Home Education
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A Week With Mem Fox
This week during our Book & Activity time we focused on our collection of Mem Fox titles. Mem Fox’s books do not naturally attract me but as I’ve shared previously, watching our children, particularly our emerging readers engage with her books has helped me develop a new appreciation of her writing. The first day we read Where is the Green Sheep?, Arabella the Smallest Girl in the World and The Magic Hat. Making a ‘Magic Hat’ was a huge hit! The attention to detail and creativity was wonderful to watch, the children were so enthused! Our Book & Activity time has become a treasured time each day (or rather every second day). On our second day we read Shoes from Grandpa, Harriet You’ll…
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Studying The Russian Revolution
On the weekend I was updating our previous First World War plans to suit our 11th grader and I realised anew that one of the rewarding results of maintaining a blog is to be able to search your own blog for ‘those plans I wrote before’. Our 9th and 7th graders are studying The Russian Revolution this term therefore sharing our Russian Revolution plans in the desire to help someone else also searching but also to help myself in another year or two;) The books suggested below reflect what is available at our local library (alas) I’m certain there are other wonderful titles available. Websites http://www.skwirk.com.au/p-u_s-56_u-427/the-russian-revolution/qld/sose-history http://www.angelfire.com/biz5/romanovs/links.html http://www.oocities.org/athens/bridge/1230/Tsar.html http://randomnetstuff.com/page/anastasia/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Romanov An online…
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Inspired by Our Koala Sighting
Inspired by our koala sighting this week our ‘A Book & Activity’ was all about koalas. Our readings included; Koala Lou by Mem Fox, Kolo the bush Koala(OOP) and Two-Thumbs the Koala by Leslie Rees.(OOP) The first day we made toilet paper roll Koalas. Next we enjoyed making origami koalas. On the third day we made movable koalas. Everybody enjoyed joining in once again and my enthusiasm continues to grow:) well it does about ‘a book & activity,’ I confess we didn’t manage all our more formal academics, so obviously I’m still a ‘work in progress’.
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Nurturing My Lost Enthusiasm
Home educating a wide age spread can be a challenge and sometimes there are casualties. For months now, one of our casualties has been our little ones, blush. I had plans but they consisted of.. “I’ll read two picture books a day and…” but we weren’t achieving much. For years I used to overplan, investing hours that seemed wasted as our plans always changed. Attempting to change this situation I became more relaxed and let my planning go. We had a broad structure but no finer details. However I’ve come the the realisation that planning created & fed my enthusiasm. So it wasn’t wasted, it just translated differently. Over the…
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The Pen is Mighty
This month’s Homeschool High School Carnival is hosted by Take Up and Read and we are chatting about: Writing and Composition in High School What place do you see writing have in your high schoolers education? Do you use a writing program? What approach do you use? Which ‘tools’ did you use in the younger years that helped prepare your high schooler to write and prepare them to join “the Great Conversation?” Learning to write well is a high priority in our home, a goal in which we work towards from the earliest years. As our overriding academic goal is to nurture “thinkers and effective communicators, both in the written and the spoken word” a large portion…
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The Mission, The Strategy, The Focus
Participating in the Homeschool High School Carnival, in fact this is our launch edition! Sharing my thoughts today about: The Wide View….How does your family’s ‘big picture’/goals/educational philosophy affect/guide your planning and translate into what your highschoolers do on a daily/weekly basis? Do you generalise or specialise? Like many home educating families we began this journey with ideas, thrilling, inspiring ideas, with plans to set our little corner of the world on fire, along the way our journey has taken twists and turns, some as thrilling as hoped, some rather unexpected. Travelling the journey we have tried to keep the ‘big picture’ in mind, we believe that God has a plan…
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Monthly Memories – July 2012
Sharing our Monthly Memories. A productive learning month, capturing a few of the highlights. Carpenter’s essay……Carpenter entered an essay competition, ‘The Greek term ‘polymath’ referred to a person who had expertise in a number of different subject areas. Is there a more contemporary figure that you believe deserves this term? What specific contributions has this figure made to his or her fields of research?’ This essay was the impetus for a huge growth area for him. Research, diligence, bibliographies are just some of the skills learnt. His essay writing skills grew enormously during this period. I have lots more to share about this, which I will in a later post, suffice it for now…
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Monthly Memories – June 2012
Sharing our Monthly Memories. As always, sharing a month at a time means that only a snippet is recorded. Our logic classes with Father N:) Before Father N left we were blessed that he was able to present a series of logic classes to the children. We (both children and mums) thoroughly enjoyed his presentations and learnt so much. Father designed the lessons himself, and presented them on the flat screen. These lessons were such a blessing and we are still talking and implementing the skills learnt:):) Maintaining steady progress in the 4Rs, Science and the Humanities. Highlights Carpenter making fantastic progress on his essay for competition! Exceptionally well written, researched and…
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Awesome! – A Masculine Opinion
The layout of our study has bothered us for some time now. When we recently acquired two new computers and realised we needed to shuffle the room around yet again we decided it was time to invest in a more permanent solution. After discarding a few ideas PC decided to head to town in the search of desk modules. Having no success at any of the retail shops in town, hours later PC and Carpenter arrived home with gleeful looks on their faces. Instantly I was suspicious, what had they bought? Well… they hedged, I might not think it pretty, but it was perfect for the job, it just was…
