Some fun stuff over the last three months

Lost teeth - three in two days!

Playdough peeps

Bath art - food coloring mixed with hand soap

Birthday girl - Miss 6

K loves her meditation pose - she called this lounge box her humming box. We were in a spiritual type book store the other day and while T and I were browsing she grabbed a yoga book off the shelf and started doing some poses in the middle of the store. People just graciously passed over or around her while she held the downward dog.


Back into nature



Bushwalking with Nanna

Fuzzy friends


Furry surprises

Giants Cave

Shell/rock collection from Henley Beach, Adelaide - added some weight to our baggage on the flight home!










Love Karen

Organic Learning

How can you ever record the learning that happens in everyday life (without driving yourself totally crazy)?

It is a rainy Saturday so we popped on a movie this afternoon that T picked up for two dollars yesterday. It was a cheaply done 2D cartoon type called Globehunters - an around the world in 80 days adventure.

Well, the conversations it generated. Firstly, there was the travel which we followed on our world map to see how far the three escaped animals travelled - Miami, China, Italy, France, Russia, Germany and India with references to the Himalayas and Mt Everest. Then there were the animals in the different areas - pandas in China, leopards and baboons in the Himalayas. Also the different countries' monuments - Great Wall of China, Eiffel Tower and Leaning Tower of Pisa. When the 'baddie' was chasing the three animals, K asked why he could catch the cheetah because aren't they the fastest in the world?

It had issues of animal cruelty as the animals escaped from a lab in America. When the chimp decided to join the circus after escaping, there were discussions about whether that was just trading one kind of cruelty for another and was the animal really free if it made the choice to work in the circus.

At one stage the parrot asked when they were going to be fed as it had always been fed while in the lab while an insect passed under its' wing which led to a discussion about the dangers of hand raised animals being let back into the wild.

I'm sure there were many more topics as well. So, how do you record all of this on a day to day basis to meet the KLAs?, Well, you could always blog about it.......

Update on our busy life

My eldest, D, has finally got his P's driver's licence. Aaah, freedom. I remember it so well. He has been getting up really early (for him) to take his brother to work - just because he can! He has spent the last week driving his Dad's car to and from places and drove our car for the first time today. I stood on the driveway, just like my Mum and Dad did the first time I drove off independently, and pretended to be biting my nails in fear but just so, so proud. I have really enjoyed seeing him grow up over the last couple of years. He is quite adamant he will join the army. Having already filled in the forms, we are just waiting for an interview and more information so he could be gone in two months or six months for at least four years or so. I am enjoying every last minute with my big baby while I can.

We visited a Macadamia Farm a couple of Fridays ago.
The staff got the children involved in a game of "collect the most macadamias" and you could win a prize - cheap labour, I call it - cough, cough.
They then had their buckets weighed. N, K and one of her little friends collected a bucket and a half which is a LOT of macadamias but, alas, were beaten by a group of teens. After that they were shown through the factory to see how it was all done.
Then it was time to browse in the shop to drool over all of the delicious products and enjoy a hot chocolate and cup of coffee. We had about 70 people turn up from the home school group - our group and support network is definitely growing.

Other than that, we have been doing more trampoling training with M with Qld championships coming up on the June long weekend, NSW championships in June as well and a couple of other qualifying comps just before then.

We have also bought an extension part for T's bike to make it a tandem for K to ride on. She still just fits in the baby seat on the back of my bike so we left that on my bike in case she got too tired on her first long ride but she loved it, staying on the back for the loooong ride and only hopping in for about a km or so. Looking forward to lots of long rides now with her on the back of T's bike. I was flying on mine, riding solo after five years of carrying her. She weighs about 20kg now, so the extra weight was great for my fitness and strength!

K's reading is coming along well. We are working through the Fitzroy Reading program which I have had for ages and involves a fair bit of phonics, practicing letter writing, etc. Yes, we are using curriculum, but she has always enjoyed her "schoolwork", loves the workbooks, so we are just going with it. Her face lights up when she recognises the letters or small words so that's joy enough for me.

Other things we've been loving are:

Ranger's Apprentice series - N is up to book 9 and whipping through it.

Horrible Histories on ABC3 - funny, funny, gross and funny

My Place on ABC3 - Australian history series about the same house that has different families living in it every decade or so. Set against cultural, political and economical issues at the time throughout history back to 1883. Fantastic series.

Fun Brain Institute - a group meeting fortnightly ages from 4 to about 10 run by a primary school teacher who has an absolute passion for teaching and it shows. She now home educates her two littlies and has organised a three hour session of art, craft, logic puzzles, maths, literacy, reading time, music, etc based around a theme. Last time it was puppets, next time transport and the time after that is dinosaurs and fossils. It is such a fantastic get together and to see the kids work in groups on projects or just playing with the games, puzzles and playdough is lovely. Of course, it is a great support time for the mums as well.

There's part of our busy life. Looking forward to the next couple of weeks as well.

Cheers, Karen

Our Chaotic Dining Room Table

I had made us a big pot of vegie soup for the cooler autumn days and as I served it up with lovely crusty bread I had to push and move things around the table to make room for us to eat. This is pretty typical of our days of learning. This particular day was on the go and as I served the soup over the top of art work, writing practice and science kits, I had a little chuckle about the choas some days bring.
I thought photos would say it much more clearly than I could but every home educator can relate to this, I'm sure. We had gone from doing a jigsaw puzzle on world flags to phonics practice to watercolour painting to putting a science kit together to running out and buying batteries for our new talking globe (we love it!!). There were books to be read, colouring to be done, paper planes to make, a motorbike meccano-type kit that was being put together, a game of 20 questions that has been lost for a while..... I seriously didn't have time between one enthusiastic thing to the next to make a clearing so it just kept getting piled on the table until I stopped and took a breath at lunchtime, served up the meal on top of all of the activities and had a good laugh.
Here's our new globe. K loves trying all of the national anthems, finding flight times between cities and practicing pronouncing the capital cities names. I love the busy, productive days.

Learning Snippets

K is always asking what colours mix to make other colours, you know, blue and yellow make green, etc so we got out the paints so she could work it out for herself.
It started off with mixing the primary colours to make the secondary colours and then, of course,it ended with one of her "masterpieces", displayed proudly on her easel.







We took her to an art class at the Newcastle Regional Art Gallery, part of the school holiday program, and she did printmaking. She made three different types of prints and loved it. I had to stay with her (I was the only mum) but I much prefer her to be comfortable, the alternative is she doesn't do it. Next week we are doing ceramics.


She was thrilled to spot Australia in her pancake and insisted I take a photo of it (minus Tasmania, sorry Tassie).
We started an alphabet challenge, with her drawing three things starting with the letter put up there - an apple, an ant and an alligator are her first answers. She is barely starting to recognise words but most of the letters she is familiar with the sounds. She runs her fingers under the words though as I read and often is up to the right one so we'll see what happens over the next couple of months.