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 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.

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.

Week 4 - Bed School

Most of this week was spent doing Bed School, after Moomintroll was stung on the ankle by a bee. Usually when she gets stung it's sore for a few hours and nothing more, but this time her body began building up an immunity to bee stings. For almost 5 days she was in real pain with a hot, itchy swollen ankle. It reminded me of my swollen ankles in the last months of pregnancy!  Hopefully the next time she gets stung (and she will - she always does!) the reaction will be minimal. Well, that's what this article says anyway and it seems like the author knows what they are talking about.

Anyway, Bed School was quite fun. We arranged ourselves on Moomin's bed with pillows and blankets and worked our way through some reading comprehension sheets following the story of Jason and his appearance on a tv game show, grammar sheets and some maths sheets on arrays.  Our multiplication facts method is showing some good results now. By the end of this week Moomintroll was able to fill in another multiplication grid without too many hesitations and without using the red pen (meaning that none of the facts were considered 'sticky' anymore. Yay!). She even survived a grilling from her Auntie with a smile on her face :)
Multiplication.com continues to be our favourite site. The short stories and mnemonics work very well for Moomintroll's visual/aural style of learning.

The Magic Schoolbus episode this week wasn't as engaging as previous weeks. The topic was Urban Wildlife. She watched the episode twice, filled in the sheet and found some short videos on Splash and that was as far as we took it.  

We finally finished Ophelia and the Marvellous Boy. It happened as we sat nestled on the couch out on the deck during a rainstorm. Very atmospheric and really added to the excitement of the book's ending. We're sad it's come to an end.  Moomintroll spent most of the week thinking about a design for a book related T shirt and on Friday this is what she came up with.

Ophelia and the Marvellous Boy T shirt

A swimming lesson, 'Club' with best friend K, a spontaneous trip to the Eureka Skydeck, a successful school swimming sports for The Snork Maiden, a family BBQ at school, dinner out at an Indonesian restaurant and a lovely 80th birthday celebration for our dear Opa finished off another whirlwind week!

view of St Paul's from Skydeck

Flinders Street Station

Week 2

We had a quiet week last week with The Snork Maiden going away on her year 7 camp.  Moomintroll really missed her sister the first two days so I tried my best to keep her occupied with lots of fun activities.  The best by far was going to her friend K's house for their 'club' which mostly consisted of playing Minecraft. They were both so engrossed in their play that they forgot to eat the snacks she brought along!
Moomin's swimming lesson was also a highlight. She's moved up a class and is enjoying the challenges there as well as lots of time for 'free swimming' with bestie K.

On the workfront we were quite productive, however my plan to follow The Essentials of English  kind of fell by the wayside. At the start of the week we read a poem and discussed it together stanza by stanza. It worked well but was kind of, well, boring. In the days following I considered continuing with the book but really I was finding it hard because it seemed contrived and the language slightly condescending, so for the remainder of the week Moomintroll practiced her cursive writing, revisited our book Smelly Spelling and continued with our read aloud Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy which really is a marvelous book - funny, scary and mysterious all at once.

Our science topic was Habitats. We watched The Magic Schoolbus episode Hops Home, filled in the related worksheet, read about frogs and sea turtles.  Her task for the week was to create an informative comic strip on an animal of her choice. She chose the Sea Turtle and wrote about its diet, habitat, characteristics, etc.  She also went on a little field trip with her Grandma to the Melbourne Aquarium to see all the different animals and habitats.

As Moomin loves Minecraft so much I asked her to create a habitat in her land. She chose to build a rabbit habitat with lots of trees and bushes for the rabbits to hide under, carrot and dandelion patches for food, a pond for water and a lovely big warren to live in.  She was so into building this on minecraft that soon she was building a scene from Ophelia and the Marvellous Boy, complete with Boy, Snow Queen, monsters to evade, and special quests for finding secret keys.  Minecraft is awesome - so many possibilities!

Our times tables project is coming along well.  Every day we did some practice filling in multiplication grids, using the Honey cards for really sticky facts, making up hand clap routines and using more pop songs, such as 2x9=18 to the tune of Let it Go and 8x3=24 to Love is an Open Door (from Frozen).

