Mummy's holiday Bucket list

The boys have all now written their holiday to do lists. While I was watching them slave away over them I decided it would only be fair if Nathan and I participated too. So I have already done a Christmas recount and am about to present my list, Nathan will be writing a comic strip and publishing it here soon! But for now here is my list.

1. Spend quality time with my family.
2. Walk my boys and Bolt up my mountain.
3. Take my boys to Questacon.
4. Enjoy a hot date with my gorgeous hubby.
5. Take my family to Brisbane.
6. Get enough beach time in Brisbane to last me all through the Canberra winter.
7. Have at least one pyjama day.
8. Finish my merchandising job.
9. Plan how I am going to spend all of my hard earned cash from my new job!
10. Walk my boys up Mt Ainslie.
11. Pick a mountain we haven't walked up and walk up it.
12. Hire one of the paddle boat on Lake Burley Griffin and paddle my kids around in it.
13. Make my husband paddle me around Lake Burley Griffin.
14. Play cricket with Grumpy and the boys in the park.
15. Pick a museum in Brisbane to take the boys to.
16. Only use public transport not available in Canberra to travel around Brisbane.
17. Laugh at Nathan when he gets sea sick on the ferry on the Brisbane river.
19. Go to breakfast or lunch with my two favourite Canberra girls.
20. Take my Mum, Nan, Aunt and sister out for morning tea.

*edited*  We are marking the ones we have done with red text.

Rickard Writing

My boys don't really like to write. So much so that after Matthew's NAPLAN test last year he told us he didn't actually need to use writing as he wouldn't be using it as a professional athlete! But unfortunately to get to the professional athlete part you need to suffer through years and years and years of school first. And schools LOVE writing! 

So when we got the boys report cards this year and two out of three had a comment about their lack of written skills I decided it was time to bring out the big guns! Using the same theory I used when they were little to encourage a love of reading which has been successful we are now encouraging lots and lots and lots of different ways to write! (With reading it was lots and lots and lots of different books every night.)


After Ryan read Andy Griffins "Once upon a slime" he was keen to publish, he really wasn't keen to write something to be published he just wanted to be miraculously published. So I came up with the idea of them writing their own blogs. I have blogged for years and I love doing it. It has become a catch phrase around here when someone does anything even minutely amusing "That's going on the blog!" They are always keen to feature on the blog so I am hoping when they can feature in their own blog we may be able to spark a tolerance if not a love for writing!

So for a while I nagged, goaded, encouraged, cheered, bribed, yelled and screamed and they each have written their first piece which they have published to their own blogs. Please check them out from the links below. Add them to your favourites. And please, please comment. Teacher friends and family, correct them! Their grammar is terrible. Much like their fathers! Help them with their there, they're, theirs because trust me, by the time they have got to the publish button Nathan and I have nagged, corrected and edited to the point where they will no longer listen. And if you say it, they just might think we know what we are talking about (or in Nathan's case, making up!) and listen to us next time!

We have a plan to assist with their blogging! The plan centers around delivering a written piece each week of the holidays. Week 1 was the Christmas recount, 2 a holiday bucket list (stolen from here), 3 a lego comic strip complete with illustrations, 4 a comprehensive lego design with rationale and analysis, 5 a narrative about Elfelfa the Elf Helper and finally 1 real and 1 made up recipe complete with method.

Thank you in advance for your support and you never know they just might entertain you!

www.matthewswriting2014.blogspot.com

www.ryanswriting2014.blogspot.com

www.benswriting2014.blogspot.com

THE jet box construction

Remember a few weeks ago Ben had to present to news a box construction and the evaluation? Well he finally brought the construction home. See it does look like a jet plane! It has a cockpit and everything!

 Even jet burners!

He really was right in his evaluation about the only thing that could make it better would be a pilot!

Engineer In Training

Ben's homework this week was to plan, build and appraise something that would be useful or a gift. Ben being Nathan's son designed a bomber. Complete with egg carton jets and juice bottle cockpit.

When I read this I hear Nathan! It was completely written, designed and constructed by Ben but it speaks volumes to me about how much Ben and indeed the other two boys idolise their father. It also speaks volumes on the level of Ben's confidence! I love how the only way it can be further improved is to put a pilot in it! I also love how it rates a 10 out of a possible 5 stars! Gosh I love this kid! When he brings the actual construction home I will take a photo of it because it was quite impressive!

