November already?

Ok so where did the year go?  One day it's the middle of term 2 and suddenly now it's the middle of term 4! I'm certainly not going to rehash every single thing Moomintroll and I have done since April. Just believe me when I say we're on track and learning every day, blah, blah, blah...
Right now she's on a filming kick. She uses Video Star non stop. As part of her English work she's been learning some Edward Lear poetry - so far she has The Jumblies, The Owl and the Pussycat, and The Table and The Chair down pat.  Her challenge was to present one of the poems somehow. She chose to make marionette style puppets and put on a show using the set she made in January at our ballet school's summer school.
I now present to you The Table and The Chair by Edward Lear.
Narrated by Moomintroll.
Puppeteer 1 - Moomintroll,
Puppeteer 2/camera operator - Moominmamma,
Set design - Moomintroll and Moominmamma.

Term 2 - Weeks 1 to 3

The past weeks have flown by so quickly that I've forgotten a lot of what Moomintroll and I have been up to. Thank goodness for the camera!
After our wonderful holiday in Indonesia it took us a while to get back to work. In fact it took us a whole week! But we're back on track now and after looking at the photos I am happy to see that we've actually done quite a bit.
Here's a summary:

Moomintroll's current passion is drawing and this is her new toy - Opa's old drawing board from his workdays.  She loves drawing on it and we've begun learning about technical drawing and design. I just wish we could fit in inside the house! Many hours are also spent on Minecraft and SketchUp creating buildings and homes.

Her first attempt at perspective drawing came out quite well. We followed a tutorial on this blog.
We also finally finished our Art in a Box. The items for this creation were collected on one of our geography walks last term. We painted them and the box with white paint, arranged them, then glued them onto the box.

Kitchen Chemistry 1.  Using vinegar and bicarbonate of soda we did the Dancing Raisins and Grapes experiment, then blew up balloons with varying amounts of vinegar and bicarb. We also did the Mentos in a Coke bottle experiment, much to the delight of Sniff who happily licked up the mess.

Kitchen Chemistry 2 - making a rubbery egg by soaking an egg in vinegar overnight.

Kitchen Chemistry 3 - Changing States of Matter.  Using resources such as Backyard Science, Study Jams, The Magic Schoolbus and Education.com  we investigated how matter changes. Here we watched ice melting - one cube covered in salt (below right), the other just left alone (our control).  Moomintroll was blown away to see the salted ice melting almost twice as fast as the control cube.

More chemistry. The best kind - the edible kind!  Making molecules with gum drops. Other edible experiments included baking bread and several chocolate cakes and brownies. All in the name of research of course!

Kinetic sand is getting a good workout this week. We finally took the plunge and mixed up the colours but not before making a few colourful mountains.  Kinetic sand is great fun and so versatile - art and maths in one session!

ANZAC Day was last week - we headed into the city to Fed Square to see the thousands of poppies on display to commemorate 100 years since the Gallipoli Landing, and in the Follow the Flag exhibition at the Ian Potter Centre we added a poppy each to remember the girls' Great Great Grandfather.

Moomintroll is reading a Nancy Drew mystery, Danny the Champion of the World, and Awful Auntie this week. I am reading another wonderful book by Barbara Kingsolver called Flight Behaviour.  I can't get enough of her books!

Weeks 5&6

The Labour Day long weekend was so lovely and relaxing that I forgot to do my usual Sunday night wrap up of the week. Then yesterday P and I were in Bendigo for the day with band, sharing the spotlight with the local schools band in an afternoon concert.  It went pretty well despite the poor turnout. A band concert just can't compete with a sunny Sunday afternoon Collingwood vs Carlton clash at the nearby footy oval.

