Project Life: Week 34

Hi everyone :)

Yes, I’m like a ‘bad penny’ and I’m back again.  This time it’s with my Project Life update for the week.

Here’s an overview of the week:

With all the new planning, assessments and paperwork we have going on at school it’s easy to get ‘lost’ and Chris was feeling a bit lost with her maths planning.  When I told her that I’d found a good way to do it that really worked for  me and saved me HOURS she was keen to have a look so we went back to my classroom and spent a bit of time with the resources in front of us.  She went away quite happy and has since updated me with the news that it’s really working for her and her kids!  It’s so neat when we can support each other to make life easier… that’s definitely working ‘smarter rather than harder’ in my opinion!

While I’m on the subject of school… we’re studying the environment this term and my kids have done some GREAT writing!  Plus they’ve been doing really well with their reading contracts.  We’ve also been busy in the afternoons with some ‘hands on’ activities.

Here’s a closer look at the start of the week:

Our ‘hands on’ activity this week was making hypertufa pots.  If you’re anything like the rest of our staff you’re probably wondering what hypertufa is.  Basically it’s a mix of:

• two parts peat moss
• one part cement
• one part sand
• mix together with water to form a ‘mud pie’ consistency and then you can mold it into the shape you want

It’s been really cold at school in the afternoons this week but you couldn’t keep my kids inside if you tried… there’s nothing like learning something cool to get the excitement going!

The kids worked hard… the made their pots in pairs and armed with the ‘ingredients’, buckets and dowels for making the drainage holes they were pretty happy.  The fact that they got to wear rubber gloves seemed to add to their excitement!

To give you an idea of what we’re actually attempting to make, here’s an example from the internet:

We made our pots inside ice cream containers and we now have 27 pots drying outside our classroom.  At the end of this week we’ll take them out of the containers and then they have to dry for another three weeks before we can plant into them… it’s going to be a long wait!

Here’s the second part of my week:

On Friday, my brand new Faber Castell Gelatos arrived and I was super excited!  I opened the package up in my classroom and the kids thought I’d bought them lip glosses!  The Gelatos come in such gorgeous colours and I’d already seems lots of tutorials on HOW to use them but I decided that I would make myself wait until I’d done all my maths marking over the weekend… it was definitely hard to wait but at least now my books are all totally up to date!

On Saturday morning Toby and I went out to the firewood place… actually we went out there twice because we needed heaps of wood… but not enough for a truckload.  He’s good company but not much help when it comes to loading the firewood into the boot of the car… he looks at me with his ‘I’ve got no thumbs’ look… honestly if he HAD thumbs there would be some other excuse!

After we’d finished doing the wood I shot into town to the picture framers to pick up my Gypsy Queen which I’d finally had the guts to get re-framed.  When I was given the picture in it’s original (and hideously ugly frame) my Granny made me promise not to get rid of the frame but I think she’d be pleased by how it has turned out now!

Just after lunch Sheree turned up from Katikati and we met up at Spotlight… BIG mistake because I saw some lovely papers and paints that we’re just ‘perfect’ for a project that I want to do!  But we did go out for hot chocolate/coffee afterwards and had a wonderful catch up!  Check out our delicious afternoon tea from Capers:

Then it was back home to carry on marking maths books… I did a really thorough job and making lots of notes so it was taking quite a while.  This morning I finally finished the last six books and then it was time to ‘play’.

If you visited my blog earlier today you’ve already seen the art journal page I did with my lovely Gelatos!!  Super happy with it and keep looking at it and feeling pretty clever about the whole thing!

I’ve even been up to the laundrette and gotten all my washing dry already but quite frankly I can’t be bothered doing the groceries so I think I might just shout us pizza for dinner… haven’t had that for ages and it’s exactly what I feel like having!

I hope you’ve all had a great weekend… I know my friends who went to Scrapfest by the Sea are probably all feeling pretty tired right about now… but from what I’ve heard it was a fantastic weekend!

Have a good week xx