Miles Franklin Art Show

Miles Franklin Primary puts on an art show every second year. This year is the first time we have actually been here to see it. And I'm impressed! The hall has been transformed into the best art gallery i have ever seen! Every child has two pieces on display, every class has a display and there is one whole school piece.

 Matthew chose to display this piece. It is a 3D shading piece.

To celebrate the national year of reading every class made a book.

 

 Ben's class' book is called 'School of fish'

 Matthew's is the Clever Chooks

 And Ryan can't remember what his class book is called!

 Matthew's second piece is a tribute to Sidney Nolan and is a Ned Kelly piece.

 Ben is a huge fan of Picasso and you should hear him spout Pablo Picasso facts and jokes. Ben loves to tell you that he loves Pablo Picasso to bits and bits! Get it!!

 Ryan and Matthew's were displayed together!

 Ryan did some newspaper art.

 These totem poles were made by the whole school.

 Ben's duckling pond

Ryan's string painting.

 

My children have thoroughly enjoyed the Art unit this term so much so that Ben wants to be an artist when he grows up!

6 months of school!

So Ben has been at school for 6 months and this is his entry to the Miles Franklin Brilliant Writers competition. You might remember that Matthew won a prize in last yearscompetition.
 The story is:-

One day a bugy went to a frens house to play chest his frend beet him so he plaid a gen and wun and they had fun and they plaid for eva.

For those of you who aren't fluent in kindy speak his story goes like this:-

One day a budgie went to a friends house to play chess (or chest as it is known in this house! What can I say it is a house full of boob men!) his friend beat him so he played again and won and they had fun and they played for ever.

We had a hysterical conversation with him over the word 'again' he swears it is two words!
Anyway we are very proud of his effort and wish him well in the competition. Gee I hope there are no rules about submitting previously published work!

