I'm a 'formal' student! Haha ... Research, discussion, assignments, deadlines! After so many years of not doing any formal study this month I decided to take the plunge with a four week art appreciation course with BraveWriter and it's been brilliant. With two assignments due each week and some information overload in the middle my brain is really hurting but I'm learning so much about observing art and adding to my art vocab it's been incredible. I've still got such a long way to go with putting much of the learning into practise, if I don't use it I'm going to loose it, and I still feel like a child taking their first steps: very wobbly and not confident. Once again I've been reminded that learning is about observation skills, asking the right questions (who, where, when, what, why and how) and learning a new vocabulary: and yet, it's great having someone who knows what they are doing to guide you through the process step-by-step, to see this new world through their eyes. Ok, just one more week to go!

While we at the zoo yesterday we saw a bit of unexpected wildlife action. We were checking out the lions when a Blue Heron flew in over the lions as they were snoozing (or so we thought) around the enclosure. Maybe the Heron realised he was too close to the lions and started to fly upwards -- too late! One of the lionesses went from lying prostatrate to being airbourne in a second, snatched the Heron in midair before landing to make a run for it with her prize. As soon as she landed the male lion was after her to release the Heron and fight they did, but the lioness was not letting go. After being chased for a minute or two she secured herself a corner where much to some peoples disgust, and that of the other rest of the pride, went about chowing down into the poor bird ... those of us that found it fascinating stayed to watch a little more. It's not often that you get to see something like that in real life right before your eyes!

Well, we are into our 3rd week of taking a break from academics ~ I've really needed it, some down time from the routine of lessons, and we've had a mix of days and activities. The Netherlands is in the middle of summer vacation so all the school kids are on break which has meant playdates and some sleepovers for us.

The first week our three older children were at their various scout camps (not sure if I update you about that yet) ... they had a blast and came back very tired. Jassy has been invited to train as a patrol leader next year so as you can imagine she's nervous but mainly excited about the thought of taking on a patrol leader role. Jackson and one of his little friends had a day together at the Aviodrom (air museum) ... that was a great day.

In the second week we chilled out, going to the park when the weather was good, sleeping in and generally being slobs around the home ~ haha don't ya just love those PJ days!

Week three has been busy! Sunday found us out in row boats in the middle of the most glorious nature with our friends the Middendorfs. I hope to have some piccies up soon. Wednesday we were at the beach ... it had been awhile and we all took in too much of the sun's rays ... poor Marcel was in the worst shape, especially his feet :-( ... dispite the sunburn we had a wonderful day together enjoying the sun, sand and water. Yesterday was a day at Artis, Amsterdam's zoo, which is an older zoo but we has a fascinating time with another family who are visiting Amsterdam for the summer.

Next week is our last week of holidays before getting back into the more formal side of our learning -- it's going to quickly!! ;-)

Our three older children are camping this week, the girls in Baarn and Michael in Haarlem. Check out the girls on the day their troup left for camp! One of the leaders was offered a work truck to carry all the equipment needed for one week away!

Loading the truck ....

Truck and trailer ~ equipment included the usual tents, food etc plus all the scout kids took their bikes too!

A couple of weekends ago we headed up to a beautiful area of Holland to see the dunes and hang out in nature with our friends the Middendorfs. We had a wonderful, relaxing afternoon!

That's where we were headed

The kiddos running ahead

Jackson playing "I'm exhausted" Yeah right, he can't fool us. He enjoyed running around the dunes too much to be tired! Look at the dirt on those legs and I was finding sand in the house for days afterwards LOL

Our new car .... NOT .... Marcel, keep dreaming ok ;-)

I had to put in a call to CanberraConnect today about renewing a licence - I got so much more out of the call then just what procedure I had to follow. They were efficient, helpful, friendly and that Aussie accent, well, nothing can beat it. In the past I've laughed at the name CanberraConnect: while today I thought the name so appropriate because of the friendliness and ease of the conversation. Ahhh it's interesting the things I miss about home!

This was an activity that the kids did with their scout unit some months back. Check out these incredible creatures!

Another smaller variety

Amazing birds!

