Better Catapult Capers

As I mentioned yesterday in my family blog I was disappointed in a science class I was required to teach. It sounded fun but turned out to be over controlled and burdened with paper. I had to purge my miasma so today Kirk and I made a very simple, yet effective, catapult. The design works really well so I reckon we might make a few of these tomorrow in class if the kids can find a little spare time...and I am sure they WILL!

Ants in Yer Pants

When I was little my Grandma said she would buy me a watch when I learned to tell the time so naturally I have given Kirk the same bargain. This has been sped up considerably because when our Mums visited Annette brought a kids calendar and a clock from Bernie so now Kirk is keen to learn  how to tell the time. The days of the week are also starting to make an impression - this week it clicked that the days of the week have an order.

Ann also brought an ant farm with her. Richard had a great time putting it together and both Kirk and Joshua are all fired up about filling their ant farm. They liked it SO MUCH Dad went out and bought another one so they could each have their own metropolis. I imagine they have plans to invade each other one day...

Busy

This last few months have been very busy  but we are squeezing in our schooling around our manic social life. Last week was all focused on the SCA and this weekend he had a birthday party.
Kirk has been fairly obsessive with numbers & is consistently reading numbers to 100 and understanding numbers to 1000 about 1/2 the time. We've been experimenting with the spiragraph and playing a lot of Snakes and Ladders, Snap and Memory.  I'm reading Enid Blighton's Magic Faraway Tree series to him and working on a few sight words. Now that Sean is home more, they are spending time in the shed together. He's exhausted at the end of most days.

Long time...

Since returning from Gold Coast it has been difficult to bring our routine back on track, nevertheless Kirk has been working very hard at reading 2 & 3 digit numbers and simple words. Now I'm back at school teaching the odd day, I have the opportunity to compare him to the preps and he seems to be about average.

I still haven't bought him that trampoline which he thoroughly deserves but Aunty Michelle gave him Joshua's bike which thrills him immensely. There isn't a lot of flat area to ride it here so he takes it to Jorja's and rides it all day there. Rachel tells me he is managing to ride it on 2 wheels going forward but still requires the trainer wheels when cornering.

Last term we were studying space and since our trip have been fairly lax with it but as he is gravitating to anything space oriented I shall plug along with it and see how far we can push the theme. He has matured these last couple of months and I think he might be ready to learn more of the physical concepts rather than just facts.

A problem Kirk has had the last 6 months is a very slight lisp, not unusual for his age, and I have been trying to correct this and concluded its persistence was due to the lack of front teeth. A visit to the ENT said it was more likely due to inner ear fluid. Hopefully after his tonsil operation we will be able to correct this.

We made a couple of model rockets today. One the traditional style - the other closer to a multistaged rocket. Learned about making cones and cylinders.

Almost there

Although Kirk still has an issue with the 10s, he is developing a solid grip on counting to 100. He is very determined to understand double digits and the difference between numbers standing together, being added or multiplied.

He is still enjoying our exploration of space so I will continue with this. He's chuffed with Uranus which has fallen on its side and tonight watched a fictional documentary on the discovery of a planet with life. He has a huge imagination. I wish he liked art so he could show us what is in his head.

Writing the alphabet has reached a plateau so we will play with pastels for a while.

Questacon

Yesterday Questacon came to Bundaberg. Kirk and his friends had a ball. Not surprisingly he spent much time playing with the gear board. It is a vertical magnetic surface with 1 moving gear to which you stick different sized gears and watch what happens.  We then spent the afternoon in the Botanical Gardens with our friends. 

Please Mum!

For months Kirk has been nagging me for a trampoline. A fortnight ago I gave in and said that when he could count to 50 by himself he could have one. At the time he could barely get to 15, let alone 50. I thought this would buy me a heap of time but it looks like I will be forking out a lot sooner than I expected. On Monday he watched his friend, Jorja, count to 100. On Wednesday, with some help, he did it himself. No kidding. This week he has spent a lot of time asking me about numbers. Questions like: "What's a 6 and a 3 make?" (63), "What is 6 plus 3?" (9), He has also been obsessively counting everything and doing a lot of self talk about number comparisons, "8 is bigger than 6."

Note to self: material rewards WORK but forgo trampolines in the future.

TESS Animal Wildlife Sanctuary Day

Around 60 people attended the homeschooler gathering at the sanctuary.  Kirk enjoyed being able to touch the animals and interract with them.

Space fact from Kirk: The centre of Jupiter is hotter than the sun.

Image

Kirk spent the afternoon practising archery at the Historical with us. Ron commented that he looked like Robin Hood and he was delighted with the comparison. I wonder if this is the point where imitation for fun becomes modelling the self? I wonder...

