Snake Handling

The children got to hold a real snake this morning while we were out at the shops.

And Noah pats the snake while it sits on Hannah's shoulders.

Yes, a real life dingo.....

Australian Insects

Ever since we started getting into Nature Study I have found that it has been slowly and a most steady winding road to new delightful discoveries.

When we took up AO for Chloe it suddenly went into massive overdrive, and has been producing an entire whole new world to us.

This week while out in the wild I found this particular little gem.  A general flick through the pages revealed a hidden nugget of wealth.

I've been living in Australia my whole life, and all this time I had no idea to the extent of our native insects, let a lone any other animal species.

It's like I was robbed for nearly 50 years and all of a sudden my inheritance is being sent back home.

How did I ever get through life without doing Nature Study??

I have so much to catch up on.

Anyway, back to the book:  it does have some colour plates, but it was the copious amounts of detailed lined drawings that really caught my eye. 

 Can't wait to include it in our schooling along the way.

Nature Study AO8

Here are two of the nature study notebooking pages that Chloe gave me this week:

Basically she's reading a chapter from a book and then doing a notebooking page for them.

This particular one came from 'First Studies in Plant Life'.

This one came from 'Nature Studies in Australia'.

Both books are proving to be awesome books.

Week 13

For the past two weeks on my facebook wall I've been showing people how to make their own Language Arts program without a curriculum.  Yes, without a curriculum.  All you really need is a good reading book.  We tackled one portion at a time.  It's been fun.

At any rate, I've saved you a copy of the download, so you can try it out too.

Just click the page below.

This week in our homeschool......

The girls came to the end of their exercise books

{ well, so close that I felt we needed new ones now }.

It took us a whole 3 months to fill them.

What they look like stacked.

Yep, nice and fluffy.  We fill them up with all sorts of things.

Nature Drawing this week:

Charlotte tried some new stuff:

and kept on working on her 'morning work' { on the right there }.

{ k } is for koala.  :o)

The two older girls are nearing the end of their Climbing to Good English workbooks:

They turned out to be lovely little hidden gems.  I don't think that they are very well known as a curriclulum, and I only stumbled upon them because of my Rod and Staff love.  I really love them for English.  They cover so much and I love their style.

Even Hannah is doing great with it.  I only ask her to do one page a day.   I feel confident that she "could" easily do more, but yeah, I don't push it.  I save that for her Maths.  ha ha ha.

This week I'll be linking up with:

I hope you will join us.

A Catch Up Week

We are officially on school break at the moment, but yes, I am still handing out the odd bit of schooly work for the girls.

I found a great little 'Australian Golden Project Book' - unused I might add - for the girls to read and copy some insects out of.   Copy, not trace.  :o)

I have also started putting some Art Appreciation lessons aside for next year.   I very specifically went in search of prints, coloring pages to match, and a couple of good books for reading.

Since we aren't doing much schooling these days I've also had some free time to do some laminating.

A nice little Time center { that I picked up on TpT } for half and quarter hours.

The cards below are actually designed for a word wall, but I thought they'd be super handy as flash cards.  They work to compliment the morphology spelling lists { that I picked up on TpT } that the girls are currently going through.

Each spelling unit actually comes in 3 different levels, which I think is awesome.  That makes it super easy for me to divvy up the worksheets as I know Chloe gets level 3, Phebe gets level 2, and Hannah gets level 1.  The higher the level the more words the child has to work with.

Something fun and new that the girls have become addicted to is the game 'Cluedo.'

I hope you've enjoyed a quick peek into our week.

Are you on holidays yet?

Today I'll be linking up with:

I hope you will join us.

Thanks for visiting.

{ Week 20 }

Yahoo!  We are now half way down for the year!  Or less if we decide to have less than 40 weeks this year.

Nature Study, when we were away on holiday, seemed to be restricted to water, sand, and a spider for the most part.  We spied this fine specimen in the front garden, and so we began to study it. We gently knocked out his web at one point as well and voila, when we returned the next day it was completely re-built.  Don't you just love his decorating style with the extra zig-zagging?  I also love how he pairs his legs.  Such a neat and tidy fellow.  His web was gorgeous and so meticulously woven to exact measurements. 

