January Homeschool Miscellany

• home education

We were still on Christmas Island for most of January so it was still mostly geared towards being with family.

We got to watch the derpy little thrushes fledging, slowly learn how to fly, hop around the garden still demanding food from and getting fed by their parent, and hopefully eventually soaring off to start their own lives.

I’ve since heard from Sprat that a new family has now taken up residence. We wonder if different birds just find the place or whether they’re all in the same family that keeps returning.

We spent time at various beaches and found lots of interesting things. 10yo really likes building temporary sculptures out of random things that we find in our travels.

My phone was taken advantage of yet again for underwater shots. I do have a long one from the cove that JJ took for me which I was thinking about posting raw as I’m too lazy to edit it any time in the foreseeable future, but then my sister did a really nice one with music and everything so I stole that instead.

When we got back to Perth, one of the very first things we did was go and pick up 14yo’s new kitten.

We’re not sure how old he is but he still had kitten teeth when we got him (it’s all adult teeth now as far as I can tell, so time for needles and castration and other such fun stuff, poor thing XD). A friend’s friend had found him somewhere wandering and passed him onto my friend who used to work in rescue and she was wondering which rescue to put him with and then remembered we’d been looking for cats and thus we got him. 14yo and kitten were introduced before we left and 14yo was instantly smitten. My friend continued fostering the kitten until we returned. He’s been pretty amazing at fast levelling 14yo’s sense of responsibility, which had already developed in leaps when he had decided to try to look for a job when we got back.

We planned out what we were doing for the term.

After discussing stuff he was interested in, 14yo settled on “robots” and I suggested mechatronic engineering with a brief explanation. He’s so far decided he likes the sound of that, so I’ve told him to focus on physics, maths and possibly a bit of chemistry this year (which he wants to do anyway as he thinks it’s fun) on Khan Academy, and we’ll cover everything else incidentally. Our moderator has also suggested seeing if he can do some Open University courses which I thought he might be a bit too young for but will definitely check out now, and we are also intending on going to Curtin’s open day to see what’s on offer and if we can have a chat with the mechatronics people and start figuring out how a homeschooled teen might get in.

12yo has decided to try out high school for a term and has been enjoying it so far and is apparently doing really well, one of her teachers has so far described her as “a perfect student” (we said just wait til she’s more familiar with everyone and the cheekiness starts XD). Before even starting she was already pushing for longer and I said see how the term goes first. School pickup is the absolute worst. I’ve committed to a term but have told her that she’s going to have to get herself home if she wants to keep going as it’s unfair to the boys if I have to keep cutting their days short.

10yo decided a year or two ago that he wanted to be a chef and own a restaurant. So we’re currently doing a bit of cooking (mostly helping JJ in the kitchen and making lunch with me on the rare occasions there are no leftovers for lunch) and I’m trying to encourage him to find recipes to try. He is still getting overwhelmed by the volume of reading that sometimes needs to be done but we’re making slow progress. He loves maths but not the crazy strategy stuff that I found in a relatively recent maths workbook which also crops up in Khan Academy, but is grudgingly agreeing to do KA anyway. At this stage it’s easier on everyone if we stick with functional English and maths (frustration meltdowns minimised this way) and just push as interest takes us.

I’ve signed the boys up for Scitech lessons, the first of which they’ve already missed due to everyone but me catching the flu. Fortunately it seems to be a long and varied course this year (which differs a lot from previous years). As weird and bittersweet as it is having all three kids in double digits now, it’s also extremely convenient as they’re now usually in the same age bracket which cuts down on the number of classes I’d be needing to sign up for.

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