Gin Gin Home Educators Calendar

I'm cheating & using a blog as the calendar...meh...it works.
Gin Gin Home Educators

GASP!

Our weekly schedule is filling up; swimming, medieval group, art, science, excursions, festivals, library, kids club, soccer and music classes. And you know what? People who send their kids to school go to all this too! Isn't school supposed to provide all this for them?

What people think

Thanks to Defying Gravity

Week 5

We had a very arty week. On Monday we went to BRAG (Bundaberg Regional Art Gallery) where 3 collections were showing: Cabinets of Curiosity which Kirk adored because the stuff he collected last year for his cabinet, with a little creative arrangement, could EASILY have gone into this exhibition. The second one impressed me, Growth, which used basket weaving and natural materials to create sculptures. We also had an art lesson with Brian on painting watercolour flowers. It was a really easy technique - I think we will have to make a wall full of flowers! The rest of our subjects were simply carried over from last week although notably, each night I am reading a couple of stories to Kirk from Stradbroke Dreamtime by Kath Walker. Great stories & beautiful artwork.

Do We HAVE To?

2 years ago Qld came into line with the rest of Australia & now provides 13 years of schooling and this year the national curriculum was introduced. BUT it's a hard and disappointing. So many of the kids are too young to manage it. Yes, some are loving it, but why make this Struggle Street? Can't we give the kids who are not quite ready an extra year to grow up so that their maturity matches what they are expected to learn so schooling becomes a joy instead of constant bafflement?

Week 4

English: Made a frog with plasticine then photographed a story sequence and wrote the story. Read LOTS of books (4WD mag, Asterix comics, Steven Parish wildlife stories, find a bug book, paper aircraft, and Far Out Brussel Sprout series). Revised titles, capitalization, full stops & topic sentences. Also did a lot of phonic work with Reading Eggs.
Maths: Money - focused on adding 10c, 20c and 50c pieces, general equations - building his speed.
Science: Frog & leech observations (involuntary). Weed identification
HPE: soccer, swimming, playing with friends, climbing trees, hanging out with M&B
Arts: Experimented with  an electronic keyboard.
Practical Skills: Weeding the property.

The Rest of Week 3 (3 days)

Science: Freshwater: Kirk discovered tadpoles in the wheelbarrow so we will monitor them over the coming weeks. Gardening: We planted macadamia seedlings (thankyou Ross) one of them was directly planted with no ground preparation, the other in a large hole with a couple of old nappies for their water crystals, humus, slow release fertiliser and cow-poo liberally mixed in. Spotter's Log: We saw a few different animals but the most impressive was the red backed fairy wren.

Maths: Money, basic equations & pattern recognition.
English:  Frog books, Asterix comics and lots of random stuff.
HPE: soccer, swimming, bike riding, hanging out with friends inc. spent time with Ashley & his family selling snags for the soccer club and last night Dylan's birthday dinner (17!)

Week 2 & a bit of 3

I suspect these reports will gradually get further and further apart because doing home schooling is so much more fun than writing about it. Note that I integrate the subjects so when we study science we are also reading, writing and doing a lot of maths, art, drama etc... 


Science: We modelled the rain-cycle in a jar & watched how plant transpiration works. Then we made some splattery ink clouds to go on the art wall. We have done numerous trawls catching mostly glass shrimp (Paratya Australiensis), dragonfly nymphs and BSFs (bloody small fish). We've looked at the dragonfly life-cycle which differs from butterflies who have a pupation stage whereas dragonflies just go about their business and gradually transform inside their own skin.  We read, "Exploring Our Creek" and he knew a fair bit about all the animals mentioned so we added our own page on the Freshwater Mussel (Velesunia ambiguous) which he gathers regularly in the creek.

Freshwater Mussels: They live in creeks and dams. They eat algae and detritus. In drought they bury into the mud. (He dictated, I wrote & he copied.)

Socialisation: Plenty of opportunities with soccer, swimming, shopping & visiting friends.
Reading & Listening: We're still on Pobblebonks - he's really enjoying the book because he has discovered how to use expression in his reading. We also read Mem Fox's "Harriet You'll Drive Me Wild", Terry Pratchett, "The Unadulterated Cat" and more Andy Griffiths.
Handwriting: Meh...a little every day. Quality varies with his mood.
Maths: 6 weeks of holidays killed his speed equations so we're slowly building it again, mostly with games but our focus this week  is money. Kirk has made a shop from a cardboard box and we have been role playing the transactions between some very interesting characters. We giggled so much we needed a "Run Like Muppet" session to get the giggles out.  He also did some book work which looked at informal units of measurement. Sigh...he is still learning the months of the year - I need a song!
PE: We are taking every opportunity to go swimming and started soccer last Saturday.
LOTE: Kirk is experimenting with words and continually makes up his own words or asks if they exist in another language. This is great because he understands that language in itself is a creative process.
Practical stuff: Kirk made pizza, noodles and sandwiches. He discovered knives hurt and now prefers to use the little serrated knives. He's also independent enough to go alone to the public library and borrow appropriate stuff for Skye & himself.