The Brian Street Learning Centre

The girls have come up with a name for our homeschool - the Brian Street Learning Centre. That should keep those pesky supermarket cashiers happy when they ask the inevitable question.
We even have a theme tune sung to the tune of Play School. It's lovely to hear them singing it loudly in the garden whilst performing synchronised jumps on the trampoline.  I'm sure the animals enjoy it.

This week we picked up where we left off last year with Life of Fred for maths. Both girls are enjoying the quietly humorous stories of Fred and Kingie. The level of maths is just right for Moomintroll. It's way easy for the Snork Maiden but we think the revision will be handy for her. I'm letting her get through the books at her own pace; she's already onto book 2.

We then revisited Mapping the World with Art. We went right back to the beginning which wasn't really far at all seeing as we had only got as far as chapter 4.  This time around Moomintroll is joining in too; maybe not with the map drawings but certainly the historical readings and activities. This week we made Babylonian cuneiform tablets out of cookie dough and created maps of various rooms of our house in ancient Polynesian style.
My plan is to merge MTWWA with our Around the World scrapbooks that we began last year.  This way we'll cover ancient history with present day geography/culture at the same time.

Babylonian edible clay tablets

ancient polynesian style map. just imagine reeds with shells tied to them instead of blue paper strips and stickers!

For science this week we began Taxonomy using this great free resource.  We learned about the five Kingdoms and looked in depth at the animal kingdom. The accompanying activities are great fun; we created a bean classification chart and by taping up our thumbs we learnt how important having opposable thumbs is to survival.


Our read aloud this week has been Those Dreadful Children by Enid Blyton which was a great favorite of mine growing up. I remember reading and rereading it endlessly and desperately wishing that I were friends with "those dreadful children". Actually they're not dreadful at all - the Snork Maiden said "they sound just like us!"

One thing we are making more time for is craft. Not just the cut and paste style but real, proper handicrafts that everyone needs to know.  With my help the Snork Maiden repurposed a tired old black crocheted cardigan into a very hip and happenin' sleeveless vest. Think Madonna in the 80's. Very cool.
Moomintroll tried her hand at dry felting and made a little fuzzy face which she attached to her painting from the week before.
Next week we hope to make a skirt for Moomintroll and I may teach Snork Maiden how to crochet something very exciting - dishcloths!  Which leads me to our other fun activity that we've started each morning called 'Tidy Up Time'.  I have a list of jobs that are kid friendly and the girls pick one to carry out. So far so good; the toilet is clean, the washing has been put away and the floor mopped (for the first time in about 6 months I'm afraid to say)!

Finally, our Saturday Science prac was fossil hunting. P and the Snork Maiden collected more 405million year old rocks from our favorite site and brought them home for some serious whacking with hammers and chisels. Most of us found small brachiopod and crinoid fossils and we all made a terrible mess.

a lovely neat presentation.  it didn't last long

June 20-26

I realize that I haven't posted many of H's maps from the MTWWA.. We were talking about it the other day and H has requested a break from the curriculum as she is finding it a bit too challenging and not really fun, especially the map drawings. I agree that some of them are difficult, even I find them hard at times, so we'll put it aside for a while (H recommends two years!). Here are the rest of her maps:

the Nile River

Greece

Italy

satellite image of Greece

I really think she's done well with these maps, but if it's not fun then there is no point in continuing with it now.
Fingers crossed that she'll be ready for it again next year. If not I might just draw all the maps myself because I think it's great!

We had a very social week this week with friends visiting, including a lovely 10 week old baby who is the latest addition to mother's group. We watched our friends perform in a french play of Snow White and also attended an entertaining performance of The Baron and the Widow by the Australian Ballet at the State Theatre.
The weekend  was spent at lunch with friends and then an attempted sleepover by the girls, but at 9pm we got the teary phone call to come pick them up.  To make up for that R suggested having a party on Sunday, so we all got up early, decorated the house with streamers, baked cupcakes, pancakes, pikelets, popcorn, got out the veges and dips, made juice and played pass the parcel and Chinese Whispers. Then we were given tickets to a Scout/Guide Gang Show for that afternoon which was brilliant and really was the icing on the party cake!

