Wandering around in New Spaces

Hi everyone! Well, here it is, almost a month since my last post.... and I've been on holidays! So grab yourself a pot of tea and settle in for a whole lot of photos of a really fun trip. Firstly, we had to delay the trip because the roads were closed... closed because it RAINED! Before we all get too excited, not the earth shattering drought breaking kind of rain, but a significant amount which was widespread and has greened the place up nicely. We had over a few weeks around about the 100mm mark, (which is more than we had in the entire year for 2018 I'm told) so it was significant. Alongside this, there was the flow of the Paroo into the floodplain, so there is still a lot of water hanging around in the channels and drains on the sides of the road. There is water in the river again, though it has subsided from the height of the flow to a stable and slow moving 1m -1.5meters. It did get up to about 2.9 which was very nice to see. So, we went to the North Coast of NSW. We t...

Hello again! What a busy month or so we have had! It started with our last trip to Cobar. At homeschool group the children acted out the story of Burke and Wills. If your memory of primary school history lessons is good, you'll remember that in 1860 there was a race, with a grand prize for the south to north crossing of Australia. Well, the Burke and Wills Expedition was one of the teams that started (and the only one that actually completed the crossing) but all but 1 member of that Northward Party perished somewhere around present Innaminka on the Cooper Creek. There is a famous tree - The Dig Tree, where the waiting party buried supplies then left on the same morning that the northward party returned. They had carved the tree with instructions to find the supplies, and they did dig them up, but then stumbled around a bit more before dying a few days/weeks later, or in the case of Mr King, being rescued and cared for by local Aboriginal people until the search party located him...

Homeschool Space. This box might not look like much to some.... it is a box of plastic blocks, like Lego, but more... These are the maths manipulatives that I hope will teach the boys to love maths again. Math, you see, has been a bit of a challenge for us in our homeschool journey, in this post I'll try to explain. We left the NSW school system officially in July last year (in reality we checked out a while before then really). When we did leave the school we bought with us a whole load of 'stuff'. In those 2 plastic bags though, the kids both had their math workbooks - they happened to be Targeting Maths, a bit of a staple in primary school classrooms. I also had with me from my prac resources a comprehensive (day-by-day, week-by-week, term-by-term) plan of how to capture the entire maths syllabus for k-6 organised into one lengthy but helpful document... I printed it and stuck it in the yellow maths folder, neatly organised with tabs. That sounds great - we...

Hello, This post has been a long time coming. I've been thinking about it, wondering what I might do and if I really want/need/have energy for a blog. And here I am, with a new improved blog and a bit of a introductory and starting post. Now, if you know us you'll know there was no way we could have predicted all of the 'things' that happened in the past year. I struggled to think of the good things, and I was feeling a but regretful, until I realised that even though, for the most part, there were pretty awful situations and experiences, they also taught us a whole lot, and led to the decisions that we make now which we wouldn't be freely making had we not had those experiences. Not everything was bad - we swam with a dolphin named Tallulah at Sea World in October and that was an amazing experience, not only for Simon and I but the kids too!!!!!!!!! So, in no particular order, last years lessons: 1. Speak up - even if your voice shakes (thanks Dolly).  You s...