technonaturalist

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Home ed program 2014

Saturday, 5 October 2013 @ 10:46pm

Weekly-ish

All

  • library
  • 2x kung fu
  • visit great-grandmother
  • music lessons if finances allow
  • doco/music video/cooking show (every night)

9yo

  • 1x Khan Academy
  • 1x Reading Eggspress
  • 1x written bookwork
  • 1x extra any of the above
  • 1x roleplaying (followed by session writeup)
  • AFL Juniors (1x training, 1x game)
  • gym/circus iff finances allow

7yo

  • 1x Khan Academy
  • 1x Reading Eggs
  • 1x Maths Seeds
  • 1x written bookwork
  • 1x roleplaying (followed by session writeup)
  • gym

5yo

  • 1x Reading Eggs
  • 1x Maths Seeds
  • 1x written bookwork
  • 2x optional extra any of the above
  • Auskick (1x training, 1x game)

Bookwork is for $5/week pocket money. A bookwork “session” is two pages of a book, one set of exercises in Reading Eggs/Reading Eggspress/Maths Seeds (usually 10 short exercises, with Reading Eggspress it depends on what 8yo chooses to do at the time), one “stack” of problems or one video in Khan Academy. The rules for earning extra have changed, rather than doing extra bookwork the bigs can now embark on a research project of their own choosing. They get an extra $5 for a relatively simple thing like a poster, $10-15 for essays/reports with diagrams, $20 for a fairly detailed book (appropriate to age obviously).

Booklist 2014

Saturday, 5 October 2013 @ 5:23pm

Everyone

  • textas
  • coloured pencils
  • crayons (big ones)
  • street chalk
  • paint (acrylic, water, if Ru wants oil or something complicated get a small set and keep it out of the way)
  • pastels
  • oil pastels
  • one of those huge arse dangerous sharpeners with a handle that is impossible to lose

9yo

English

Maths

7yo

English

  • Reading Eggs 5-8
  • renew Reading Eggs sub

Maths

Science

5yo

English

  • renew Reading Eggs sub
  • Reading Eggs 1-4

Maths

  • renew Maths Seeds sub
  • Maths Seeds 1-4

!schooling from whenever til now

Friday, 4 October 2013 @ 4:11pm

[minor pseudonymising edits during Drupal to hugo migration for all the good that will do now]

Due to stuff (some it was the parents coming up to visit for a couple of weeks, some is that business has picked up dramatically), I haven’t been keeping track of the homeschooly stuff. Also we’ve been finding better things to do than sitting and doing bookwork, so it’s a really good thing that’s not the core of our homeschooling program (I need to write one of those for next year by the way, and also a booklist). So here’s some photos of things it occurred to me to point a camera at.

Random keys

Friday, 27 September 2013 @ 7:43pm

8yo (watching me touch type): how do you tap random keys and come up with words?

Freo heave ho...

Friday, 20 September 2013 @ 2:40pm

So once upon a time (not really so very long ago, only a handful of years), JJ’s favourite AFL team the Fremantle Dockers made it into a qualifying final (and then got knocked out). I said that if they ever made it into the finals again, I would do the anchor in my hair.

They’re currently up for a semi.

So…

Hair bleaching

I wonder if whoever it was got the idea for the Minbari horn crests while waiting for their hair to bleach

Calling horns done

Wednesday, 18 September 2013 @ 10:31am

Though I’m sure I’ll find more things to clean up and refine while I’m doing the rest of the body.

Anyway I tried to reflect nature somewhat with some horizontal bands like what’s found in kudu (what I based Red’s horns off):

Kudu style twisty horns

Horizontal banding - can’t make it look twisty enough!

!schooling 0000I18c - I22n

Friday, 23 August 2013 @ 4:00pm

[minor pseudonymising edits during Drupal to hugo migration for all the good that will do now]

We spent most of the last week recovering from whatever plague we had and trying to get back into the bookwork. What this meant was that we stayed home all week and I let the kids do whatever books they wanted which meant 6yo only did Reading Eggs books all week when they are supposed to pick different subjects.

Sculpty goodness and pipeline change

Tuesday, 20 August 2013 @ 9:10pm

While sculpting horns I was quite sure I was going to use Blender for all the sculpty goodness seeing as it had actually imported the mesh to begin with. I think I’m going to have to accept the fact that my brain is never going to play nicely with Blender because even though I have been doing so much better than I ever have, I still don’t understand it.

Blender sculpt

Very roughly positioned front, side and three-quarter view of the character in a window on the 21in monitor. The actual work was being done on the Cintiq at close range. The multiscreening is one seriously cool thing about Blender and I do miss it a little bit in Sculptris

Christmas Island: long photopost and fyn's bad luck saga

Sunday, 11 August 2013 @ 11:02pm

[minor pseudonymising edits during Drupal to hugo migration for all the good that will do now]

Back in Perth now and this post is going to be a long one.

The holiday has been great because I was home and crap because in the second week, I got a swollen gland or lymph node that pressed onto the nerve of one of my back teeth and caused a LOT of pain and made eating difficult, and the kids got sick. In the third week the kids recovered and I got sick (two days completely out of action and just general misery, persistent headache and neverending mucous production for the rest of the week and continuing as I type). I am feeling slightly bitter about it and thinking it’s brutally unfair but at least I stayed there the entire time unlike a certain Christmas where I got medevac’d.

Victory is sweet

Friday, 2 August 2013 @ 2:49pm

I’d told the 4yo to go and rest up prior to a planned outing as he’d power chucked from the dining table to the back door at lunch time and we wanted to make sure he was okay for the trip (which didn’t eventuate as he was still coughing in a manner that had us paranoid that he might do it again).

I heard screaming matches between him and the 8yo and walked in, found the 4yo lying on the bed looking sleepy and upset and the 8yo playing his DS. Told off the 8yo for antagonising the 4yo (he protested, but he has been antagoising his siblings for the past couple of days). After giving the 8yo a serve I again told the 4yo to lie there and rest up and as I was walking out he smiled and said “Ahhh nothing is sweeter than victory.”