The world is our classroom!

New pets

2010-02-23T19:58:00.000-08:00

We've had an exciting couple of weeks with the arrival of some new pets.

Whisper and Fluffy are 3 week old guinea pig babies. They are so utterly adorable - I love their squeaks and their happy purring sounds. They are eating and pooing machines and need a lot of looking after! I haven't been game to let them sleep outside yet so they are spending their nights in a cat cage and their days in a large enclosure on the back lawn. The cat of course has been spending his time sitting at their enclosure trying to get his paw and mouth through the wire - unsuccessfully but he can dream!

While we were picking up the guinea pigs, the family who was selling them mentioned that they needed to downsize their chicken numbers as many of them were no longer laying. I have been fantasising about silkie hens for a while now so of course I jumped at the chance to bring these two home! Their names are Ebony and Ivory - sadly not living in perfect harmony with the existing chickens yet, but luckily they are great freerange chooks who don't do anything naughty like scratch in the vegie garden. They spend their days on the lawn and their nights in the shed with the big chooks. They're 3 years old and lay only occasionally but they are dead cute to look at, and if we decide to get fertile eggs down the track I'm sure they'll make great adoptive mothers.

So life has become just that bit more chaotic what with juggling chooks in and out of yards, keeping the guinea pigs and the cat away from each other, and responding to feeding demands from all angle. I was a bit late home the other night and arrived to meowing, squeeking and bekerking from all the hungry mouths.

I love what pets bring to a home and family. It's such a rich learning experience.

More craftings

2010-01-10T16:08:00.000-08:00

The craft explosion continues!! Craft has become a staple activity for every day. Our craft box became crafts boxes and is now a craft cupboard. You have to be quick to take the recycling out before someone yells "I want to use that for craft!". Anything is fair game!! We've stocked up on lots of coloured paper, toothpicks, pipe cleaners, stickers, glue, glitter and so on but DS is just as happy using fabric scraps and cotton balls.

These cute little ants were made from egg cartons and pipe cleaners.. they added toothpick legs after the photo was taken.

A paper plate cat.. it has a really cute face but you can't really see it because it was drawn in yellow.

DIY Compass

2010-01-10T16:03:00.000-08:00

Here's a quick and easy science experiment - a DIY compass.

1. On a piece of paper write NSEW
2. Magnetise a needle by stroking it in one direction along a magnet
3. Poke the needle through a small piece of cork
4. Float the needle in a bowl of water - the tip of the needle will point to north
5. Align the paper underneath so the N is where the needle is pointing.

Embracing Multicultural Australia

2010-01-03T17:27:00.000-08:00

In the last few months we've attended some fantastic local events embracing the multicultural nature of Australia.
The Spirit Festival is a celebration of Indigenous Australian culture - music, art, craft, sport, community and food. The festival was really well put together, fantastic music and dancing in particular. DS really enjoyed the kids craft workshop. He made an animal mask, a beaded necklace, a stone with dot art and some very colourful paintings.
I think it's extremely important for children (and everyone really) to have an appreciation of the traditional custodians of the land we are living on so I am always happy to find opportunities for him to experience some Indigenous culture.
http://www.thespiritfestival.com/spirit/

Another great event was the Moon Lantern Festival, which was a part of the OzAsia festival. It was held in the evening so we had the fun experience of watching the lantern parade lighting up the area. We really enjoyed the amazing lanterns - some of them enormous and very elaborate - and the atmosphere.

http://www.adelaidefestivalcentre.com.au/?cat=3355&id=181589

One of the best things about living in a capital city is the ability to experience a wide range of different cultures, which is a core part of our homeschooling curriculum.

From "Act Now"..

The multiculturalism policy can be seen through the following core principles:
Equality—this means all citizens are given equal rights, no matter what race or religion they are. It also ensures that people can rely on Australian law if they are discriminated against because of their cultural beliefs.
Responsibility—this means all Australians are responsible for accepting others who have individual beliefs. It also means that we have a duty to support our democratic model of government.
Benefits—this means we recognise that multiculturalism brings great benefits to society. And, if we continue to live in a society like this, the possibilities of success in social and business spheres are endless.

Bok Bok Bok

2009-10-26T01:20:00.000-07:00

We have chookens!

I just love chooks, as entertainment and an integral part of the permaculture garden. Our three girls are Freddo, Lou Cooper and Esme and they are just delighful. There is so much that can be learned from owning chickens, such as:

- Food production

- The responsibility of caring for animals

- Life cycles in nature

- Cooking with home-grown eggs

Art class

2009-10-22T22:26:00.000-07:00

This term DS has started a weekly art class. He has been thoroughly enjoying it, and I am continually amazed at the gorgeous artwork he brings home with him.