School Photos 2012

 Matthew Rickard Year 3

 Ryan Rickard Year 2

 Ben Rickard Kindy

Our Big School Boys

The Kindy Crunch

I read an article in Sunday’s paper (I wish I could find a link to but so far have had no success!) which was about how parents are sending their four years old to private tutors so they can get the jump on school, in particular literacy and numeracy programs. The parents claimed they were doing it to alleviate the stress of kindy. They felt it is no longer the ‘done’ thing to show up at school with no experience in reading, writing and counting. Having had three kids through kindy very recently I can certainly substantiate that kindy is getting competitive! This is really not a good thing for our kids! Will someone please think of the children! I didn't feel any pressure when Matthew went to kindy four years ago. It could have been because he was my first I wasn't familiar with how things are done around here or it could just be a recent phenomenon. But geez the competitiveness of kindy in 2012 is huge! The kicker is it is not coming from the school! Yes, our school prides itself on its academic achievements, yes, it uses an intensive phonics program in the first half of the year but it is fun and orchestrated by a very talented bunch of teachers who never place any pressure on the kids to learn and they actively assist the kids to learn properly using a variety of decoding methods to learn to read. The article stressed the value in the Steiner method of schooling which is play based. The only argument I have with Steiner is not learning to read until 7 because research now says that children until the age of 8 are learning to read but once they hit 8ish there is a switch in the brain and reading becomes reading to learn. In my experience it takes longer than a year to fully learn to read with full comprehension as well as fully memorise the 100 sight words we use at our school. However, I fully support play based learning before formal school age as I have witness with my own children their expanded knowledge gained from this model via preschool play based programs.  I fully credit the boy’s curiosity and enthusiasm to learn to the play based preschool programs they attended before reaching school age. I will also stress that both programs the boys did had not one iota of formal literacy or numeracy integrated into their programs.
So if you do have your child in private tutoring here is my advice to you….
Take all that money you are spending on that tutor drive to the book shop and spend it on books and colouring pencils and books!
I pride myself on having children that love to read. (A love of swimming and a love of reading have always been my main goals for my boys!) And whilst they aren’t fully grown up so I haven’t given myself the congratulatory pat on the back for being such an awesome mummy yet I can safely say we have laid a solid foundation. You have no idea how much it warms my heart to see my boys tucked up in their beds reading their books before bed or when it is too cold to be anywhere else but in bed!  Matthew is a voracious reader; I cannot buy enough books to satisfy him! He is now collecting a wide variety of books. We started with Tashi books, moved onto Zack Power and currently he is reading some star wars novel.  Ryan is well on his way, his comprehension is still developing but he is more than capable of reading Zac Power but is going through Phineas & Ferb stage (which he enjoys because they are famous, they’re on tv!)  As a family we have done most of Roald Dahls book and are graduating to Harry Potter. Benny is a funny one, being so close in age to his brothers and tacking along for the ride of his brothers reading journey meant he turned up at kindy with quite a few sight words and a beginning understanding of reading. He had no decoding methods and patchy understanding of phonics but a rather good memory but a great enjoyment of reading (even if he was just making up a story to the pictures in the book) and being read too.
So what did we do to get the boys to where they are now? We read to them, every day, from when Matthew was 3 months old. (We won’t count in-utero because we thought Matthew was going to be a girl so we read him the Paper bag princess every night, at least he should grow up knowing how not to treat a princess!) We started with Happy Helicopters (a first Christmas present from Nanna Bev and Grumpy) and now we do three readers and a chapter from a book. But it is more than just reading! We talk about what we have read, we play with it, we have been on a bear hunt up Mt. Rogers, we have done experiments that we have read about, we have googled information that has been piqued by books we have read, we have read the book and then hired the movie. Instead of sending the boys to a tutor to teach them the alphabet we sang it, at the top of our voices, we talked about all the things that start with “B” and gasped with amazement when Ben realised his name starts with “B”! And then went on to find out Bunnings starts with “B” also. The fun really began with the discussion about how the 60 inside the red circle is the speed limit and how when the yellow pointer goes above the 60 means Mummy is speeding and the police man could book her. (If he catches her!) Dinners are for making up quizzes, last night it was the time (if half an hour is 30 minutes how many minutes is an hour and a half? The person who catches Mummy out is the winner!) For a while we could not miss Sesame Street just so we could find out what the letter and number of the day was so we could spend the day finding them. 
Talk to your children! I have no teaching experience. In fact I teach my children all the wrong things, they think the sky is blue because that was God’s favourite crayon that day, thunder is God moving his furniture and it is not a myth that leprechauns have a pot of gold at the end of every rainbow but is an actual fact, I know this because I saw one once but he was too fast to catch! So I am by no means the perfect educator for my children and in a lot of aspect they have outgrown me academically already. But I know how to love them and I know how to make them love too and what I know for sure is that they love to read and learn. Those two things right there make them invincible. No matter what, they now have the capacity to learn and with that they can go anywhere and do anything.
The final thing I would say to the parents paying for tutoring is it makes absolutely no difference if you win kindy. Kindy is for learning. The whole of primary school and most of high school is for learning and making mistakes and figuring things out. Things are supposed to NOT be perfect in primary school. It is though supposed to be the most fun. Ever. You don’t get to be declared the winner if your child is the first to learn his sight words in kindy or the first to move to level 13 readers. The winner is not declared until high school graduation or university graduation or maybe not even until their first full time job, or maybe their first promotion or first million, or perhaps it is the delivery of your first grandchild! Kindy is absolutely not the time for winning, it’s the time for supporting and nourishing and building network capabilities and most importantly loving, no matter what!
Your kids might grow up and say you never gave me everything I needed to be the best at school (my Mum will tell you they definitely will) but at least then you will be able to say “I tried my best” not “The tutor tried their best.”

Cross Country

It all started with the school Cross Country. All of the boys had been training with their classes.

 In Kindy it is all about participation. In fact, the serious racing doesn't begin until they turn 8, so Ryan is still yet to compete for a spot on the school team. Despite the "non-competitive' nature Ben still ran his fastest and informed me he came 2nd! The boy that beat him had been tousling for the first position for weeks with it being fairly even. I can see a very competitive "friendship" for these two boys in the future. They are very similar and currently it as a very friendly rivalry.

 The winner of the having the most fun race was absolutely Ryan!

 He was very impressed not to have come last this year. I very much think for him it is a case of the race being just a little too short! This kid is full of slow twitch muscle fibres. He certainly didn't get them from his father. His Grumpy ran a marathon so perhaps he inherited it from him......

 Matthew placed a lot of expectation on himself. He knew he came third last year and he wanted to equal or better it this year. He came third again! Which once again meant he was off to Districts. Do you remember what happened last year? His shoe came off in the first 100m and he ran most of the rest of the way in one shoe! Anyway so after last year we thought we had better have a practise to boost his confidence.

 So the weekend before the race we went out to Mt Stromlo forest where the carnival is held. Nice view hey! The little ants in the centre of the midground are Nathan and the boys.

