Stretching out a Week...

We don't usually follow the official school holidays except over Christmas and New Year but some of our regular activities such as dance lessons are suspended over the holidays between school terms which leaves us with some free time. Road traffic reduces dramatically during school holidays and with the combination of that and a reduced schedule we usually do some things we don't always get the time or inclination to do at other times.
We had a week's holiday a couple of weeks ago & I didn't want to have a complete break so soon after that, so I'm doing something that works well for us - ie. stretching our weekly schedule out over two weeks.
I printed each child's schedule at the beginning of the week. This is Benj's:

 

If there are certain things I want each of them to get done, those are given priority. Looking at the schedule above, I know that dictation and Jensen's probably won't get done but I'm fine with that.
I usually plan a few outings or catch up with family and friends during our 'extended week' and we
also make a time to meet my husband near his work and have lunch together. This was a priority so I made sure we did it earlier in the week.

Benj is reading through the poetry of George Herbert and he came across the following poem which intrigued him:

Paradise

I bless thee, Lord, because I GROW
Among thy trees, which in a ROW
To thee both fruit and order OW.

What open force, or hidden CHARM
Can blast my fruit, or bring  me HARM
While the inclosure is thine  ARM:

Inclose me still for fear I START.
Be to me rather sharp and TART,
Than let me want thy hand and ART.

When thou dost greater judgements SPARE,
And with thy knife but prune and PARE,
Even fruitful trees more fruitful ARE:

Such sharpness shows the sweetest FREND,
Such  cuttings  rather heal than REND,
And such beginning touch their END.

(The old spelling is retained in order to preserve Herbert's ingenious construction: furnishing new rhymes by the dropping of a single letter at a time - Albatross Book of Verse, edited by Louis Untermeyer)

I suggested he try writing a poem of his own using a similar construction. He managed the construction but had a hard time coming up with a serious poem! 

 Another priority was a bush walk. We've been doing regular nature study but hadn't had a good observing time outdoors. We went to a park a little way out of our area today that we hadn't visited in ages and found some interesting fish to draw and a bird we hadn't seen before.

Very well camouflaged...identification anyone?

A trip up to our local lookout...

Some climbing on the rocks & trees...

And then I read aloud in the warm afternoon sun, which we haven't experienced much of in recent times. 

When we got home, I had a look at the flowers I pressed a couple of weeks ago. They were nicely dried so I put them into my nature notebook.

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