Rocks,Mould,and Kookaburra pellets

As today is the end of term One I thought I would post a picture of  my arch nemesis, Henny Penny, the homeschooling chicken!  Her major role in the educational process is to stare forlornly through the patio window waiting to be hugged,...(yes. really.)...Poop on the doormat and consume any,books, written work,experiments or materials that are not closely guarded.

We kicked off this year with an awesome unit called, Scavengers,Predators and Decomposers. Part of which involved experiments on Mould and Bacteria. This of course filled our windowsills and fridges with decomposing foodstuffs for over three weeks, whilst the said items were weighed,photographed and generally admired on a daily basis by the kids. It made for interesting dinner party conversation with our non home schooling friends and gave the kids the chance to use a microscope and explore the visually stunning world of microbe photography. Undoubtedly my favourite moment  was being presented with a plastic bag of black fluffy unidentifiable rotten stuff from the depths of a car boot with the excited comment.."Its for you, isnt it GREAT!" ...( and no, this was not a child)
This unit also provided my favourite Comment from my DH: "could you come to the fridge for a moment and identify just what is or isnt an experiment so I can eat?"

Dinosaurs was another popular topic we covered, using the excellent i pad app from the American Museum of Natural History,"AMNH.Dinosaurs HD".It wasnt free but everyone thought it was well worth the money. It was a great app and proved very useful to link in to the previous terms work that we had done on classification and evolution.Also everyone loved watching the DVD series, "Chased by Dinosaurs with Nigel Marvin" and it was a great extension activity to look into the CGI and robotics used. It  also tied in with the Dinos alive Exhibit and the work on Fossils and Meteorites,Sadly we didnt get to go out and Fossick this term, as I was concerned my Pommie eyeballs might melt in the midday heat of Gingin,but we did get to handle some great Trilobite fossils and I found some nice resources,  A book called. "The Fossil Factory by Niles Eldridge" was a winner with DS 6  and a little i pad app called "Earth Stories"


We also ventured into the realm of Earth Science and Geology. We invested in a DIY kit for schools from   Sci tech. These are two large containers designed to provide a term of science based lessons for about 12 kids on a variety of different themes.We clubbed together to get the "Rock on kit" which explores rocks, minerals and earth science .It cost $155 for a term and was packed full of rock samples, resources, experiments, students / teacher worksheets and materials. It provides a good framework of  Aus Curr Linked activities .We really enjoyed it and will probably get  another one next term.(Sarah Forbes Co ordinates these kits and is very helpful).We had excursions to Crystal Caves at Yanchep and Perth Mint and but  I highly recommend a visit to the Earth Museum at  the Geology Faculty at UWA for budding Rockhounds.
My Personal High Point was Crafting an Aboriginal stone tool from, Kangaroo Poo Glue, a stick, flint and a tin can in my friends new house whilst she was at work,closely followed by my low point in realizing the chickens had eaten my newly made Aboriginal stone tool,leaving only the faint aroma of marsupial droppings in the kitchen.

We started our history module on Ancient Civilisations with Mesopotamia and in the process made some great bread,bricks and Cuniform tablets. Henny passed comment on my baking skills by ignoring the bread and partially consuming the clay bricks.We also discovered a great timeline i pad app "Timeline Eons"and the worlds most annoying song.... and Just for you Pete, in case you are  missing it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAMRTGv82Zo


The irrepressible Mrs W  was tackling a myriad unlikely combinations during her fun Friday sessions,which our reviewers felt were "super awesome" Including, The Water Cycle, Visible light spectrum , Aquifers, Limericks, Persuasive text, Debating and also releasing previously domesticated Helium balloons back into the wild. (whilst also encouraging us to all bunk off on occasions)

All in all we had a fabulous time and topped it off with a great homeschooling Geology packed long weekend in Kalgoorlie.Mrs D and myself got gold fever and had to be forcibly removed from the panning activity,and a state of "OVER" ness was declared on camper trailers for the rest of the duration of her life!

Thinking outside the box...when its made of water..and it constantly changes.

Most commonly asked Question.. What do you do all day apart from the tree hugging and proclamations that life is beautiful? 

My first Term with both Jack and Daisy together was a bit like herding fish.It was both exciting and challenging.In some ways an 8 year old with the skills of a 6 year old and a 6 year old with the skills of a 9 year old sort of meet in the middle.Jack has a lot of flexibility in his work to extend himself as far as he wants and frequently does.Daisy needed more help.In truth a lot of my time was spent trying to address the deep seated existing problems that Daisy had with literacy and numeracy and more importantly her fear of having even a passing acquaintance with anything literacy and numeracy related.A great deal of energy went into disguising learning as fun..in much the same way you might puree vegetables in pasta sauce.

Another large proportion of my time was spent thinking.

 Q. How an earth did it get so bad and go unnoticed for so long ?.. 

 When do you ever as a parent seriously check if your child can,count to twenty forwards and backwards,complete a Dolch spelling test, read to an benchmark age, or sequence correctly...you don't  In the real world you read the school reports and if they are good, you trust all is well.As my husband pointed out its a cookie cutter system,you deliver a concept and you have a certain amount of time to do it,the majority will get it,those that don't grasp it may get left behind.

We built last term around how to deliver Daisy the support she so desperately needed .It was obvious to us she could not get the most out of any materials or any programme unless she could understand and participate in it.We went back to the foundations, letter sounds and phonemes,blending and sight words and practiced again and again,It was tough.

Imagine reading a small frequently occurring word like "the" in a book when you cant say it phonetically or understand it once youve read it, then you instantly forget it,and even if there are 20 examples of "the" on a page, every one has to be re read and explained, like its the first time you have ever seen it.After 30 minutes  of doing this you might hold on to it.Only to forget it all again the next day.Its the same with numbers you might have no concept of what comes after or before ten in a sequence.Imagine the frustration.

When your planning a term you have a world of choices, the children dictate what you do by what they need,their learning styles show how you deliver it.The Australian Curriculum has standards that should be implemented but whose bar is so low it is possible to achieve all the outcomes from the core areas by doing an activity such as making a cake.  Read the recipe (Eng)  Measure the quantities (Maths)  Bake it in the oven (Science) Talk about how in their parents day they didn't have packet cake mix and in their Grandparents day they didn't have cake! (History)....I am grateful to my Educational Moderator for this Gem of an example.

Anyway for us the core is Literacy and Numeracy, which we reinforce with Writing and Spelling,We like hands on learning so go on an excursion every Monday to tie in with Life Science,We finished off all the units on animal classification,habitat and environment,and use lots of Documentaries,text and on line resources not forgetting the ipad (all hail to thee.. glorious svelte tablet of magic).Tuesdays is the chance to do Art, Guitar,Keyboards,Choir and Drama,Wednesdays is speech therapy day so a good day to do Technology, construction,and Geography and languages We learn about different cultures and places and its traditionally the day to write to the kids we sponsor and pen-pals.Thursday our kids go to Flourish a whole day with like mind homeschool kids where they create,play games,make films,build cubbies,flex their imaginations,problem solve,and learn to be flexible agile thinkers,Whilst I mostly drink Coffee!.This term on Fridays we took up the Sci Tech Homeschooling CIRSO lab classes which were great and combined them with a programme from the WA Museum and the Planetarium. Thats the nuts and bolts but it would be nothing without the fun and the tree hugging.