5 Days of Lunches

Engineering Challenge

The question was simple: How high can you go? 

Pulling blocks out of a solid Jenga tower to add to the top

A staircase just because.

That high.

 ♥

Shaving Foam

This is the activity I tried to finish my first day of homeschool with. In reality Will and Tama demanded that homeschool continue 'officially' for another hour and three quarters that day- more, more, more!

This was just something fun, and tactile with a little fine motor stuff (writing in the foam) thrown in.

We tend to do a lot more of this active/physical stuff when Tama is home. And more solid academic and bookwork type stuff when he is at kindy and not around to interrupt. I have zero interest in him doing the academic stuff this year or next- he's four, he just needs to play and play and play. 

♥

This week on the homeschool web...

Kids discover has some cool free resources. I wish they had ebooks of some of their issues as the cost is prohibitive to order them to here in smaller numbers but they look cool.

I read a lot of Happiness is here this week. An unschooling Australian Family with 4 girls.

Will enjoyed his new favourite person's You tube Channel Veritasium. (His new favourite person is a scientist: Dr Derek Muller).

Willowbrook farm looks like it could be a cool place to go for a few nights camping.

I think the Gravity Discovery Centre is something Will, Tama and I would enjoy checking out.

I am bookmarking the Targeting Maths book as I think it might be a good one for Will. And also handy for my planning.

Bookmarking River Blossoms in case we win the lottery I'd love to send Tama there next year.

  ♥

5 Days of Lunches

Big Button Numbers

Making extra-huge numbers with buttons on an abacus.

Picking the buttons is half the fun. Also super good fine motor work for little fingers.

745,357,263 Awesome!

♥

Everyday it looks like this...

Without fail every 'home' day at home school involves some reading. Often it's what we start our day with. Each reading our own, me reading to him, or him reading to me. Or all three.

♥

This week on the homeschool web...

I liked this article “Can you imagine them at school?”. I think her description is pretty apt... which is kind of weird to me because I'm not totally anti-school- weird paradox?

I'd like to try a Mystery box with Will and Tama, I think it would be fun!

Some natural material art inspiration.

I think we need a digging pit!

Free Science Experiments!

A bunch of links to places for learning online. I want to have a look at Khan Academy with Will.

I want to do the bird Collage in this post with Will and Tama- very cool.

Also cool is this Tree of Life Chart... so pretty and interesting.

Big Picture Science has a free downloadable Tree of Life Chart you can make yourself.

Spelling activity

I'm trying to do a spelling activity connected to Will's weekly words each day. A lot of them are fairly bland but this one was kind of fun. I love these old school letter cards. These were Les' but I had some too!

Magical Blocks

This is the last 24 hours at our place....

 We adopted these blocks into our family yesterday from their last family who had out grown them. These are International blocks- played with in South Africa and Perth by South Africans, Aussies and now Kiwis!  We got a super good deal for around 200 blocks- really really happy! 

Will started building a catapult with them in the five minutes we had at home after we dropped the blocks off and went to do the school/kindy run. Then he and Robert worked together to make a Theme park.

 Tama made the letter 'T'.

And then became a skip bin rubbish truck.

This morning  they worked on some more bits before they got dressed.

 And a dinosaur park after breakfast. They 'filmed' a narrated Dinosaur show after Kindy. With performances by the T-rex and Tricertops.

This afternoon it has become some sort of fantasy land which hides a number of precious Orbs which need to be hunted and found.

The only bad thing about these blocks is trying to get them to stop playing so they can eat or leave the house. :-) 

 ♥ 

This week on the homeschool web...

The lovable learning blog has some great ideas for Montessori inspired homeschooling.

Home grown books products are lovely!

The Montessori Child online store is Australian based.... yay!

Learn with play at home has some cool ideas. I'm keen to try cows and bulls with Will.

Designing with loose parts at Happy Crafty Family has a list of ideas for items to collect.

And some more cool physical resource ideas at Let the Children Play.

A great article about how we view socialisation.

   ♥ 

This week on the home school web...

I need to translate to Australian the ingredients for this Super Easy Gold Slime.

I need to do this visual schedule it will help both me and Will!

And taking note of these tips for highly sensitive parents will also be very helpful!

If you have a small person who you think may need speech therapy to articulate some sounds (as we do) then this is a handy article with the basics.

Book marking this Audio book I think Will might enjoy: George and the Big Bang

If you are an Australian Based Home Educator then HEN (Home Education Network) is a great resource- it's Victoria Based- but you don't have to be.

Decimal sets for making tens.

 Montessori Golf Tee Clock

Golden Decimal Beads

 Wooden miniatures - there's one for every letter of the alphabet- but I can imagine some other cool uses for them.

Fraction circle sets. 

 ♥

I think....

'Freedom to Think' should be our home school motto.

Image drawn by Chris Riddell from Freedom to Think website which is a super cool concept encouraging and sharing children's creativity.