Our church has been laying new carpet. This means the biggest cardboard rolls we’ve ever gotten our hands on are just laying around the place and since we are studying the continent of South America, and looking closely at Brazil, when I saw them I immediately thought tree trunks.

This activity didn’t just serve as a huge visual reminder of our journey through the Amazon it presented numerous learning opportunities in itself.

The kids knew they needed brown but we had only the primary colours. I asked them if they could talk to each other and maybe do a few experiments to see if they could find brown, they had remembered the basic colour mixes but couldn’t think of two colours that made brown. Lani had a moment of inspiration when she remembered seeing brown when Sabi had gotten to their paint pallets and mixed all the colours together. So after a few trial runs that were too red they got the colour they were after.

It also turned out to be a fairly messy activity, like that’s a surprise.

This may not be top of your list of bonuses. However with one child who adores mess and will seek it planed or not and another who has been known to freak out over glue/paint/water touching his skin it proved to be a brilliant safe time to give in to obsessions and challenge phobias respectively.

Oh yeah and as the tubes were round and had to be held while painting them it was also good for all that bi-lateral, crossing the centre line, using two hands and both bits of your brain stuff….I should really listen better in class.

plus it was fun

Bet you can’t tell which child adores messy play. By the way bubbles are included in messy play in my world once you’ve seen what Sabi can do with a bottle of detergent, the kitchen and the time it takes Mummy to go to the toilet you would consider them a ticking time bomb too. But in the above photo she was being reminded (once again) that mess can be fun, but we do need to clean up after ourselves.

And then we learnt to fly.

Like an Amazon bird

or Amazon super hero?

before we all came back down to earth and made dinner.

I was totally failing at keeping my ASD seven year old in the room long enough to even hear the words we were trying to learn let alone attempt to spell them. It wasn’t that he wasn’t interested in the lesson. He was, he couldn’t wait for his turn to write on the board and squealed with excitement every time he got a word right first go. It was just that he was equally interested in jumping on the trampoline, skipping, swirling the skipping rope, trying to catch the dancing spot of light on the wall, discovering what was causing the dancing spot of light on the wall, explaining the properties of reflective material, listing the occupations in which the wearing of clothes made out of reflective material was a requirement………..and it was really starting to tick the girls off.

The lesson was taking too long and I was about to cut my losses, send him off in search of a butterfly or something and hope the fallout later when he realized I had gone on and schooled the girls without him wouldn’t be catastrophic. Then inspiration struck. I realised that one of the word families we were working on was the `ood` family. Yay I know that family, those weird squishy, tentacle faced, hive brained singing dudes, I know them and better than that Eli does too. At the moment Eli’s absolute top of the list special interest is Doctor Who followed closely by Minecraft and Gymnastics. Basically he’s in his element killing Creepers whilst wearing Eleven’s skin and standing on his head. If that last statement makes no sense to you then you need to hand your nerd licence back in, it’s been revoked. Anyhooo I quickly scribbled up an Ood on the whiteboard and the change in Eli was instantaneous. Without being asked and with overflowing enthusiasm he began to write all the words he could think of with ood in them. Those staring red eyes were like some kind of attention drug and Eli was hooked.

Mr Ood has not been allowed to leave our board all week. Instead he stays, demanding the best out of his pupils and has now become a crucial part of each spelling lesson coming up with ingenious if not childish sentences containing the word on our list. Now I’m racking my brain to think of other ways to let the Doctor into our lessons.

Book Week is a magical day, yes it is a day to celebrate the hard work of talented Authors and Illustrators. A day to appreciate the characters they gift us after many creative hours labouring over the birth of a new life albeit a one confined to the page, but it is also a day were we can put aside self and live the life of our heroes of fiction. Today we can talk to animals, follow white rabbits and fly in a blue box to planets normally held captive by time and space, today is magic.

Goldilocks and her three bears (and apple)

Alice in Wonderland

The Eleventh Doctor Who

Pippi Longstocking

The best group shot of the day, Sabi was meant to be in the large gap in the middle but never mind.

One of the books we read was called My Uncle’s Donkey. It is a cute little book with very retro micky mouse style illustrations of a donkey running amuck in the uncles house. The story elicits delightful responses from the children along the lines of “That’s naughty he really shouldn’t be in the fridge, I would never do that!” And “Ahhh now he’s eating the flowers…..aren’t they Vincent Van Gough flowers?” and yes they were, the book is full of little pop culture references that you can explore in greater detail with older children.

I did love the fact that when the book inquired at the end not one of our kids thought it would be a good idea to have the Donkey come and live at their house.

For a craft we used one of the donkey drawings from the book and the starter line My uncle’s donkey……. to create our own donkey scenario using drawing and collage just like the book.

