The times are changing

The snork maiden started year 7 this week. She's having a great time with her new 

friends and meeting and working with her new teachers, most of whom she likes a lot.  The routine of getting up early really hasn't been too difficult - she knows she has to get up and out the door by 8am so she just does it without any bother. It's great to see her so confident and responsible. She's grown up so much in the last few months.

The days are quieter without Snork Maiden around but Moomintroll and I have been keeping ourselves busy with the new work plan that I have put together.  

Our maths goal for this term is learning the times tables but more about that soon from Dr P who spent his last week of holidays working through a course with Moomintroll.  

I am doing the follow up games and activities with her to help reinforce what she's learned. Our favourite games so far are Tableland (a super find at an op shop several years ago and it's so old and apparently rare that I can't even find a webpage about it!), our variation of

Island Conquer (downloaded from here), and inserting certain 'sticky' tables facts into her 

favourite songs. Uptown Funk with Bruno Mars is perfect for remembering that 6 times 9 

is 54!

Using Island Conquer for revising times tables as well as teaching area

This week we began our geography course. We are going to be exploring and keeping a record of the interesting walks in our local area.  First we began by confirming where we 

are in the world by making a Geography Circle (kind of like Me on the Map).

getting the 'classroom' ready at our local park

Geography circle

Our first walk was at Currawong Bush Park where we saw mobs of kangaroos feeding in 

the early morning. The walk is called Ready Aim Click. If you click here you will find a listing of all the walks together with brochures and audio guides to download.

Later in the day Moomintroll created a lovely Word document with photos describing our walk.

Our science this term will be using The Magic Schoolbus. This blog here has very comprehensive plans on many topics/episodes.   Our first topic was ants; we've watched videos on ants, observed ants on our walk, learned the German word for ants( Die Ameise) and thought about collecting ants for an ant farm but then decided it was far too mean to 

keep them in a  jar.

We're loosely following Essentials of English:Lower Grades by Henry Carr Pearson  for our English component. It's full of beautiful poems to read and discuss, dictation practice, and has some nice writing prompts as well.

Moomintroll enjoys photography and filming so I'm trying to incorporate those skills into her English work. After reading a short fairy story on how umbrellas were invented, she made her own comic strip using Strip Designer. It's a great app but not so good on an iPod as the screen is way too small, so I've also downloaded Comic Life onto my laptop. We'll definitely use that on a regular basis.

Books we're reading this week: various Mr Men and Little Miss books, Wind in the Willows, Ophelia and the Marvellous Boy.