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Apr
09
2020

January/February/March Homeschooling Miscellany

If you know that I only clump months if at least one of them has been quiet/lazy what does this tell you? XD

I also did it at the end of last year I hope that didn't set a precedent >_>

Nov
16
2019

August/September Homeschool Miscellany

Comp season is one of our quieter periods and between that and juggling school transportation and crammed work days we got even less done than usual.  I was going to put together a compilation video of all the routines but some combination of my phone and computer has been giving me an inordinate amount of trouble has made getting photos and videos off it way harder than it should be in this day and age and I've given up on that for now.  That is one of the main reasons why I'm so horribly behind on hs misc.

10yo spent some pocket money on a crystal growing kit from Australian Geographic and grew it.

crystal grown from a crystal growing kit

Sep
02
2019

June/July Homeschooling Miscellany

The mess that has been this year continued along with my sustained failing to manage one in school and two out.  I've ended up palming most of the school-related stuff off to JJ, which has mostly been parent/teacher meetings and he's supposed to be helping her with homework and doing the admin stuff too but somehow I'm still getting stuck with that (guess the 12yo is just used to me dealing with most things).

10yo got into making paper planes again, he was happily off on his own once I'd reminded him how to make them.  As he was occasionally cutting our printing paper into squares for some of the plane designs, he decided not to let the off-cuts go to waste and started making smaller and smaller planes.  I think he remembered doing something similar last year.

Jun
08
2019

April/May Homeschooling Miscellany

By necessity we ended term 1 pretty quietly with the Scitech homeschooling lessons.  Occasionally one or both boys missed some lessons due to colds, which I didn't realise at the time was a taste of things to come.

at the traino with fly glasses

After one of the lessons both of them got to, 10yo decided to blow some pocket money at the Scitech shop on some compound eye glasses.  There was some hilarity when both of them had a go with it the first time.

 

One of the last two lessons involved programming an extremely basic AI to win an extremely basic game, and the paperwork task was to graph the robot's wins.

Apr
15
2019

March Homeschool Miscellany

As February was ending I suspected Term 1 was going to be a write-off for the boys and unfortunately I wasn't wrong.  An additional and unforeseen problem with the school run was that even though it's short it seems to be further destroying my problem shoulder, so I really didn't want to drive anywhere, which given the time restrictions caused by school and the amount of pain I was in basically meant we got stuck with the Scitech homeschooling lessons I'd booked at the beginning of term, and me imposing 10am-12noon as "no non-educational videos and games" time if we were staying home.  They could still use their screens but had to be doing Khan Academy or making something, or doing any off-screen activities.

Apr
02
2019

February Homeschool Miscellany

February was confusing.

I thought I had everything worked out.  I was going to show 12yo how to get to and from high school for a couple of weeks, then cut her a key and leave her to it and just continue as normal with the boys.

I didn't realise a) that this would be tiring and b) that 12yo kept insisting on being accompanied past the two weeks and both her and JJ were having epic freakouts about "what if she gets on the wrong bus" on the way home, as the bus route couldn't be easy and just reverse, the opposite route goes in a different direction.  I had told 12yo how to get back to the main road and where would be safe to cross and which bus numbers to take, but anyway. 

Feb
07
2019

December Homeschooling Miscellany

The teenager made the decision some time this month that he needed to be more responsible and started voluntarily practising basic life skills.  One involved cooking up a batch of sausages for lunch (plus both boys just felt like sausage sizzle apparently), and while he was about it he decided to experiment with steaming some of them.

Jan
22
2019

November Homeschooling Miscellany

November had to be cruisy after the insanity of October, plus we usually start winding down about now anyway.  We stayed home a lot.

13yo-playing-with-snap-circuits

Oct
10
2018

September Homeschooling Miscellany

One of the things about not learning in an institution is accepting that the stuff taught and learned in institutions isn't the grand authority on all that's worth learning.  I know this, but sometimes I don't really know it.  Like on her day, 11yo said she wanted to get her nails done.

My immediate response was "pick something educational".

I'm not sure why mouths sometimes just randomly fire off before engaging the logic part first as not only would it make a lot of things so much easier, it would probably also make the world a better place in general.  11yo has spent a couple of years studying makeup artistry, nails were part of that, so we would learn how nails got done professionally.  Also, I got her to research the nail places at the shopping centre we were going to in order to get some idea of prices.  As it turned out none of them had prices on their websites (which is really annoying) so we had to do actual legwork.

Apr
01
2018

February Homeschooling Miscellany

The month kicked off with 9yo deciding to make his own "card game" after ages of playing Magic and Yu-Gi-Oh.  After quick playtests with me and 11yo, 11yo decided to help make even more "cards".  I use the term loosely bcause the "cards" were all A4-sized.

9yo-11yo-making-card-game

The game was fairly simple and entertaining, and after playing a couple of times 9yo decided that he probably needed more "good" cards as it didn't take very long for me to die despite the lives and death prevention things that had been added in the iteration with 11yo.