Its fruit picking season

And yes, it always changes the dynamics of our homeschooling in a huge way.  The workbooks are out for yes, more revision , we have to rely on Grandma for any little ‘extras’ like made-up games & the Reading Eggs program has been great. The kids can virtually do it unsupervised if necessary.

This year Miss 7 has really grown up a lot and made the decision to earn some money by helping to pack fruit. She actually set her own fee of twenty cents per tray and managed to pack a huge 26 trays one day, earning herself a $5 note, which she was thrilled with (and has since earned another plus some gold coins).

Miss 6 has been earning herself some baby sitting money entertaining her baby sister while Mum & Dad pack fruit.

Miss 6 has also become quite the little cook lately. She made these yummy sugar-free anzac biscuits.

However, most of the time its a case of hitting the workbooks mostly as a source of revision because there just isn’t enough time in the day to organise activities during our busiest time of the year – fruit picking.

Homeschool on holidays

Miss 7 kept a diary of where we went and what we did on the days that we weren’t travelling. It was good spelling and writing practise for her.

We finally visited the Pet Porpoise Pool this time at Coffs Harbour and learned more about these fascinating creatures (one of Miss 7’s favourites), but she wasn’t game enough to actually touch one (they felt like rubber tyres to me).

We read road signs & how many kilometres to places.

Had swimming lessons. Miss 7 has really improved and can now do doggy paddle, swim under water and some freestyle.

Miss 7 also continued her study of birds and enjoyed photographing any wildlife we came across and identifying it.

We visited the botanical gardens at Tamworth and the girls did drawings of different plants that interested them and wrote their names.

We also visited the Hunter Valley Gardens, which the girls really enjoyed (of course Storyland was their favourite) and they learned to read the map and lead us around the whole garden.

And of course we did some of the regular stuff such as computer CD work on the laptop and reading books. Both girls were allowed to choose a workbook suitable to their learning level and they started these while on holiday.

Back from holidays

Wow, well we have not long returned from a month’s holiday making our way up to our favourite place of all….Tallebudgera, QLD.

Here we are at Burleigh Heads beach just around the corner from this…

This is the girls looking back at where our caravan is in the camping park.  Its a beautiful place to holiday and they have a brand new heated pool.

As you can see, the girls had a ball! 

More on what homeschooling we did later…..

Wind speed

The day started out beautifully looking like another early Spring day but it all changed rather quickly so we took advantage of it and did a wind speed experiment – it was great fun.

We printed off a protractor from here then glued it to cardboard, attached a ping pong ball with cotton (as shown in this experiment worksheet) and measured the angle our string got to. Ours hit 10 degrees, which converted to more than 60 kph.

Using the Beaufort wind scale chart, we discovered the wind was blowing GALE FORCE .

Miss 7 was very excited (probably a result of the wind!) and thought she would practice giving a weather report on the wind to her grandparents later.

Black Cockatoos!!!! Woohoo!

What an exciting morning! We ventured over to the spot on our property that Miss 7 calls ‘Bird Paradise’ because of the number of birds in that particular area. We were trying so hard to get some pictures of the birds that were almost within touching distance but are very flighty, making the task harder than it seemed, when suddenly our attention was drawn to the far-reaching raucous in the sky……..

Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoos!  Woohoo!

We took off after then because we were sure they were nearby, still on the property and sure enough there wer 6 of them. It was so exciting.

Here’s 2 that were having a bit of a tif.  They only come for a short period each year and usually its only the red-tailed ones, but this year we got YELLOW ONES!

Here’s another shot.

We don’t think this one really had a white head, we think its just the angel of the sun in the camera lens but LOOK AT THAT EYE staring down at us.

They landed right in front of us near our dam so we got a great look at them – they are so interesting to watch – like kids fighting. You could imagine them really messing up your house (lol).

We also managed to get a shot of these red-browed finches eating seeds in the grass.

And also of this bird that had been illuding us for weeks. We think its either  a grey Fantail or possibly a Willie Wagtail?  We also think it has a nest in the tree just near it. If we can locate the nest we’ll know which bird it is because they are different. Its so much like Spring here already and Spring is still 3 weeks away.