I have proven it this last few weeks.  Feeling so sick from just 6 weeks pregnant with baby #3, I just couldn’t manage it, spending most of my time horizontal and in bed.  Homeschooling just went out the window.  I am so grateful to actually be able to sit at the computer today for a little while - something else I haven’t been able to manage until now. So please excuse my lack of blog entries recently for those who check regularly.

What homeschool has exsisted has been purely incidental and unplanned - reading books, both girls are into writing lists of words which delights me no end, building with lego, watching DVDs.  But perhaps the biggest lesson they have learned is INDEPENDENCE.  They have had to get their own breakfast, (sometimes even get Mummy breakfast) get their own work out to do, dress themselves, clean up, get snacks - pretty much fend for themselves.  Its been a good lesson to learn and I am so pleased with the way they handled it all. Of course, books and chats about baby development & possible names are daily occurences.

I am feeling a bit better today at 9 1/2 weeks, hopefully the worst is over and some semblance of homeschool might begin again?

Miss 6 had been spending more time than I liked, watching movies.  So rather than fight it, I went with it and we did a little exploration into how movies are made.  This website http://www.makemovies.co.uk/ gave us an excellent start.

She started with a few simple drawings of a face without a mouth, a horse without a tail and a girl with no legs and photocopied them.  She then drew on the missing bits, say a smiley mouth, a tail upwards and legs standing) on one copy and then did something different on the other copy. We stuck a pencil to them, rolled them up and made instant 2-frame movies (or roller book).  They worked beautifully.

Next we watched the making of the movie section on her “Spirit” dvd which showed how they draw the characters, the computer animation, the voice-overs and all the work that goes into an animated movie - it took them about 2 years to make.  It gave her a real appreciation of the effort that goes into it all.

The Animator that drew the main character of the horse in it, showed step by step, how to draw Spirit - it took her ALL DAY (with a few breaks) but wait till you see the finished product!!!!  (By the way, watch her expression change over the day as she could see it all coming together - she started out not too happy with it, but was so pleased with herself at the end of the day). It really turned out FANTASTIC for a 6 year old.

Step 1 - draw the backbone and head shape, a box for the body to go in and geometric shapes for the different parts of the horse.

Step 2 - start to draw in the lines of the back, tail and muscles in the legs.

Step 3 - Trace the outline in black (which I had to help with) then draw in some of the details such as eyes, nose, hair. (The animator gave excellent instructions - very detailed but simple to follow).  She can see it starting to come together here.

Step 4 - Start add some colour, 3 colours, black, brown and gold - dark at the edges and fade it out to the edges making a shadow.

JUST LOOK AT THE FINISHED PRODUCT!!!!! and how happy she is. Needless to say, we framed it.

We will probably continue with this theme a bit later when interest sparks up again using tha above-mentioned website as a guide.

We embarked on another journey into a bible story last week - David & Goliath, and in order for the girls to get the concept of what a feat it was for David to win this battle and how much God helped him, we had to come up with a way of seeing just how big Goliath was.  After some internet research we discovered that Goliath was 6.5 CUBITS high (or 10 metres).  We measured out the conversion using a tape onto a long roll of paper.  It also happened to work out that the girls standing on each others shoulders (Miss 4 twice) was the same height.

We hung it from our back verandah just to see how high 10m actually was. It was a real eye-opener for the girls but then they thought it couldn’t be real so we did more internet research and found pictures of real giants - even some that are alive today. http://www.stevequayle.com/Giants/index2.html  This showed the girls that giants do actually exsist and made it all the more real.  We also looked up the Guiness book of world records for the tallest man and women in the world.

Of course, we just had to make a sling shot from elastic and a forked branch, and to be on the safe side, we made paper rocks and a paper plate shield each.  Of course Miss 6’s had to have a horse on it.

Wanting to revise Mammals, we started by revising what a Mammal was, then sorted these plastic animals accordingly.

