How I love the unschooly life! To know that we have the freedom to learn and do whatever we desire whenever we desire it is so liberating, and the girls appreciate that we never run out of time to do the things they enjoy.
This past week has been jam packed with new experiences.
We discovered a shop called Habitat for Humanity near us which has a huge selection of new and second hand books and a great series of workbooks covering all things such as time, maths, english... the usual workbook stuff. The great thing is that they are small and portable (A5 I think) and have nice pics of mice - anyway, H likes them and is happy to spend some time filling in the pages. R bought a lovely book of Mr Froggy Went A-Courting which came with a CD of James Reyne singing the song and playing guitar. I have newfound respect for James Reyne now - he plays brilliantly!
Besides her new workbooks H has begun learning some music theory which will help with her piano practice, and with the use of two books called World of Mazes and Eco-Logical Brain Games is covering geography and environmental science.
The Elements has been on the back burner lately as we've been out a lot, but the
Periodic Table Colouring Book is helping to keep their interest in chemistry simmering along.
Something has clicked with both girls all of a sudden (it may have come from watching their friends in the French play last week) and now Indonesian words are coming out all over the place. R still likes to speak her own weird language but now uses some Indonesian words as well, and H is learning the days of the week. It's really becoming fun now to teach them some words as they don't roll their eyes at me anymore and tell me to stop!
As well as Indonesian we have started a Latin course (at H's request) with this book:
It seems very well thought out so far and has really short lessons, so it's great for us beginners. Our first word is Nauta which means sailor.
Another book I found at the library is a book of opera stories.
So far we've read the story of a cruel yet vulnerable princess in Turandot and listened to most of the opera by Puccini. This was followed by a screening of another Puccini opera Madame Butterfly - a really beautiful movie that captured the girls' attention in a big way. When it was over R exclaimed in a sad voice "That was so dramatic!" Sometimes it's hard to remember that she is only 5 yrs old :)
I have some more music and stories lined up and thanks to You Tube we can watch a number of operas in their entirety. How I love You Tube!
Our band will be doing a Russian Music concert in August so I've been preparing the girls for that concert as well by playing some Russian music. We have found that they enjoy the concerts so much more if they know the music beforehand. So far we're listening to Rimsky-Korsakov, Khachaturian, Stravinsky, Mussorgsky and lots of Borodin because his music is so beautiful. Did you know he was foremost a chemist and worked with Mendeleyev - the father of the Periodic Table? It's no wonder he's one of our favourite composers!
Other things we've done this week were roller skating, two ballet open days, kids cardio, reading library books, an astronomy night with Dobby the Telescope who showed us Saturn and some messy objects, Headsprout episodes and making an aperture at Saturday Science. I'll ask P to post soon about the other Saturday Science experiments they've done over the past few months.
Here are a few more drawings from Mini Marshmallow Art Lessons:
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| Ice cream cone by H |
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| Cathy Fish by H |
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| Cathy Fish by R |
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| Flowers by H |
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| Cathy Fish has lost her pencil by H |
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| Cathy Fish loses her pencil again by R |
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| Pencil rockets by H |
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| Koala by T |
