Oct 10 - Nov 2

H turned 9 last month. We celebrated at the local Mexican restaurant for dinner followed by cake at home. It was a nice quiet end to a busy day of family visits, art class and ballet.

The Sound of Music season was a hit with full houses each night.  After the last performance we jumped into Manuel and drove to Bendigo for the night.  The next day we explored and shopped, then enjoyed a concert by Bendigo Concert Band in the afternoon.

All the good weather we've had lately had put ideas of the beach into R's head, so off we went to Rickett's Point for some rockpooling and adventuring.  Whilst there we met a grandmother and her grandkids catching crabs and fish with nets and pieces of bacon on a string. Will have to remember that for future trips!

Tube worm cases

Neptune's necklace everywhere

sea monkey

Snail's eye view

contemplation

The girls started a gymnastics class this term.  They are both really enjoying it and have alot of fun hanging, climbing, jumping, swinging, rolling, stretching and somersaulting around the courses. With gym, cardio and ballet (and lots of extra ballet rehearsals for the coming concert) H and R are burning off loads of energy and keeping fit. I'm exhausted just watching them.

At home we've done lots of painting and drawing, and making presents for people.

H and I finished off The Elements and have begun learning about photosynthesis with this fun game. R plays too but often doesn't have the stamina to finish.  We also found an online game called CellCraft which is a great way to explore how cells and organelles are formed and what their functions are.

Other things the girls have enjoyed lately are filling in times tables charts, practicing drawing various 3D shapes, continuing with Song School Latin (up to chapter 10) and H writes in her journal most mornings.

Cornfield by R

Sept 18 - 25

 The Sovereign Hill camp was a great success. Here's a snap of H's class at St Alupius Diggings School 1854.

H and Sir

Soldiers marching down Main Street on their way to inspect the diggings

Speedwell Street

R at the mines

R watching big sister H experience 'school'

Digging for gold

Lining up ready to go in

Cradling for gold

We all had a great time away. We bowled, dipped candles, found gold, rode in a carriage and went down into a mine to experience "Trapped!" - the story of 27 miners in Creswick who were trapped in a water filled mine for 3 days.  On Friday night we visited the Observatory to watch 3D movies and make a bush clock. By 8.30pm R was asleep in P's arms so we went back to the cabin for the night. 

I think overall H enjoyed the experience though she was quite shocked by how long the day was, and how boring the work was as well. The adults kept reassuring the kids that it was all just play acting, but in the end alot of kids cried about various things, especially not being allowed to write with their left hand.  Learning about history should be fun. I wonder if those kids that cried were having any fun?
P has a great idea - instead of making the left-handers write with their right hand for two days and making them feel bad, get all the kids to have a go at writing with their non-dominant hand for half a day and then tell them that that's what some kids had to endure 200 years ago but thankfully today we know how silly it was and we can all write with whichever hand we want now.  I like P's idea alot and I think it would help all the kids (not just the left-handers) to appreciate how harsh life was back then.

Anyway, our first homeschool camp experience was fabulous and we've already booked in for another in February next year to Phillip Island.

Other things we did during last week were finishing Ch 7 of The Elements, reading a book about Marie Curie and her discovery of Radium, watching a short animated film about Marie Curie on You-Tube, experimenting with iron-enriched Milo Flakes cereal and a magnet, singing and working through Song School Latin, translating the Latin songs into Indonesian songs, painting, cutting out felt clothing/accessories for the felt board people, and celebrating my birthday.  As I had hoped, H had been busy sewing at Brownies. She made me a cute little felt mouse.  Other presents included soaps, drawings, handmade card, fingernail bling, a pair of earrings and biscuits and tea in bed.  Lovely!

June 27 - July 3

 How I love the unschooly life! To know that we have the freedom to learn and do whatever we desire whenever we desire it is so liberating, and the girls appreciate that we never run out of time to do the things they enjoy.
This past week has been jam packed with new experiences.
We discovered a shop called Habitat for Humanity near us which has a huge selection of new and second hand books and a great series of workbooks covering all things such as time, maths, english... the usual workbook stuff. The great thing is that they are small and portable (A5 I think) and have nice pics of mice - anyway, H likes them and is happy to spend some time filling in the pages. R bought a lovely book of Mr Froggy Went A-Courting which came with a CD of James Reyne singing the song and playing guitar. I have newfound respect for James Reyne now - he plays brilliantly!

