Posted by Sarah in Homeschooling on February 25, 2013

As a way of learning about Australia’s past we have been focusing on a new painting each week that depicts a moment in the evolution of our country. This week’s painting was Second Class: A Parting by Abraham Solomon. The artwork, completed during Solomon’s train obsessed period, is a raw, honest portrayal of the multitude of emotions experienced by a family farewelling their son and brother as he embarks on the long journey to from England to Australia to seek his fortune in the gold rush. The emotional scene is neatly contained within the curved walls of a train carriage. As a way of getting inside the artists head we decided to take a little art focused train trip ourselves.

I forgot how exciting everything can be to a kid. What in my mind was a simple ride on a train to do a little drawing became became a thrilling adventure full of wonderful machines…

…that magically gift you with tickets that…

…defeat ominous symbols glowing from unknown obstacles

I also forgot how upset Sabi would be when she was told she was too young for a ticket, oh boy there was tears. Luckily her ten year old sister has just recently outgrown the need to jump up and down with excitement and sqeee loudly when given a ticket. She happily handed hers over to Sabi and so saved the day.

Lilly read the platform safety rules and Eli made sure he could stand as close as possible without breaking the yellow line rule.

The train ride up the mountain was surprisingly packed full of people so it was impossible to get out our drawing things, this didn’t stop Lilly being so excited I thought her smile was going to wrap right the way round her face and meet itself at the other side.

Out of the train we headed straight to a bakery for afternoon tea. Sabi found her reflection an entertaining companion.

mmmm sweet things yum!

Mr cool trying his hardest not to smile.

We then went and squealed around at a park for awhile…

…before heading back to the train station to wait for the train home.

This time the emptiness of the carriage gave us the freedom to sit together as a family.

The square framed suburban paintings that flashed passed our hungry eyes brought us back to the mission we had set out to accomplish.

The bigger kids sketched away happily…

…while Daddy tried to subdue Sabi’s boundless energy.

I love how the kids learn so much more than I plan for them to explore when we go out with learning in mind. As they drew they peppered us with questions about the workings of the train and voiced  their observations of the differences from the carriages Soloman painted in the past and the one we road in today. I was happy today, any day where one of your offspring shouts across a crowded platform “This is the best day ever!!” has to make you smile right?

Posted by Sarah in Homeschooling, Outings on November 29, 2012

Lani has recently noticed that other families take nicely posed group shots when they go anywhere special. This is our best out of four taken at the south east Asian festival Parramasala. Eli point blank refused, Lani got nervous and couldn’t look at me, my camera wasn’t fast enough to capture Sabi in the split second she sat still and  Lilly engaged all of her facial muscles taking her straight past the desired ‘happy face’ and straight in to psychopath territory,

When we arrived at the site of the festival the kids played in the playground with the masses of other children. It was like we had travelled overseas, out of the 50 or so kids swarming over the play equipment ours were the only ones of European decent, and poor Lani with her pasty white skin glowed like a ghost, sorry honey if I could up your melanin levels I would.

Lani and Lilly were very keen to try the food from the market stalls. They love butter Chicken from our local Indian shop but decided to be brave and try something new. They chose a chicken and rice dish under a big sign that read “Not Hot”

The have now learnt that advertising signs don’t always tell the truth. To be fair we did tell them that to people who eat vindaloo regularly, their chicken and rice probably tasted as mild as milk.

Glenn brought back a tray with six different dishes thinking that it would be just for him and me. The kids however weren’t fazed by the spicy rice and wanted to taste them all. I was quite proud of them for tasting a selection of foods that were new to them even if they did eat my dinner. 

Eli even tried a few which is huge for him who panics over new foods and can’t stand the feel of rice in his mouth. He really only ate about four bites of food all night but hey, I’ll take a win no matter how small.

We then tried to go inside the town hall to see the market stalls. It didn’t go well, Sabi decided to have a massive meltdown because she wanted to go back to the playground. We had said she could go back later, forgetting to specify an exact time, so she had it in her head that we would be going there straight after dinner. She went off like crazy, I think the large crowds, loud music and flashing lights weren’t helping but Glenn eventually managed to calm her down.

Stepping inside the town hall building was as if we had been transported to a far away land. Garlands of yellow and orange flowers rained down from the ceiling and a bright coloured tent graced the centre of the room. The furnishings of the tent were ornately carved wooden chairs and cushions woven with glittering golden thread. Lani noticed all the gold colour, “Do Indian people like gold?” she asked “because it’s all over the place here and on the videos of the dancing they wore lots and lots of jewellery.” “Yes they probably do,” I answered “but there’s not many cultures in the world that don’t like gold.”