Then we went outside and discovered how to recreate animal tracks in the dirt.

Then we watched a PLANET EARTH dvd, which Miss 6 loved, in which the presenter mentioned Marsupials - a perfect introduction.  After discussing that all marsupials have pouches, we made these cute paper plate pouch Kangaroos with Joey. It involved some paper folding from one of my resource books I’ve had for years.

Following from this, I found a great new website while I was looking for Lapbook ideas http://www.homeschoolshare.com/wombat_stew.php with a whole study unit dedicated to WOMBAT STEW full of Mammals & Marsupials. We started by reading the book then went on an excursion looking for the ingredients to make our own stew.

Here’s the girls cooking their Wombat Stew on the campfire of sticks they made.

Luckily, I had some puppets suitable for this story and we made it into a Puppet play.  It was a great opportunity for the girls to learn about being organised, sharing roles, props and re-telling a story.  They did the show (after a few practices) for their Dad that night.  Miss 6 painted the sign, Miss 4 did the stars.

The SHOW!

It was also  great opportunity to introuduce ’shy i’ and ‘tough Y’.  Both girls managed to read all these words from the book.  Miss 6 sorted them into groups of same sounds.

This book also presented a chance to talk about friendship and what being a friend means.  We discussed what the animals in the story did to help their friend then did this little fold-up person booklet.  I got the girls to draw pictures of things they could do to be a friend.

We all really enjoyed this little unit of study.

Hooray!  I finally got Photoshop re-installed, now for the picis of what we’ve been doing the last 2 weeks.

Even though the girls have come leaps and bounds with their reading, imagine my shock when I heard Miss 6 reading this Pony Pals book with about 100 words to the first page.  She read a whole sentence unaided - WOW! A couple of months ago, she would have just tossed it straight in the too hard basket.

The girls went on an impromptu leaf hunt looking for Autumn leaves finding all different shapes and then sorted them into shapes using the text book as a guide.  Fitted in great with the fact that we were learning long ‘a’ and magic ‘e’. They then made their own little sand garden in a tray.

Continuing the leaf shapes theme, we printed some of these beautifully shaped Liquid Amber leaves in Autumn colours.

We also cut some simple yellow leaves to be used later for our ‘Vowel Forest’ that the girls wanted to make but first used them for a game of Postman.  The idea was that the girls had to sort the word into families and put them in the correct envelope, then mail them to the corret word family being ‘ay, ‘ai’ or long ‘a’ with magic ‘e’. 

Miss 6 really enjoyed this.  They took it outside on the verandah and played it several times.

Next we used up most of our toilet rolls, painting them to make a rainbow snake of long ‘a’ words. It turned out nice and bright and they enjoyed threading them as they called them out.

Next we started putting togther our own VOWEL FOREST. The inspiration came from the Jolly Phonics DVD but this was our own version.  We printed the raindrops with a potato, the cloud was made from sponging, I painted the tree trunk and the girls stuck the leaves on as they read them. I asked the girls to paint a picture of themselves in the forest and rain, for a reason - their names both had long ‘a’ sounds in them. Here’s the finished product.

Firstly let me say, I am lost without my Photoshop software.  I can’t blog my photos of what we have been doing - very annoying and all thanks to a computer crash (aarrrrgggghhhh)! I will catch up on this asap. 

Meanwhile, somedays it feels like I’m not filling my kids needs as far as homeschooling goes.  Some weeks we fill out time easily with a study unit of interest, other times I wander the house thinking, shouldn’t we be doing something (as in Homeschooling, sitting at a table, out on a field trip, building, making, creating)?

I read a post on http://lapazfarm.homeschooljournal.net/ today about how she had comfortably come to the decision that Unschooling was the way to go.  As much as I think this all sounds great (for her), I’m not sure its the way to go for us? (Of course more research is needed).