Additionally, we also went castle visiting.

Phebe in the stocks.

Hannah's turn.

I really dislike castles museums.  Am I allowed to confess that?  They give me the creeps!  Nothing more creepy than dead people and the like on display.  I only like the ones that are in books.  ha ha ha.  So we only stayed for a couple of hours, just enough to do a good round of everything on display.  Then off we went to do something else.

The character workbook is moving along nicely.

Working on their Anaconda theme.

Definitions, and opinion.  They just write their work underneath.

How to feed an Anaconda.

Practicing using the words:  first, next, then, last.

Something else that occurred to me this week is wondering WHAT type of books the girls, in particularly Chloe was reading.

So what I did was list them up with these categories:  Bible, Literature, History, Biography, and Science.   So now I was able to see at a glance what type of books she'd been reading, and which categories needed more focus.  We're pretty strong on Literature { novels } but yeah, we could really do with reading some more of all the others.

 

Reading this week to the littles:

Caesar's Triumph - I am really enjoying this book.

The Science Book of Science by Jean Henri Fabre.

Plutarch - Marcus Crassus, as per Anne White's guide from Ambelside.

Shakespeare - Midsummers Night's Dream

Encyclopedia:

Ageing

Air

Air-conditioning

Aircraft

Airport

Alabama

Alaska

* * * * *

Today I'll be linking up with:

and

I hope you will join us.

Thanks for visiting.

{ Week 18 }

Homer

Homer was a bard.  He was a bard because he made books.  People liked him.  And he was a boy.  He will be here if it was the olden days.

Homer made stories when he was young.  He had some fun in his life.  We do not live in books.  He has already died.

Homer was big.  He was kind.  He was happy.  I love doing this.

Hannah { 5 }

* * * * *

This week we started SHAKESPEARE!

What am I doing?  ha ha ha.

Nevertheless, we begin with The Tempest.

We also continue with our beloved Plutarch:  Marcus Crassus.

As a side note, did you know that he also wrote 5 hefty volumes on Morals?  Yeah, me either, but I am super interested in them.

A science notebook page before we went away on holidays.

Going to the beach for a look, see.

Checking out the sand.

Peeking out.

A favourite day.

Little tortoises swim.

How you pack for lunch while travelling.

A sketch from Phebe.

A picture of Chloe { now 10 }.

Now, I always find it easier to start new things after returning from holidays.  So on our return Chloe started these two books:

This one I picked up for only $16.50 in a Noosa second hand book shop.  In great condition too!!

Something that's been on the shelves for years.  Chloe will be reading it for Bible time.

I also got quite interested in Samuel Pepys due to Jeanne's post on her blog { A Peaceful Day }.  And low and behold when I got home I found this on my shelf.  I've had it for years and never knew how awesome and handy it would come.  Yay!!  Additionally, I've also ordered myself a copy of his Diaries.  Can't wait for when we finally get to reading it.

Nature Study this week:

I think the girls had fun discovering how a seed splits and allows the root to grow out and begin a plant.

Copywork by Chloe.  In many ways I think this "speeds" up our English lessons.  As in, the time it takes is actually less than what we would normally spend.   The girls find it to be much easier, but also, on the other hand, more instructional than the other different types of English lessons as well.

There's a lady called Amy on TpT that does these Bible Notebooks.  I've purchased a few of her mini lessons.  I really love them, and will buy more.  Here is one: Solomon, we did this one today.  For a $1, you can't go wrong.  I highly recommend them.  :o)

Also in our read alouds this week:

Aborigines

Abraham

Abrasives

Absolute Zero

Acacias

Acceleration

Achilles

Acids

I got the ENTIRE set at market day for a song.  $4 I believe, if my memory serves me well.

Ok, think this might be enough show and tell for the week.

This week I'll be linking up with:

I hope you will join us.

Thanks for visiting.