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.

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Aviation Heritage Museum of WA and Army Museum of WA photo post

On two different weekends, we hit up the Aviation Heritage Museum of WA in Bull Creek and the Army Museum of WA

in Fremantle. I think the boys got more out of those trips than the girl did so next stop might have to be the Perth Museum (she has a special liking for the butterfly corridor) or Art Gallery and I suppose SciTech or the Zoo can also be considerations, somewhere she enjoys at any rate. Both these places are great, the guides are extremely helpful and are often floating not far away and are happy to answer everything about everything.

Unschooly things

Yeh I’m not doing the week by week anymore.

In addition to pocket money, daily bookwork is really good for basics when I’m sick or otherwise blargh from staying up too many late nights in a row and the kids are not (if they are sick they get to veg out and I try to get them to watch docos, we have recently discovered the TED Education Youtube channel and the kids have been consuming the snippets rabidly. There are full lessons on the TED-Ed website but we haven’t really explored there yet. The animations are short (usually under 15mins) which is perfect for 5yo’s attention span, and could potentially skim a huge variety of topics in 2 hours. Just off the top of my head from passing they’ve watched clips on the Higgs-Boson field, icebergs, eel migration, vampire mythology, why glass is transparent and the Fosbury Flop.

Christmas Island: Tai Jin House exploration

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My suspected real life Crazy Dog House on the Cliff allegedly contains a museum these days. For various reasons we’ve never quite manged to get to it. Apparently neither have my parents, but as it turns out the opening hours are really awkward and you need to either be a tourist or taking time off work to go to it within the very short opening hours (Thursday and Friday 10-3).

!schooling 0000E11c - E15n | Apr 23-26

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Monday: sick. Fortunately there was JJ to help with maths. JJ was making noises about wanting to do modular arithmetic. When I passed the kids were doing basic arithmetic on the whiteboard. JJ wasn’t quite sure who was where and thought 8yo knew how to carry 10s. I said we were working on carrying 10s, he hadn’t quite got it yet but could so multiple digit addition and subtraction in his head as long as the numbers were under 10.

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.

Schooling 0000d25c e01n apr 8 12

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Last week and a bit have been slack and uncoordinated partially due to Easter and mostly due to the sleeping pattern going seriously out of whack resulting in myself and the kids going to bed way too late (me because I was staying up late to finish stuff off and also to make sure the bigs were asleep before turning out their light, and them because I have no idea).

Fun with static electricity and other things

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Just randomly (and because they asked nicely), we decided to go down to the park at the end of the road on bladei (okay, fine, Thursday, to be followed up by a trip to City Farmers to stock up on roo meat and mutton, and more flea meds).

The day was lovely, and of course I hadn’t brought the camera, missed out on some awesome shots. I really need to buy something that will cart just the camera with my favourite lens attached, don’t really need the monstrosity that is JJ’s camera bag (I have enough crap to haul as is).

Not quiet on the !schooling front

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I just haven’t been writing about it.

Last week, 6yo drew a picture of Venom from Spiderman with black whiteboard marker on paper, including sounding out the name and checking with JJ after writing it out.

This week just gone has been crazy.

Unschooly crap

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You can learn a lot from doing not much. As most people know, I do 3d. I seem to know bits of geometry, crap I never would have picked up at school, mainly coz it was in the higher level maths class and I suck at maths.

Currently I’m learning a little bit about Russian history (there’s a doco on sometime in the next fortnight that might be helpful) and researching titanium alloys. Why? Roleplaying :P