Besides her new workbooks H has begun learning some music theory which will help with her piano practice, and with the use of two books called World of Mazes and  Eco-Logical Brain Games is covering geography and environmental science.
The Elements has been on the back burner lately as we've been out a lot, but the Periodic Table Colouring Book is helping to keep their interest in chemistry simmering along.

Something has clicked with both girls all of a sudden (it may have come from watching their friends in the French play last week) and now Indonesian words are coming out all over the place. R still likes to speak her own weird language but now uses some Indonesian words as well, and H is learning the days of the week. It's really becoming fun now to teach them some words as they don't roll their eyes at me anymore and tell me to stop!
As well as Indonesian we have started a Latin course (at H's request) with this book:

 It seems very well thought out so far and has really short lessons, so it's great for us beginners. Our first word is Nauta which means sailor.

Another book I found at the library is a book of opera stories.

So far we've read the story of a cruel yet vulnerable princess in Turandot and listened to most of the opera by Puccini. This was followed by a screening of another Puccini opera Madame Butterfly - a really beautiful movie that captured the girls' attention in a big way. When it was over R exclaimed in a sad voice "That was so dramatic!"  Sometimes it's hard to remember that she is only 5 yrs old :)
I have some more music and stories lined up and thanks to You Tube we can watch a number of operas in their entirety. How I love You Tube!
Our band will be doing a Russian Music concert in August so I've been preparing the girls for that concert as well by playing some Russian music. We have found that they enjoy the concerts so much more if they know the music beforehand. So far we're listening to Rimsky-Korsakov, Khachaturian, Stravinsky, Mussorgsky and lots of Borodin because his music is so beautiful. Did you know he was foremost a chemist and worked with Mendeleyev - the father of the Periodic Table?  It's no wonder he's one of our favourite composers!

Other things we've done this week were roller skating, two ballet open days, kids cardio, reading library books, an astronomy night with Dobby the Telescope who showed us Saturn and some messy objects, Headsprout episodes and making an aperture at Saturday Science.  I'll ask P to post soon about the other Saturday Science experiments they've done over the past few months.

Here are a few more drawings from Mini Marshmallow Art Lessons:

Ice cream cone by H

Cathy Fish by H

Cathy Fish by R

Flowers by H

Cathy Fish has lost her pencil by H

Cathy Fish loses her pencil again by R

Pencil rockets by H

Koala by T

Sodium

H had a chemistry assignment to do this week. Pick an element, research and present it.

May 23 - 29

A week of discovery!
While reading this book:

 a self directed research project began. H spent many hours with Google and YouTube and discovered sea spiders, Niagara Falls, the Rainbow Bridge in Utah, Antartica and many interesting and creepy looking deep sea fish.
H also has become somewhat domesticated and enjoys baking and cooking, and feeding the guinea pigs (finally!).  Every day she diligently chops up their veges, tops up their water and coos devotedly at them.

Choc chip cookies - our yummy morning and afternoon tea

 R finished the last two episodes of Headsprout this week, and has been reading all the readers endlessly.  According to the Headsprout chart she can officially 'READ' now and is getting ready to begin the second part of the program.
As a treat (unrelated to work) the girls got new minifigs. Funnily they both picked identical figures - the cute little banana holding gorilla.  R promptly built hers a circus to perform in.

 

Our latest chapter in The Elements called for some experimenting.
The first used iodine to determine the presence of starch in foods (we used carrot, cheese, chocolate, a raisin, bread, apple, potato, a corn flake and a chocolate pillow):

 The second experiment involved dissolving MgSO4 (epsom salts) in water, then adding some ammonium solution. We watched as the cloudy solution gradually became clear due to the atoms rearranging themselves to form new molecules.
The final experiment used bleach (NaClO) and red food colouring.  We added red colour to water then added the bleach until the colour disappeared. This happens because the bonds between the oxygen atoms and NaCl molecules break and the oxygen atoms join up with the red colouring, changing its composition so that it can't reflect the light anymore.
Once we had a clear liquid the girls experimented further by adding more colours and we got some spectacular patterns:

All in all a very successful and messy chemistry lesson.

On the weekend we had another birthday party to go to - cousin B's 8th and Uncle P's 44th, and then we finished off the week with some Mini-Marshmallow fun for the whole family.

H also has mastered her 8x table. Three cheers!

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