I think of the kids at school, working away, wondering what they are learning today. Is their anything my kids are missing out on information-wise. I am one of those Homeschooling mothers who does not want to hear how her children are ‘behind’, despite my best efforts to see above this towards a greater goal. I had planned a year of reading/writing mostly, no real themes as such, but now the girls are reading even 7 letter words all of a sudden with the synthetic phonics program & Miss 6 is already ‘bored’ with Grade 2 Mathletics, I just find myself a bit lost - especially when she asks “Mum, what can we learn about today? “

I really look to the girls for my inspiration - if they become interested in spiders, then that’s what we ‘do’.  I thought a recent trip by her Grandparents to New Zealand might get them interetsed in Maories or volcanoes, but ah ahhh, nope -it wasn’t personal enough. It had no emotional attachment.

SO, what to do next?  This last week we have covered David & Goliath with about a days interest in giants and measurement.  We started the YELLO DYNO child safety program which they got the hang of quite quickly, stating the video was boring ( it didn’t really appeal to them because of the raspy, almost yelling dinosaur). Have to admit, I didn’t like it either.  Yesterday we re-discovered Mammals and learned about Marsupials with a fun day of WOMBAT STEW cooking, puppet shows and craft which had aspects of friendship/character to it,  the inspiration provided by http://www.homeschoolshare.com/wombat_stew.php

So I just don’t know.  With grandparents arriving tomorrow for a few days visit, this will ‘fill time’ with some interesting activities thrown in compliments of her Grandma, but I just can’t seem to get comfortable with Unschooling.  The Reviewer we had visit last year wasn’t too keen on it and warned there are ‘issues’, as in , there is no definite goal in sight and children need some direction. After all, they are like big sponges, just waiting to be soaked.

Somedays it seems like there are endless topics to learn about, other days I just don’t know. I am topic-less.  Probably being 5 weeks pregnant doesn’t help this; confusion and procrastination reign supreme.

Oh well, the girls have started building their own cubbies - that’s the next few hours of childhood enjoyment taken care of ……..(he he he). Until inspiration strikes next, cubbies it is.

Anybody else have days like this?

The girls are moving along in leaps & bounds with their reading.  Here Miss 6 is doing one of the activities from the Take-it-to-your-seat learning centres, reading the words on the cariages then adding it to the train.  We are almost finished our single sounds & willbe moving onto double-letter sounds next week, like ‘ai’ and ‘ay’ for long a.

The girls also completed their frist 100 piece jigsaw puzzle which was actually hidden away for a birthday but little Miss Big Eyes saw it in the cupboard when we were doing a clean out.

And yes, we decided it was time for a Garage sale and did a HUGE clean-up, clear-out this week.  Baby stuff, scrapbooking,clothes, household items, all OUT.  Ohhh it felt good. In the process the girls got a re-decorated playroom (well yes it is also abedroom but no-one sleeps there yet) & it was done without spending a cent.  My old quilt was discovered, cussions & pillows, a floor rug, trinkets (just a few were allowed).  They were so happy with the room that they have actually kept it pretty clean for a whole week.  Mama is happy, kids are happy.

The Garage sale had to be put off due to wet weather but Miss 6 has learned all about sorting & classifying, Money, value, recycling, re-decorating, saving, signage & more.

She must have….. either that or my girls slept on the Clever Pillow last night.  After struggling for a fair while now, especially with Miss 6, with Phonics & reading, today, both girls just started reading.  I can hardly believe it.  They must have read over 100 different words today.  It started when Miss 6 shocked me by walking up to the rainbow words and said, ‘Mum, I can read that word…it says WENT’.  Ok, I’ll just pick my jaw up off the ground first, then lets try another word.  WOW, she knows lots of words.  She read all her sight words on her rainbow, plus the new ones, then she and her sister spent the next few hours doing every gane & activity I could think of with complete success. She started making words on the window (below)

Then she moved on to this activity actually READING the words then finding the picture.

