'Backyard Insects'

We very nearly bumped into our Nature Study today.

Mid-morning we came through our front gate after piano lesson and groceries (oh, the joy of doing the yukkeries) when haphazardly fluttering past were these two very large butterflies. They danced gracefully, a little uncoordinated though, across our little suburban garden negotiating their way to the 'right' leaf to mate.

Since I re-started my blog last September I've tried hard, but haven't always succeeded, to keep my camera with me. Somewhere handy so I can grab and click. This was one occasion where I was so thankful to have the opportunity to slip the camera out of my handbag and fire away.

My boys were pleased to observe our little visitors and as they fluttered past hither and thither we followed them around noting their colours, how they flew, what they were doing and where they may flutter off to next. Too soon the butterflies parted ways to which Kookaburra announced that they must have mated.

Really?! I replied in a little disbelief.

Between you, me and the front gate - it was much too brief :D

So we took our photos inside. Downloaded them and dug out our 'Backyard Insects' book.

Turns out these little beauties are in fact a wee bit of a pest for our citrus growing friends out there. Its name is the Orchard Swallowtail Butterfly or Citrus Butterfly. One can deduce from the name the little fellas favourite snack.

In the Charlotte Mason world of homeschooling, I should have encouraged my boys to draw the butterflies but seeing as drawing madly has been their main occupation this week, I let them print, cut, paste and narrate to their hearts content into their Science Notebooks.

I don't mind Kookaburra dictating. Through giving him the chance to 'tell' me all he knows about the butterfly, we're developing his knowledge and I'm happy for him to develop his writing skills in his Language Arts program (for the moment).

Kangaroo's contribution was a little smaller but he's pleased with getting to know the inhabitants of our backyard a little better.

For fun we googled a few videos of the Orchard Butterfly too.

Firstly,

the Giant Swallowtail Butterfly hatching

Defense Behaviour of the Giant Swallow Tail Butterfly




Giant Swallowtail Butterfly becoming a chrysalis

My boys especially loved the little alien hatching and the chrysalis boogie dancer. It really appealed to their super silly side and had them cracking up with laughter.

Quick and Easy Homemade Toy

So simple and very Quick.

You need:

* an old small sock

* rice

* about a meter of thin rope


How:

* pour a few handfulls of rice into the sock, using a spoon makes it so much easier, until it settles into the shape of a small ball

* knot the leg of the sock

* tie the rope securely onto the knotted sock and head out into an open space to let the new toy fly.

As your kiddo's are spinning and throwing the toy, be careful to not be too absorbed in recording the fun. I was clicking away when Kangaroo unbelievably managed to 'sock' Kookaburra in the eye. They had so much space to run around in!


I was glad I had the camera though. As Kookaburra walked towards me crankily conveying the incident, Kangaroo rushed to embrace Kookaburra for a quick apologetic hug. I quickly clicked and well...


brothers are so sweet.

get Real

We are so sick this week.

But today we still dutifully managed to plug on with the basics of math and language arts. I have read for an hour but then I found that my voice just couldn't cope any longer. All three of us are snotty and coughing, and really struggling.

It wasn't so bad this morning when we started up, but our momentum came to a grinding halt by lunchtime. Even my lolly bribing during spelling - a recent and wonderful motivator, which I refuse to feel guilty about - was an uphill battle. So by twelve our reality looked like this:

Sucking lollies whilst watching Andrew Lloyd Webers Cats on youtube.

It's now half three and we're in for a movie.

I'm getting real. This is how it is and sometimes our home life looks like this when we don't have any excuses - we do it for fun!

I want my boys to spell well. They like lollies. For us right now, it's a perfect match.

We like Youtube. And we love movies. I'm in charge and I help them choose their view appropriately.

I can't imagine our media habits ever changing.

With all the happy homeschool talk on this blog I thought it would be nice to know that I'm far from getting it all right.

Very far. But our right sometimes looks a lot like this and at other times there are no lollies, no media and whole lot of the wholesome stuff. I think it's Balanced.

Do you have anything you want to 'get Real' about today?

(I did make chicken soup for tea :) do I get some redeeming points now :P)

(I double batched it yesterday, so maybe not :)

Bargain

i

'Seriously!'

'Only fifteen dollars? Are you sure?!'

This is the best kind of conversation to have at an op shop when we've just piled our wonderful finds onto their counter.