Week 5:
After a morning doing our usual maths, science and english, Moomintroll and I had our travel vaccinations, which led to another science lesson on vaccines and how they work.  All went well with no side effects, just tender arms for a day or so.
Our English work this week was learning antonyms and synonyms using various sheets from Education.com.
The rainforest was our science theme. Moomintroll made a comic called Into the Rainforest. Instead of finding pictures of animals on the web she decided to dress up as the animals herself and I took pictures of her climbing trees and eating frogs.

impersonating a coatimundi climbing a tree

  She also did word searches, word scrambles, and watched our Eyewitness episode on Jungles/Rainforests. After that episode she watched the 'making of 'episode and got quite interested in that. We may have to find an online computer animation course for her soon.
Maths continued as always with tables practice using various games and songs. I introduced the concept of factors to her. It took a little while to understand but she's slowly getting it. It's great to see when a connection is made; those "Aaah!" moments are priceless.  We use Loot the Pirate Ship and various worksheets to practice factors.
Art was fun this week. We made Before and After pictures using collage, painting and pastels techniques. I found the Before pictures at Dover Samplers.

She also used the same techniques to make birthday cards for K and cousin H.

To finish off the week's work we combined English, Geography and Science by writing a report on our visit to The Rainforest Gallery near Warburton.

Week 6:
A shorter week than usual due to the Labour Day holiday. We spent the afternoon at the wave pool where we all practiced swimming laps and riding the waves.
Coincidentally our science theme this week was water based - Coral reefs and Tidal zones. We watched TMS Takes a Dive and TMS goes to Mussel Beach. We reminisced about our holiday on Heron Island in the Great Barrier Reef, searched for images of plankton and barnacles, watched Eyewitness Oceans and other plankton videos.

 barnacle pop up page 

pretty plankton

She also did  many word searches on different habitats and made her own wordsearches using a blank grid.
I gave Moomintroll her first spelling test based on science words we've learnt over the weeks. She got 11/15 - a great result considering I didn't give her any time to revise!
We took a lovely walk at Wombat Bend along the river. Unfortunately the camera battery died so we didn't get any pictures but we saw many birds - cockatoos, magpies, lorikeets, kookaburras, fairy wrens and many others we couldn't see but heard.
Maths consisted of practical shopping maths; she wrote down on paper everything we put in the trolley then added it all up. She's getting the hang of carrying the tens now.
A swimming lesson and Club with K topped off a fun week before we all succumbed to the dreaded lurgy - sore ears, coughs, runny noses and headaches.  Right now the Snork Maiden is missing school for the first time this term, feeling miserable and achy. Poor Dr P soldiered on to school this morning - hopefully he's managing a bit better today.

Painted faces

Painted funny faces

acrylic on canvas

"..no more teacher's dirty looks."

So, we've pretty much come to the end of our 'school' year. We've all decided enough is enough and it's goodbye workbooks, worksheets, essays, maths, and whatever else is considered too 'work like', and hello to iMovie, Photobooth, Magic Piano and other fun stuff!
The last few days have been quite arty. We've done 3D hands, Mondrian inspired paintings and Selfie Portraits. It's nice to be getting the paints out again after such a long time. I don't know why we haven't done much art. Sadly it's one of those activities that is easy to forget once you let it slip.
Well, we're trying our best to make up for it now.

3D optical illusion hands from this site.

Paintings inspired by Piet Mondrian

Selfie Portraits. They were supposed to be done in lovely smudgy oil pastels but after turning the house and my brain upside down trying to remember where the pastels were, the portraits were done with boring old twister crayons!  Gotta remember to put new pastels on the shopping list...

Oh, and we went on another fun walk and Scavenger Hunt yesterday. The results are on the Ready Rosie and Oobi Doobi blogs. My camera is officially dead, so I didn't join in. Maybe Santa will bring me a new camera this Christmas?

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

Passing notes

I remember when I was in grade 2. We were writing innocent jokes and messages, passing them around the class, trying to stifle our giggles. We thought we were so funny and clever, until we got caught and my best friend dobbed on the rest of us.  I spent all afternoon sitting outside the principal's office, my nose red from crying. He took pity on me as it was my first offence and I got off lightly. Other kids had to go home with red strap marks on their legs.  Such a shame, seeing as we were all having such fun. We certainly learnt a lesson that day, but I don't think it was the one that the teachers had in mind.
The students of the Brian St Learning Centre have started passing notes around too. One student in particular is obsessed with it. She just can't stop herself writing pages and pages of special notes to people. It is really wonderful to see her spontaneously working so hard and seeing her pride in herself. This is her note to me:

"I know how you are. You are good and happy. And the best thing of all is you."