He has used crayon to draw the pictures (a cat, a rainbow and the tooth fairy up in the top corner) and then filled it in with watercolours.

This one is a garden, with a goose standing in front of a (giant) boot, and a castle to the right of it.

It gives me so much happiness to see him continuing to grow and learn, and expressing himself through his amazing art work.

Investigating surface tension

2009-10-22T21:37:00.000-07:00

You may have noticed that there have been a whole lot of science experiments going on in my house lately!
One of the wonderful things about home-based learning is being able to follow your child's lead and pick up on their interests. This means sometimes DS does a lot of english and not much else, at other times he is busily creating art and craft, or powering through a maths workbook. Science is his big interest at the moment, so we've been looking through all our science resources and doing different experiments each day.
This one was from the CSIRO website: http://www.csiro.au/resources/amazing-detergent-activity.html
It's a very simple experiment to investigate surface tension, using water, detergent, and food colouring.

Non-newtonian fluid

2009-10-22T21:32:00.000-07:00

Non-newtonian fluid (a fluid that does not follow Newton's law) can be made easily with corn flour (the type actually made from corn as opposed to the one made from wheat) and water. We added a bit of food colouring just for fun. When force is applied to it, it acts like a solid. For instance, you can punch it and it feels firm. Without force being applied, it acts like a liquid, so you can slowly insert your fingers into it. It's truly bizarre stuff and a whole lot of fun!

Hama Beads

2009-10-20T19:03:00.000-07:00

Hama bead people just before they were ironed.
This kind of activity encourages many different skills; creative art and design, fine motor skills, sorting colours, and (very importantly for my DS) having the patience to see a tricky job through to the end!

Phonics and literacy (AKA Scrabble)

2009-10-20T18:49:00.001-07:00

"But if you don't send your kids to school, they'll never learn to read!" - so they say! Here's a couple of self-taught readers playing scrabble. Both are reading fluently now and enjoy playing with words, making rhymes, changing prefixes and suffixes to make variations on the words they have created. Scrabble also provides an opportunity for practising turn-taking and collaboration. They made up their own rules which didn't involve scoring the words - just working together to make as many words as possible.

The Magic Garden

2009-10-20T18:39:00.000-07:00

The magic garden! I'm not too sure exactly what the scientific principles behind this experiment are - but it was interesting to watch the formation of the crystals anyway.

Soft-drink bottle science

2009-10-20T18:16:00.000-07:00

For this experiment, you need 2 x 2L soft drink bottles, attached neck to neck, with a plastic tube going towards the end of each bottle. To make this at home, you need a plastic sleeve into which one screws two empty 2-liter soft-drink bottles (you could glue two lids together to do this).
Inserted into this connecting tube are two clear plastic "straws", one extending toward the bottom of each bottle. Fill one bottle 3/4 full of water, colored if you like, invert the duo, and watch water spew from the top end of the top "straw".
We bought a pre-made connector from here:
http://www.windmill.net.au/Age/8+/BC12976-Fountain-Connection.html

The water spurts into the upper bottle due to the vacuum created as water drains from one bottle to the other, but it looks as though the water defies gravity. I reckon this is a good physics demonstration!

We also did a similar experiment with the tornado tube.

You can find the instructions for this one here: http://www.csiro.au/helix/sciencemail/activities/TornadoTube.html

The Food Forest

2009-10-14T14:47:00.000-07:00

The Food Forest is a permaculture farm just outside of Adelaide. We went on a tour with the local homeschool group.
All the buildings on the farm are built for energy efficiency with passive solar design. This picture demonstrates that passive solar design can be applied to the smallest of buildings - even a cubby house!

The cob oven is used for summer cooking - avoiding the need to overheat the house by using the oven.

Checking out the rows of garlic at the edge of the vegie garden and learning about companion planting.

The sacrificial row of lettuce - it attracts slaters which are fed to the chooks, which produce manure which is fed back to the garden. Circle of life!

I love excursions for a few reasons.. it gives D the chance to build relationships with other homeschooled kids and exposes him to new information which covers a number of curriculum areas.
On this excursion there were learning opportunities for maths (angles, calculating water usage for drippers), geography (passive solar design of north-facing buildings), science (discussion of different types of fertilisers) and society / environment (permaculture and sustainability).
Now when we buy vegies from the Food Forest stall at the Farmers Markets D will have a better appreciation of where our food comes from. Overall, a really fun day!

