Well fellow homeschooling mama's, I've decided that keeping up with 3 different blogs is beyond too much for me, so I'm consolidating all my blogs into one.  My hopes are that 1. it will cut down on the time suck that is the interwebz ;)   2. that it will be interesting to have all my hs, crafting, gardening,  general rambling on ONE blog so that it paints a more 'complete' picture of me & my life!    I will still pop in on occasion  and check the blogs of my friends though, and hope you'll wander over to livejournal and have a peek at mine as well.     The new blog site is Treading The Maze , in reference to the Labyrinth that is my life.. many interests  & posts on different things  might get one lost.. but thankfully Livejournal has a handy 'tag' feature so just click on the homeschooling tag on the side bar and it'll bring up all relevant posts!  (that was the geeky feature that won me over btw lol)  

But it appears not!  Ah well, things have been busy around here ;)  Frodo has started subtraction and is a whiz at it so far, he just spent a while showing rainforestmaths.com what for lol.  They are outside now 'making a helmet' out of who knows what.. will be interesting to see! 

We've been working on the cardinal directions and now Frodo (and sometimes little sam) can point out east & west, and he knows our house faces south so he can work out north based on that hehe.  Last weeks project was a map of his room, with all the walls labeled and everything placed in the appropriate spot (ie window on the north wall, train table on the south wall, bed in the NW corner, door in the SE corner) and he did really well with it.  This week we've moved on to the whole house, and used a cut up cereal box as a diorama of sorts, and made a model of our house from the perspective of looking through the roof.  Still have a few bits & peices to finish up with that, then he is to draw it in his MLB since we'll never be able to keep EVERY project we do!  I will of course take a pic and post it when we finish though!

He's finishing up the alphabet MLB pages this week, Z is today :D  He's decided to draw zig zags as his MLB masterpiece!  Next week, we'll be starting the word families reader.  I've been doing some copywork with him, his handwriting needs a bit of practice, but it's been fun stuff.. silly rhymes from the OM book, based on the letters of the week.. so he'll get lots of Y & z practice this week ;)   And today I'm going to help him write his uncles' Nigel & Mike a letter, and mail it to them in NZ.  He's very excited as they're coming to visit in June, and he just thinks they hung the moon lol.   Could have something to do with the fact that they LOVE shopping for nephews, and the early learning centre shop is their fave place to stop by with him? hehehe 

We have been outside a LOT as the weather has been COLD at night (ok cold for us lol) but nice & mild during the day.  The boys got to see a gecko 'drop' his tail, when the cat was trying to eat him and the  kids shoo'd her off (they were all proud that they saved his life :) so we had an interesting chat about how gecko's do that when they are in danger, and the tail keeps moving to distract the predator so the lizard can make it's get away!   Must find them some info on that online today, as they were really fascinated by it!  They've been helping me with the veggie patch a lot, and are eagerly awaiting the cherry tomatos to start turning red.. they're still little hard green things at this stage.    

We also got to discuss plumbing & sewage YUCK.. as the sewage pipe acess point in our neighbors yard (behind us, up hill, so it flowed into our yard YUCK) sprung a leak and there was 'smelly water' oozing out everywhere.  Which lead to a chat about germs and how they are so tiny you can't see them.. but sewage has germs so STAY OUT OF THAT PART of the yard until the disinfectant has a chance to neutralize them PLEASE!! lol 

The last couple of weeks has seen a lot of creativity out of Mr.Frodo... he decided the whole family needed new mobile phones, so made them for us.. out of toilet paper tubes LOL.   He's had several little ideas like that and just set himself up at the table with all manner of stuff and dug in.. unfortunately now I have no glue stick though, or anything other than clag!  The child is a glue addict.. although I'm pretty sure he's sticking it to stuff, not sniffing it ;)  He's also found somethign he wants to make me for mothers day , so I have to vacate the house for a while tomorrow so him, dad & the brothers can get their mischeif managed.  Gee whatever shall I do, a couple of hours of forced galavanting around without family in tow?  However shall I cope ;)  

So with that, I'll be off now.. Happy mothers day to you all this weekend!