The Snork Maiden returned from camp happy and relaxed and begging to back to camp!

Advent Calendar 2014

Our advent calendar this year is big and bold, made on a budget and takes up lots of space in the kitchen.

I have reused the little envelopes I made for last year's calendar; the frame is an old one we've had for years and the decorations were leftovers from Dr P's year 9 class. Total cost: $0!!  I have more baubles to add as we progress through the calendar. Each morning we'll cover up that day's date so we'll always know what day we're up to.
Yesterday's activity was a day out at Funfields with loads of other homeschoolers to celebrate the end of another year. An awesome day out complete with all kinds of Melbourne weather - cool winds to start with then an almost thunderstorm, some rain, sudden humidity and then scorching sun.  All that in just five hours!

Day two - Make beaded bubble wands.

We made a pile of these as presents for Moomintroll's birthday party guests.
With the bowlful of leftover beads we also made some sparkly new decorations for our tree.

The girls are desperate to put the tree up now, but we'll have to wait until the Advent Calendar says it's the right time.  I've actually forgotten which day it will be so hopefully I'll get a surprise that day too!

Venturing further afield

Yesterday the Snork Maiden started the first leg of her new journey and attended a pre-orientation day at our local high school. She was so nervous in the days leading up to it but as usual she rose to the challenge, mastered her fears and came out all smiles when Moomintroll and I arrived to pick her up. According to reports, everyone was lovely: the girls, the boys, and the teachers.  The woodwork teacher held them all in thrall as he manfully demonstrated how not to use the wood burning tool.
The science teacher had them experimenting in the lab with such rare and dangerous chemicals as vinegar and bicarbonate of soda. Amazing styrofoam block prints were artfully designed under the guidance of an art teacher and the day ended with a rousing game of general knowledge a la Million Dollar Minute, complete with nifty hand held devices.
The Snork Maiden is chomping at the bit to start school next year; it's really satisfying to see her so eager and keen to spread her wings. She's ready to move on to the next phase of her life and to see her embracing it with so much enthusiasm makes me so proud!

Someone who is not too happy about the thought of losing her favourite playmate, however, is Moomintroll.  She has absolutely zero desire to do anything remotely 'school' related, so yesterday while her sister enjoyed her day, Moomintroll and I went on our own adventure.  I devised a list and by incorporating her desire to 'just jump on a bus and see where it takes us', we embarked on our first photographic scavenger hunt.

Just to set the scene, this picture tells you where and which bus we took:

As I was enjoying the ride Moomintroll suddenly pressed the next stop button and we screeched to a halt. Our scavenger hunt began.

1. Something round

2. a tree from an interesting angle

3. your reflection

4. Eyes

5. a green car

6. wheels

7. an insect

8. a barcode

9. water

10. something peaceful

Then my camera suddenly ran out of battery, so I missed out on clouds, an animal and a 6 sided shape.  Kind Moomintroll took the last picture for me:

11. a 6 sided shape

I am linking up with Ready Rosie for The Scavenger Hunt Linkup.

Public Transport Adventure No.2 - The Gold Coast!

We're enjoying our Public Transport Adventures so much that we decided to go all the way to the Gold Coast. Well, not all the way of course. Just to the airport and back again.
Firstly a train to Southern Cross station at 7.30am, then the fantastic Skybus to Tullamarine at 8.20 am.
We arrived at SeaWorld Resort around 2pm after a two hour flight and a one hour bus ride along the Gold Coast.
For the next three and a half days we swam, rollercoasted and waterslided our way through SeaWorld, Wet'n'Wild and Movie World. The weather was glorious everyday.

Sea World Resort

Sea World

Movie World

Movie World

We weren't the only ones who had a great holiday. Sniff enjoyed staying with Grandma and the Fluffies (as we now call Hazel and Cuddlepie) spent their time at the lovely Clarabel College Fluffy Palace.  Many thanks to our very kind babysitters!

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.