Judgement

This month I must send in Kirk's progress report & the plan for 2013 to the Home Education Unit. I want to wax lyrical but I realise I'd be wasting my time because they are busy people and just need evidence of progress. This consists of 9 work samples across 3 subjects - English, maths & own choice. Last year I sent them art, so this year I'll give them science.
A quick general summary; Kirk's written composition is below the grade 2 standard but his verbal ability to compose and speak comprehensively is high. His reading & recall is excellent and his ability to "join the dots" and draw conclusions is...creative. This has carried him well with LOTE and his recall of Indonesian vocabulary is pretty good. He loves being able to communicate in other languages especially when it provokes great gales of laughter from his teacher.
His maths ability is above average but he's slow on the draw when speed counts and has trouble dealing with the pressure of competition.
Science floats his boat and his science knowledge is far above the expectations even for grade 3. His conclusions and methods are still dodgy but at this age it's more important to get the experience & knowledge in.
His understanding of health, nutrition & exercise are cruising along but his idea of a "fair game" is decidedly biased. 
Anything to do with a paint brush still receives naught but cursory attention but he enjoys alternative projects - particularly building stuff. Drumming continues as a part of jam sessions with Sankofa. However he will never need to learn drama - his sister creates enough of that for him.

Now a little of Skye...
She is the Barbie of my world.  She likes pink and pretty clothes - although denim jeans rate highly too. She LOVES music & dancing and the word "shopping" whispered at 50 feet can bring her running.  Eyelash-fluttering, toothy smiles and sugary begging are major components in her arsenal. If they fail she chucks tanties. Unfortunately Mummy is blind and deaf so we have wall-to-wall tanties throughout the week. I should just draw a little Hitler moustache on her top lip as a warning to others
Skye craves constant interaction and she is very bossy. Last week she made Reagan lie down so she could change his nappy buuut once she got his legs in the air and nappy off she realised a major flaw in her plans - NO WIPES! Fortunately Anna looked into the playrooms at just the right time and spent the rest of the day laughing. We are very lucky to have a day care mum with such a good sense of humor.
At the moment she is showing very good pre-reader skills so I am wondering if I MIGHT be able to start her reading in the next few weeks. Numbers are just starting but I am not sure if this will be a talent - I expected her to be better at counting by this age. Her spatial ability isn't crash hot either.

My children are poles apart in nature and ability which makes things very difficult for me but maybe, MAYBE, if they can ever stop fighting and trying to manipulate each other they COULD work as a very effective partnership.  I'll keep dreaming...

Abnormal Physics

Surely these past 5 months have stretched the space-time continuum? We spent most of June and July travelling, visiting family & friends in Gold Coast, Taree, Sydney, Canberra, Barham, Stawell, Mt Gambier, Narracorte, Lake Mungo, Cobar (?) and Conabarrabran. Kirk then dived into the Home Ed Winter Read-a-Thon and read 60 books and raised $75 for TEAR Australia. We also started Indonesian language classes and hammered Kirk's maths & English. Meanwhile I worked flat out on grant writing in preparation for a 4 week stint at the high school teaching English & History. During the school contract I did a couple of training days in Goomeri and was offered a strange portfolio of work in grant writing, environmental education & club governance. In the middle of my full time stint we had September holidays which were  a chance to breathe and enjoyed visits from more friends & family. At the same time our first WWOOFer arrived and was soon joined by 2nd Japanese girl. These girls are great because they give me the incentive to start the garden projects and they relieve me of the drudge jobs such clothes and dishes. Many thanks to Brian, Mary, Anna, Rachel & Michelle who have looked after the kids while I have been at work.  Thankfully the endless summer has begun with BBQs, archery, music and swimming in the dam so I no longer feel like this wire spring man Kirk made last month.

Storyteller

When Kirk was young I repeated to him the many fairy tales I grew up with and when I started telling them to Skye, he decided that he was a big boy and too old for baby stories. So I figure he is ready for the darker world of the original tales.  Each era fashions its fairy tales to fulfil its own purposes and the original tales can be very hard to pin down because they were entirely oral. Fragments are found in literature (an entirely different beast) and journals but the recording of these cultural gems occurred only in the late 1700s when people really started to recognise these stories as an interesting aspect of culture.

