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Sep
13
2018

August Homeschooling Miscellany

This month, we started sliding back into normal.  Seeing as most grocery stores have now stopped providing single-use plastic bags, we've ended up with a lot more cardboard boxes which get put to good use:

9yo-cardboard-infinity-gauntlet

Here after watching Guardians of the Galaxy 2 he's made a cardboard version of the Infinity Gauntlet complete with the little stone things on top.

Jun
06
2018

May Homeschooling Miscellany

May was pretty quiet and boring as well.  Think we just ended up gaming most of the time (occasional bout of Skylanders with the small one, and a few rounds of Monopoly with everyone, and I think there was some Exploding Kittens in there somewhere as well).  Magic and Pokemon cards were sorted (at least by colour and type, and further sorting in the case of the Magic cards depending on how pedantic people were, I think 13yo just sorts by colour and 9yo sorts by colour and type til he gets bored).  As per usual when we're stuck home there was a lot of docos, again mostly concentrated on Horrible Histories and David Attenborough.  Very hard for other types of docos to get a look in against those.

9yo got back into making paper planes and made me this tiny little one complete with a pilot:

Nov
06
2017

September homeschool miscellany

I originally intended to combine July, August and September into one post as I didn't think I had kept track of enough material to be able to make a post each.  As it turned out I was wrong (which is not unusual when it comes to the home ed front, I always think that I have been terribly slack any given month and find out we've done more than I thought).  However some of the September stuff still got caught up in the July/August mashup so this is the rest of September that escaped.

The kids have three cousins, the oldest of which turned 6 recently.  He decided that he wanted to go hiking for his birthday, so his celebration was held at Noble Falls where we met up, had drinks and snacks and then embarked on the epic voyage (it was a pretty easy walk as long as you have no mobility issues or all-terrain wheels).

Oct
11
2016

July Homeschooling Miscellany

Right at the beginning of July we went to Melbourne for 4 days to visit my 97yo grandmother.  While we were there we also went to check out the city and Mum decided that we may as well go and have our first snow experience seeing as we were there in winter, and generously paid for a private tour.

Jun
23
2016

April Homeschooling Miscellany

Artificial rock climbing at the PCYC fundraiser.  Didn't get a lot of photos as we got rained out!

Climbing artificial rock wall at PCYC fundraiser

7yo climbing artificial wall

11yo went to a birthday party for one of his team mates and won a dancing competition not because he's any good at dancing but because he was full of confidence and energetically went at it where a lot of his friends were too scared to even get on the floor.

11yo with his prize from the dance competition - a Hungry Jack's voucher

Mar
07
2016

February Homeschooling Miscellany

We took a fishing trip to Jurien but once again were not able to go out in the boat due to the howling winds.  The boys went fishing off the jetty, JJ caught a blowfish and the same seafull four times.  I caught some godrays and the kids checked out a sundial.  There wasn't enough sun to see what time the sundial thought it was, 11yo tried to take a guess based on the position of the sun while explaining how the sundial worked to 6yo.

Sunset at Dobbyn Park, Jurien Bay, Western Australia

Checking out the sundial on the foreshore at Jurien Bay, Western Australia

Oct
02
2015

Day trip to Jurien Bay

Do you know how hard it is to do a coast to hills transect with three kids under 12?

Not that hard actually if you go with their interest levels.  I would have liked them to observe how the vegetation and soil changed as we went from the eastern outer metro to the coastal part of the Wheatbelt.  They were mostly interested in getting to the beach so we just ended up pointing out sand dunes that were covered in vegetation and having quick chats about why the vegetation is important for holding the sand together, and how the soil colour changed from browny-red clay to sand to white sand.

Heading towards Jurien Bay, Western Australia

Mar
26
2015

Liddelow Homestead, John Oakey Davis Park and some miscellany

The City of Gosnells recently had its Homegrown Festival, but due to many clashes of things the only thing we ended up making was the Liddelow Homestead Open Day.  It has a really cool corridor.

Corridor in Liddelow Homestead, Gosnells, Western Australia

There was also a stove which the kids didn't initially recognise as such, we spent a few minutes talking about what it might be before I told them what it was, and we then discussed how one might control the temperature of the stove when cooking.

Old woodfired stove in Liddelow Homestead, Gosnells, Western Australia

Mar
27
2010

Catchup, Tapfish economics, cartography and Lojban

[imported from livejournal and backdated]

[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]

Dec
30
2008

Statues in Kenya

[imported from livejournal and backdated]