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 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!

Kancil Story Writing competition entry by Moomintroll

Kancil and the Banana Tree House

Once there was a Kancil - a small, smart and very fast mouse deer.  He was meditating under a banana tree. It was a lovely warm day and Kancil was relaxing after having a cucumber lunch from the farmer’s field.

Just then Mr. Tiger was standing a few yards in front of Kancil.  He was a bit nervous that a tiger was standing in front of him.

Mr. Tiger came closer and he said, “I’ve got you Kancil. You won’t get away now!”

Kancil replied, “If you eat me I will be turned into a little piece of cardboard by Prophet Suleiman for not taking care of his crunchy, tasty, luscious, succulent, mouth watering meat pie, in his banana tree house.”

Mr. Tiger said, “Where is this house?”

“Just behind me,” replied Kancil. “And this is the key,” he added, showing Mr. Tiger a small stick.

 “Let me in now!” roared Mr. Tiger. “If I can’t eat you then let me have that pie!”

“Ok, Ok, you can have the pie.”

Kancil gave him the key to the house and said “Go inside, lock yourself in so no one sees you eating the meat pie and throw the key out the window.  I’ll take the key into the forest and when you can’t see me anymore then you can start eating the meat pie.”

“Alright, alright! Just run away now Kancil.”

Then Mr. Tiger started climbing over the tree, looking for the key hole. When he got to the top of the tree he got stuck and all tangled up.

Kancil ran away giggling because there was no such thing as Kancil being turned into cardboard by the Prophet or a meat pie in the banana tree house.  He had tricked that silly Mr. Tiger into getting stuck in the banana tree!

The End.

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