Fishing at Coonarr - Take 2

This time, sensibly, we went in Bob's car - albeit I had to leave Skye with Cissy because there were no seat bolts (Cissy is sooo tolerant). We caught a swimmer crab (Kirk thought this was hilarious), 4 undersized flathead and 4 dart - 3 of which we fried for lunch with salad & rice. Kirk had a great time and and keenly absorbed everything about baiting and casting the rods. After lunch Bob and Kirk checked the trap and found and enormous red claw yabbie.

Of late Kirk's knowledge of the world is rapidly expanding but his capacity for self awareness and control takes two steps forward and one step back. Sigh...

He ain't Newton

...but he observed that when things are scrunched up they fell faster. At the time he was throwing a windscreen shade around (AKA bat wings). So I asked him to do the same thing with a piece of paper and explained what is happening with regard to gravity and wind resistance. So tomorrow we're making parachutes.

Twinkle Twinkle Bloody Huge SUN

Currently he is hooked on the comparative sizes of our moon, earth and the sun and will tell anyone who will listen about it. Mercury is pretty dull - a bit like the moon - but Venus thrills him with its volcanoes and sulphuric acid rain. Looks like space science is a winner.

We've had a lot of friends here this week. The Edgar family came on Monday and the kids both helped rescue burrowing frogs from the sand and lug pavers for the front path. Today the 5 George kids were here for a few hours and they all played outside in the sand and on the swings.

Reading & writing is experiencing slow but steady progress. He is consistently differentiating initial sounds and rhymes. Inconsistently identifing & writing letters. Can listen to a string of sounds and make a word from it. We just do a little every day.

In maths we're building vocabulary such as more, less, fewer, most, least etc... He's adding & subtracting inconsistently. Counts well to 15. Of late he has been asking for a trampoline and today I finally said "Yes"  ...when he can count to 50. Hopefully that will buy me sufficient time to save up.

The stumbling block to counting is the "teens". English is an odd language - we have 1 to 10 and then the teens which to a child in no way resemble the first 10 numbers then we revert to using the initial base 10 nunbers.

Today

Phil, Ben and Bradley came today to finish off the shed. I played with Bradley, played Rainforest on the computer and we normally hang out the washing. We smoked chicken wings and pork ribs in the smoker. The chicken tasted great and the pork tasted great. It is a gas fired smoker with sawdust to give the smoke flavour.  We also put a big bowl of water in the smoker to keep the meat moist. I want to make smoked beef next time.

Duck Dodgers

Kirk has decided he wants to be an astronaut, not just as a payload specialist but THE PILOT. So we looked up the requirements. Mmm...I think I shall take advantage of this phase and put dinosaurs in the back burner. What a great excuse to watch science fiction.

Found Sock

We found Dad's woolly yellow sock yesterday. He lost it in Tasmania and Yvonne, being a meticulous housekeeper, remembered to give it to me when we visited. Me NOT being a meticulous housewife promptly lost it again until yesterday when it was discovered in the sewing pile. Kirk thought he would make up a story about it....

One day Grandpa was looking for his sock but he couldn't find it. Then he went to the zoo and it was there! It was being nibbled by squirrels. He was really angry and banged his foot on the ground and went into the cage and took his sock back.  [At this point Kirk fell asleep]

In the morning we stuck a couple of Harmony Day badges on it and it became a yellow eel which ate frogs and the puffer fish Nanny knitted.

Mud Monsters

Little Athletics

Last week Kirk started Little Athletics. He was keen to boast how he would beat everyone but the imagined did not match the reality and he was overwhelmed. Nevertheless, once Sean performed longjump with him he figured it was all right and started to make an effort. This week he managed to get over his fears a lot quicker and joined in.

Progress

Woohoo!! Kirk is starting to understand initial sounds and rhyme. I've really sweated over this one. It's all well and good to have letter recognition but then you have to put it together.

Fiddler Crab

Kirk has made a dozen or so butterfly prints today and this was his favourite.

Snorkling

Yesterday Kirk finally had the opportunity to use his snorkle set. He was thrilled to be able to see all the fish which were mostly diamond fish and diamond-scaled mullet.
Click on the pics for enlargement. Landscapes are hard to do  in Blogger.

The snake is back - By Kirk

The snake is here and it is hiding behind the head of the big mask. He is about a metre and a half and he's a tree snake. He's got yellow on the bottom and green on the back. He was going to eat a frog. Not much because there are only 2 frogs left. I think he's going to eat all our frogs and I don't think we will be able to eat any more frogs. Frogs can't beat snakes. Snakes have a special tongue. We smell with our nose. Snakes smell with their tongue.

