home education
Reading and writing
[minor pseudonymising edits during Drupal to hugo migration for all the good that will do now]
2yo loves being read to, and is constantly bringing books to us and demanding “Wead book!”
I can also say “duduk” to him and he will sit down. All three kids understand “makan” and “bagus” (6yo used to pronounce it “ba-goo-doos” when he was 2yo’s age :) and that’s as far as I’ve gotten with Malay; my vocabulary is shocking and grammar non-existant.
The initial homeschool moderator visit
[minor pseudonymising edits during Drupal to hugo migration for all the good that will do now]
We had our initial visit yesterday, with the next one scheduled for another couple of months. Everything went pretty much as expected. The lady was nice, and was happy with all the learning areas except for English and maths, and also wanted to see more “scientific communication”.
6yo and 4yo set up an experiment to turn a flower blue, directed by 6yo, who had seen a demonstration on some science show on ABC. They made the blue water with paint and water (as we don’t have food colouring). They then went on to do some other arty crafty thingies while they waited for the colour to be drawn up to the flower.
Work, Wannabe and other projects and a dash of unschooling
[minor pseudonymising edits during Drupal to hugo migration for all the good that will do now]
Firstly, what in the hell is with the life category?!
I’ve been (very slowly!) importing livejournal entries so I can replace missing photos. Very minor regret that I didn’t bother skimming through my shadowshifter livejournal before I deleted it as I probably had a few progress reports for my various projects kicking around on it, but oh well.
Post-zoo entertainment
We hit up the Perth Zoo today, and I finally got around to getting the zoo membership passes. So now we can visit regularly without it costing an arm and a leg! We inadvertantly stayed there the whole day too. Maybe it was the cart. I’ve been avoiding going on the “adult and kids’ prices” days because it’s always packed out, on the other days it’s fine and we can always get a cart. Then the kids can hitch rides whenever they’re feeling a bit tired and we don’t end up walking over half the zoo before they’re complaining of being tired.
Three decades, and some dolls
[minor pseudonymising edits during Drupal to hugo migration for all the good that will do now]
I recently hit three decades. I spent most of the actual day finishing up the coding for the site that’s going on the kiosk Sprat and I are doing for the Christmas Island Tourism Association and cleaning for the party on the following day.
4yo requested the whiteboard so I took it down for her, and little arty girl knocked herself out drawing on it. 6yo came in to me at one point asking how to write an F. I explained it as like an E but without the bottom line (and previously I’ve described the E as a backward 3 as that’s how he was writing it, just straighter). Later he very excitedly came out and asked me to come look at something he’d done for me.
Good day, "bad" day
[minor pseudonymising edits during Drupal to hugo migration for all the good that will do now]
Yesterday was an awesome day. To counter, I had a rather average day. Compared to yesterday it was bad, but seriously in the grand scheme of things, it could have been a lot worse.
Good day
I went to bed at a reasonable time the night before. Slept in a little bit, woke up chirpy, had breakfast and did the usual morning computery stuff. The kids woke up all in a good mood, breastfed the two small ones, gave everyone breakfast, and had plenty of time to hang out the laundry and get lunch ready for homeschool group. We got there not quite as late as we usually do and I was feeling glad that I had opted to go instead of staying home to do the laundry as I had originally planned as EVERYONE was there.
Organisational skills? What organisational skills?
[minor pseudonymising edits during Drupal to hugo migration for all the good that will do now]
What’s been happening at Wannabe Farmstead? Feels like a lot. I was out with the dogs at the oval when it occurred to me:
- I can sort out and adjust training “schedules” in my head fast from observing the dogs while working with them
- I can work out learning styles and interests of the kids from observation and interaction and work out where to go and things to do that they might find interesting
- I can work around family stuff with minimal dramas
- I can do things for clients on time (provided they get me what I need when I say I need it by)
- I cannot organise my own way out of a paper bag
I should probably do something about that last point.
Painting lessons
- when you have autonomous big kids who can set themselves up, poke head in every so often
- make sure they know that the glass jar the brushes stand in is the paintbrush rinsing jar and that they shouldn’t use drinking glasses
- ditto palettes, so they don’t substitute food bowls
- choose non-toxic paints in case the above happens
- never leave toddlers unattended. Ever.
All post clean-up. The projects are stuck fast to the table due to having been quite wet. The toddler had spread paint all over the table and was happily gooping it around. Was contemplating getting a photo but opted to not have him tracking paint around the house as we were heading out.
Basic literacy and numeracy sans formal lessons
[minor pseudonymising edits during Drupal to hugo migration for all the good that will do now]
[imported from livejournal and backdated]
Pocket money and birthday cards.
And that’s just two of an infinite number of possibilities. 5yo has recently started writing the names of his friends from !school group on the backs of envelopes. It all started with the first birthday party of one of them a couple of months ago, in which both 5yo and 3yo, with a little help from me, wrote “Happy Birthday from [their name]” on a piece of paper, decorated it, and then stuck it into a similarly decorated envelope, and wrote the child’s name on the front.
Sound of the Universe
[minor pseudonymising edits during Drupal to hugo migration for all the good that will do now]
[imported from livejournal and backdated]
Last Saturday (1st of May), the parents-in-law took us to the Gravity Discovery Centre in Gingin.
It is well worth a visit. Once they got over the toy corner, the kids, especially 5yo, had a great time checking out the exhibits in the main building, particularly the chaos balls, the “pod racer” (big metal sphere with two magnets being held just off it by wires), and the giant gravity funnel that you can spiral tennis balls down. We raced up the leaning tower and my legs are only just recovering (I blame the extra 10kg+ I was backpacking the entire day), and we went on a “solar system” walk, which is an incredibly scaled down model of the entire solar system that from the sun to Pluto is a bloody long walk, we got as far as Uranus before we turned back. The kids were getting tired and my jelly legs were being pathetic and not holding up.