home education
Aviation Heritage Museum of WA and Army Museum of WA photo post
Monday, 24 March 2014 @ 10:41pm
On two different weekends, we hit up the Aviation Heritage Museum of WA in Bull Creek and the Army Museum of WA
in Fremantle. I think the boys got more out of those trips than the girl did so next stop might have to be the Perth Museum (she has a special liking for the butterfly corridor) or Art Gallery and I suppose SciTech or the Zoo can also be considerations, somewhere she enjoys at any rate. Both these places are great, the guides are extremely helpful and are often floating not far away and are happy to answer everything about everything.
Unschooly things
Thursday, 27 February 2014 @ 3:53pm
Yeh I’m not doing the week by week anymore.
In addition to pocket money, daily bookwork is really good for basics when I’m sick or otherwise blargh from staying up too many late nights in a row and the kids are not (if they are sick they get to veg out and I try to get them to watch docos, we have recently discovered the TED Education Youtube channel and the kids have been consuming the snippets rabidly. There are full lessons on the TED-Ed website but we haven’t really explored there yet. The animations are short (usually under 15mins) which is perfect for 5yo’s attention span, and could potentially skim a huge variety of topics in 2 hours. Just off the top of my head from passing they’ve watched clips on the Higgs-Boson field, icebergs, eel migration, vampire mythology, why glass is transparent and the Fosbury Flop.
Attitude
Friday, 7 February 2014 @ 10:22am
As he approaches 5, the 4yo has been much less…well…4. While still prone to bouts of 4 year old raging tantrums, he is much easier to reason with and manage because he listens sometimes.
The attitudes of the bigs hae shifted dramatically from towards the end of last year where I have no idea what was going on (but the stress I was feeling at the time wouldn’t have helped) but I was fully prepared to pick up enrolment forms from the primary school down the road.
Breakthroughs
Friday, 24 January 2014 @ 12:38pm
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9yo seems to finally be over his writing hurdle. Yesterday he reported that writing seems to be a lot easier, and as a result he hasn’t actively resisted/refused doing bookwork when I’ve put out the call to come and do it. Maybe he’s also realised that if he just comes and does the two pages he can go back to what he was doing quicker than if he tries to ignore me, then has a tantrum and argues about it, then does it with all of us in a cranky mood and then isn’t in the mood to do whatever it was he had been doing beforehand because the world is obviously dead set against him having any fun whatsoever. He still needs to work on some letter formation and is occasionally writing some things backwards but it seems to be coming a lot easier to him now which is great. I’ve told him it will get easier as it goes into muscle memory and his writing will slowly get neater the more he practises.
Schooling 0000m00x m06z
Tuesday, 3 December 2013 @ 10:07am
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Weeks are getting slower as far as socially accepted “schooling” goes and ramping up with Silly Season.
We did our usual park meet and roleplaying and a quick stint at the library this week but missed out on a chunk of the boring every day stuff such as grocery shopping as 4yo has been very 4 lately and taking him out anywhere is more unpleasant than it needs to be.
Potions
Wednesday, 20 November 2013 @ 4:09pm
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Week has been flat tack.
But today they made potions. Supervised from a distance as today is a work day. Ingredients included a small tub of yoghurt, jellybeans, cordial (even though I told them no food items they could consume directly when they asked if they could make potions ie before they’d had a chance to gather ingredients, they tried to claim they had somehow assembled these things before I’d told them no food items), citric acid, bicarb, vinegar, hippie lice shampoo (contains only eucalyptus and melaleuca oils) and hippie plant-based detergent.
ko sipna
Thursday, 14 November 2013 @ 10:34pm
Late night lojban lesson with the stubborn 4yo:
me: Do you remember any lojban? mi prami do
4yo: mi prami do, what does dat mean?
me: it means “I love you”
4yo: mi prami do gives me a cuddle
me: cinba gives him a kiss
4yo: what does dat mean?
me: it means ‘kiss’
4yo: sheen ba! gives me a kiss
me: ko sipna, that means ‘go to sleep!’
He’s still not asleep.
!schooling 0000L06z-13z
Tuesday, 12 November 2013 @ 8:46am
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We had one day where the smalls played Maths Seeds and 8yo found himself a doco about octopi (or at least the bit I saw of it had an octopus glooping through a “maze” of clear plastic pipes) just because it was fun. We had a kerbside collection recently which meant there were a lot of people kerbside collecting, including JJ who picked up an outdoor setting, three tubs, a shelving unit and two working monitors.
!schooling 0000K18c - 0000K25r
Friday, 25 October 2013 @ 1:49pm
Another disorganised week. I did finally acknowledge the fact we don’t do weekends in the traditional sense so dumping that idea. I’m slow but I get there eventually.
8yo started trigonometry with JJ Pokemon card game with a deck he built himself Go Fish 6yo did some very simple letter transposing cyphers Pokemon card game Go Fish 4yo Reading Eggs and Maths Seeds 8yo wants to start next year’s program this year, we’re going to start driftingin a thatwayward direction once everything settles down.
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).