The Dangers of Dog Walking

We rarely take the dogs out for a walk during the day for three reasons.

1. Safely walking two boisterous dogs together with two children on wheels is a handful,

2. They are old and arthritic now, so walkies usually results in two incapacitated canines for the next two days,

3.  In the ensuing melee of getting two writhing dogs into their harnesses, organising drinks and snacks, getting the aforementioned wheels ready at the front door and dusting off a tonne of dog hair from my clothes and trying to look presentable, one of the children will get her finger caught in a bedroom door, split it open, break the bone, scream hysterically for an hour and then spend the next ten and a half hours waiting around and having surgery at Box Hill Hospital.

It's two weeks now since that fateful day and all H has to show for it is a little bandaid on her left ring finger. She did have a ridiculously large cast on for the first ten days, but despite that she managed to dance her way through two ballet concerts and showed some amazing inner strength and determination.

a spotty puppy

backstage fun

In the midst of all the finger drama, R celebrated her 6th birthday. She's entered an interesting stage of development - so proud to be six yet at the same time frightened to be getting older.
During the year she would declare that she'd start Gumnut Guides and ballet when she turned six.
Now when we mention it she gets all nervous and upset at the thought.  I do tell her that it really doesn't matter whether she starts or not, but she does take these things very seriously.
Like her sister she is very determined and I think she will take the plunge, but it won't be as easy for her.

6 years young

The days are flying by - some are great, others not. Tonight we created a Zone of Peace. We lit candles
and listened to some soothing Christmas music. A little later the girls took off to bed, tired but calm
after our dinner out.  It was a lovely way to end the night and hopefully we can do it every evening.

November 14 - 21

It's sometimes hard to know when to introduce a new skill to a child because although they may show interest it doesn't mean that they are mentally prepared for it.  I think R started Headsprout a bit too early. What started out as fun games gradually became information overload and the poor girl just gave up.  We've not looked at a Headsprout episode or reader for three months.
In that time however, we've read many books together and R has been intensely playing Scribblenauts on her DS (which involves typing in names of things/people to use in the game).  Today I picked out a Headsprout reader at random and she read happily read it with hardly any hesitations or mistakes.
All I can say is "Yay for unschooling!"
Here are some other wise words from clever people:

“Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.” ~ Leonardo da Vinci

“Education is hanging around until you’ve caught on.” ~ Robert Frost

“All I am saying ... can be summed up in two words: Trust Children. Nothing could be more simple, or more difficult. Difficult because to trust children we must first learn to trust ourselves, and most of us were taught as children that we could not be trusted.” ~ John Holt 

Now, on to last week's happenings...

It was a fairly quiet week. The girls had the usual ballet, brownies and gymnastics. H hurt her back jumping into the foam pit so had to go for a proper back massage to get her well enough for the ballet dress rehearsals that have started.  We had a public transport adventure to the zoo and gamelan practice then finished off with a pizza night at Belle Rose Pizza in Chadstone.

We've rediscovered the joy of felting thanks to H who was off quietly in the kitchen felting a family of little people as a present for a cousin. I've begun a felted ball garland for the christmas tree.

Yesterday an early bike ride put us all in a good mood so we had a game of Swing Maths (mental maths done whilst swinging at the park) and Blackout Poetry which is a fun way to mix poetry with art. I found it at this great blog - go check it out!  I'll post a photo when H has finished hers.

new baboon enclosure

penguin feeding time

Moorhen mums and babies

 

Nov 3 - 13

As the months fly by I find that we are unschooling more and more.  Even though we tell each other that we do want to learn languages and history and maths and science (and we really do!), whenever I get out the books or worksheets it all seems so boring and contrived and irrelevant to what's going on in our lives.
So whilst the books were sitting neglected and gathering dust these past ten days, we've been doing this:
 
1. Botany Scavenger Hunt.
Whilst taking a lovely, wet, early morning walk in a local park H and R hunted for interesting leaf shapes, flowers and seed pods. A very gentle and enjoyable introduction to Botany.

2. Caring for Cookie.
R found this little one in our garden while out on a treasure hunt. She certainly found a treasure!  Apparently possums often reject their joeys if they are stressed or sick and this was the second joey found in our garden. The first was even smaller and was already dead when P and the girls found it two weeks ago.  This one - we named him Cookie- was still alive but oh so cold.  He was tiny (only 6 cm long), hairless and very underdeveloped.  We took him inside and wrapped him in a woollen beanie, bought some native animal baby formula and fed him for almost two days before he slipped away. This is a terrible photo but it was dark and P and I were bleary eyed from waking every two hours to feed him and to reheat the heat packs.
When we fed him his little paws would curl around our fingers, his tiny mouth opening, searching for some milk from the syringe. Cookie was precious indeed.