Look at this beauty

Looking at this guy look at us you it's difficult to believe he is an incredibly efficient hunter

European Owl

We met a good number of our neighbours this weekend at a combined BBQ for our street and 3 other surrounding streets ~ it was lots of fun! Lots of activities for the kids and adults alike. At the end of the night we all sat outside to watch the Holland/Russia game on a big screen (definitely not the highlight of the night ) ... but still we all totally enjoyed meeting more of our neighbours.

My sister-in-laws wedding day in tropical North Queensland ~ a beautiful day!!

Hmm not that our family sticks strickly with the school year but I know heading into school holidays it's best to go very light with our already 'loose' schedule. And it seems premarture to be finishing at the end of June (in Australia the school year ends in December) and yet, that's when school finishes here in Holland and the summer vacation starts.

For some reason, too, I'm feeling so good about heading into these holidays. The main reason for this is for the first time in my homeschooling career I'm no longer responsible for recording what work we have done on a day to day basis, eventhough, the recording is still happening. The reason why? My partner-in-life, who shares this learning journey with me, discovered some months back an online schedule system (if you go to the SimplyCM website you can check it out too, free for one month) which he has been playing with and is now using for keeps. The peace that has descended on this home is incredible: a major pressure has been taken off me allowing me to get on with teaching the children. And secondly, Marcel is directly involved in such a way that draws on one of his strenghs as a person - in areas where he has an interest (eg. finances and homeschooling) he keeps fantastic records! So most days when he gets home from work he logs on and in five to ten minutes has recorded for that day what has been 'worked on' and what has been 'completed'. Both of us are seeing tangibly how much work is getting done throughout the day. It is so motivating to me because we are only recording the learning that you can see/touch which in a funny way gives me a lot of peace because I also know there is alot of learning that can't be seen or will bare fruit sometime down the track.

I also head into the holiday season knowing more about my eldest son and his needs as a learner. For this visual spatial mum has a dear son who thrives on structure, who needs a step-by-step (dare I say it) workbook approach. We have started a new maths program and starting from the beginning we are flying through it filling in any gaps and for the first time in awhile my son loves maths. His sisters are loving the new program too! Even our youngest, as if through osmosis is chatting about tens and hundreds - it's a joy to see. Over the holidays we will have an informal season of maths before starting into a more routine schedule when things slow down and become more normal in the lesson pace. Must say it's a pretty wild pace right now and unpredicatable - some days we spend 2 hours on maths and other days it's around 30 minutes so I'm going with the flow and enjoying the ride.

So, that's us with wrapping up this school year. For those of you here in Holland, whether you are wrapping up for your school year or continuing on as usual, I want nothing but the best for you and your family. For my friends back in Australia enjoy the season of winter and stay warm!

Edited:  :-) it was such a random photo. We were walking down a back road taking a shortcut from the Albert Cuypmarkt (100 year old well known, loved markets in de Pijp area) and it was sitting out front of this apartment come business office. Who knows if it belonged to the business for carting their goods around the streets of A'dam or if it belonged to an apartment-owner - it's difficult to say. Ppl can have the strangest bike adaptations!

Take a guess who is playing Russia in the quarter finals in one of the European Championship Quarter Finals on Saturday night. Maybe this will help! 

One of our favourite places ~~ great place to explore ....

Hi dear friends and family,

The weather is a little on the cold side today, overcast and drizzly. Hence the reason why I'm blogging this afternoon  and enjoying time listening to my iPod and some cool music . We have had the other type of brilliant weather over the past couple of weeks: sunny, warm which goes along nicely with the longer days we are seeing.

Today we've caught up with some of our friends in Australia. One of our close friends turned 8 years old yesterday and it was terrific to hear Rachel's excited voice and all her news - at times like that we just really miss Australia so much. I got to catch up a little with my friend Janette and tried to keep her for as long as I could from the doing her Sunday night ritual of ironing for the week - yeah sorry about that Janetteso   but what are friends for, and it was great to chat about family and history! 

