health and physical education
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.
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.
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.
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.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.
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.