3. Enjoying each other and their babies.
I'm not sure if it was due to caring for Cookie or not, but suddenly both girls started acting very maternal towards their baby dolls again. H and I looked on as R gave birth to her baby Poppy, and special beds were made up for the new arrivals. The girls took loads of photos of themselves with their daughters.  I love that they have the same eye colour as their babies.
Of course all this play acting led to many questions about babies and childbirth, the most important one being "Does it hurt?"

 

4. Recycling Crayons.

We had a big clean up yesterday and I found a forgotten box of old crayons that nobody ever used. We broke them up, melted them down and made cool multicoloured crayons.

The big clean up resulted in the girls now having their own rooms once again. H immediately got busy setting up her Sylvannian families in their new digs on top of her desk,

..while R made the most of her new play area on the now empty top bunk.  Today they both spent most of the day up there using it as a gymnastic apparatus (climbing up, jumping off, timing each other) before it transformed into a restaurant.

The dogs love the new arrangement too and had a sleepover on the futon last night.

Oct 10 - Nov 2

H turned 9 last month. We celebrated at the local Mexican restaurant for dinner followed by cake at home. It was a nice quiet end to a busy day of family visits, art class and ballet.

The Sound of Music season was a hit with full houses each night.  After the last performance we jumped into Manuel and drove to Bendigo for the night.  The next day we explored and shopped, then enjoyed a concert by Bendigo Concert Band in the afternoon.

All the good weather we've had lately had put ideas of the beach into R's head, so off we went to Rickett's Point for some rockpooling and adventuring.  Whilst there we met a grandmother and her grandkids catching crabs and fish with nets and pieces of bacon on a string. Will have to remember that for future trips!

Tube worm cases

Neptune's necklace everywhere

sea monkey

Snail's eye view

contemplation

The girls started a gymnastics class this term.  They are both really enjoying it and have alot of fun hanging, climbing, jumping, swinging, rolling, stretching and somersaulting around the courses. With gym, cardio and ballet (and lots of extra ballet rehearsals for the coming concert) H and R are burning off loads of energy and keeping fit. I'm exhausted just watching them.

At home we've done lots of painting and drawing, and making presents for people.

H and I finished off The Elements and have begun learning about photosynthesis with this fun game. R plays too but often doesn't have the stamina to finish.  We also found an online game called CellCraft which is a great way to explore how cells and organelles are formed and what their functions are.

Other things the girls have enjoyed lately are filling in times tables charts, practicing drawing various 3D shapes, continuing with Song School Latin (up to chapter 10) and H writes in her journal most mornings.

Cornfield by R

Sept 26 - Oct 9

September 14th was the anniversary of the death of John Holt.  We love Holt's books.  They were the reason that we chose to home educate. When our toddlers were nearing their second birthdays all the mums in my mothers' group started discussing kinder and school, but the idea of sending H away to learn, grow and play just didn't feel right to me.  At around the same time my mother in law gave us some of the books she had read while she was teacher training, and two books that really enlightened and inspired us were Holt's "How Children Learn" and "How Children Fail". 
In memory of Holt, his collegue Pat Farenga has recently made all the past issues of Growing Without Schooling available for free here.  I'm really looking forward to spending some time reading through these - if I can find some time, that is.

P's holidays flew by as usual. Here are some scenes from the first week:

William Ricketts Sanctuary

possum, koala and lyrebird carvings

shadow play

Tulip fun at Tesselaar's Tulip Festival

Making bath bombs - Saturday Science

Making lavender body lotion - Saturday Science

Oma's 70th at The Pig and Whistle, Olinda

We also visited Sky High in the Dandenongs for a treasure hunt, saw Spy Kids in 4D and went to a fantastic concert by the Indonesian National Orchestra which included a huge variety of instruments from different regions, singing and dance. To finish off the week, on Sunday evening P and I performed with Permai at the Princess Theatre in Melbourne. It was for a concert called SoundSekerta, put on by Monash University.  In the end, despite long delays and general chaos backstage, it was a great experience to play in such a beautiful theatre.
The second week of holidays has been full of the Sound of Music. H and R have been coming with us to rehearsals and pretty much know the show backwards now.
H had an early birthday sleepover party with eight friends on Friday night.  They played pass the parcel, stuffed themselves with chocolate and lollies, made their own pizzas for dinner, watched My Fair Lady, camped out in the tent in the backyard in the rain, stayed up till 1am, then woke everyone up at 5am. It was a huge success.

Sept 18 - 25

 The Sovereign Hill camp was a great success. Here's a snap of H's class at St Alupius Diggings School 1854.

H and Sir

Soldiers marching down Main Street on their way to inspect the diggings

Speedwell Street

R at the mines

R watching big sister H experience 'school'

Digging for gold

Lining up ready to go in

Cradling for gold

We all had a great time away. We bowled, dipped candles, found gold, rode in a carriage and went down into a mine to experience "Trapped!" - the story of 27 miners in Creswick who were trapped in a water filled mine for 3 days.  On Friday night we visited the Observatory to watch 3D movies and make a bush clock. By 8.30pm R was asleep in P's arms so we went back to the cabin for the night. 

