November Homeschool Miscellany

We haven’t really made good use of our zoo passes this year. Hopefully this will be remedied next year. 10yo stole my phone to take a number of photos of things she considered cute and as we ventured into the Asian rainforest to see the Komodo dragon and the red panda it reminded me that there are a few sections we don’t get to very often and we should probably make the effort to go into them.

September Homeschooling Miscellany

Apparently doing bookwork with Dad is much more interesting than doing the same bookwork with Mum. I have handed off 11yo to JJ for maths as he’s too advanced for me, so J has been teaching him physics and chemistry and other related things. They started off in the computer room, and then 9yo decided to join them doing English. As he was passing the computer room 7yo happened to look in, I told him not to go in there as they were doing bookwork and he decided then that he wanted to do bookwork too.

November Homeschooling Miscellany

Fallen a bit behind on the regular homeschool blogging! I actually started this one in early December but didn’t quite get around to finishing it so here it is now.

We started playing Ingress (we’re Resistance) and have so far discovered a myriad of portals in familiar places and three new parks. One of next year’s goals is to try to go visit a new area at least once a week. We also met up with a bunch of local players at Pioneer Park and they gave us stuff, and 10yo gave one of them a Jarvis virus that he’d managed to pick up from one of the green portals we’d hacked. We’ve been doing a lot more walking as a result which is a nice bonus as we do quite a few activities already.

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.

Homeschool catchup post

The day before we [flew out to Christmas Island]({< relref “massive-christmas-island-photopost-2014-15” >}), we went on an excursion to the Art Gallery of Western Australia. They accommodate homeschool groups easily and the programs the kids did were great and seem to have been enjoyed by all. To make running things easier for the staff, the kids had been divided into pre-primary to Year 3 (5-8yos) and year 4+ (9 and older). The older group went for their activity first while the younger one went on the tour. The younger group got split into two and 8yo, then 5yo and I ended up in a tiny little group consisting of ourselves and 8yo’s then-6yo friend. The tour guide got peppered with a billion questions as both girls are very interested in art and did a great job fielding them and the additional and often random questions from then-5yo.

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:

Mundaring Sculpture Park and Weir

Last time we were out this way was a few years ago for a Truffle Festival. This time round we came out this way on the weekly excursion (which he hadn’t done for a couple of weekends due to some major works including replacing the fence out the front and helping friends lay some cable to a shed) and because 7yo heard there was an art gallery.

We stopped by the “village” to pick up maps and things for 7yo’s collection and she also bought a butterfly spotter’s book and to hit up the bakery for lunch. We took the food to the Sculpture Park and the kids had a play at the playground before we checked out the sculptures, read and followed the track up to where there were some rail switching levers and an amphitheatre. 7yo put a performance on the old platform (now a stage).

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.

Stand back! I'm going to try SCIENCE!

[minor pseudonymising edits during Drupal to hugo migration for all the good that will do now]

The slogan is from an xkcd shirt.

And that was pretty much what happened today. I managed to convince the kids to go play outside. Even 6yo who “hates going outside” (or so she claimed today) decided to go out after her little brother (who had been playing inside with her) decided he was going to go outside. She found her “dinosaur stomach” and started making energon stew for the Autobots. I had a flash of “why the hell not” and started bringing out stuff.

!schooling 0000C18c - C22n | Mar 4-9

[minor pseudonymising edits during Drupal to hugo migration for all the good that will do now]

Bit of a short week this week due to Labour Day public holiday, and also (or perhaps because of that) a little bit disorganised. We did the zoo on the weekend, spent Monday cleaning the house which was rather festy. We didn’t get around to doing maths bookwork but did some Minecraft related spatial stuff. 8yo’s writing is getting neater and he is growing in confidence writing lowercase. We’re getting less freakouts about inability to form letters and other such things. He’s been having nightmares again so I’ve suggested he turn them into stories. He’s not so sure about writing horror but he has started thinking about stories he might like to write, including a self-insert Pokemon fanfic. I’m hoping to develop him out of the Mary Sue stage while he’s still young, he seems to be starting to grasp the concept of balancing characters.