So at the moment we are watching film versions of the tales. We often compare a modern"'Disney-isation" with an earlier version which is usually less sanitised and does not always have the happy ending of these infantilised tales and later I will dig out the earliest occurrences of the oral tales I can find and look at how they have changed. I think it is very important to understand that there are many versions of the same story - even in real life - and to is up to you to select which story is meaningful and worthy of perpetuating.

Term 2 - Week 2

In Term 1 we worked a lot on Kirk's manual skills but it is only now he is showing some marked progress. In April we did a fortnight of watercolour paintings to improve his dexterity and to give him more confidence to create. Here are a few  samples. Some amount to little more than colouring in while others are fun and random.

Monochrome Shades: Pen & watercolour

Marbling : Shaving cream & watercolour

BATIK: Watercolour & dribbled wax

BATIK: Watercolour and painted wax.

Still life: Water tank

Pen & Watercolour

Landscape: Sunset

THEY CAME

As I mentioned in the previous post, "They Came"  is an exhibition by HolyGreenCow currently on show at BRAG and it gave us the opportunity to play around with her technique so Kirk made this; A GIANT ALIEN KITTEN flying on a BIPLANE, TERRORISING a woman! ARRGHHHHH!!!!!

Kirk thinks this is hilarious and so did I at his age. I spat my milk across the dinner table and rolled on the floor laughing when I saw Kitten Kong on The Goodies. So what are we learning here? SCALE!

Week 9 - 11

WOW! That disappeared quickly! Sigh...it's always the way at the end of the month when I'm grant writing.
 I think you've basically got the picture of what we do each week (endless reading, writing & maths) so now I will just write up the highlights.
HPE: The seasons continue to turn so swimming had its last day, soccer had its first day and we had a pleasant time snorkelling with Bern & Mum & some local home edders. Kirk is enjoying kids club and is interested in the bible stories & ethics they do. Not so good at involving himself in the games and craft but I am sure that will come.
Science: The dragonfly project is slowly growing and in a few weeks I hope we will have something worth showing off. I borrowed mum's camer to take some photos but they are very difficult to photograph. So when the new camera arrives we will have to do the whole "camera man in the wild" thing.  The tadpoles are now testing their legs on dry ground so Kirk's science observations are almost finished. Bernie took him to draft stage, typing it on the computer - unfortunately he made it extremely difficult for them both by by acting as though he didn't know how. I'm finding this behaviour frustrating so I think I might try contracts.
Art: Brian taught us some pencil techniques and today we did a BRAG workshop applying various watercolour techniques and had a good look though the gallery. I was especially taken with the satirical exhibition inspired by 1950 sci-fi movies, "They Came" by Holly Green Cow and Kirk thought it was hilarious so I think we might have a go at the technique once the camera arrives. Samples soon!

Underwater Scene using watercolour and collage techniques made at  BRAG with teacher, Michelle.

Week 8 & part of 9

Maths: Subtraction stories, adding & subtracting vertically, chain adding, doubling, measurement with variable units, fractions, symmetry, time, date.
English: Read Wet Paper series to Samina & Lisa. He is now able to read the Footrot Flats and Garfield comics out loud with expression - exclamation marks are his favourite - and he only mucks up the occasional word. Continued with handwriting text and wrote a letter to grandparents & addressed the envelopes (yet to be posted). I re-introduced the Oxford Spelling book now he is capable of doing it and he made a tongue twister with the spelling words;  Six skinny slugs skip and spin on the spot until they slip and snap. This is also to help his pronunciation of /s/ which is still very poor.
Science: Tadpole observations - they are now starting to sprout legs, and now the weather is cooler we have been walking a lot and the kids pay very careful attention to the insects and fungi we find
HPE: I spoke with the swimming teachers & they think he could join the swim club next season. He is caring for new kittens consistently. Soccer training proper has started on Thursdays. On Monday I took Kirk by himself to Bundy for the day so he received a very direct lesson in public conduct. I let him select where to go for lunch and he immediately said, "SUSHI!" ...awwww...he knows all the right things to say. Last Friday he also started Kids Club at the Community Church now that Friday soccer has finished and that gives him a greater variety of kids to play with.
Arts: We started making some dragonflies - the frames are done but we are yet to decorate them.Started on a pinata for his birthday buuuut I doubt it will dry in time.

