Home Education
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Colour Sorting Re-visited
A few days ago I set up our first Montessori activity to discover that it needed to be more controlled, today we re-visited the activity, this time I used marbles from a board game This time the older children came upon the activity and declared that they must also have a turn
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Our First Montessori Activity
I have been spending alot of time lately at 4 Real reading, learning and discussing more about Maria Montessori’s teachings. There is so much to learn and so much to organise. However I decided if I waited till I had everything just perfect I would never be able to start. Last Friday Jelly Bean and I went op shopping for a couple of items. She was most excited with the baskets and tongs that we found. She came home all eager to use ‘her presents’. So although I wasn’t ready, not really, as I had intended to read the presentations properly first I set her up with her first activity.…
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Re-visiting Montessori
Many years ago….. it does seem like that at times… when my oldest daughter was a pre-schooler I began immersing myself in Maria Montessori’s philosophy. I read a great many books written by and about Maria Montessori’s ideas and ways to implement these in my home. During that time I made a few great homemade Montessori materials, the sand paper letters that Prince Charming and I made back then are still going strong today. As the years got busy and space was at a premimum I found we didn’t have Montessori shelves set up as such. However the ideas gleaned from those earlier years were never lost. I was always…
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Swimming Carnival
Yesterday we participated in our first ever swimming carnival. It was a homeschool carnival:) We had a lovely day and it was great to see all the children get in and ‘have a go’.This term and last our children have been attending swimming lessons and squad. Twice weekly the older two would swim up to four kilometres and the next three have been working hard at improving their strokes. So they were feeling confident at trying the various strokes.Butterfly, breastroke, backstroke, freestyle, medley and 400metres. They were very successful and we were most surprised to travel home with age championship trophies for the oldest four and a second place age…
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Re-visiting Phonics
February 12th, 2007 This year we are commiting to having a major focus on phonics. With two beginner readers and older children who still need to improve their spelling it is rather a timely commitment. We are quite excited about this really and looking forward to seeing the results come to fruition. In the past the children have learnt their sounds via flash cards which have served a purpose to a point. The point being that several have learnt to read and read fluently. However once we have mastered reading we tend to ‘drop’ the rest of the sounds so therefore have never progressed through all the phonetical sounds in…
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So Proud!
November 28th, 2006 Recently our children have been branching out into new areas. For Nature Boy this has included a term of art lessons. This was a big step for him as he ventured forth on his own without his siblings. It was good to see his self-confidence blossom and his teacher was very good at getting him to be assertive in his decision making in regards to his art work.. His teacher is excellent in fact at drawing the most from the children, true she is rather formidable in some ways but she does love to see the children progress. The term ended with all the members of the…
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Oral Narration by Mum
October 24th, 2006 Today as I sat at the pool with dd5 waiting for her siblings to finish swimming training I made an interesting discovery. I can’t narrate very well. Here I am expecting great feats from my dc and I can’t achieve this excercise myself. I was trying to distracte dd who was cold and wet and wanted to go home NOW. As I didn’t have any books to read with me I decided to tell her stories. Somehow I managed to stumble through David and Goliath, however I did have to keep going back adding in the bits I forgot. After stumbling through an imperfect rendition of the…
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Vietnamese Catholics
October 23rd, 2006 For the past few days I have been engrossed in the world and words of Tom Dooley, an American Naval Doctor who gave medical aid to 600,000 Vietnamese refugees in their flee from the Viet Minh in the 1950s. Later Tom dooley set up Medico. ‘Deliver us from Evil’ has really made me stop and think, about the selflessness of Doctors and medical staff in refugee camps. Most of all I have become fascinated by the Vietnamese people and their history. Their tenacity to hold onto their Faith is astounding, the Communists cruelly tortured these people for holding true to the Catholic Faith. 150,000 of Vietnamese’s 200,000…
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The Beauty of Poetry
October 17th, 2006 fer Term 4 has begun. Slowly we are getting back into the flow of another school term. This last part of the year I am determined to ensure that we revisit the poets. Every day for half an hour after our morning tea break we sit down with old friends and new. Today we all enjoyed revisiting Mr Nobody and other favourites. Then we enacted out with great flourish ‘Said the Spider to the Fly’ the children are considering presenting this one at our annual homeschool concert in a few weeks. When we turned the page to “Oh Captain My Captain’ Koala jumped up, grabbed the book…
