I did not have a chance to write last week as I had to create a presentation for my nature stewards program which I will graduate from next week. The last two weeks of my placement have been intense with lots of work to do and documentation and preparation for lessons. I was well and truly done and dusted by the end of it all. This weekend is just time to catch up, take a breath and return to my home. I was living away from home (see the gorgeous light fixture) where I stayed for a month while I was at my placement and came home to make food and gather supplies for the next week. Living away from my family has been difficult but we kept in touch with Face time each evening. I truly enjoyed my time at my final teacher placement and I really felt emotional on the last day saying farewell to the staff, children and families. I had found my people there and it is a very special place.

On my last day we enjoyed a morning tea with another placement student. A parent had made me this incredible raspberry crunch cake – it was so good! I really could have kept it all for myself and the family as it would have been such a treat but I added it to the amazing spread of treats and shared it with the crew. I had such a great time with the children and it was so good to be with the 5 year old children as they are so eager to learn. I had created a literacy unit of work and they all were so enthusiastic and engaged in every lesson. My favourite time was bush school at the beginning of the week where we went out and the kids climbed trees and looked for sticks for the fire. Another favourite was choosing time and the children could see what they wanted to explore for an hour or so here is where I found another Hilda fan and we made all the characters out of plasticine.

I cannot believe that it my last unit of study and placement, it has been an incredible journey of growth and I am so happy to be graduating this year. It is a very strange feeling and I feel I have accomplished something so great and meaningful to me, it makes me so happy. At long last, it is time for the next chapter in my journey in education!!

I am halfway through my placement and now this is where it gets exciting with the last 2 weeks! I have been so tired from coming home from school chilling out, having dinner, and then working till 10pm. I have been documenting my days so I have enough information to write my final report! Friday came around and I was pretty keen to get out of the groove so I drove back home to my house and hung out with the family for Friday and Saturday night. During the week I am staying near the school to make my life a bit less complicated for the month of May.

So months ago, I planned my Mother’s Day out with the family. We did the Dome to the Catacombs tour of the State Library. I was pretty excited about it but the teens who came along were not so keen! As it was a planned family event we just go with the flow and hope they learned something! H was pretty excited about the catacombs but was pretty disappointed when we got there as it was just a series of rooms filled with random stuff. The room of the catalogues was pretty cool but the children had no idea what these drawers of cards were! Hey, they do not even look at an online catalog for books at the library anyway!!! The cool thing I found out was that you can find old knitting patterns at the library, apparently, you can just look them up online? Maybe I will try and find some one day! We even saw a book so precious it was laying on a pillow 😀

Overall the State Library is a grand old building with a very rich history and has been restored beautifully. We all enjoyed the day out in the city ending with a family bubble tea while there was an anti-immigration rally a couple of blocks away, it was so crazy as there were police everywhere! The rallies in the city always begin or end at the State Library.

Every Saturday I have my nature stewards course and from this week onwards I am working full-time at my final primary teacher placement. I gave myself the gift of an Air BnB near the school I am working just so I have time to document all the relevant information for my placement. It is so much work with learning on the job as well as teaching plus documenting and commenting on everything that I am doing. Friday came around and I was so tired I could not find the energy to go back home to my family. So I caught up on watching the new Bluey episodes instead!

My first session with my mentor teacher and his teaching assistant was at Bush school – I could not believe it! I love nature play with the children and this was such an amazing experience complete with a fire. This was the children’s first whole week back after a 2-week break and being introduced to the week of playing in nature is just amazing! There were so many observations going on plus I had to have planning time to factor in the x amount of teaching time per week to the students. I am happy the first week went really well with some excellent feedback from my mentor teacher. Now I will enjoy the next three weeks of teaching and learning with children.

All in all, we had a wonderful time with the family up in BrisVegas. I enjoyed my time at the beach every day walking along the shore and burying my feet into the soft sand. I found my kindy picture with my crazy curly hair and super cool 70s dress. We enjoyed some delicious treats from Flour and Chocolate, at the end it was a daily trip there to share some sugary love with the fam. Mum took us out to Morgans for fish and chips – I took my own Turkish sandwich from Flour and Chocolate as I do not eat fish anymore. The kids enjoyed their usual calamari and chips!

Our Air Bnb was right across the road from the beach and it had the best collection of plants all mounted to the fence, such a great design idea. Plus our day trip to GOMA in the city was pretty special. We went to see the Air exhibit and it focused on the environment, for example, the hand-cut black butterflies were representing the migration of the Bogong moth in Australia and the Monarchs in the US and how threatened they are due to human interference. The 10 days up there were pretty busy and we did a lot and caught up with the family for some special times together – speaking our love language of food!

I am now losing track of the days as we are on holiday up north for the easter break. The sun is shining beautifully here and the weather is a perfect 25 degrees or higher. It must be the best time of year to come up to Queensland as I am escaping some chilly winter days down south in Melbourne. I have been enjoying my daily walks along the shore zapping up the earth’s energy in the sand and water. I am loving the sounds of the birds in the morning waking us up from 5am with the musical songs of the magpies and the butcherbirds. I have found lots of ibis living their best life hanging out at the Mon Komo or by the shore gathering fresh treats.

I found this cool boat the other day on my walk and I asked my friend who is a local and she told me it is the Black Pearl – the pirate ship from Pirates of the Caribbean. Then I looked it up and it was called the Notorious and I have become a fan! It is handmade and took 11 years to build from reclaimed Monterey pine – amazing!