Week 7

Maths: adding, shapes, introduced km & short date formats. English: Drafted a letter to grandparents about the cats focussing on phonic spellings. Continued with handwriting & reading. LOTE: Continued to practice German vocabulary with the Samina & Lisa. Art: Pencil sketch of a hibiscus, beading, collage fish, arranged art wall.

Similar model phone

This week I took the kids on my business meetings in the South Burnett. My first meeting was with Glenda at the Murgon Dairy & Heritage Museum where Kirk was able to play with the old telephone exchanges and almost a complete series of telephones. He saw the whole process of a dairy and how butter & cheese was made at different times in history. We visited a variety of buildings - the original Murgon Bank of Qld, a beautiful church, an original slab house which was very likely to have been occupied by bushrangers (as evidenced by the gun ports in the walls), a reconstructed slab kitchen-bathroom, a 1940s dairy. There was also a variety of machinery and he tried out the corn sheller which was impressively effective. I reckon we will visit every time we pass through Murgon from now on because they are always developing their display.

While in Murgon we checked out the cattle sale yards because it was FULL of cattle. It was wet weather so the pens were more like sties and the poor animals were covered in shite from the road train (obviously they were the ones on the bottom!). They were a very rough mob - a big mixture of breeds and horns all over the place - and very unhappy with their circumstances. Oh well, they're resilient so a wash and a feed should make them feel better...but somehow I suspect that lot were off to the works.

Similar model phone exchang

Following this we visited the South Burnett Western Performance Club in Nanango for their monthly meeting. Unfortunately no thrills there except the endless stream of trucks diverted from the flooded Bruce Hwy. Then we camped at the BIEDO office in Goomeri and kids drove our office staff around the bend. The SES leader from Murgon then visited us and we had our meeting in the park where the Fire Dept was rolling up their hoses after a morning call out (double car collision caught on fire) so Grant gave the kids a personal tour of the truck. Ooo! Didn't they feel special!  Finally we called in at Biggenden to sort out another client and bolted home. Ahhh... the sweet serenity of barking dogs and hungry cats!

BUT that was not the end of the week. Today was Hippy Di's festival so Kirk  listened to the bands and played drums with Sean and Isaac and generally hung out with lots of people.

Theatre of the Mind

On the long drive out to the South Burnett I looked in the rear vision mirror and noticed Kirk doing odd things, so I asked him what he was doing. He replied, "I'm growing my brain. I'm making up movies and Goon shows in my head."  WOW! Did THAT get him some praise!  Mind you, torturing his sister is his next favourite activity while travelling in the car.

Week 6

This week we took our couch surfers to Bargara swimming, snorkelling & climbing around the rocks. That evening we had dinner with friends and a jam session.

Maths: Continued with adding practice, counting by various units, basic fractions (with Aunty ‘chelle)
English: As usual he is reading a wide variety of books, magazines and comics - anything he can find - and I am STILL reading a story from Kath Walker's book to him. Handwriting: Regular page a day – definitely improving with guided practice Spelling: Able to spell out words he encounters & asks assistance to decode them.
LOTE:  Learning some German from our couch surfers – greetings & numbers. I think it is time to start a note book so he can remember for when we have more from the same country.
Science: Electronic circuits:  Kirk & Justin built steadiness testers.
Misc: explored beach, visited a bat colony, snorkelling, collected shells, watched nature documentary
HPE: beach walk, swimming, soccer.
Arts: Music: learned about layering & played the drums. Arts:Applied the watercolour technique learned last week.

Gin Gin Home Educators Calendar

I'm cheating & using a blog as the calendar...meh...it works.
Gin Gin Home Educators

GASP!

Our weekly schedule is filling up; swimming, medieval group, art, science, excursions, festivals, library, kids club, soccer and music classes. And you know what? People who send their kids to school go to all this too! Isn't school supposed to provide all this for them?

What people think

Thanks to Defying Gravity

Week 5

We had a very arty week. On Monday we went to BRAG (Bundaberg Regional Art Gallery) where 3 collections were showing: Cabinets of Curiosity which Kirk adored because the stuff he collected last year for his cabinet, with a little creative arrangement, could EASILY have gone into this exhibition. The second one impressed me, Growth, which used basket weaving and natural materials to create sculptures. We also had an art lesson with Brian on painting watercolour flowers. It was a really easy technique - I think we will have to make a wall full of flowers! The rest of our subjects were simply carried over from last week although notably, each night I am reading a couple of stories to Kirk from Stradbroke Dreamtime by Kath Walker. Great stories & beautiful artwork.