I think overall H enjoyed the experience though she was quite shocked by how long the day was, and how boring the work was as well. The adults kept reassuring the kids that it was all just play acting, but in the end alot of kids cried about various things, especially not being allowed to write with their left hand.  Learning about history should be fun. I wonder if those kids that cried were having any fun?
P has a great idea - instead of making the left-handers write with their right hand for two days and making them feel bad, get all the kids to have a go at writing with their non-dominant hand for half a day and then tell them that that's what some kids had to endure 200 years ago but thankfully today we know how silly it was and we can all write with whichever hand we want now.  I like P's idea alot and I think it would help all the kids (not just the left-handers) to appreciate how harsh life was back then.

Anyway, our first homeschool camp experience was fabulous and we've already booked in for another in February next year to Phillip Island.

Other things we did during last week were finishing Ch 7 of The Elements, reading a book about Marie Curie and her discovery of Radium, watching a short animated film about Marie Curie on You-Tube, experimenting with iron-enriched Milo Flakes cereal and a magnet, singing and working through Song School Latin, translating the Latin songs into Indonesian songs, painting, cutting out felt clothing/accessories for the felt board people, and celebrating my birthday.  As I had hoped, H had been busy sewing at Brownies. She made me a cute little felt mouse.  Other presents included soaps, drawings, handmade card, fingernail bling, a pair of earrings and biscuits and tea in bed.  Lovely!

Sept 6-18

my first baby Harris

sniff

So I survived the radiation and subsequent enforced holiday at mum and dad's. I did alot of sleeping, tried my hand at tapestry weaving, and crocheted a dish cloth. I took a long walk in the sunshine but overdid it as usual and ended up with a terrible migraine and sore muscles the next day.  On the sixth day I came back home to presents from P and the girls, a new lounge room light installed, a freezer packed with ready cooked meals, a lovely tidy house and two very happy to see me dogs. Thanks guys!
Everyone was busy while I was gone. P had two days off work so they went swimming, investigated density at Saturday Science, went to the art class party, kids cardio, brownies, ballet and did some baking.  R even learnt how to cook scrambled eggs for H which were, in H's opinion, the BEST scrambled eggs she'd ever had. R said the secret was adding 'mummy milk' (which incidentally is lactose free milk, not the other kind!).

H was very happy to get her ballet exam results at last. She achieved a merit pass and was pleased with her result. Rehearsals for her end of year concert have begun in earnest and she's loving every second.  Last week we watched the annual Peter and the Wolf performance by her ballet school. It was great to see some of her friends in it this time and of course she can't wait to be in it herself. Maybe next year..
After the performance we listened to a recording of  Peter and the Wolf. Both girls are very familiar now with the storyline, musical motifs for each character, and they enjoy dancing around being hunters.

The skills H has learned from our sewing club are taking off - she's made a teddy bear for a friend, decorated a hair band for herself with felt flowers, and has begun mending her own clothes and some of Barbie's clothes too.  She's also been sewing at Brownies but won't tell me what she's made - I wonder if it's a birthday present for me?  I can't wait to find out.

The DS's are getting a good workout lately. R is loving Scribblenauts.  She is constantly asking us to spell out words for her but bit by bit she is remembering how to spell them herself, and she is really enjoying using her outrageous imagination to create some amazingly weird scenarios for the game's hero.
H has revisited her Horrible Histories Ruthless Romans game, but this time round, instead of just playing the games she's reading all the historical facts and trivia about the city, its culture, and its emperors which was all a bit too hard for her at the start of the year.

The postie brought some new books over last week:

 I saw this beautiful book mentioned on another blog and knew I just had to read it too. The girls and I often discuss what happens to us when we die and I've been wanting to introduce Buddhism to them for some time. We haven't read the entire book yet. I'm taking it slow as I'm still learning about it myself.

 

This book sounded like alot of fun with songs to reinforce vocab, and I'm pleased to report that it has been fun so far.  The songs are catchy and are sung to familiar tunes - we find ourselves singing them everywhere, every day.  And the best thing is that we can adapt them to suit Indonesian and  German too.

 

This book I bought just to introduce some different maths concepts as it's been pretty boring just doing some sums and trying to remember the times tables.  So far I've made the girls some magnetic tangrams. I had H in mind for this, but R is having the most fun with it so far.

Art class came to an end for this term. They made some stunning papier mache masks and have brought home lovely little glazed ceramic pots.  Today they headed outside with their smocks on for some serious painting on the deck. Here are some works in progress:

Next week we're off on our first homeschool camp to Sovereign Hill, Ballarat!