Weeks 7 & 8

The past two weeks have been all about sleeping and resting with the two girls both sick and feeling miserable.  The Snork Maiden stayed home from school for two days with a bad cold and fever, and once she was well enough to go back to school Moomintroll's cold took off and has ended up having a mild case of tonsilitis.  Happily now she's on antibiotics and is improving daily which is wonderful seeing as we leave for overseas tomorrow!  We're finally off on our long awaited Indonesian Adventure. Sniff and Hazel have gone off to their holiday homes and we're ready to go. One more sleep!

Despite all the sickness in the house we did manage to do some work. Moomintroll still has a thing for poems and is loving part of The Wind in the Willows which we call Toad's Song. It's the bit where Toad has just escaped from jail, stolen and sold a horse and is feeling very full of himself. Moomintroll can recite it by heart and now is carefully writing it out in her english book.
Our science theme for the week was deserts so we watched TMS All Dried Up and Eyewitness Desert which led to watching 'the making of' and then Eyewitness Arctic/Antarctic because, you know, the Antarctic is the world's largest desert as Moomintroll reminded me. Other desert related work included word searches, research on 3 desert animals, a desert poster, making a cacti garden and a trip to the zoo to see the gila monster and other beautiful desert dwelling reptiles.

cactus garden

a happy little desert dweller

science and maths work for the week

To finish off our term of maths Moomintroll did some word problems about the exploits of some fierce ninjas and a librarian with a pile of books, and did a little times table test which she handled very well.  She then went on to demonstrate her understanding of arrays by building an amazing underground house with interconnecting rooms in Minecraft.

By the end of the week both girls were feeling fit enough for their Just Brass end of term concert where they performed a duet together of Bengawan Solo (the same piece we played at Opa's 80th party). At the concert Dr Jim accompanied them on the piano.

Back in the swing

I really love this time of the year. Last year is in the past and there are so many exciting possibilities looming in the future.  A new year brings with it the most exciting thing of all - a new schedule! I'm a big fan of plans and schedules and time tables and even though we often don't stick to them religiously it's comforting to know that when things are going pear-shaped and out of control we can look at our schedule again and be reminded of what we could be doing and when. The Snork Maiden especially is liking having a time table and is suddenly very eager to do her work and learn new things.

We kicked off our new year at the annual Not Back To School Party at a water theme park not too far from home. About 250 other homeschoolers were there taking over the park. It was a great day to relax and have fun with friends.

a ride that looked pretty tame but really wasn't!

driving a mini car

racing down head first!

The time came to get stuck into our work.  I won't go into the details of our time table but it mostly consists of Table Time, Indonesian language, the usual maths/English stuff and our project for the year: The Middle Ages.
Table Time is a new thing I've come up with after reading many other blogs and their versions of Circle Time, where families spend time together learning scripture verses, prayers and/or poetry and copywork.  I have adapted this into Table Time where we spend every morning choosing and writing out an inspirational quote and decorating the page, then learning a poem.  At the moment we're using one of my very favourite childhood books called "A Child's Garden of Verses" by Robert Louis Stevenson.  It's a Golden Press publication with beautiful handstitched artwork by Virginia Tiffany.

These are some of the images from two poems the girls have learnt so far: At The Seaside and The Swing.

We choose uplifting quotes from "101 Moments of Joy and Inspiration" by Meredith Gaston.
Both girls really love starting the day this way - settling our minds and being creative puts us all in the right mood for the rest of the day and they are easily able to move onto other studies without any fuss.

Table Time on the deck

Moomintroll's work from today

The Snork Maiden drawing happily

one of mine

Indonesian studies are taking off at last, with the help of these free podcasts from the Learning Indonesian website. They feature a native speaker who has a beautiful melodic voice - that helps alot when learning a new language.
Our big project for the year is the Middle Ages. As it was Chinese New Year last weekend I thought we'd begin with Ancient China. So far we've read about the Tang Dynasty, read poetry by Li Bai, Wang Wei and other famous poets, learned about inventions from that time period including toilet paper and the first moveable type (woodblock printing) and explored Confucianism - a blend of Buddhism, Taoism and local Chinese beliefs and practices.

Buddhist shrine at our local Chinese New Year festival.

the Snork Maiden found her lookalike

having a go at woodblock printing, using polystyrene blocks. It proved challenging carving out the letters backwards!

 Confucius says...

"I hear and I forget.  I see and I remember.  I do and I understand." 

                               "Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated."   

Alone Looking at the Mountain

All the birds have flown up and gone;

A lonely cloud floats leisurely by.

We never tire of looking at each other - 

Only the Mountain and I.

Li Po