I have a growing collection of these notes on my desk and I love to read through them when I'm feeling down. They never fail to cheer me up.

Other notes that have been passed around here lately are musical notes.  Both girls have joined Just Brass
- a local music initiative by the Salvation Army. We now have a percussionist and a cornet player in our midst.

I haven't filmed the Snork Maiden on the drums yet because she only has a rubber drum head to practice on at the moment. Once we get her a snare drum watch out!

So that ticks off two subjects - English (written expression) and Music.  Oh, and maths too from working out all those tricky drum rhythms and timings.
We've had a change to our PE program. Goodbye Kids Cardio after five happy years and hello to tennis at Silver Grove.  J is a great teacher who fits in tennis classes for home educated kids between his regular classes for preschoolers.  The girls are really enjoying the lessons and have made some new friends too, so that's a bonus.

Moomintroll had her first ballet exam this week. She was in a line of three girls, so had to do many of the exercises and dances on her own (usually they are done in pairs). It didn't seem to bother her though, and she enjoyed the experience.  Now they are setting their sights on the final performance for the year and she is beside herself knowing that she'll be dancing in The 12 Dancing Princesses.  The Snork Maiden may be an Outlandish Creature in a ballet inspired by William Morris' writings.  Did you know that besides being an amazing artist he was also a writer?  I didn't.  I consulted Mr. Wikipedia and discovered that Morris was so prolific and famous as a writer that he was a huge influence on C.S Lewis, James Joyce and J.R.R Tolkien!  There you go, you learn something new everyday.  I have downloaded three of his books from Project Gutenberg and can't wait to begin reading.  What I'm really looking forward to though is the set design for the Morris ballet. Mr H from the girls' ballet school is a superb artist and creates wonderful sets. His Medieval Scene backdrop a few years back was amazing.

one of my favourite Morris designs - The Strawberry Thief

March happenings

The students at the Brian Street Learning Centre have been busy working on various projects over the past month involving taxonomy, history, physics and dance.
Both girls are interested in British history thanks to the wonderful Horrible Histories series and they have begun a very large and ambitious poster of British monarchs from the time of William the Conqueror.

Work on this poster is ticking many boxes: research skills, art, english and maths (working out dates and how long each monarch reigned). Most of the work is by the SnorkMaiden; Moomintroll helps out with the dates and has been making her own mini posters for her scrapbook.

Taxonomy or classification has always been an interest of mine, so I felt I had to start sharing it with the girls. We began with the five Kingdoms of Life and are now looking in depth at the Animal Kingdom.

a page in their scrapbooks

Of course this topic warranted a field trip, so we visited the aquarium and took photos and wrote down lots of scientific names for further research.

the newest Aptenodytes patagonicus chick

Phyllopteryx taeniolatus

Homo sapiens homeschoolicus

The sewing/craft set up has been a hit. Nearly everyday for a week both girls could be found sifting through piles of fabric and sewing up all sorts of items for their baby dolls like pillows, sleeping bags and blankets. Here are two of the best items they created - a quilt by Moomintroll and a tote bag by SnorkMaiden.

The girls entertained us with their ballet class open days:

We took a trip to the Cranbourne Botanic Gardens for easter. We're not up to learning about the Plant Kingdom yet but hopefully the girls soaked up some interesting facts while we were there :)

Our latest expedition was to Williamstown to see the fantastic Sea Shepherd boats - the Steve Irwin, the Bob Barker and the Sam Simon.  We toured two of these ships and learned alot about the injustices going on in the Southern Ocean.

surveying the damage done to the Sam Simon by Japanese whalers

sitting in the Skipper's seat

the Steve Irwin

We've had a really busy month. I am hoping to slow things down a little in the coming weeks. With the weather finally getting its act together and getting cooler I think we're all looking forward to some cosy and warm, in front of the heater, read all day, stay at home pajama days.