The rest of the day was a breeze.  They played word card games, read books and EVEN DID WRITING, yes the dreaded writing which she now seems to be enjoying more.  Miss 6 went off and did it all by herself - it was her idea.  Wow!

Daddy bought the girls a graphics tablet that day and when he brought it home, they were straight into it.  Braylee made several pages of her words from her new ‘my words’ box - all of which she could read now.  Then, somebody pinch me please.  She asked, “Mum, if I put an ‘r’ on the end of you, does that say ‘your’? WOW again.  (See below).

What a great day.  Both girls reading.  Miss 4.5 is reading as well as Miss 6.  In fact we had a competition and it was a dead heat - each girls read the same number of words - even ones with sounds we ahdn’t really covered yet. Woohoo!

Here’s Braylee teaching Pa (who was actually a computer engineer) how the graphics tablet works. (he he he he).  Well, he did know how it worked, but she still saw fit to teach Pa a thing or two.

Here’s Miss 4.5 doing one of the Take-it-to-your-seat activities, which she choose to do and could read all the words by sounding them out. The Jolly Phonics & synthetic phonics program we are using is working so fantastically well.

Well didn’t the girls have ball this morning.  Braylee expressed an interest in water spiders today because she thought she had seen one on the dam one day.  So we decided to go on an expedition in search of water spiders.  We did our internet research first http://www.naturegrid.org.uk/pondexplorer/gallery/wspid.html then rode our bikes to the dam with the most plants in it because we now knew this was a likely habitat.

Well just look what we found - it was so exciting.

It was about 8cm in legspan.  We also found another true water spider - one that can breathe in an air bubble under the water and lay its eggs underwater.

It was the perfect opportunity to discuss the finer points of habitat selection.  The girls collected water samples in jars which included many microscopic creatures, plankton, and some we are yet to identify.  They also added one of the dam plants to a bottle with the dam water then placed the spider in for observation.

It was fantastic because after a little while the spider did go under the water and make a small air bubble around itself.  The girls could see how the egg sac was waterproof too. 

After the mornings activities of Spiders Breakfast maths sheet from www.britishcouncel.org/learnenglish (pictured below) & then we talked about a spiders life cycle using the sequence pictures below from http://www.sedl.org/scimath/pasopartners/spiders/lesson4a2.html , we decided to spin our own web.

We also found this cool website http://science.howstuffworks.com/spider5.htm which you can watch step by step how a spider spins it web.  We watched a few Youtube vidoes of the process as well.  Both girls developed a new appreciation for the work a spider does and how clever it is as we tried to build our own version of a web, but it was tricky - I had to help tie the knots & get quite involved in the tricky bits.

Step 1: Cast your ’silk’ (we used wool) out with the wind and anchor it at both ends.

Step 2: Go back along the thread leaving a loose new thread drooping down below.

Step 3: Go half way along the bottom thread & spin a new piece down to the ground making a Y shape.

Step 4: Make 2 new threads up either side the Y forming an outer triangle. (We split our wool strands in half to do this).

Step 5: Working form side to side, twist your thread around the centre point as you go and tying knots at the sides to stop it slipping.

Step 6: Starting at the centre, weave you thread in and out alternately forming a loose spiral as you go towards the outside, again tying knots as necessary.

It turned out pretty good once we snipped all our losse ends off but this is as far as we got because it was time consuming and a bit tedious at this point - as I said, the girls and I developed a new respect for the spiders skills.

We also made some spider eggs and sac out of little white tissue paper squares.  We wrapped them carefully in another square using water on the tip of our finger to secure it.

The Incy Wincy Spider game has come in handy.  Here we used it to see who could get to the end first - the prey or the predator.  If it was the prey then it got away, if it was the predator, it had dinner.

Question:  Do you know the biggest spider in the world?

Answer: The Goliath tarantula can be as big as a dinner plate & comes from South America.

Favourite website for this unit was: http://www.sedl.org/scimath/pasopartners/spiders/welcome.html