 Funnily enough Ben won the practise. Although we did tell Matthew to not go flat out or he would be too tired for the real race! Daddy came last. He tells us his is NOT a land animal!

 The big day came around and Matthew was very confident. He took off like a bat out of hell and was coming fourth for the first 800m until he got tripped over! I'm not sure who I was prouder of, the boy who tripped him and stopped to see if he was ok or Matt who got back up and kept going even though he was definitely out of the places!

 In the end he came 16th. So very proud of him!

Now we only have to wait two weeks until it is athletics carnival time! Lets see if Matthew came make the treble, the swimming, cross country and athletics district carnivals? Good thing he is a sportmans because he told us after his writing NAPLAN test this week Sportstars dont need to be able to write expositions and when he grows up he is going to be a sports star!

Box Construction

From time to time on here I have posted pictures of various monstrosities that the boys have made from boxes at preschool. They are usually captioned with a comment about how they will make awesome engineers just like their father. Times have changed however, but box contructions are still apart of our schooling landscape.The big change as I was informed today by Ben is now there is a process involved! Now you need to "D, B, A". That is "design", "build" & "appraise"! I checked Ben even knows what appraise means! So now apparently whacking a bit of masking tape on a box is a thing of the past! Bring on the "D,B,A"! He even knows that part of the appraisal process is thinking of two ways you can make it better!

A revisit: Kindy Assembly

The video was awesome but you just got a glimpse of the photos. So here are my favourites of the hundreds that Daniel gave me!

Please bear in mind that this was the last day of Ben's very first term at school. The weekend after we had driven to Brisbane and back in the space of 4 days. So that is why he looks super tired but also super cute!

The last one! I promise!

I can guarantee this because Nathan has had enough of making them!

He also told me that i have to warn you all that they are big files. I don't think it really matters because they are so worth it!

This one is the kindy hosted assembly that was held on the last day of school. As we were driving to school Ben casually says "Mum I am reading today at assembly!" WHAT! We haven't practised! Turns out he didn't need to practise. He was perfect! Plenty of volume and no apparent nerves at all! He loved being front and centre! We were so proud of all of the kindy kids!

Because I can't resist...

 Matthew's first day of school....

 At the sign with his best mate Dylan. (They are still mates and Dylan is Alyssa's brother!)

 Ryan's first day

 At the sign

 Ben first day....

with the sign.

I have no words only tears!!!

Ben's Big School

So I am now the mother of three school age children!!! This has blown my mind for a little while now. There have been many benefits in having the kids so close together. For example we haven't had a sleepless night in years, nappy's were done when Ben was two and they will all move out of home around the same time (won't they??)

But the one thing I didn't count on was them all leaving the nest so quickly! It has been bam, bam, bam.... three school boys!

Ben has been busting to go to school since Matthew started 4 years ago! When he started preschool last year he very quickly figured out the fence separated him from his brothers so that meant he wasn't at real school. Well now there is no fence and they play with each other regularly at lunch and recess.

 Ben has settled well into school. However he is missing his friend Eli desperately. It's funny because I am an army brat so I moved school every two years and thought I got a rough deal. However, I now feel greatly for all the kids that got left behind. In hindsight I probably did the wrong thing in letting them get so close (but then again I was close to Eli's mum too...) They were so tight last year that Ben didn't really extend his circle of friends. Yes, he knew the boys in his class well and played with them when he had too but he would always choose to play with Eli. Anyway so now that Eli is gone the other boys have their own little friendship groups and Benny is a little lost.

I had given him the task last week of finding one new friend. So the first day he came home he said he had. But he forgot his name! So the next task was to remember his name! He came home telling me it started with a T! The next day he came home and said that they ate lunch together and Benny said to him "Will you be my friend?" The kid said yes so Ben asked him if he wanted to play with him and his brothers at lunch! (Soo cute!) Anyway it turns out he lost his little friend in the search for his brothers in the playground. Well finally today he tells me his new friends name is Taj!

 On the first day of school only kindy goes which meant Matt and Rye stayed home with Daddy.

 Ben kissed us and our photographer (Michelle) decided a photo of us kissing him would be great!

 Ben and his wife Alyssa!

 Ben and his locker. He is in the Possum Magic class!

 Ben and his tote tray!

 Miss Brearley, Ben and I doing an activity on the first day. He was much better at it then i was!

My three school aged little men!