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December Homeschool Miscellany

I usually don’t do December and January unless interesting things happen as December is usually write-off month (too many end of year things happening for anything to be effectively planned and even if it could be planned we’d be exhausted as normally around the end of year things we just want to chill) and January is planning month (because my organisational skills are that atrocious that I need an entire month to plan).

August/September/November Homeschool Miscellany

I thought I’d already done August Homeschool Miscellany but apparently I’d done July and collected photos for August but not actually written the post. Oops. So everything ended up getting grouped as I’ve been struggling this year. It’s no accident that October was left out, apparently we didn’t do anything that I could include. Goolugatup Heathcote Museum We initially heard that there was a museum in the building of the Heathcote Cultural Precinct when we attended a relative’s birthday party there.

July Homeschool Miscellany Breakdown into Educationese

I wrote July HS Misc pretty late at night and completely forgot I had told @bearone I would do this one (which is “the next one” from my last one XD) with explanations as to how our crazy shenanigans can translate into stuff to soothe the Education Department. Was going to edit the original post but it got a bit messy and I started rewriting the entire thing so thought it might be somewhat safer to do a “companion” type post.

July Homeschool Miscellany

WARNING: there are fake wounds made of Vaseline, flour and red food colouring about halfway through this post. Broke the habit! For now. My head is still all over the place and and trying to get and keep organised is presenting its usual massive challenge, exacerbated by the fact the children have been staggering being exhausted for no apparent reason lately (a possible reason is growth spurts, because they’re lethargic and sleep a lot and suddenly they’re bigger, especially the boys).

January/February/March Homeschooling Miscellany

If you know that I only clump months if at least one of them has been quiet/lazy what does this tell you? XD I also did it at the end of last year I hope that didn’t set a precedent >_> For new readers, December is usually insanomonth when all the end of year shenanigans occur on top of silly season shenanigans, so while I still try to squeeze some things in, it usually (but not always) ends up a write-off as far as the socially accepted definition of education goes.

April/May Homeschooling Miscellany

By necessity we ended term 1 pretty quietly with the Scitech homeschooling lessons. Occasionally one or both boys missed some lessons due to colds, which I didn’t realise at the time was a taste of things to come. After one of the lessons both of them got to, 10yo decided to blow some pocket money at the Scitech shop on some compound eye glasses. There was some hilarity when both of them had a go with it the first time.

January Homeschool Miscellany

We were still on Christmas Island for most of January so it was still mostly geared towards being with family. We got to watch the derpy little thrushes fledging, slowly learn how to fly, hop around the garden still demanding food from and getting fed by their parent, and hopefully eventually soaring off to start their own lives. I’ve since heard from Sprat that a new family has now taken up residence.

December Homeschooling Miscellany

The teenager made the decision some time this month that he needed to be more responsible and started voluntarily practising basic life skills. One involved cooking up a batch of sausages for lunch (plus both boys just felt like sausage sizzle apparently), and while he was about it he decided to experiment with steaming some of them. The appearance of the steamed sausages wasn’t particularly well received by the 9yo, and it was noted that the flavours and textures differed with the different cooking methods.

October Homeschooling Miscellany

October started out with 11yo’s bestie staying for the weekend and them asking if we could wander around Perth for a bit after visiting a store they wanted to browse. 9yo requested my phone to take a couple of photos of things that interested him: The city has been trying to do more fun and interesting stuff so we tend to find random things whenever we go there. At the time they were celebrating the arrival of spring so there were these random bird cages there, which were apparently great for photoshoots.

September Homeschooling Miscellany

One of the things about not learning in an institution is accepting that the stuff taught and learned in institutions isn’t the grand authority on all that’s worth learning. I know this, but sometimes I don’t really know it. Like on her day, 11yo said she wanted to get her nails done. My immediate response was “pick something educational”. I’m not sure why mouths sometimes just randomly fire off before engaging the logic part first as not only would it make a lot of things so much easier, it would probably also make the world a better place in general.