With our holiday over we jumped straight back in to work.  Last week we completed some drawing lessons every morning.  We're all getting good at drawing balloons and ninja eggs and they are popping up all over the place in all our pictures complete with shading, horizon lines, van Gogh suns and shadows.
R is now up to episode 36 in Headsprout. She's almost halfway and doing really well.  She is also very interested in numbers all of a sudden, so I'm searching for a fun maths program for her.
H and I have started reading 'The Periodic Kingdom' - a fairytale-like story about the elements.
We also revised the chapter on Rome in MTTWA and redrew our map with only a little more success compared to last time!
For H's maths I've found this site which has a wealth of worksheets for primary levels.  So far it's been a good addition to our usual way of doing maths (mostly living maths). We use it mainly as a way for H to practice writing her work on paper.
After three full working days at home we needed some fun. A walk to the library and a stack of new books and games took care of that.  H finished The BFG at last and continued  her Roald Dahl obsesssion with a reading of Esoi Trot.  We also played canasta endlessly, Storm the Castle, Fraction Lotto (even R is enjoying this game) and of course the best game ever - Coffee Shop, where H plays to make as much money as possible and R plays to see how many virtual people she can make vomit.

No pictures to show for this week as our Mac crashed and I can't upload anything from the camera.
Instead here's the girls' current favourite song: Charles II - King of Bling

Term I wrap up

Ok, here's take two of this post - just as I clicked on publish post it disappeared completely! AAARGH!
Anyway, moving on..

I think the girls did very well this past term. We are up to chapter 5 in both The Elements and MTWWA.  R is almost halfway through Headsprout and is really enjoying the fact that she can read 'real' words when we are out and about. Her favourite word at the moment is nepo (she was reading the 'open' sign on a pizza parlour door backwards).
Maths with Dad and Saturday Science sessions are progressing nicely, as are piano lessons, occasional clarinet and recorder lessons, kids cardio, ballet and brownies.  Last week we started an online drawing program here. It is alot of fun and a lovely way to begin our days.  It seems to motivate the girls enormously and they are always very animated and happy afterwards.
As our reward for all our hard work we took a fantastic trip to Canberra for 10 days.  We drove up in a luxury 7 seater 4WD courtesy of the G family and stayed with our good friends the K's for 4 nights at their new place in Canberra. The children were in heaven - 4 sleepovers in a row!  We spent our days exploring the National Gallery (saw the Ballet Russes Exhibition), National Portrait Gallery, Questacon, op shops and the K's local library which was brilliant.
On Good Friday we set up camp at the EPIC centre and immersed ourselves in all things folky at the 45th National Folk Festival.  We danced, sang, listened, learned and played guitar, ukelele and tin whistle for three and a half days. It was so not long enough.

leaving at 5am

stopover and obligatory play on old steam engine at Jugiong

Australian War Memorial

not really sure why they are saluting...

furry friend Basil

setting up early before the hordes arrive

pear racing

giant pears advancing on the National Gallery

fun in the Ballet Russes family activity room

H's ballet costume design

festival girls

marimba playing lion

monkey and lion playing echocellos

scene from Wayang Kelly

our way of saying goodbye to our campsite

Out and about

Poor little blog - I actually forgot that I had you!  I'm sorry and hope to make it up with this post about our VERY busy past weeks.
We've been continuing working on mapping the world - we've drawn and painted Greece and read about latitude and longitude, and today learned about Ptolemy, the first modern cartographer.  Being a Roman dude we had to draw Italy for him, but our boots lacked well defined toes so we'll redo that map again soon.

Drawing lines of latitude and longitude on an egg.  Not easy!

The elements are getting a good workout too, with the latest chapter on electrons now firmly under our belts.  We have some great experiments in store over the next few days, providing we can get our hands on some tincture of iodine, ammonium solution, and other delights.