Do We HAVE To?

2 years ago Qld came into line with the rest of Australia & now provides 13 years of schooling and this year the national curriculum was introduced. BUT it's a hard and disappointing. So many of the kids are too young to manage it. Yes, some are loving it, but why make this Struggle Street? Can't we give the kids who are not quite ready an extra year to grow up so that their maturity matches what they are expected to learn so schooling becomes a joy instead of constant bafflement?

Week 4

English: Made a frog with plasticine then photographed a story sequence and wrote the story. Read LOTS of books (4WD mag, Asterix comics, Steven Parish wildlife stories, find a bug book, paper aircraft, and Far Out Brussel Sprout series). Revised titles, capitalization, full stops & topic sentences. Also did a lot of phonic work with Reading Eggs.
Maths: Money - focused on adding 10c, 20c and 50c pieces, general equations - building his speed.
Science: Frog & leech observations (involuntary). Weed identification
HPE: soccer, swimming, playing with friends, climbing trees, hanging out with M&B
Arts: Experimented with  an electronic keyboard.
Practical Skills: Weeding the property.

The Rest of Week 3 (3 days)

Science: Freshwater: Kirk discovered tadpoles in the wheelbarrow so we will monitor them over the coming weeks. Gardening: We planted macadamia seedlings (thankyou Ross) one of them was directly planted with no ground preparation, the other in a large hole with a couple of old nappies for their water crystals, humus, slow release fertiliser and cow-poo liberally mixed in. Spotter's Log: We saw a few different animals but the most impressive was the red backed fairy wren.

Maths: Money, basic equations & pattern recognition.
English:  Frog books, Asterix comics and lots of random stuff.
HPE: soccer, swimming, bike riding, hanging out with friends inc. spent time with Ashley & his family selling snags for the soccer club and last night Dylan's birthday dinner (17!)

Week 2 & a bit of 3

I suspect these reports will gradually get further and further apart because doing home schooling is so much more fun than writing about it. Note that I integrate the subjects so when we study science we are also reading, writing and doing a lot of maths, art, drama etc... 


Science: We modelled the rain-cycle in a jar & watched how plant transpiration works. Then we made some splattery ink clouds to go on the art wall. We have done numerous trawls catching mostly glass shrimp (Paratya Australiensis), dragonfly nymphs and BSFs (bloody small fish). We've looked at the dragonfly life-cycle which differs from butterflies who have a pupation stage whereas dragonflies just go about their business and gradually transform inside their own skin.  We read, "Exploring Our Creek" and he knew a fair bit about all the animals mentioned so we added our own page on the Freshwater Mussel (Velesunia ambiguous) which he gathers regularly in the creek.

Freshwater Mussels: They live in creeks and dams. They eat algae and detritus. In drought they bury into the mud. (He dictated, I wrote & he copied.)

Socialisation: Plenty of opportunities with soccer, swimming, shopping & visiting friends.
Reading & Listening: We're still on Pobblebonks - he's really enjoying the book because he has discovered how to use expression in his reading. We also read Mem Fox's "Harriet You'll Drive Me Wild", Terry Pratchett, "The Unadulterated Cat" and more Andy Griffiths.
Handwriting: Meh...a little every day. Quality varies with his mood.
Maths: 6 weeks of holidays killed his speed equations so we're slowly building it again, mostly with games but our focus this week  is money. Kirk has made a shop from a cardboard box and we have been role playing the transactions between some very interesting characters. We giggled so much we needed a "Run Like Muppet" session to get the giggles out.  He also did some book work which looked at informal units of measurement. Sigh...he is still learning the months of the year - I need a song!
PE: We are taking every opportunity to go swimming and started soccer last Saturday.
LOTE: Kirk is experimenting with words and continually makes up his own words or asks if they exist in another language. This is great because he understands that language in itself is a creative process.
Practical stuff: Kirk made pizza, noodles and sandwiches. He discovered knives hurt and now prefers to use the little serrated knives. He's also independent enough to go alone to the public library and borrow appropriate stuff for Skye & himself.

Week 1

A gentle start, so not a huge amount done this week.