Op shop advice - avoid The Endevour, they've forgotten that they are a charity and that their goods are actually donations. There was a lovely lady's hat in there two weeks ago for sale at fifty-nine dollars! What the! Their prices do not reflect the purpose of the store. But our favourite op shop by far is St Vincent De Paul. Our goods totaled to nearly thirty dollars but once the lovely lady reached fifteen she stopped counting :D!

It's kind of funny that we've acquired new books as I'm in the midst of organising a huge curriculum clearance which I'll be listing with Aussie Homeschool Classifieds when I get round to it. But my view of a home learning environment, even if our boys were at school, includes access to plenty of great books on every imaginable subject and so I continue to haunt the op shops in the ever hopeful pursuit of that wonderful bargain to enrich our home learning. This doesn't make for a pretty home and I still struggle to be at peace with that but to see my boys pouring over books at five am leaves us feeling pretty chuffed.

They're interested and best of all, unconsciously, they are learning all about their wonderful world.

Oh! and I must add that I'm pretty proud of myself. Whilst at the art gallery today we were chatting for a little while with one of their lovely staff when she asked Kookaburra the dreaded inevitable question,

'What grade are you in?' (or to the trained Mumma ear, 'Why aren't you at school?')

He looked at me uncertainly and I replied calmly and quietly,

'Well, we actually homeschool so we don't need grades. We learn until we Know a subject and then we move on. We aren't graded by A, B, C's or worst of all D and F's because we don't fail and move on anyway. We strive to know and understand what we're learning.'

and then I added,

'He's nine.'

I know this isn't the best answer around but this is a huge milestone for me because I dread That Question and I really struggle to answer it in a way that I'm happy with :D!

Catch, Spike, Smash!

I love the language of sports. I adore sweaty little heads and glowing cheeks and sore and tired bodies and the satisfied thrill that is part of being an active kid... and adult. I might have slowed down as an adult as my priorities have shifted, but I clearly remember the fun of team sport during my school years and early adulthood. It wasn't fun all the time but not everything is and for me I loved it so much that I fought hard with my parents during my final senior years to have Health & PE as one of my elective subjects. So in the name of a wholesome education I'm working steadily towards including this 'subject' as part of our lifestyle.

Do you remember a post from a few weeks ago where I mentioned we would be using Anne Elliots Homeschool PE program? Well, like all things in our home, it's taken us a little while for it to become a solid part of our routine. We're a long way from having PE regularly but this week I wanted to try and include it at least a few times. I really recommend the program just for the language used when teaching the littles how to stretch and it provides me, aside from the program itself, with an idea of how to structure a Health and Physical Education program in our homeschool. Anne has written the warm ups in a really fun and friendly manner that has my boys laughing as they perform crunches whilst checking their belly buttons for lint and looking to their toes for dirt as the counter exercise, which helps make it a little easier to get my boys on board and ready to play along.

Part of Annes's program is to explore a new sport each week. I don't think we'll jump around that quickly because I think we'll enjoy focusing on the one sport for likely two or more weeks.

This week is Volleyball. Now I did pretty well at sport in my younger years but even so I was a little stuck for the terminology and needed some guidance as to how far to go when coaching my boys in the techniques of the game. So after a little googling I came across this cool video to provide a visual on the sport and see other kiddo's playing it. Inspirational and they could relate to the kids.

DragonflyTV Kids Do Science - Volleyball en Yahoo! Video

I also looked for some links on modified lessons for young children and volleyball in a small setting.

When I'm able to bring Volleyball to our Homeschool Group to play, I'll be using the modified rules of Mini-Volleyball as outlined in Mini-Volleyball from International Federation of Volleyball which have been especially created for our smaller crew.

For my boys we focused on:

Catching

Throwing

and returning

the ball by using only contact with the pads of our fingertips shaped into cups, whilst both of their hands are reaching over their heads when hitting the ball.

Not a lot but enough to introduce the idea of the sport to them and give them something more to play with each other when in the yard with a ball.

I'll need to take them to a park later this week to focus on digging, spiking and serving, 'cause we need a whole lot more room. I really don't fancy rescuing our balls, after enthusiastic digs, from the neighbours dogs :D!

