home education
Sound of the Universe
Wednesday, 5 May 2010 @ 9:23pm
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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.
Rejigging flux
Sunday, 11 April 2010 @ 12:03pm
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It’s probably a good thing I’m used to constant flux, it has on occasion driven me mad but I think I need it, considering several attempts to have anything above the most basic of basic routines results in more chaos and me actually going mad. Considering the amount of Stuff going on in my head I’ve decided to relegate logging of the banal crap and reminders to do Stuff to djinn (my iPhone, yes it and both my computers and my car have names and personalities) which seems to have left the part of my brain I’m aware of using more room to do some really weird stuff.
Catchup, Tapfish economics, cartography and Lojban
Saturday, 27 March 2010 @ 7:52pm
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[this post got a lot of interesting/amusing comments mostly about people apparently annoyed by my decision to use Lojban as the IAL (international auxiliary language) for AEfter Ragnarok - bit sad to lose them]
Catchup No posts for a whole year. That might have something to do with being slightly manic with what I calculated was roughly the equivalent of a 24/7/365 on call full time job and two contract/casuals. And I’m only getting paid for one of them, and only if I can find contracts. Sprat and I have gotten down to srs bizness and are now doing design and websites for money, along with the mass plethora of other people doing the same. We’re better than 90% of them ;) I am also still working on AR (formerly referred to as The Comic and then The ComicAnimation, you know, that thing I’ve been plugging at constantly and more or less consistantly for the last 8 years or so). It’s come a long, long way. It’s also because I thought I’d try my hand at this record keeping business. So I (very intermittently) kept records in a Smiggle notebook.
Statues in Kenya
Tuesday, 30 December 2008 @ 4:50pm
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Today Tiny was spinning a tale about a house a bit bigger than ours with olts of people. Then he starrted talking about golden statues. I asked him where, he said “somewhere else”. I said somewhere could be anywhere, could he be more specific?
He said he thinks Kenya. Then asked me where Kenya was.
Individual learning styles
Sunday, 21 December 2008 @ 11:02pm
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Again with the attempt to keep up recording. I have a funky silver Smiggle diary which I’m going to be using for homeschooling notes, and if I remember I’ll transpose them on here and point the relatives at it, as well as anyone else who’s interested in homeschooling or unschooling, just on the offchance :)
Good day
Thursday, 3 April 2008 @ 2:08pm
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Had playgroup today. It’ws one of those nic days, warm in the sun but not hot, cool in the shade but not freezing. It was particularly nice today as Tiny had great fun playing with his friends, there are four of them including Tiny around the same age (3-5) and for almost the entire time they were playing together, who knows what but pirates and dinosaurs and sticks were involved. The boys went up with one of the mums at some stage and played around the memorial pond and the rest of us were watching from the usual spot and thinking how adorable they were and it all was. I’m wondering if the other mums were thinking the same thing I was, like this was the way it should be with the kids having fun playing together as they were.
P r e o
Thursday, 20 December 2007 @ 3:26pm
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Slowly I am getting back into the “unschooling” groove and our life is becoming happy again after a week of horror where Tiny and I were trying to adjust to his testosterone levels, with Smidge not sleeping and teething on top of that. It’s still trying at times as he is being extremely aggressive at the moment, I really need to play “the killing game” or do more kung fu with him, he’s always so much calmer afterwards. Anyway.
Puzzles
Saturday, 10 November 2007 @ 12:58am
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Tiny can do them now. Proper jigsaw puzzles, not the usual kiddie kind of match the cutout piece to the shape on the board. So they’re only 6 piece, but on the Bob the Builder website they not only click and lock into place when you put them with other right pieces, you can also rotate them and you don’t always start with them the right way up.
Unschooly crap
Tuesday, 2 October 2007 @ 2:36pm
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You can learn a lot from doing not much. As most people know, I do 3d. I seem to know bits of geometry, crap I never would have picked up at school, mainly coz it was in the higher level maths class and I suck at maths.
Currently I’m learning a little bit about Russian history (there’s a doco on sometime in the next fortnight that might be helpful) and researching titanium alloys. Why? Roleplaying :P
Here comes a Smidge, walking walking...
Wednesday, 8 August 2007 @ 6:44pm
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Very small small girl stood up yesterday. She’s been able to stand by herself for longer periods of time lately, but only after pulling up on something else. Yesterday she spent 5 minutes standing all by herself while gnawing on a banana with her two chompers.
JJ reckons she’ll be walking soon.