Socialisation: Played with cousins & friends, spent time with Leo learning about France via photos & music and watched Peter & gaming club play Warhammer.
Science:  Introduction to the water cycle & concept of healthy waterways. Flooded creek observations: erosion & the animals around the creek (insects, frogs & snakes). Built a working submarine (soda bottle with a rubber band driven propeller). Electronics - rebuilt the continuity circuit and modified the circuit to accommodate a buzzer (far more annoying = more fun), started using a commercial voltmeter.
Maths: Revised year 1 math concepts; numbers to 100, count by 5s & 10s - forward & backwards. Measuring cm, 2D & 3D shapes, months of the year.
English: He read levels 1 & 2 books from Wet Paper's, Kids and Water series & Pobblebonks. I read to him: 1 story from Andy Griffith's "Just Stupid"
Grammar: Together we revised how to use full stops and he used ABC Reading Eggs which in lessons 95 to 97 taught vowel blends and the difference between vowels and consonants.
Handwriting: 2 pages from handwriting book.
LOTE: Leo is providing a lot of cultural knowledge about France & a lot of international music.
Practical Skills: Sewed a tapestry bag & assisted Sean with fencing (helpful & entertaining).
Personal Development: Used metaphor to boost confidence - watched The Little Train Who Could & read The Little Red Caboose.
Skye started to learn shapes, colours, letters & numbers.

Long Time No See

Apologies for the long holiday! Normally I just place here the highlights but instead I will try to post more often and give a run down of what Kirk does each day - this could prove tedious but so many people ask what homeschoolers actually DO all day. Of course they are also intensely interested about how we socialise our children which is a skill parents lost in the industrial era - over 200 years ago! Fortunately the home-schooling fraternity are reviving this lost art, creating hard-working yet creative and happy adults who are able to relate to people across the generations!

So what's on this week? I'm aiming on a freshwater ecology, electronics & gardening...I hope :-)

Moving Along

Kirk is a stubborn, self-directed learner and often rejects my assistance. Currently he is reading Footrot Flats and Garfield comics. I know he can not read much of them yet but he is decoding them gradually and since they are his reading matter of choice (obsession?) how can I refuse?  He loves the ABC Reading Eggs software and has almost finished all their latest levels so I hope they publish something soon.

We have finally moved onto grade 2 Signpost Maths and he is finding it easy. Oddly he likes the structure of that particular maths text and bucks when I try to feed him anything else. Using the Mathletics texts as grade 1 revision was unsuccessful and nor does he find the Mathletics online software engaging any longer because the interface is extremely repetitive. So why is Mathletics so popular? It looks like I need to find something which will engage him in more creative ways. However we will be studying electronics in term 4 so that should extend his numeracy in all sorts of directions. 

On a side note Kirk now wants to be a chef because he is very proud of his efforts in making pizza from scratch.  He can also prepare noodles, make sammies and helps me generally in he kitchen.

Report on the Bundaburg Air Show

Last weekend we spent 3 days at the Bundaberg Air Show. On the first day we bought a hovercraft. We also saw 3 big racing cars (one was small), they do 400km per hour. They belong to Stuart Bishop. He’s the guy who drives them. We spent a lot of time looking at airplanes. I liked the bi-planes – they were pretty good at stunts.

I like the Roulettes doing their tricks. They are planes that are red with stripes on each wing. They’re airforce pilots that fly the trainer aircraft.
  
I have found out that F18s are REALY REALLY REALLY loud. They are incredibly fast! They protect the world – they go to war. And maybe they are the best planes ever built in history.

Matt Hall is a famous pilot, he did stunts. He did loops, hovering, he flew upside down and all sorts of amazing things.
   
I had a chance to get in an airplane. And I knew how you steer it and how you use the brakes. There was a stick that had a little handle you pull it back and that slows the airplane down and that stick steers it. Right – turn the airplane right, left – turn the airplane left. It was a fighter called a Nanchang CJ6A and it fought during the Korean and Vietnam wars.

I saw microlights. They have a propeller at the back which pushes them whih is attached to an engine. The man said that he takes his daughter flying in it. How you steer – there is a little bar and to go left you tilt it right and to go right you tilt it left. There is no roof, no doors or walls – they are just a small light aircraft.

This “seeker” airplane looked very unusual.

