March Homeschooling Miscellany

posted on: Friday, 20 May 2016 @ 1:56pm in

home education

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7yo got one of those hatching dinosaur eggs for his birthday.

Placing hatching dinosaur egg in a container of water

Starting to 'hatch' after a day's soaking

The fully “grown” thing is now sitting on his shelf with all his other dinosaurs.

I organised to meet up with JJ’s family (parents, sister and her family) at Whiteman Park. We met up at the pretty large and cool playground that had a pretty tall slide tucked into one corner:

High twisty slide at Whiteman Park, Western Australia

The play was followed by a nice morning tea and then we separated as I’d planned to go to the transport museum whereas sister-in-law wanted to take her kids to see cute cuddly animals at Caversham instead. 9yo decided she would much rather see cute cuddly animals instead of learning about the history of transport in Western Australia and went with them.

9yo feeding kangaroos at Caversham Wildlife Park, Western Australia

JJ’s parents and the rest of us went to the transport museum. Again it ws great to have the parents in law with us as they were able to put quite a number of things in context for the boys, such as mother in law telling them how her mother (the kids “big nanna”) used to go to school on a cart, and their own memories of seeing some of the older style vehicles, school buses and hay wagons in use at various points in time. Father in law also explained the oldschool petrol pump to 7yo who couldn’t really remember the one from our Wilkinson Homestead excursion from a few years back.

Sitting in a horse cart at the transport museum in Whiteman Park, Western Australia

Investigating leatherworking tools at the transport museum at Whiteman Park, Western Australia

Watching a doco about trains in an old train carriage at the transport museum, Whiteman Park, Western Australia

Playing board games with themselves because they accused each other of cheating. Transport Museum at Whiteman Park, Western Australia

Test driving a section of an old bus at the transport museum at Whiteman Park, Western Australia

7yo playing in old car at the transport museum at Whiteman Park, Western Australia

7yo being entirely too gleeful playing in the section of old bus at the transport museum at Whiteman Park, Western Australia

11yo investigating the old car at the transport museum at Whiteman Park, Western Australia

9yo decided to draw a labelled diagram of her guinea pig as something “sciencey”.

And did amusingly silly things with photos.

We went on a “school group” excursion to our favourite museum to see the 100 Objects Exhibition. I’m not sure how much the kids really understood that this was almost like a once in a lifetime opportunity to see these things in person unless they were able to travel to the objects’ originating museum at some point in the future. I mostly wandered around with 7yo as he can’t read and also has a need to touch things and a lot of the cases were temperature controlled, touch sensitive, alarmed or some combination thereof.

Rock exhibition at 100 Objects exhibition at WA Museum

Bull head lute - 100 Objects exhibition at WA Museum

Bust of Rameses II at 100 Objects Exhibition, WA Museum

Earliest known mangas at 100 Objects Exhibition, WA Museum

Ship's chronometer in 100 Objects Exhibition, WA Museum

Javanese shadow puppets at 100 Objects Exhibition, WA Museum

The kids were incredibly fascinated by the holographic rhinoceros. The photo obviously doesn’t show the projection. They had a lot of fun walking around it and studying it from all angles and putting a pair of sunnies on it. The older kids, on having it explained to them that being able to see these things was a rare opportunity so after getting the lay of the land to be able to say they had at least seen all 100 objects, they then went around a few more times to more closely inspect things they were interested in. I in the meantime volunteered to hustle younger kids who were getting bored out and sat with them in the old entranceway waiting for everyone else to come out.

After another eye test it was determined that 9yo needed glasses. She wears them when she feels a need for them. Of the colour choices for the cases she chose a bright green one with a red interior as it looked like a Chompy from Skylanders. I need to get some pipe cleaners and googly eyes so she can finish it.

On one of the trips to the beach up near a friend’s place, we all collaboratively built a decent sized sand castle complete with mage tower and surrounding moat and retaining walls. When the tide came in we battled with the retaining walls for a little while before the sea inevitably won.

11yo did some structural art, making a “campfire” in the yard.

He’s also been trying to learn programming and has been trying to write some thing sin pseudocode:

There was a hike to Lesmurdie Falls with another friend that left 9yo seriously unimpressed. In fairness it had been a very hot day and the kids had wanted to go to the beach but JJ wanted to see if Lesmurdie Falls had any water. The thing is probably a winter creek as there was no water whatsoever anywhere. The bigs did read some of the informational signs on the way down but were too tired on the way up. There was some nice scenery.

Lesmurdie Falls trail, Western Australia

Looking up at the top lookout from the bottom of the waterfall, Lesmurdie Falls, Western Australia

We hit up a local park that we hadn’t been to for a while and found a trail that led to a walk around what’s usually a lake. The kids went down to explore the mud flat.

We had brief discussions of the different types of vegetation and rocks in the area and what actions caused the mud and some of the dried up vegetable matter to appear the way they did. We also discovered mushrooms in the park and discussed what they require to grow and made up a lot of stories about mycelium patches taking over the world.

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