We had a great evening with the L and G families over for dinner one Saturday.  As a treat we all joined in making an icosahedron (20-faced polyhedron). Such fun will never be forgotten!

Halfway through making the icosahedron

Last week the girls and I went on an excursion with the G family to Ecolinc in Bacchus Marsh.  H learned about the Diprotodon found nearby and had some fun digging up some fossils and bones.  R and I did a nature walk around the wetlands (which sadly were dry), filled in an activity sheet then headed inside to make our own paints from soil, pva and water.  On a piece of paperbark R painted a lovely image of a blue legged koala sitting on a gum tree branch. (in case you are wondering - no, we didn't make the blue paint!)

A beautiful leaf fossil in Laterite (0-65 m years ago)

This week we've been having some puppet fun:

H and R enjoy distributing these puppets to their friends and tutors - I hope the puppets are enjoying their new homes!

Yesterday we had yet another excursion and had to dress up like this:

 

 I didn't manage to get as fantastic a set of teeth like R's though.
All this gear was for climbing through the treetops at Trees Adventure in Belgrave.

Not a brilliant picture but what a breathtaking place to spend four hours with some wonderful friends!

Ever had one of those days where you just can't remember what you've done the past week?  Lucky for me the camera keeps tabs on our days.

We had a house guest last week. Flat Stanley arrived in the post from our friend K and so we showed him the sights of Mitcham - ballet classes, lunch at Forest Hill Chase, the very lovely Roundabout Park, and a cultural trip to Albert Park for our weekly gamelan practice.

He also listened in on our Mapping the World and Chemistry lessons and enjoyed hearing R reading her Headsprout stories.

A fairly quiet week altogether, the only diversions being a sleepover with cousin H, celebrating N's 10th birthday and an impressive Mozart concert for P and I.
Quiet weeks are good - we all get a chance to relax and play uninterrupted for hours on end.  Right now they are playing with their new Henry XIII and his wives paper dolls - it's very funny hearing their version of this song!

It's all coming together..

I'm a terrible one for making lesson plans and then not following through.  Take my Aesop's Fables study we started in week 1 for instance.  We didn't get past the third day without tears and everyone seeking refuge in their trusty DS's.  I told myself for the upteenth time to get over it, we're just not curriculum girls.  I put away my painstakingly hand drawn maths problems, and suddenly we were all happy again - free, relaxed, enjoying each other.
Then, suddenly last week I forgot all about that disaster and bought two curriculums.  The girls are really enjoying chemistry, history and art at the moment and these curriculums are based solely on those areas. The first is 'The Elements. Ingredients of the Universe', the second 'Mapping the World with Art'. Both are by Ellen McHenry whose link you will find in the list of links over on the right.
I admit I was nervous about starting these.  We began with the first lesson of MTWWA.  It involved a short reading about the first mapmakers. Then after watching the video of how to draw Mesopotamia we drew it. It was really alot of fun. We then made edible Babylonian cuneiform clay tablets. H's said something about fish and oxen on a heavenly mountain.

 

Throughout the day we practiced drawing the map from memory. H enjoyed it so much that she even drew it the next day on the train.
We continued with Lesson 2 on Friday - reading about Strabo and Eratosthenes, drew the Nile River, and H was able to recall stuff she remembered about Alexandria from reading Horrible Histories books.

The Elements curriculum was just as fun. In addition to that we are learning The Elements song by Tom Lehrer. H can already sing it word perfect, P and I have a long way to go yet!

Our new art teacher was a great success both with students and parents.  She's quiet and kind and allowed the kids to produce some great work with ink, watercolours, native plants and twigs to use instead of brushes.

R's work

H's work

We've been busy this past week, but still found time for Kids Cardio, applying skills learned on Art Academy to paint on enormous canvasses, H teaching R how to paint a sunset, and endless games on The World of Miamiopia (see link on right).

Oh, we also had a great time at niece H's birthday party

A Cave girl and her Cat

..and Opa's birthday too but R was photographer that day so no great pics of that occasion, unless you want to see lots of photos of people's armpits or up R's nose.