That's Just Silly

Reading has really clicked. Perhaps because he has discovered Dr Seuss. He INSISTS on reading them himself and giggles all the way through. Which in one way is a pity  because I love reading them to him.

Just an Update

Kirk is almost ready to move onto grade 2 maths but I'll just revise all the concepts & wait for his literacy to catch up before we buy the next text. While he has an excellent oral ability, his reading level is still restricted to the basic building blocks & phonic words. His handwriting still requires a lot of work as well and I think these things are restricted by his maturity and he will simply develop them in time. Also I'm finding he has an excellent memory and will repeat facts and passages wth fair accuracy months after he has learned them. 

North American Indians

A report dictated by Kirk with a few suggestions from me to help it make sense.

Indians used bows and arrows and spears for hunting. They liked to hunt wild turkeys - they go, "Gobble, gobble gobble!" [turkey calls on YouTube].  They hunted buffalow by scaring them over cliffs. They then would fall and break their bones. The Indians hunted moose with moose callers. We made a moose caller last week out of paperbark and tied it with strong grass. It sounds like "mwaaaaaja".  Here is a page full of moose calls. [ed: Kirk thinks these are hilarious.]


They caught fish with nets and lines with hooks with bait. Their bait was made out of other fish. Their first idea was insects and then other fish.  They also made fish traps.  Indians planted types of corn, squash (pumpkins) and beans. They also gathered blueberries, seeds, nuts and herbs. 

They made canoes fom wood and bark.

They lived in tepees, wigwams, longhouses and mud brick houses.
The plains Indians followed the buffalow with tepees. The tepees were made out of skin and how they put them up was with stiff sticks.They were nomads.The east coast Indians lived in longhouses made from bark and wood. They did not move often. Others built wigwams and moved occassionally. Some of the mudbrick houses (adobe) were built under a cave so they did not have roofs.

During this month we have made a costume & feather headress. We are now making a tepee and my first tepee is nearly half built. Mum is making leather moccasins, a quiver and tomorrow we'll make a leather bag with seed and shell decorations.

We have been doing lots of archery and I'm hitting the targets more often. Sometimes I hit them in the neck.

My Life as an Indian

Kirk spent most of today as an American Indian. He sewed a tunic (which he can wear to Northern War) and went hunting for deer. He also discussed at length their houses. His tepee unfortunately is still under construction.

V-I-K-I-N-G

Mum, I know how to spell Viking. V-I-K-I-N-G!

Ahhh... A boy after my own heart!

Last week it was Indians and it looks like this week it will be Vikings. He then asked, "Why did they call them Vikings?"
"I don't know, we will have to research that."

GOAL!!!

The soccer team kicked their first goal and Kirk achieved his - NOT to cry during the game! Well done my little boy.

Nerd Cert I

Kirk passed Nerd Cert I the other day. He excitedly pointed to David Attenborough on the DVD and exclaimed, "This man tells me all about animals - he's really good - I watch all his stuff!!!"  and he doesn't recognise  High 5 or the Wiggles.

Cock-a-doodle-doooo

Kirk is buckling down to work properly now. When we open a page of his handwriting text - he just does it. If I tell him it's not good enough and rub it out, he just does it again with more care and no complaints.

His maths progress is great but what I am even happier about is he can self-assess and is setting his own goals. If he receives less than 80% in Mathletics he is disappointed and deservedly celebrates when he achieves full marks. Today he aced his term assessment from the Signpost Maths textbook. Partially this has occurred because reading and writing is falling into place hence the textbook is a lot easier to understand. He willingly does 2 or 3 pages at a time and can sometimes predict what they want him to do.

3 weeks ago we did a mapping exercise at Frank & Elaine's place with our homeschool group and this week Kirk surprised me with a spontaneous map of our yard - everything was recognisable and in the right place. Incidentally he drew this map for the Toothfairy because he has lost another tooth.

He is also loving soccer even though he is the woosiest boy there! His coach, Ashley, is very patient and gently explains and encourages him. His swimming progress is also pretty good and I am hoping he will be good enough for swim club by September.

So where is Skye in all this? Usually harassing him!

Reading at last

It's taken a while but reading has finally clicked for Kirk. Admittedly it's just phonically and only 2 & 3 letter words but he's made it to first base. PHEW! I hope the next landmark comes a bit quicker :-)