January Homeschooling Miscellany

Our year started fantastically with being able to go to a performance of The Lion King Broadway Musical courtesy of mother in law who bought us tickets.

We were up in the nosebleed section so couldn’t see fine details of costumes or clear facial expressions but got an awesome view of everything going on on the stage and around the theatre (as the performers didn’t restrict themselves to the stage).

October Homeschooling Miscellaney 2

Might try to do these as monthly things rather than semi-random ones.

Firstly, we are chick central again. About three clutches with 7-10 chicks in each one. Chappie’s family want some of the naked necks. This was the first lot. Idiot hen had gone next door to brood, kids heard the cheeping and went next door to investigate. Neighbour was astonished as she hadn’t even realised they were there behind the shed, and just as well they’d only hatched that morning as she’d been dogsitting and the dog had left earlier in the day.

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.

Museum

8yo has made it into the “Sunflowers” group which is a group of Level 2 girls who the coaches decide are good enough for competitions. Level 3 is the official competition level for the PCYC clubs (I have no idea about in general) so the Level 2 girls get to go along to the comps for fun and get a medal based on their overall scores. 8yo participated in her first comp and got a silver.

Perth Zoo, Scitech, a play, Museum of Western Australia and Fremantle Prison

I’m doing a reasonable job doing everything else and an atrocious job blogging.

Perth Zoo

While visiting relatives:

And now what follows is a ridiculous week in which we went to SciTech three times for homeschooling lessons for 10yo and 8yo, a stage play and we also squeezed in a trip to the museum on one of the Scitech days because everyone was in a good mood at the time (I won’t say anything about the trip home from that day).

More little things

9yo displayed that he does have some organisational skills while we were playing Minecraft and he wandered off and said he had found some mines, then told me the coordinates so I could join him. He had made a book and quill to use as a journal (and would be less likely to misplace seeing as it’s in-game) in which he was writing down the coordinates of our bases and any mines he encountered (which would then be deleted once we’d finished exploring and digging them out).

Unexpected family history and a keyboard

Recently we were at a nephew’s 3rd birthday party. Seeing as we were in the area we followed JJ’s parents back to their place as his dad had said he had a straight razor belonging to his grandfather that JJ might be interested in (seeing as he’s recently gotten into shaving with straight razors).

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.

History overload, and vague career plans

We binged out on history recently. I can’t remember if I mentioned instating a docos-only-before-bookwork rule to stop the kids from gluing themselves to screens and routinely refusing to come do the bookwork, but it’s been working reasonably well. Horrible Histories was the recent favourite, I think they’ve watched every dvd we have now as well as anything on iView at the time, and favourite dvds have been repeated with them singing along. As well as watching Horrible Histories, 9yo has also decided to have me read him the books for bedtime story. We’re also still very slowly working our way through the very thick Ned Kelly book.

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).