The Museum

2009-10-14T14:41:00.000-07:00

Here are some pictures of a recent trip to the museum. D's favourite exhibit is still the giant squid - he loves racing up and down the stairs to check it out from every angle. At each level is a touchscreen computer with information about the squid and the other marine life on display which he very much enjoys also!

Some more marine specimens.

Update

2009-10-14T14:36:00.000-07:00

I seem to have fallen off the bandwagon for blog updating, whoops! Life has been so busy!
Over the next couple of weeks I'm going to try to get things back up to speed again. We've been so many places and done so many interesting things in the last few months.
One of the highlights was a road trip to Canberra for the homebirth rally. I believe that children benefit greatly from exposure to politics at the ground level. What better way to expose them to the workings of our government than to rally outside Parliament house! He also managed to complete an english and a maths workbook while we were on the road - just for his own fun.
Aside from that, the usual arts and crafts and science experiments are going on around the house. He continues to amaze me with his growing vocabulary and understanding of the world.
Stay tuned... more posts to come!

Today's artwork

2009-04-02T01:24:00.000-07:00

D bought this Hama bead set yesterday and made this fantastic spiderman figure tonight. I thought it was really excellent fine motor skill practice and I was also impressed how realistic spidy looks. We ironed it when he had all the

beads in place so he has his own home made spiderman to keep now. He's very pleased with himself.

This drawing is of a character called Special Agent Oso that he has seen on the playhouse disney website. I really love how the 'S's are around the wrong way! The process of learning to write never fails to amaze me. I thought he was holding a whip but D tells me that it's a rolled up map.

Natural Learning

2009-03-24T15:57:00.000-07:00

I thought I would make a note of some of the learning activities that happened here in one day. None of these were prompted or scheduled by me at all.

Drew a picture of the characters from a tv show
Asked me how to spell 'bread' and 'cheese' and wrote them down on a peice of paper
Drew up plans to build himself an art set, including drawers and containers to hold his crayons
Continued his ongoing project of building a wall out of spare pavers
Asked me to play a board game with him
Played with local kids at the park. He approached them and said 'Hi, My name is D, I'm 4 years old and I like spiderman'
Read about 15 books - mostly on his own but he occasionally asks me to read a word for him

Natural learning really is that easy - provide the materials and the opportunities and kids want to learn!

Craft from today

2009-03-20T04:47:00.000-07:00

DS received a package of craft supplies from a friend today and promptly turned the straws into whiskers. He got the idea from a book of craft activities, asked for a bit of help to draw shapes for him to cut out, but the rest was his own work.

The daily bugle...

2009-02-25T23:18:00.001-08:00

More art by the boy wonder.. this is new york city (the spiderman version thereof..) and in the middle he has called one of the buildings 'daily bugle'.

Learning a second language - Malay

2009-02-19T00:17:00.001-08:00

DS's step-mother's first language is Malay, so I've decided to elect her in-charge of our 'language other than english'!

I found this a set of books online to form the basis of the curriculum. Each book has a theme such as words around the home, words on holidays, words for food etc. and each phrase is written in both english and malay. In addition I'm going to have DS make his own dictionary with pictures of words that he would like to know. I'm hoping in time they will use malay conversationally while DS is with them.

Lego workshop at the motor museum

2009-02-18T23:54:00.001-08:00

Today's outing was to the National Motor Museum for a lego workshop. DS is lego CRAZY at the moment so it was very topical.

The actual activity was a great concept - all the kids were given the same set of peices to design and made a car and explain the features of the car to the group. The next step was for them all to make the same car, using the same peices, and following instructions. The last step was for them to form a small group and make a number of cars, as a production line.

What was really interesting was the way the group leader was expecting the kids to behave; it was a very telling insight into how school works. An enormous amount of time was spent organising them to sit in a circle - a concept I'm sure many of these kids haven't come across as it doesn't happen outside of institutionalised settings! Then there was the expectation to "raise your hand" before speaking - again not a concept we use at home!! The constant praise from the group leader and the mindless "good boy / girl" for correct answers really grated on me. I also noticed that she elected the eldest boy in each group as the leader.

The wonderful parts of the day were watching children of different ages and genders playing together without anyone being excluded. I was also thrilled to see kids indulging in activities they really love to do, like reading. It just doesn't seem to be a chore to them.

