Making

Declan and I read a really nice picture book this evening, about making a boat out of household objects (an empty juice carton, a straw, and a piece of paper for a sail). Declan demanded to do the same, and used a rice bubble box, and put the peg dolls he made on the weekend into it, before sailing away across the carpet.

Merit Award

Today Callum brought home a merit award he had been awarded at assembly.

Presented to Callum Predavec
for his responsible attitude towards school work and wonderful sense of humour. Callum always works hard and greets 2/3C with a smile each day.

He was mostly pleased with himself because he had caught his teacher writing it (without knowing who it was for!). But we made much of him anyway.

Grandparental sleepover

Callum and Declan slept over with Grandma and Grandpa on Saturday night, entirely at their request (they decided that it was about time they did it again about two weeks after the last time).

By all accounts (boys and grandparents) a good time was had by all, with some sandstone hammering on Saturday evening, and then a visit to the tram museum on Sunday. We met them in Circular Quay so that we could all have a look at the Queen Victoria (along with most of the other people in Sydney) and then caught a ferry home together.

They seemed (judging by grumpiness) to have been tired out by the whole experience, but again according to their grandparents, waited until they got home before the grumpiness emerged.

Apparently the next time the grandparents have weekend space in their diaries is May, so we'll have to let the boys down gently when they demand another sleepover!

School update

Mainly because I managed to visit twice this week. Wednesday was parent information night, so Evan and I got to go and sit in Declan and Callum's classrooms respectively so that their teachers could tell us anythign we needed to know. The main piece of useful information was the discipline method. In each class they start each day at the top of a chart (a cloud for Declan, green for Callum) and then any serious infractions result in them moving down a colour - eventually down to red - sent to the Principal.

Both boys seem very unlikely to be in that position on current form.

Callum is doing lots of year 3 work - being in a 2/3 class has made that easier, and so he is doing year 3 maths and spelling/english homework now. It's quite a lot harder than last year, which so far is proving mostly a good thing.

Today I came with Evan to drop them up, and Callum was very excited to show me his classroom, and make sure I caught sight of Miss Carapina.

Declan will start taking readers home next week for him to read to us - it will be interesting to see how well his teacher thinks he is reading. For us, he has a slowly increasing repetoire of sight words, and good technique on phonetically sounding out words. It takes him a few goes to add a sounded out word to his long term repetoire though. He's been more enthusiastic about it lately, though. I suspect because Callum is no longer his only point of comparison, so he's more willing to give it a go.

Noodle markets

We went to the Noodle markets tonight - it's been raining so much this summer that this is only the second time we've been! Today's game was playing hide and seek in a section of garden with tall plants - the boys were immediately spottable, but were very pleased when we pretended that it was hard to find them.

Also a good development - their favourite dinner (turkish gozleme) came with far more vegetables than usual, and they ate lots!

A less good development - tiredness from the week of school meant that the last half hour was spent with a lot of pushing, shoving, and quickness to collapse into tears.

Still, overall a nice way to end the week.

Forward rolls

Tonight, with the advantage of a personal gymnastics coach in the house, Callum and Declan decided to try forward rolls. Callum set up a special series of cushions to give himself a slope advantage, and finally managed to get his head tucked in to roll over to sitting postion.

Declan tried the harder option - rolling along a cushion without the slope. He did well - managing to roll straight 75% of the time. It turned out that his secret came from Lego Star Wars - he was pretending to be one of the robots that propels itself by rolling up into a ball.

Mermaids

Callum and Declan went home from school with Milly and Alice this afternoon as Evan had a Council meeting. I arrived to get them to discover all four of them dressed as mermaids - Callum and Declan with shiny tails, and Milly and Alice with more complex costumes.

They play very well together, as a foursome, and love having a range of different dress-ups at the two houses.

Sleeping bags

When it's a hot night, we give the boys doona covers instead of doonas to cover themselves up. (Since we have very few sheets that aren't actually fitted).

They've now decided that they are sleeping bags, which are much more fun than covers. Tonight Declan insisted on having his sleeping bag under the doona, as it makes him feel warmer.

Star Wars party

Today we went to Aidan's Star Wars Party. Callum and Declan had been thrilled to get the invitation, when they realised it was a Star Wars party, and insisted on taking their own light sabres. They had a great time playing the various star wars games (light sabres and balloons, throw water balloons at the death star, bullrushing with star wars characters) and enjoying the light sabre cake.

As Declan is currently insisting on a Star Wars party of his own for his next birthday, we were taking mental notes - I think the water balloons at the death star is going to be a winner.

Hurt chin

Yesterday, while at school, Callum fell down a ramp leading to the quiet zone, after he had a tangle with Angus. In his words, "I came to, in excrutiating pain, and dropped to my knees and started crying. I told Angus to get a teacher, and he didn't, so then I called a few girls, and then a teacher came, and told me to go up to the office. The office called Evan and told him to take me to a special doctor to get a special bandage. And then I had exactly three stitches in my chin. Then I went home, and then I felt like eating, because I felt a bit sick when the doctor put the stitches in. Evan and I went to Thomas St Cafe for lunch"

Callum can't get his chin wet for 24 hours, but otherwise he's seems OK from his experience. His cut is almost parallel to the last time he cut his chin falling over in Victoria St.

Tae Kwon Do

Yesterday the whole family went to Tae Kwon Do to try it out. Evan and Callum, in a small ceremony, received their yellow and yellow tipped belts, respectively. And Declan and I got to try and work out what was going on and follow everyone else.

Declan did very well, kicking with great enthusiasm, and doing a good job following the warm up. He decided that he had a sore knee for a small part of it, but was jollied out of it by a very friendly black belt who taught him kicking techniques.

Next week, we all get the uniform.

Star wars friends

Milly came over last night for a sleepover. She is one of the few people who is happy playing Star Wars with Callum, even when he bosses her around by telling her how to jump and when to fight.

They had a great time after dinner with a remote controlled car, which we took down to Bradfield Plaza. They took turns controlling it and chasing the others, and a lot of running around was had by all. I think all that running around may have tired them out - they all went to sleep within about 10 minutes of lights out.

Carapina Cash

Callum has now found out his new class for the year - 2/3C. He loves his new teacher, Miss Carapina because she has a very complex system called Carapina Cash. He was so taken with it that he explained it to me twice before we even finished dinner.

You get one Carapina Cash for doing things like answering tricky questions, by "staying green all day" (i.e. getting no warnings), and sitting still on the floor. You can then exchange 5 Carapina Cash for one good work card, which then gets you into the Cammeray mainstream system of currency, where ultimately 250 good work cards get you a Pennant.

Callum is very happy because his best friend Angus is in his class also. It's a good start to the year.

Big schoolboy

Declan has now had two days of school, and we're gradually hearing more about it. Tonight he proudly told us that he had homework. It was to perform the Three Billy Goats Gruff using the puppets he made in his class.

He and Callum did it together, at first, building a bridge out of lego, for the set (black on one side with no grass, green on the other where the grass was) and Callum played the troll while Declan played the parts of all three billy goats gruff.

Declan was so taken with the concept that he did it twice more, alone, and then asked me to play the billy goats.

After the first day he was a bit tired for half an hour or so, but both yesterday evening and this evening he's been bouncing around very happily with the world.