As some of you know Marcel will be in Australia soon to walk his sister down the aisle(!!) and making the most of this visit back to Australia I've been doing a bit of ordering for our homeschool (which will save us heaps on postage) - my mum has been the recipient of all these packages .... and had the 'honour' of opening them all up! Now that was a totally new experience for me of having someone else being the first to take the new purchases out of their wrappings LOL! All is good and everything seems to be there and mum did a great job of working out what was what

This week has been an unusally full week with having people over for dinner - it's just the way it worked out - we had a family from our old neighbourhood over, also a couple from next door on another night and then Marcel's brother and fiance for some seafood. They were showing me how to cook BBQed salmon steaks - so lekker and a yummy sauce to go with it too. Last Sunday after chuch we went to a local park with family who also have four children so that was great and relaxed. And we had our small group get together on Friday night with a very yummy BBQ.

BBQing is definitely the way to go and something we plan to get into more. In the Netherlands they have these neat, little disposable-BBQs made of alfoil trays, with the necessary coals and grill-plate, ... still they don't seem like the real-deal BBQ to me but, hey, they work!

The girls were at Walibi World yesterday with their scout group, such a difficult, boring way to earn a new scout badge - NOT! They had such a blast and came home not the least bit tired - nice to have that sort of energy, eh?! Michael was at a sleepover on Friday night with one of his friends from scouts: we have had the same boy over here more lately for play-dates and a sleepover. Also, Michael has been getting very bad hayfever lately, yesterday the scout-leaders called us to come take him home as his face looked like he'd gone a couple of rounds with Mike Tyson(?). It's looking alot better this afternoon with the help of some hayfever drugs and eye drops.

Ps. ... I have a few more photos from May to put up, hopefully soon  .....

I have been so thankful over the last nine months for the Read Alouds that we have enjoyed they have been a main stay in our home, and finally it would seem I'm being more consistent with the RA part of our day.Thanks to Sonlight, Bravewriter's The Arrow and a few books I've picked up over here the children are getting their dose of history, science and good literature without us following any formal programmes (only exception is The Arrow - our approach is pretty relaxed and at our own pace).

Some of the chapter books we have read:

A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Brunett

Justin Morgan Had a Horse by Marguerite Henry

Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Poppy by Avi

White Stallion of Lippizza by Marguerite Henry

Archimedes and the Door of Science by Jeanne Bendick

The Aesop for Children

Stories for Children by Isaac Bashevis Singer (on going)

Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Eleanor Coerr (current)

The Cricket in Times Square (current)

The Little Riders by Margaretha Shemin (current) - a charming little book set in Holland during the German occupation - Liberation Day is celebrated on May 4th in the Netherlands.

Some piccies from our weekend in Dusseldorf!

Life here in the Netherlands is going along well and we are experiencing lots of things. Below is a quick overview of some of the things that we've been up too!

At church we had our ladies day (19/4) which was fabulous .... lots of laughs and learning. We had some families from Dusseldorf, Germany come to town for it too and one of the families stayed with us.

Marcel started his Monday night dutch course! There is only one other lady doing the course with him so they should cover quite alot of material over the 10 weeks!

A day in the Centrum with Jikke and then dropping by the Rijks Museum (we feel really spoilt to be able to drop in when we can!)

On the 30 April each year is Koninginnedag! Koninginnedag or Queen's Day is a national holiday that started with the current queen's (Beatrix) grandmother: April 30 is actually Beatrix' mother's birthday but it was dicided when Beatrix came to the throne that Queen's Day would be celebrated on April 30th each year. Each Koninginnedag the queen visits 2 cities in the Netherlands and this year one of the cities was Franeker. So we had the opportunity to visit with our friends again in Franeker enjoying a day of celebrations and lots of orange. To say that the Dutch love their orange is an understatement! So getting into the spirit of the day we started collecting the orange: hairspray, glasses, headbands, wig, shirts, and the Holland flag. So we were ready to meet the royal family . A few favourite piccies!

This photo made it into one of the national papers! One of the reporters on the day was kind enough to interview us ~ if you are interested in seeing the article let me know I'll send it to you on PDF

Notice the orange beard!

Queen Beatrix in pink

Princess Maxima ~ we shook hands with her back in Australia when her and the crown prince visited for the 400year celebrations a couple of years back

We had such a fun day!!

Incredible show! We had an opportunity to see this show which was awesome. All of it was amazing but our highlights were the girl who balanced on canes, the Russian swings, the aerial stunts and, oh, just about all of it really!

At the show ....

on the way home ...