On a very personal note, somehow I've managed to really hurt myself. Completely unrelated to any sporting activities, but I think it was from picking up my big boy last night to comfort him whilst we were at the theater rehearsing for The Music Man. It was a really long night and I was trying to keep things light with him and be jovial but eventually Kookaburra just needed me and comfort. It was half nine and there was no sign of wrapping up for the evening, so I picked my Kookaburra up in a really stupid 'Mummy nursing the Baby fashion'. So, so silly! My big boy is half my weight and I think I may have really hurt myself! I could barely sleep last night from the pain and today I felt like I could barely walk. The pain has been ridiculously immobilizing and I've been taking strong pain medication to cope. Well, I think this may be it. I'm going to have to finally relent and go in for a massage. A massage sounds so divine but the thought of near nakedness in the presence of any one but my husband is horrifying and this very thought has successfully prevented me from having anything more therapeutic then the complimentary head massage from my hair dresser pretty much, ever. But I think I'll be looking into Bowen therapy as I can't cope with this back pain. To add to my wee little troubles, I've also been feeling strangely sad for about two weeks and I can't seem to shake it. It's not my cycle and I'm not pregnant and life's pretty awesome. So all things considered it's a strange feeling to be having. But it's there and it feels like such a weight. A very good friend has recommended kinesiology in the past and I'm seriously considering it. I hate this illogical feeling and I think that kinesiology or perhaps maybe reiki may help provide some healing that I may be unconsciously aware of needing.

I have my fingers crossed pretty tight for both therapy's working a treat but as I can only do one this fortnight, it's definitely going to be Bowen all the way. Hopefully I'll be raving all about it real soon!

Ready, Set, Move!

This morning was my first attempt at creating a 'physical education' morning for our little homeschooler group. After being worried during January about the smallish size of our local group, it appears that over the holidays (whilst I was freaking out) the numbers have in fact swollen by another four families increasing our childrens numbers by, I think, fourteen children! It's so exciting :D! Our group has almost doubled in size and best of all, both my boys are steadily gaining some nice little mates there - both boys and girls of the same or various ages.

Seeing as this was our first organized get together for the year I wanted to create a 'this is awesome fun' attitude in the kids and parents so everyone was keen to keep on coming for subsequent events. You know, I think, just maybe, judging by the numerous boa constrictor hugs I received and profuse I love you's and you're the best Mum in the world claims offered up from my small fry at the mornings conclusion, I think it may have been a hit.

I had some great helper Dad's along too and if I needed to step away for a moment to look after my Kangaroo, they were right there to continue the fun. So, so lucky to have great parents in our group, they just really made the morning easy as.

Physical Education has been a 'subject ' I've wanted to cover for many years but have struggled because of either my terrible organizational skills or that the medium age of our group has been about four. Very little people are pretty content to get together and free play but now we have a wider age group ranging to include a thirteen and fourteen year old, we can start to enjoy some structure. The beautiful thing about today was the way when some kiddo's had had enough they would wander off for a play or a drink or something to eat while the games continued and when or if they were ready the kiddo's would rejoin the group. Pairs of children would wander off and chat and rejoin the games later. I really felt from watching this behaviour that I could see lovely friendships growing so nicely already between the the newer additions and the established kiddo's.

We began with a quick stretching out of the arms in full circles to explore our personal space. We didn't want to accidentally bump into anyone during our fun :D!

After we established our space we played this fantastic game called Pirate Ship (I've included it below) which the kids loved! and it got them ready in a great fun way to follow instructions during the rest of our mornings games.

I felt that from the very beginning we should establish a few quick ground rules to keep play safe and fair. The list might change as I develop the program so what follows is a tentative list to be developed as our sports days grow.

1. Take Care of Our Mates - If someone falls, be there to help them up. If we have an accident be ready to say 'Sorry Mate'! and help dust each other off and keep going.

2. Be a Good Sport - if the other team wins give them a clap and tell them 'Well Done!' and if you're a part of the winning team shake your opponents hand and say thanks for a good game.

3. Play Fair - pretty much means, take turns and be nice. We have a rule in our family which would apply nicely here 'Nice Words, Gentle Hands and Shining Face (Smile Baby!)' which describes our conduct when playing or anytime really.

So I'm making it up as I go along but I want the kids to establish an acceptable way to behave when we get together for sports and games.

Okay so that great game I mentioned earlier was:

Pirate Ship

So easy peasy fun to play. It's as simple as calling to your 'Scurvy Dog Crew' instructions and demonstrating the moves. Try it out soon. A great game for small and large groups.

So here are those instructions - Super fun! :

Man the Lifeboats - find a friend and sit on the ground facing each other holding hands and rock backwards and forwards singing 'row, row, row your boat'

Scrub the Deck - children crouch down and pretend to clean the floor with the hands

Climb the Rigging - children pretend to climb a rope ladder

Crow's Nest - Now that they've climbed the rigging, the children stand on one leg which will become their masts while their other foot rests on their knee to become the crows nest and their torso is the pirate looking out to see, hand above eyes! Peer into the distance and shout 'Land Ahoy!'

