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The Australian Homeschool Summit is Back and I’m Talking Again!!
The Australian Homeschool Summit (Online) is back…and once again I’m going to be one of the workshop presenters What I’m Presenting This time I’m going to be sharing about Centering Your Education Around Australian Living Books. I’m thrilled to be talking about a topic that is near and dear to my heart. I admit to being rather passionate about Australian Living Books, the type of passion in which I can cause others’ eyes to glaze over. However amongst my fellow home educators I’m with my people and I’m sure you’re just as keen about Aussie Book love, if not you will be by the time I’ve finished 😉 I’ll be…
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2018: A Year in Review
So hard to believe we’re already in 2019! Before we move forward towards the New Year let’s have a quick recap of the Old Year, like all years since forever it was jam packed with life. My new refrain is ‘boring is great, I love boring’ though there were not many boring moments in 2018. It was a fantastic year, so much happening, many special moments, although there were times we barely held on by our fingertips. Let’s get to recapping the old so we can begin the New. Since we began moving into life with older teens I find my time and energy is more limited, so alas blogging for…
- Blog, Home Education, Home Education - Language Arts, Home Education - Leaping into Literature, Learning
Leaping into Literature: Animals & Anthropomorphism
The past fortnight saw us once again diving deep into our Leaping into Literature immersion. This fortnight we focused on reading our way through our collection of Animal and Anthropomorphism (attribution of human characteristics & behaviour to animals) picture books. We discovered and re-discovered some real treasures, we also discovered some total duds. When well done, picture books can be wonderful avenues for learning, informative and engaging, and springboards for the imagination, Jack Jack (12) was so inspired by one book he began re-writing plot twists. Yet some picture books can be such a disappointment, the illustrations gorgeous but the text dull, the premise of the book rich with possibility but…
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First Holy Communion for Bass
Three weeks ago Bass (7) was blessed to receive Our Lord for the first time during a Missa Cantata at the Carmelite Monastery in my nearby childhood town. Extra special was that he received Our Blessed Lord for the first time from our Bishop Emeritus, who has also given First Holy Communion to seven of Bass’ older siblings, all bar our oldest, the continuity is treasured. Our first seven children were also all Confirmed by our Bishop Emeritus, though Jem and Bass were Confirmed at Marian Valley. The Sisters were so excited that Bass was receiving his First Holy Communion with them 🙂 The Missa Cantata in the Southern Hemisphere has…
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26 Australian Picture Books for Remembrance Day
Remembrance Day, the 11th of November 2018 marks the 100th anniversary of the Armistice which ended the First World War. Tomorrow at 11am a minute’s silence will be held around the Nation to remember those who have died in Wars. When attempting to explain War with children, the why’s and how’s are often more easily understood through books, picture books create a space to discuss and ponder, to begin to grapple with the enormity of the sacrifices made and the complexity of issues. Online Database of Australian Books Be sure to head on over to our Online Database of Australian Books to find more books about our War Years.…
- Blog, Home Education, Home Education - Language Arts, Home Education - Leaping into Literature, Learning
Leaping Into Literature: A Tradition Returns
Way back in 2013 I had an idea and like all great ideas it took off, blazing a path. The idea was to devote the whole of Term 4 to an immersion in literature, predominately with a focus on quality picture books. When introducing new ideas to our children I need to carefully consider as often my great ideas quickly become firm Tradition, as has our Leaping into Literature, which now reaches it’s 6th year!! Over the years, with our older children particularly in mind, we have expanded our Leaping into Literature Term to include another Tradition, our Bookworm. This is a favourite, oft visited reading competition which the whole…
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7 Quick Takes: Lots of Projects
Head on over to This Ain’t the Lyceum to read more 7QT for this week. 1 We use the Readerware database to keep track of our extensive collections of movies and books. I love being able to track what books (and movies) we do and don’t have and one day I’m going to splurge and buy the mobile phone app as well, it will save having to ring from town asking my teens to check the database. It’s rather fun hearing the beep as the scanner reads each bar code as new books enter our home (and the database), yep I’m a nerd. One thing irks me though, some sellers place their price tag…
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Flooring The Last Room! Our Room
Early September we finished flooring the last of the children’s bedrooms which finished off our supply of salvaged floorboards from the Convent school. We still needed flooring for our bedroom so we followed leads for new boards, one being the purchase of second hand boards from a local demolition company, but at $3.50/lineal metre this translated to $850 for one room! PC is an accountant at a local plywood company and we began considering the option of plywood floorboards. I admit I held some biased beliefs against ply, I might have called it ‘fake timber’ and so needed to become more flexible and knowledgeable in my thinking 😉 PC’s work had a couple of…
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Homeschool Burnout & Recovery
Nearly twelve years ago we achieved our dream, one we’d been working towards for years. We finally purchased our rural property! It was the best of both worlds, 147 acres/49 ha only 15 minutes from town. The property was everything we had looked for with the variety we wanted. It was; cleared, semi-cleared and bush, there were flats and hills, a creek and dams. Plenty of land for the children to explore and enjoy, a dam to swim in complete with a flying fox and canoes, space for a dune buggy to roar around in and trees to build a tree house in, places to go camping, freedom to be…
