THEAC

People keep telling us how relaxed the Tasmanian Home Education Advisory Council is regarding registration but it still surprises me that we haven't heard back from them yet. Still waiting for them to get back in contact with us to give us a date for our first monitoring visit which is supposed to occur sometime in March (and it's now nearing the end of March!). I've been nervous all month waiting for that letter LOL. I suppose I should just be grateful that they don't make it difficult for homeschoolers like the boards do in some other states, huh?

Am still trying to find the method of record keeping that suits us. Having spoken to other Tas homeschoolers, it's good to know (once again) how relaxed THEAC is about all this. At the moment I'm just keeping samples of Shmoo's work, a list of library books we've borrowed, a photo album of education-related photos, and checklists of the completed components of our unit studies. Am pretty sure this will be satisfactory for THEAC.

All the time I'm having to adjust my expectations of this homeschooling thing... the expectations I have of Shmoo. We've ended up taking more of a natural learning approach than I expected, because that's what works better for Shmoo. At the same time, the unit studies approach has been working well too... I choose a something that the kids have been really into lately, load up on subject-related library books, loosely plan some fun activities and 'excursions' and we take it from there. They've been really enthusiastic about the themes so far (and the next theme is dinosaurs - they loooove dinosaurs, particularly Loo who will be having a dinosaur birthday on Friday!). Anyway, whatever we're doing, so far it's working well!

Autumn Equinox

We were trying to come up with some last minute, budget-friendly (free!) things for the boys to do for the autumn equinox.

I cut some vellum to fit around some old glass jars and then Shmoo and Loo used it to do leaf rubbings (love the Stockmar block crayons... such gorgeous colours and so nice to work with). Of course, once again I forgot to take photos of them doing it.. Shmoo's is on the left, then Loo's, then the Bean's (I did Beanie's for him - he's still at the age where he just wants to eat or rip everything!).

Popped a tealight in each one and we had them on the table during dinner. We were also going to scrounge around for some change to buy some marshmallows to toast over a fire but the weather hasn't been cooperating so we might do that for the winter solstice instead.

Reading

My boys amaze me all the time with how much they are learning... and most of the time I don't even realise just how much they are learning! Loo** has made a great start with phonics and is starting to sound out written words. We've been reading a page a day out of Kingdom of the Sun, a gorgeous book about the planets that we borrowed from the library, and today Loo spontaneously sounded out the word 'Mars' and eagerly asked for more words to read.

**I can't believe he turns four in just over a week! Four!!

Moon Biscuits and Other Things

Shmoo has certainly learned the names of all the planets much quicker than I expected him to.

Shmoo and Loo's moon phase shaped biscuits.

Leaf rubbing.

Moon, Moon, Shiny and Silver...

Making the different phases of the moon - wrapping cardstock cutouts in foil. We were originally going to glue little bits of foil on to the cutouts but it seems that foil does not like to stick to paper.

The end result: new moon, waxing crescent, first quarter, waxing gibbous, full moon, waning gibbous, second quarter and waning crescent.

Our phases of the moon hanging up.

 

Tonight we used the telescope, borrowed from the Launceston Planetarium, to have a look at the moon. (It's handy having an astronomer friend!)

And this is what we were looking at (I had to flip the image as it was reflected upside down in the telescope). Pretty cool, huh?! Shmoo correctly identified it as a waxing gibbous moon ("do, do, do the waxing gibbous. The waxing gibbous!"... as in The Funky Gibbon? Surely my kids aren't the only ones who are obsessed with The Goodies?!).

Ice Cream Comets

One of the things we did today was to revise what asteroids, meteors and comets are. Then we made our own comets...

Crushing up biscuits to make dust and rocks.

Then we rolled scoops of soy ice cream in the dust and rocks (to make the icy head of the comet) and put it in mini ice cream cones (the comet's tail).

And then some maths to calculate how many ice creams we'd eaten between the 6 of us (14... but they were very little scoops in mini cones, honest!)

 

I really need to get some more sidewalk chalk for the kids to draw outside with. Shmoo's obsessed with buses again at the moment. He gets quite detailed with some of them, down to air vents and solar panels LOL. Apparently Loo was drawing a platypus.

Constellations

Shmoo chose to do Hydra the Water Snake (glow in the dark stars on black cardstock)

Loo chose Orion's hunting dog, 'The Great Dog'.

Photo Update

A week or 2 ago Loo had part 2 of his 3.5yo check and Beanie had his 12 month check with the child health nurse. While we were there Loo and I found lots of little pinecones. So we made some little mice out of them...

Yes, I know the one in front is missing ears. The boys pointed that out to me after LOL. They had to get the glue out again and give him some ears so he could hear.

We all love baby-wearing in this family!

 

Homeschool group astronomy night.

Homeschool Group Astronomy Night...

Tonight, 8pm, our place! Complete with our very own astronomer and telescope!

The Solar System

'Asteroids' (pebbles) crashing into flour with a thin layer of cocoa on top

Feral kitty, Bubbles, doing a taste test.

A little green Martian.

Feral kitty, Bic.

The sun. Both Shmoo & Loo have written 'sun' but it's a little hard to see in the pic (and Loo wrote a back-to-front 's', upside down 'u', and his 'n' looked more like an 'm' LOL... but he's getting there!).

The scaled down solar system in fruit. Neptune (strawberry), Uranus (lime), Saturn (grapefruit), Jupiter (coconut), Mars (chickpea), Earth and moon (large grape and lentil), Venus (smaller grape), and Mercury (small chickpea). Loo took to smelling the various fruits and I must admit, all 4 of us adults giggled like silly school kids when he said that he wanted to smell Uranus!

Shmoo ate Neptune. Loo ate Mars, Earth, the moon (mmm yummy - uncooked lentil LOL), Venus and Mercury. They both shared Jupiter and Saturn.