is the table of contents which I made just for fun. All though, I think in the end, I have a few page numbers off, but since I didn't number the pages inside I don't think it really matters. I even cheated this year and snagged a freebie calendar. There's many to be had, but I liked this one.


I included our annual checklist of things the boys will aim to accomplish. Honestly, some of it I know for a fact we will most likely not get to {like ancients in regards to history because we're focusing mainly on US history this year}, but that's okay I put it on the list anyway. Each boy has one page, front and back, that we tick off as we go along. We create our lists from this book.


I included another set of read aloud lists too. We generally have 3 tentative lists each year. One is for audio books, one is for Aussie read alouds, & the final list is just general read alouds or ones that are included with our curriculum for the year. I often have a list of books I want to read to the kids. I divide it up between audio and read aloud based on what I own and what I can obtain easily. Our Aussie list is often left blank and is filled in as we read over the year. We may pick books that are classics here, something fun we find at the library, or books that are truly Australian but fit into the time period we are currently learning about.


I also have a monthly calendar in there, again I cheated and used someone elses. I really wanted to use the ones put out by Anything But Perfect because I really loved the color and cuteness, but it wasn't to be. She wasn't done with the years worth and I really needed to get mine bound up, plus I really wanted portrait view not landscape, so I went with these instead.


I don't know about your house, but in our house the #1 time killer on a school day around here is lunch time. Seriously, what's up with that? If I plan leftovers you can bet someone ate them without my knowledge. If I plan sandwiches you can be sure we're out of bread. If I plan nothing children revolt. I just can't win! So, I was delighted to have this little planner to jot down a months worth of lunches. Weird, maybe but I'm hoping to stock the freezer monthly with lunches incase we're mysteriously out of bread or leftovers. It was a freebie from here.


This school year we'll be using Sonlight Core E, and I decide to go with a planner page the reflects the Sonlight Schedule pages in the cores. I know that might seem a little silly because I'll have that plan to follow, but we have a vast amount of other topics to cover in a week. On top of that if we're using our planner as our journal then it's equally important that everything is jotted down in one place.


Each planning page has a front and a back. I've put one page in per week per student to keep track of each child's individual accomplishments. I probably didn't need to go to that extent because in general my boys do the same level/subjects for everything but math and language arts, but I really felt their own personal records was important. We'll see how it all goes for us this year.


You've probably all ready noticed, but I'm a planner. So I included a page for any notes I have for each child for next year's school. If I come across a book or bit of curriculum I think will better suit a child I now have the space to make a note of it so as we get closer to the time for ordering new school stuff I can actually remember what I needed. On the backside of this page is a book wish list, which is basically a lined page with Book Wish List written across the top. Again, just a spot to jot down books as we stumble across them.


Gotta love the title on these blank note pages. Seriously, every time I see "& other important things" I laugh. I need blank space to keep track of things. Ideas I stumble upon, those last minute ideas you get that you must write somewhere where it won't get lost, & stuff like that. Yeah, some of these pages are all ready being filled up with things like that..


I stumbled up this Reading Response Journal some time ago and wanted to pop it in my notebook instead of making it a notebook for the kids. I thought the prompts would make great discussion points as we read our books Sonlight books this year, they'd also give me great ideas for questions to ask my kids about the books they are reading, & they just make general great starting points for narration ideas. It's a free download from here.

Last week, after checking various things on the internet I felt something on the base of my computer and upon flipping it over found the the rubber on the bottom of my Macbook was warped and melted.

I sent Mr S some nifty pictures via my mobile phone & his reply was rather expected: "What happened??!!" Of course I had absolutely no idea, & still don't! The next question was, "Are you okay?" Because, of course the term melted implies that one has been burnt.

I was not burnt however which is the oddest part about the entire situation. I then rang Apple Australia to find out what my next move was and, after spending five minutes convincing the woman I was no way harmed, it was just the computer and I needed it fixed pronto because my recipes, school plans, writings, and a billion other things are all inside of it! After another five minutes she told me I could take it to a place reasonably local & then attempted to give me instructions by saying silly things like, "It's by the lighthouse."

To which I really wanted to say, "No, it's not by a lighthouse, it's by the ANZAC clock, across from the vets office, & directly next door to the Footy shop." Instead, I told her not to fuss I knew exactly where it was and that I'd take it over that day. And I did. They assured me it would be a really quick turn around and the logest part would be awaiting Apple sending them the rubber base.

I was also, once again, asked if I was okay. Then, once we sorted out the case # one very charming and helpful little boy scribbled out on my paper {he saw me writing more and didn't want me to get mixed up.. he saw the error of his way when the color clearly left my face and I wailed, "Oh no that was the most important thing on my paper! He also hid in the corner of the shop near the cases for fear they'd guess he was the child who scribbled it out!}  I was once again informed that this was a quick turn around, and further more it was very common in the white Macbooks.

However, once they flipped mine over there were shocked at how bad it was. Apparently while it's normal for the rubber to come away it's not normal to bubble up as much as it did. Unfortunately their, "quick turn around time" has gone as long as six days and counting. Here's hoping that when I finally have a computer again it doesn't have a huge bubble on the bottom of it.

I spotted a 111 page free download, over on Teachers Pay Teachers, of the 50 Nifty United States! How cool is that? There's notebooking pages, graphics, resources, and more. Did I mention it was free?


You absolutely must race over to Pink & Green Mamma and check out the Life-Sized Body Maps her kids made. It is so amazingly awesome! Seriously. My Jayden will adore making one of these. Biology is on the table for science next year, and even if it wasn't we'd probably make one of these anyway.