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Posted by Sarah in Parties on November 24, 2012

The party’s starting I mean it!

Unlike last year’s Doctor Who party this year Eli and Sabi wanted completely different party themes. They also wanted most of the same guests and asked to have their parties on the same day. Because their parents are mad we said yes. So on the same day, at exactly the same time Eli had a Princess Bride themed party and Sabi had a Peppa Pig one but I’m going to blog about them as if they were completely separate otherwise we’d be here all day.

Eli practically lives his life in dress up clothes. He feels most comfortable around other people when he’s taking on a character, I think it’s an Asperger thing. He had asked if everyone who came could be dressed up too but as a fair few of his friends also have varying degrees of autism or sensory integration disorder or anxiety we talking him round to accepting them in whatever they felt comfortable wearing on the day. He, of course, was The Dread Pirate Roberts the most coolest swashbuckling love struck hero of all time.

We put the movie on as soon as Eli’s pack arrived, we hardly ever go to the movies so at home movies with pop corn and fairy floss are still pretty exciting. also it allowed any kids new to the Princess Bride to catch up to speed. It was funny to see how many of them were as grossed out by the kissing parts as the sick Fred Savage was. 

With the movie done we headed outside where the Dread Pirate Roberts scaled the Cliffs of Insanity (the kid has very strong arms)

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Posted by Sarah in Parties on November 24, 2012

 

Unlike last year’s Doctor Who party this year Eli and Sabi wanted completely different party themes. They also wanted most of the same guests and asked to have their parties on the same day. Because their parents are mad we said yes.

 

So on the same day, at exactly the same time Eli had a Princess Bride themed party and Sabi had a Peppa Pig one but I’m going to blog about them as if they were completely separate otherwise we’d be here all day.

 

 

Every day for the last two weeks Sabi has been asking to hear the names of the little friends she had invited to her party. She would start with ‘”Who’s coming to my party?” I would give her a name “Finn’s coming” “and then who, and then who?” and she would bounce up and down till we had gone through them all.

So on the day of the party, when everyone started to arrive she squealed with joy when each of her guests appeared and call out loudly “You were right, they did come to my party!”

She was very spoilt and got lots of lovely presents and lots of help and instructions on how to open them.

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Posted by Sarah in Homeschooling on November 7, 2012

The kids, with freaky glow in the dark eyes, waking up up early to watch the Olympic opening ceremony.

As we really aren’t all that sporty in this house I thought that the kids would be keen to watch the opening ceremony and then that would be where their interest in the games would fizzle out. However they truly surprised me by showing such a great interest in watching the events, having to be dragged away from the TV at night and wanting it on as soon as they woke to see what had happened while they slept, that I decided to go with it and put aside my sketchy plan for the term. luckily we had just reached Europe in our trip around the world lessons so we focused on England as London was the host city. I had been planning on visiting the other major European countries, we usually read fiction and information books from the country we are focusing on, look up their traditions and landmarks and eat meals that originated there and so on. I asked the kids to chose between that and spending more time on the Olympics and they chose the latter, which I was fine with we can always explore Europe in greater detail later. So all we really did was look on our big map and the countries of Europe and I made an effort to point them our when we saw them competing in the games.

Instead we learnt about the history of the games and the individual events, revisited Greek mythology looked at what life would be like to be an athlete and had ago at imitating them at our local athletic park. I found an Olympic themed preschool pack so even Sabi could join in. She loved doing her ‘work’ like the big kids. There are more preschool packs over at 1plus1plus1equals1.

Lani decided she wanted to make an Olympic Ring meal she had seen one on the internet made with fruit, I think, but the only fruit we had were bananas so Lani’s creation has coloured icing, BBQ sauce, jam and bananas and they ate them all, gross kiddies.

We also made an Olympic lap book, a lap book on England, completed some worksheets from the Australian Olympic Education site. We read some of the history of Great Britain in a book called Our Island Story which we have been reading on and of all year as I think a good understanding of British history is important for our kids as their Grandparents and Aunty and Uncle were born in England. For our family read aloud we read through a collection of European legends from the middle ages in a book called ‘The Big Book of Knights Nobles and Knaves’. Eli had a little trouble with this book he enjoyed the Arthurian tales of Gawain and Percival’s quests and the tale of Arthur himself but most of the others in the book including Romeo and Juliet and Tristan and Isolde were very tragic and after a few nights he decided that he would leave the room during the dying bits because they made him too sad. The girls had no such problems and are still retelling the part where Roland blew his horn so hard that his head ruptured and blood ran out of his ears.