But what if I COOK HIM FOR SNAKE STEW?!

Note:  This photo was taken this time last year and I am sure this is the same snake. Sorry the camera is out on loan so I can't show you how big and beautiful he is now.

Nintendon't

The Fly, a light remote-controlled hovercraft, WAS Kirk's latest toy. Predictably it is already broken so Sean made for him a Nintendon't. It is a postcard with a Nintendo display drawn on it. It is called a Nintendon't because it don't really work! Kirk finds this hilarious and he and Sean spend lots of time using it like a remote controller for a paper aeroplane or he can use it solo by imagining the games. The Nintendon't requires no batteries and costs nothing yet can provide this imaginative child hours of entertainment.Who needs electronica when one has a whole brain to play with?

Another week full of friends! We picniced at the dam, played soccer and cricket and did a lot of swimming.
This week Kirk completed a preppy math book. I don't push texts but they are helpful. e.g.While he learns matching and categorising by sorting the washing (which he can do by himself), the book decontextualises that skill and helps him understand these skills as concepts. He is pretty chuffed with himself and I am pleased he finds it easy. The preppy English however will take a lot more effort.

Numeracy

Today I discovered Kirk can do basic subtraction. It is a simple thing but a significant one because he's figured it out for himself.  Let's hope he remembers he can do this tomorrow.

Cooking is also teaching him informal fractions. This week he made these...things....they were like a  dry scone with jam.We ate them...some of them....Kurgen thought the leftovers were very tasty.

Cabin fever

It's STILL raining and everyone is trying to get out! This week, we had another crafting session with Kelly & kids until the flooding creeks drove them home. Rachel dropped in with Jorja and she did a bit of craft and then they got on the sillies and played their crazy games. Cate called in for a chat and dragged her boys off the bus when it stopped at our place so they wouldn't try to cross Niagra Falls. Around tea time she chucked them in the troopy and went to play in the torrent (I so envy her car ... er .. truck)

What have we achieved academically this week? Well he's learned "R" REALLY well....just ask him ;-)  We've just been continuing with the sea theme and abc/123/reading etc...

Sluggy

This morning Kirk was a blue spanish dancer (a nudibranch) oozing up onto the dining table and swirling around in circles. This week we made all sorts of sea creatures with our fellow homeschoolers; killer whales (rubber matting), sharks (cardboard), leafy seadragons (vinyl and material), fish (cardboard & sparkles), octopi (yarn doll), star fish (paper & sparkles), seaweed (finger knitting) and jellyfish (1/2 CD and straw beads).  I'm trying to encourage him to do a lot more craft to improve his very ordinary small motor skills. Photos next week.

Virtual Aquarium

Nanny was given an aquarium for Christmas and naturally Kirk wants one too. I have refused for the moment but to compensate we painted the laundry wall BLUE and next week will create an underwater collage.

In conversation

It's great to have a conversation with Kirk when he is making sense. Today we started discussing seahorses which we were modelling from plasticine. Kirk's seahorse naturally morphed into a submarine and then he asked whether cleaner wrasse would clean a submarine or boat hull. "Yes, if it stayed still for long enough but it's better if people clean the boats because too much grows on them". We then went into why boats and submarines had to be cleaned (to reduce drag) which ended up in a demonstration on friction. PLEASE let the weather fine up so we can use his snorkle set!

Planet earth

It was long drive home last night so we watched the marine sections of David Attenborough's Planet Earth and, not surprisingly, great whites and seals are his favourite animals so we'll focus on them next week.

Heeere fishy fishy fishy

Last week Kirk and I concentrated on alphabet and number recognition and made origami fish to improve his small motor and spatial skills (these were in fact Transformers who lead secret lives as jets*).

As a part of his studies about the sea we read a lot of books (Wet Paper readers) and this weekend Sean took Kirk to Underwater World.  Sean tells me Kirk had to see the seal show 3 times and laughed his arse off throughout.  Then he explored the underwater shark tunnel 6 times before he was satisfied. Looks like Underwater World was $50 well spent.

* Note: I can't wait for him to be ready to study mechanics - he will LOVE it.

Welcome...

I'd like Kirk to share his homeschooling with you.
Yesterday we baked biscuits and a big chocolate fishcake. Today we built & sailed boats...and an echidna (no it did not float).
Left to right: Catamaran, laser, houseboat, origami boats...and the echidna...which morphed into a spider and a sea urchin and then a triffid and then a spikey spaceship which of course fired spikes. He's pretty creative with plasticine and a heap of skewers.