The group leader asked the children what their favourite part of homeschooling was and it was really touching to hear one child answer "spending more time with my parents". Watching the kids and adults interact really showed how much they were enjoying each others' company.

Our trip to the museum

2009-02-16T16:51:00.001-08:00

Yesterday we went to the SA museum with 2 other families to see an exhibit about dinosaur babies. We saw fossilised eggs complete with embryos, and plenty of models of nests and hatchlings.
We checked out the dino skulls to work out which ones were plant eaters (with blunt teeth) and which were meat eaters (with sharp teeth).
Next was a quick whiz around the rest of the museum, to see DS's favourite thing which is a giant squid model, 4 storeys high.
We followed up this excursion at home with DS doing a drawing of his favourite part of the day (the giant squid) and looking at some other resources about dinosaurs, including a poster about Australian dinosaurs.

Some more artwork...

2009-02-16T16:48:00.001-08:00

DS drew this great picture of a spiderman toy shop yesterday. He wrote 'spiderman' himself and then asked how to spell 'toy' and 'shop'. There is a door at the bottom, and outside the buildings are some boxes which are waiting to be loaded into the shop by the crane on the roof.

Where foods come from..

2009-01-08T00:55:00.000-08:00

We have been doing some activities this week about where food comes from, inspired by planting our new permaculture garden!

A couple of great kids books on this topic are

"Beans on Toast" - Paul Downing

"How to make an apple pie and see the world" - Marjorie Priceman

Both books investigate the origins of ingredients for making a dish.

On the same theme, DS looked up a recipe for gingerbread people on the internet, and we wrote a shopping list, and went to the supermarket to buy the ingredients. The results were delicious!
The garden is going wonderfully with corn about to produce heads, and plenty of spinach and rocket to eat now. The corn is the multi-coloured variety shown above.

We are very much looking foward to having all of our vegetables from the garden in the coming months.

Water play

2008-12-17T15:12:00.000-08:00

I think water play is a really interesting activity for kids.
D likes to get different shaped and sized containers and funnels, and pour the water from one to the other. He is learning about volumes and estimating / comparing the capacity of various containers. He was also experimenting with different items to see if they float or sink, which leads to learning about density. Apart from that it also feels nice and is fun!

An addition to the family of the feline variety

2008-12-10T00:57:00.001-08:00

I must be some kind of sucker, or a crazy person, perhaps both? I came home from morning tea this morning with this little fellow...
A gift from my friend Lisa. Her homeschooled daughter (in the pic) loves cats and has her own cat blog. Their cat had 4 kittens so I am pretty sure the morning tea was some kind of ploy to palm off cats onto unsuspecting victims! Anyway I am writing it off as some kind of early christmas present, or educational activity (let's hope!). Of course choosing a name is always the hard part, especially when you leave a 4 year old up to the job. The initial suggestions were Spot, Cassie (from another friend's daughter), Thomas, James (on the train theme there) before he finally declared that the cats name is Fuss. I asked him why he chose that name and his answer was "I called him that because that's his name so that's what I called him!". Of course!

Reading and learning phonetics

2008-12-02T01:52:00.000-08:00

DS hasn't been taught to read in a formal way, but I noticed when he was about 3 1/2 that he had quite a lot of words he could recognise by sight. I did a bit of reading about how children learn to read and most of what I read recommended teaching them phonics too, so that they can problem-solve learning new words. So we kept doing what we were doing, reading lots of books together, and started adding in a few simple activities like playing with scrabble letters and magnetic letters. His desire to write really helped with his learning phonetics too.
Tonight he asked a really interesting question - he looked at the word "aeroplane" and asked why it isn't pronounced "aero-plan" which gave us an opportunity to discuss how the "e" on the end changes the sound of the "a" to "aye". So it would seem that the phonetics has sunk in, and all with very minimal effort to teach it in any formal way.
I think his reading is pretty exceptional for a 4 year old, he can quite easily read most books aimed at his age group, with a mixture of recognising words by sight, and problem solving them with phonetics.

Some artwork

2008-11-26T18:35:00.001-08:00

The first word he ever wrote, he was a couple of months shy of turning 4 when he wrote this.

A picture of a robot.. and D with a remote control.

