Drawing Dinos

Tama choosing to do some drawing- dinosaurs of course!

Writing and Drawing Just Because

Tama choosing for himself to do some drawing and writing. He adds his name to most of the work he does- I'm guessing this is a throw back to Kindy. :-)

Colouring Together

Colouring in is something that Tama and I just enjoy doing together. It's also great for his fine motor skills. :-)

Telling Tales

Tama dictated a story about the Homeschool meet-up and then added some illustrations to complement the photos we printed.

Sketching and thinking

We picked up a $2 calendar with images of Western Australia at the newsagents. Tama picked his favourite image and he talked about what he saw and why he'd picked it. Then he collected some leaves to sketch to compliment the report he'd given me.

Art at the Gallery

Tama and I checked out the exhibition at our local gallery in February. Some rather abstract and some not so abstract paintings. We discussed what we saw, what we liked and why. Then we both lay down on the gallery floor and did some drawing inspired by the paintings.

The artist John Baldock

Sculpture

Triangles

Some art inspiration for us... thinking about the shapes of Crystals and Tessellation in Math.

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Drawing and Colouring

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Inspired Drawing

Tama drew this awesome picture inspired by one of our black and white baby books for one of the baby sisters at kindy.

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The Making Table

This is Will working (well) at the 'making table'- that's what the kids call it. It's an essential item in out house but it's also one that drives me bonkers. It's often left in a huge mess. We have to be careful with the materials we provide because... renting! The kids often go there to break rather than make. And that's my biggest annoyance- quite often when I put something out they'll trash it, rip, tear, cut etc because they have no clear plan of what to make... obviously they need some decent modelling. That is something I struggle with because if I'm going to make something I'd much rather do it at my own making table! Suggestions welcome!

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Excursion: Swan River, South Perth

Will elected to learn about Birds for his first area of study for home school. So this is the basis for a lot of or work in literacy, science, art, technology in our first block. In particular we're looking at identification, classification, habitat, and features. The boys already had their Nature Tracker Bird Watching books from Tama's birthday in June, as well as their binoculars. Armed with those and 'The Guide to Wildlife of Perth and the South West' by Simon Neville  (which is excellent!) we headed out to the Coode Street Jetty in South Perth which has both the Swan River and a large pond.

Observing a dead seagull.

Quietly and slowly approaching a Pied Cormorant.

Lunch on Swan.

Most of the birds we spotted are photographed below- Will has labelled all but one! 

Willy Wagtail

Pied Cormorant

Rainbow Lorikeet and hard to spot Brown Honeyeater

Red Wattlebird

Sketching the Cormorant and Tern which were not in Volume 1 of their Bird Watching Book.

Caspian Tern

Pied Cormorant

Laughing Dove

Galah

Pacific Black Duck

Shoreline observations

Looking at the layers in the bank.

Jellyfish washed up the river.

Raven

A bit of history.

Australian Shelduck

Corella

Eurasian Coot

Black Swan

Purple Swamphen

Grebe

Ibis

Rainbow Lorikeet

Corellas

From here we'll be thinking about what birds we saw where. How they were behaving. About what their feet looked like and why. We'll also check out a couple of other local bird hangouts for comparison. Then we're planning some feather drawing and bird models from recycled materials.
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