The final week of term has passed and now I am at the end of the long weekend. I was hoping for some relaxation and due to the terribly cold weather I got some relaxation just hanging around at home. It was so good not to do anything after a pretty hectic week with my final work day on Monday and my birthday on Tuesday – whoo hoo! Back to work on Wednesday with some planning and rearranging the room for Term 2. I ended the week on Thursday with a Professional Development day with my workmates that went on until late in the afternoon. Friday was a great time to catch up on Uni work and plan for my trip away with the kids.

Before my walk to the PD on Friday I found this cockatoo up high in the tree trying to get into a walnut for breakfast. So super cool to capture some pictures as he was intent on breaking into the walnut. Time for me to plan and get myself organised for some warm weather up north for a few days. It has been 7 months since I went up to Queensland and now it is still warm up there which will make a nice change.

The big news of this week is that H will be going back to school in Term 2. We went for an enrolment interview at the school she really liked and they really liked her so I am so happy to see she will be in a place that will nurture her as a whole person. The school’s educational philosophy aligns with everything I love about learning and I could not be happier for her to be there. Just like the little lorikeet in the picture above she will soar like a bird into the next phase of her life. Oh, and it was H’s 15th birthday this week and she organised everything for her special celebration. It was such a treat.

We did have a family dinner to celebrate the March and April birthdays with some delicious Sri Lankan food. Everyone really enjoyed the Sri Lankan lasagne with chicken curry. I loved the lentils, roti and pan rolls!

This week I received my new Macbook Air which I will be using for work and my placement. My lovely large Macbook Pro is still doing so well after 8 years but it was time I had a more portable laptop – my new machine is so good to work with and I love it. I am just deciding how to customise it and make it my own as I need to travel soon and I do not want to pick up someone else’s machine at the security check!

Saturday was a busy one as I started a Nature Stewards course. This is a place where I will learn about the land on which I live, work and play. I applied for the course through my local council, as a friend of mine said I would love it and I truly do. I left the class today feeling so inspired about the environment and I now have a true belief that a few concerned people at the local level can make a difference. Today I found out the history of a loved place of mine, where I go to ride my bike – Merri creek. Back in the 70’s there was a planned freeway right over the creek which would have been a disaster. Instead of a freeway we now have a wildlife corridor thanks to Friends of the Merri Creek who came to talk to us today – they are actually the creators of this wonderful curriculum. Here is what I said about wanting to be involved in the program:

“After watching your introduction video, the program resonated with me as I am interested in the natural world and have been ever since I was a little person. I am always finding out about the native plants I come across. Whenever I see animals living in our urban environment, I will always stop and appreciate their wonder. One of my favourite birds is the tawny frogmouth which I have had living near my work next to Merri creek. I love sharing the wonders of nature with the children I interact with in my job as an educator, as children are naturally curious; they are so excited to find out more about the natural life around them. The Nature Stewards program will enrich my role as an early childhood educator.“

I am so happy to be doing this program as it enlivens my soul to be with so many like-minded people and funnily enough I knew two people in the class today from my work as a kindergarten educator. As part of the course, it will be wonderful to create a little project for myself in my nature journal and plan some actions on what I will do with my newfound knowledge.

Saturday afternoon was spent at the hospital as you can see from the little sticker I have on my jacket. That is all we get now when we go to the hospital – no check-in, no vax check, nothing! I arrived just in time to see H out of surgery. Today she went in for a CO2 laser procedure on her neck, face, and arms. She had been under general anesthesia and was in the theatre for 1.5 hrs. This will be the first of many if her surgeon sees it being successful at her appointment in the next few weeks. The laser will help heal the scar tissue, the only thing H was feeling afterward was itchiness so she took her antihistamines and we stayed in recovery for about 40 minutes and we were then on our way home. She is covered in Duraderm bandages at the moment so we cannot see what has happened but after 48 hours she needs to take care of them and rub vaseline on the skin and wear her pressure garments.

So many journeys for all of us this week!

Just to test the boundaries of life a little more why not throw in a covid case?!? My hubby had a bit of a cold after the Peaches gig which then turned into a sore throat that tested positive. I had a lovely 5-day long weekend planned – first I had to cancel my acupuncture session. All good though because my last unit for University started last week and I had to study. Here is a super cool screenshot of my introductions for the past few units since the end of 2021!

So because a Normatec appointment and an Infa red sauna is a solo time to relax I booked those instead. It was so good to do the Normatec pressure boots with a PEMF session at the same time. The Pulsed Electromagnetic Field (PEMF) therapy was incredible and I really need to go back for more as it did help with my back pain and energy levels. I felt so relaxed as it really helped me get through the last few days of my hubby being in isolation and me having to do all the food prep and organisation of the house. It really is a great thing to plan some time out for those crazy weeks.

At the end of the week, I had a professional development day planned at CERES to learn about embedding indigenous perspectives into the curriculum and also to encourage more outdoor classroom time. It was so inspiring to hear what is possible and have a yarn (conversation) with an Indigenous man who provided so much history about the traditional owners of this land – the Wurundjeri people.

Here is my last California poppy of the season as the nights are getting cooler now so I will have to rely on other flowers for the bees I planted in my wicking bed.