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.

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.

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…..

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.

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.

Between sickness, wisdom teeth and a teething baby, life’s been a bit tough just lately. However, we have managed to continue learning most days – character traits being at the top of my agenda (you can guess why, can’t you? Something to do with the behaviour of my girls lately, probably due to all the turmoil).

We started with making a crown each because every little princess needs a crown, right? Miss 6 is practising her courtesy.

I found a great list on the web called ‘HOW TO BE A PRINCESS’ and we have roughly followed this with me adding in my own ideas.

We also watched some Youtube videos of Princess Mary and Princess Diana to see how graceful, modest and charitable they were.

First on the list was GROOMING and dressing MODESTLY. Here’s the girls are learning how to care for their nails and they also learned about wearing clean clothes and brushing their hair.

We found some photos and made a scrapbook page story of the first 4 rules we learned.

We are up to the part of being CHARITABLE. The girls went onto the World Vision Australia website & watched the movie about the ETICA free trade dolls & we decided to sponsor a child – the girls can contribute an amount of their pocket money to help).  We choose a little girl who was also 7. The girls also donated a chicken to a family for just $3 each – very charitable. They were thrilled to get their little keyring dolls in the mail.

Next the girls made cards to send to others while learning to be THOUGHTFUL – they only needed to make one but ended up making about 7, which I will post off this week.

Continuing with our weather unit, the space shuttle was a hot topic due to recent events, so I took advantage of it as we had been discussing what the atmosphere may have been like in the days of Noah.  A paper written by my father on Noah and the flood included some fascinating verses quoted from the Bible helping us understand where ALL THAT WATER CAME FROM? We discovered that the atmosphere prior to the flood was quite different and full of moisture – fascinating.

Here the girls are drawing the Earth’s surface and above, in each different shade of blue, they are naming the different atmospheric layers.

Don’t you love Miss 7’s airplane. She drew this to demonstrate that this is the layer that pilots prefer to fly in  – the stratosphere, because it is usually smooth sailing above the clouds – the storms are mostly below. (The toilet roll space shuttle flies up the string through the different atmospheres.

No.. the birds aren’t evolving (lol), the study is though.  Miss 7 has taken quite an interest in the different types of birds around our property and bugged her parents to take her on a bush walk to see more last weekend.

So here we are bushwalking on our property on a lovely winter morning.

Here is the little bird watcher sitting on a rock. She spent about 15 minutes just quietly searching for the illusive Spinebill – its very flighty.

After watching the news the night before with all the floods featured, Miss 7 made a brochure to tell people what to do in a flood (this is the inside alongside her Noah minibook from DLTK). The reverse side had a title page and some emergency phone numbers written on it.

We read a newspaper article and measured how highthe floodwaters came into people’s houses – she got a shock how high it was.

We completed some worksheets for kids from the SES website and then we pulled out our old Emergency kit and checked what was in it. We decided to re-pack it because the clothes we had put in, they had outgrown.

The next thing to think about was where did all the EXTRA water come from to make a flood big enough to cover the whole earth when Noah was alive?  Stayed tuned.

As you may know, we have started a study unit on WEATHER, which became topical when parts of Australia were enduring heavy rains & floods (namely Queensland and northern NSW).  The perfect time to introduce NOAH.

We began, of course, by reading the story – the girls made up their own little booklets available from http://www.dltk-bible.com/genesis/noahbook/index.htm then we made a cardboard box ark and incorporated the 2 times tables, counting the plastic animals in pairs as they boarded the ark (thankfully we also had a plastic Noah & wife).

Miss 7 thought of using the beanbag as Mt. Ararat, which we discovered was in Turkey.  Then we set about proving that the story was true – as I think it brings the story to life when we start delving into the possibilities.

We read some accounts from eye witnesses ( http://www.arkonararat.com/) focusing on one written by a young boy (now an adult) – the girls eyes lit with excitement. I also read this article beforehand http://www.westarkchurchofchrist.org/library/noahsark.htm, which was for my own information & was fascinating.

So…next thing is to help the girls unravel the mysteries, and we started with FLOODS.