Saturday, 29 August 2015

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.
 ♥

Friday, 28 August 2015

5 Days of Lunches






Thursday, 27 August 2015

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.
 ♥

Wednesday, 26 August 2015

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. 


♥

Monday, 24 August 2015

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.
  ♥


Friday, 21 August 2015

5 Days of Lunches






Thursday, 20 August 2015

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!
♥