history
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). JJ showing 9yo how to examine razor’s edges. Or something. JJ was intending to take the straight razor and clean it up and return it, but FIL said he could keep it and use it but he would be upset if JJ lost it.
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).
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.
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.1900s
me: We’re going to find out how people lived in the 1900s! 7yo: how long ago was that? me: so long ago not even Great Nanny was born then. 7yo: the Stone Age? me: …[trying not to laugh]…not that long ago. 7yo: Romans? me: not that long ago either. 7yo: [thinking]…Tudors? me: that’s probably closer. This work by ryivhnn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License