art
Massive Christmas Island Photopost 2014-15
Minimal text, many photos, some videos. Mishmash of scenic, happysnaps and homeschooling stuff coz that’s how we roll. Grab a drink and a snack before commencing.
First couple of weeks…
The airport wait wasn’t terribly exciting but at least there were planes to watch being loaded, taking off and landing.
Homeschool snippets
The mosaic thing got some good use while it was rainy, with 9yo and 7yo both copying patterns from the book and inventing their own:
7yo’s English workbook:
9yo played a “Little League” game at halftime at one of the Perth Demons games. Technically it was the Year 5 GosHawks (what JJ and I have decided to call the Gosnells Hawks) that were supposed to go and play but I don’t know what happened and most of the Year 4 group and three of the Year 5 group ended up going along instead and played against an entire team of Year 5s from Manning. To Nanna’s horror and Pop’s delight the GosHawks ended up in West Perth colours:
New norcia excursion
I keep forgetting to write about our day trip to New Norcia.
It was one of those things that had been suggested ages ago by mother in law as she had gone to school there and was interested in showing it to the kids (and us, though both JJ and I have been in the area previously, me on a Yr11/12 art camp and him…well he was not quite sober for most of it apparently). This seemed like a nice little local history and anthropology/society and environment type thing (New Norcia is the only monastic town in Australia) and we finally got around to it, in the in-laws massive shiny new Toyota something or other that they’d bought as part of their retirement plans.
Writing and thoughts on school
From writing and art not really being his “thing”, 9yo recently had a sudden explosion of doing a bit of it without me yelling out that it was bookwork o’clock and him coming and doing some or not as he felt like.
He made a new character which is supposed to be a roleplaying character (though I have already told him I’m not sure how well it would fit into the WoD Changeling system we have but I can usually make things work and if there is a next time maybe it can be after Winter if I ever get my paws on and head around the new version) and spent a couple of days writing notes and a backstory:
Not schooly stuff
Duplo ‘i LOVE U’ by 9yo with a little blue heart in the O
7yo’s pic of Hootabella, one of the owls from the Giggle and Hoot show on ABC4Kids. She has since added in a magic wand and we will be sending it in to the Giggle Gallery along with one she helped 5yo with
The company I keep
Or rather hang around the periphery of and watch.
I saw this on the front page of deviantART (hey the front page is good for something after all ;) when I went to log in:
[missing image]
Lightning La Buff Bust by mattj324
In my usual fashion after dropping in to leave a boring “wow” type comment, I went through the rest of the person’s gallery and then watched them.
8 hour freaking speed sculpt. I’d seriously be happy if I got something anywhere approaching that in a month (but more likely more considering the speed at which I work). I can run the usual excuses about how I generally don’t get 8hr sittings for anything (okay sleep but I’m generally lying down then) but it gets to a point where I wonder if the people I watch are prodigious or whether that’s a normal amount of time and I’m just exceedingly, agonisingly slow (my usual thought).
!schooling from whenever til now
[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.
!schooling 0000I18c - I22n
[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.
!schooling 0000E25c - F02n | 6-10 May
This weekly stuff is tiring. Seriously who reads this anyway? May just start hiding them as I still kind of need to write them. Anyway.
Bit of a slow week this week as the kids all caught a cold and I spent a couple of days heroically fending it off.
The kids wanted me to teach them how to draw. Actually what they really wanted was for me to magically confer kickass drawing skills onto them. I told them they would need to practise a lot as most of drawing was getting your eyes, brain and hand to cooperate and the remainder was your imagination. I put out a few items on the table including a Duplo block which I deliberately angled towards them. They don’t like drawing things on angles, everything has to be STRAIGHT. Even 8yo who currently has slightly better spatial perception drew it straight, even though he drew all three corners that he could see (in a straight line rather than having the middle one come down slightly as it did in perspective). Almost forgot about maths bookwork. 8yo is at a stage in Dragonbox where it’s stopped pretending it’s a game and has presented him with actual maths, with cute graphics like it’s marker on nicely textured paper. 6yo is struggling with Dragonbox so opted for her book and is progressing extremely slowly with it (getting bored easily and I think it’s s getting a bit hard for her).
Home Ed Program 2013
Now with more detail and split into National Curriculum subject areas as best I can manage (because I fail at reductionism and bureaucracy seems to fail at holism; with some luck perhaps we shall collide in a catalystic rather than confrontational manner somewhere in the middle, and bonus if this helps someone somewhere in some way).
The players are an 8 year old boy, a 6 year old girl and a 4 year old boy. Bookwork (which includes using the computer programs) is officially done weekly and is tied to their pocket money, they can do extra for fun and profit, and they don’t get paid if they don’t do the work. The 4yo doesn’t get pocket money and isn’t required to do the bookwork though he will usually do some if everyone else is.