Quotable quotes and adorable moments

2008-11-26T04:03:00.000-08:00

I'm starting this blog post to memorialise some of the adorable things my lovely boy says. My memory has massive holes in it so I'll try to keep this post updated from time to time.
~~
His first words this morning upon waking were "I missed my golf game!". Now given that we don't actually play golf that must have been quite the dream he was having.
~~
At the farmer's market, standing in line for apples.. he turns to me and says "I love your boobies mum. Can I see them?". Oh the dangers of term breastfeeding!
~~
I bought my boy some exercise books to draw / write in, the kind that have name, school and subject written on the cover. He wrote his name, asked me to write 'drawing and writing' next to subject, and next to school he wrote 'no'. Such an insightful and clever kid I have there!
~~
Another classic today, apparently "You can't say cheers with milk". Maybe he's been reading etiquette books when I haven't been looking.
Stay tuned for more in coming days and weeks!

The story of a plant named Selene

2008-11-26T03:39:00.000-08:00

I just thought I'd blog this because I am finding it rather cute! It really does not have anything to do with homeschooling..
DS has attached himself to a plastic plant (from a bug catcher) which he has named Selene. He introduced me to the plant by saying "I have a plant, I am going to name her Selene", and for the following couple of days he has been engaging in some seriously cute role play with Selene. She has been well watered and lovingly tended to. Tonight he told me that "Selene is NOT happy. She needs a drink, and some dirt and a worm farm". Lucky Selene has been shown all around the house and the garden, given frequent drinks from the hose. He's just too adorable for words!

Maths for the non-mathematically minded!

2008-11-22T04:22:00.000-08:00

One of my biggest homeschooling fears is maths. It's never been my strong point or indeed any point at all. But just lately I have been noticing how much maths actually occurs in daily life.
We have measuring cups in the bath - fantastic way to learn fractions. He can experiment with how many times it takes the 1/4 cup to fill the 1 cup.
Lego is great too - he really has to use a bit of logic to work out how many 2 unit pieces it takes to match a 4 unit piece, and so on.
Money of course is the ultimate mathematical experiment for a child! He enjoys checking out the coins to see how much they are worth, and paying for small items in the shops.
Cooking is brilliant for fractions, weighing and measuring, estimating volumes and so on, plus measuring time for each stage of the preparation and cooking process.
I'm sure in no time at all my 4 year old will surpass my mathematical skills!
I read a quote (loosely paraphrased here) which said that if children can't learn maths from real life, and if they never experience some types of maths in real life, then why do we bother to teach it to them!

The Seahorse Farm

2008-10-19T14:17:00.000-07:00

Last week we went to a homeschool group excursion to the seahorse farm at Pt Adelaide.
The kids had a blast!
We watched an educational video that showed the various parts of the seahorses, how to tell the difference between the male and females, showed live baby seahorses being born and explained a bit about their behaviour. The kids then looked around all the tanks at the different types of seahorses and were able to apply the information from the video to what they were seeing. Interestingly the female deposits her eggs in the male's pouch where he fertilises them, carries them to term and then ejects the live young into the water.
They also had a shark in a shallow pool for petting - as my friend pointed out, sharks are well known for their warm and fuzzy nature and their love of being petted! DS wasn't too keen on touching it, probably a wise move really.
DS was really interested in a seahorse magnet with a thermometer on it from the shop so we bought that and he spent some time that afternoon investigating the temperature rising and falling when we went in and out of the house. He also brought home a seahorse colouring page which we coloured in and labelled the parts of the seahorse.
It was a lovely excursion and great also to spend time with some other families.

Fantastic adventures in learning at home!

2008-10-18T17:57:00.000-07:00

First blog post! Woot!
I wanted to create a space to document the wonderful adventures my little one and I are having now that we have committed to home-based learning.
Just to introduce ourselves.. I'm a single mama of one delightfully cheeky 4 year old boy. He spends most of the week with me, some of the weekend with his dad and stepmother, and is babysat by his grandparents as I work part time during the week. It takes a village to raise a child, so they say! It's wonderful to have so many people committed to loving this little person, so many positive influences in his life.
I have decided not to go the usual route of schooling for a number of reasons. He's not an average child in any sense, he's extremely intelligent and very sensitive, and he thrives on close relationships with his family. He doesn't cope very well in large groups of kids. He gets overwhelmed easily with too much sensory information to process. I don't agree with the "carrot and stick" philosophy of learning that most schools subscribe to, and I would rather foster a genuine love of learning than to force him to learn a lot of stuff that's probably not very useful in the long run. Overall I just think I can do a better job of meeting his needs than a school can.
So my aim is to use this blog to document what we're learning at home and to show off some of the interesting work he comes up with. At the moment he's really into drawing and has been producing some really amazing creations.
So there you have it! Our journey begins....