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.
In the last days of the Christmas summer holidays we had a visit from Orbi, a garden orb-weaving spider who'd set up her web next to our lemon tree. Her scientific name is Eriophora transmarina. We watched her over a number of nights create her amazing web, which took her almost 2 hours and started in the dark about 30 minutes after sunset.
When she was done building she would sit right in the centre of her web, her red warning colours evident at the top of each leg. Each leg would monitor a separate radial line for any trapped insect.
Here is a video from the first night we found her (after almost walking into the web when going to water the lemon tree. By the way, if you do walk into a web, apparently the best way to get out is to stop, reverse and walk backwards the way you came. The web should just peel away. Good luck holding your nerve with that one!)
Snorkmaiden's iPad has a timelapse function, so we tried to capture Orbi on another night. 2 hours have been condensed into about 30 seconds! Although you can't see the web, you might catch the end of Orbi spiraling anti-clockwise from the centre to the outside laying down non-stick silk. She then spirals clockwise back to the centre laying out sticky thread using the first spiral as a reference.
There's a very nice animation on How Spiders Work which steps through the web-weaving process.
Thinking that it would be great to get a photo of the completed web the next morning, we went out to find it completely gone! Well, not quite completely. There was a single line - the bridge line - connecting our rosemary bush to the neighbour's apple tree. We had to spray the line using Moomintroll's spray water bottle to catch it in the photo.
After some research we found out this was normal behaviour for orb weavers. Often the web is damaged by the night's hunting, so it is taken down and rebuilt the next night. Orbi took her webs down around an hour before dawn. We never saw her do it (perhaps all her secretive night time activity protects her from attack by birds). Orb weavers spend the day concealed near one end of their bridge line. After a bit of hunting we found her hiding place, cleverly concealed at the end of an apple tree branch. Can you spot her?
To see a spider taking down her web, have a look at A Spider Takes Down Her Web, where an American barn spider kindly waited until the sun came up to pack up for the day. What takes around 2 hours to build can be packed up in a few minutes!
So, when you come across a spider's single bridge line in your garden, think of the spider hiding near one end of it and of the busy night ahead!
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
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.
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
Moomintroll, our little Ray of Sunshine, had her 7th birthday last week.
One of her favorite presents was this Lego Friends Beauty Parlour. She took some pics.
We put up our Christmas tree,
..and I've begun planning our schedule for 2013. All those bright colours have put me in such a good mood that maybe we won't wait till next year. We may start today!
The ballet concerts were a success. Moomintroll starred as a Baboushka doll,
..and the Snork Maiden made a convincing cat.
While uploading photos from the camera to the computer I found this little gem of a movie by Moomintroll.