Captain's Coming -children salute and shout out 'Aye Aye Captain'

Man Over Board -children jump as if going over the side and then sink down holding their nose with one hand and raising the other hand in the air as if going underwater. Make sure you start swimming guys!

Walk the Plank - children have to walk in a perfectly straight line one foot exactly in front of the other with arms outstretched to the sides

Captain's Wife - Everyone curtsy's

Submarine - everyone lies on the floor with one leg raised in the air like it's a periscope

Fire the Cannons - the children grab a friend and pretend to fire a cannon, shout 'Boom!' and jump into the air

Hit the Deck - well the cannon ball is coming! and the children need to lie down on their stomachs as quickly as possible to avoid it!

Port - run to the left

Starboard - run to the right

Bow - run to the front

Stern - run to the back

Sharks - sit with their knees up off the floor, hugging knees

Compass Point - All the children gather into a big tight bunch

Last One in the Dinner Line - children all line up in a very straight line

Polly the Parrot - flap arms and shout 'Pieces of eight' or 'Polly wants a cracker'

Mutiny - sword fight everyone (gently! with our hands pretending to hold a sword :)

Stormy Weather - Rock from side to side

Peg Leg Jim - the children all walk with one leg straight and the other normally

The Ultimate Homeschool Physical Education Game Book by Guy Bailey is the greatest resource I've purchased of late and was integral for planning out todays fun. But I think all the kiddo's had the best fun playing Pirate Ship and of the days games I felt that this was the definite stand out.

Whether your group is large or just you and your fam, give Pirate Ship a whirl.

Play it! and Soon :D!

Making it Work for Us

There are some days that I get out of bed and almost before my feet touch the floor the little blondie, who refuses to stay in his own bed at night, has already whispered to me, a list of what he'd like read to him or of things that he would like to do. I feel so bad for him. The reality is that we may accomplish one or maybe two of the things he names together and the rest of the time my little Kangaroo does his own thing. I'm pleased though. Today he brought me something extremely easy to accomplish. Can I please listen to this cd Mum, he says. Wow! Too easy :D! Kangaroo wanted to listen to the story of Australian Settlement and Convicts, 'A Dramatized Australia History Study'. I then played it through our laptop and because the cd is without images I set the laptop to play through a screensaver of Monets paintings, this terms Artist study. I'm bucking the AO system and going our own way this year. The AO pictures are all too dark and dreary for small children so I'm going with something lighter and more child orientated, Impressionism, and we'll immerse in the style for the entire year. Monet, Cassatt, Renoir, Van Gogh are our major artists and for Australian 'Impressionism' we''ll be experiencing the sublime works of Tom Roberts and Frederick McCubbin.

Extremely too easy wasn't it. Australian history and artist study in one shot. Thanks Kangaroo!

You know it's a Living Book when they start dressing up and want to be a convict and lump around something on their leg as a make shift ball and chain.

And wanting maps drawn on their hands.

And playing at escaping. My reluctant Kookaburra joins in beautifully with where Kangaroo leads in their history play. Our children balance each other fittingly. One is very technical and logical and the other is more language arts, creative and together they compliment and draw each other out (and challenge each other!). And so we have a cheeky escaped convict peering back through the bars. Catch me Mum!

Kangaroo drew his own compass rose, Arthur Phillips ship and lo... Oz! complete with our little mate, Tasmania :).

Between this play and chores our Sunday morning disappeared into an afternoon of what I'm going to class as 'musical studies'. The word musical is doing double duty here :P.

We won't be studying a composer this term but I will continue to play classical music as we please and read whatever falls into our lap regarding composers because Kookaburra and I have been extremely fortunate to have fallen in with our little towns' Musical production of The Music Man. So our concentrated musical energies will be going towards rehearsing for the show in April. The soundtrack is on permanent repeat in our house and while Kookaburra doesn't seem to mind , I think the other men of the house would like to be done with Mr Matthew Broderick singing 'Trouble'. Personally, I adore the library scene and the Wells Fargo Wagon scene. *Sigh* I'm really loving musicals and am so glad to be able to validly add that to our list of learning.

Sometimes life just leans towards the learning curve a little more easily than other days . I think I'm finally accepting that a learning environment will differ from family to family and that ours, which has progressed and grown with us over the years, right now, at this moment, looks super.