There was of course lots of free play opportunities and it was nice to see the kids inventing their own games.This one involved two sitting people and two standing ones that occasionally ran around the sitting ones like crazy then stood still. I’m not sure what the point was but I’m certain it existed after the amount of planning I witnessed before they started.

The second book we read was called The Tall Man and the Twelve Babies. This book is quirky and funny and delightfully nonsensical with a very tall man living in a very tiny apartment with six baby boys all named Alistair and six baby girls all named Charlene. And to top it off the babies aren’t very well behaved. To make the chaos come alive I hid laminated copies of the twelve babies around the Shed (School/playroom) each one had an action verb written on the back. When one was found the finder had to read the word then we all did the action such as jump, shake, cry……I think by the end of it we all felt the tall man’s pain.  At one point in the story the poor tall man is stuck in a cat flap and pulled in alternative directions by the Alistairs and Charlenes so we played a game of tall Man Tug of War with Charlenes (girls) verses Alistairs(boys). The girls knocked the boys socks off, twice, go girl power!

We finished with a colouring in of the Tall man complete with crazy hair that will be turned into a book mark.

Wet crafting hanging on the line drying oh so nicely when the weathers fine….

A glimpse of the madness involved in feeding so many, this was about half I’ll let you imagine the noise.

The theme for book week this year was One World Many Stories so we had to have a world cake to celebrate. My kids have also been looking at different stories from around the world and decorated the windows with a pulled apart sticker book on national costumes of the world so they felt that they had participated in the theme.

The last book we read, Maudie and Bear, won it’s category and looked just like it had been pulled of the shelves of history. For me this book works best as a one on one with a child where the little one you are reading with can snuggle up on your lap and pour over the delicate illustrations. I fell in love with the illustrations, their unfinished sketchiness and visible pencil lines gave the book an exquisite fragility, like it was merely a passing glimpse into a time gone by and if we weren’t careful we would loose the moment before we truly understood it. They added so much story to the book, filling in the blanks between one carefully succinct line to the next. The title character Maudie however is neither careful nor delicate and is instead the essence of every true child, self focused, hot tempered, excitable and sometimes rude but steadfast bear loves her through it all. by the end of the collection of short stories you just know Maudie with turn out well adjusted, who wouldn’t living with such strong non judging unconditional love.

For the craft for Maudie and the Bear the kids put eyes, nose and ears on and then stuffed a bear I had sewn. I’m hoping they can find the time to learn how to stich up his bottom because the poor bears left here very uncomfortable with their bottoms pined shut.     

They seemed to have fun, I hope they did I loved having them all around.

The Doctor will see you now.

“We are building a classroom at the bottom of our garden.”

I said that statement recently to a person I didn’t know and who I knew had no idea we are a home-schooling family. It was in response to her query about my use of the last school holidays. I braced myself for the requisite “why are you doing that, why are you home-schooling, are you mad?” inquisition followed rapidly by the usual excuses as to why they would find it too difficult (By the way, if you ever feel the need to do this, you soooo don’t need to apologise to me I really don’t care two hoots about your educational choices for your own children I imagine you put some thought into it and went with what suited your little ones best. I imagine if the thought to home-school even crossed your mind you dismissed it because you knew it would cause your whole family more stress than it was worth or you knew in your heart you children would be miserable. I know this because that’s the thoughts we have about school and that’s the reason we don’t go, not, big not, because we believe it is the best and only way to educate a child)

Anyway this women just paused for a nanosecond, said “Oh ok” with a small shrug of the shoulders and carried on with her conversation about the sales, I think. Apparently backyard classroom building is common place and I should really stress less about talking to people.

Classroom building is sparky.

We also have no working lights in the school room yet so big sparky tools are being used in the dark, emergency waiting room here we come!

Notice my Dad is helping us again, isn’t he cool, he is the King of Construction. If it wasn’t for Dad we would be living in a plastic wall panelled homage to the bad parts of the 70′s. Now we dwell in a perpetual construction zone….um….yay….

We have been looking at contractions today, it did not run soothly.

Me: “I am going to read a word to you and I want you to tell me what words it is a contraction of. The word is Aren’t”

Lillian: “Aunty!”

 

Me: Can you please say your contractions to me before you go to free play time.”

Eli: “No!!!

Me: (insert random gentle persuasive words)

Eli: “AAAHhhhhggg!!!!” bangs fists down on the table “I cannot I can’t, I will not  I won’t and you aren’t going to make me” Then runs off

Alanah: “Well….at least you got him to say his contractions.”

The book is a humorous introduction into the mad world of Inventors. That specific breed of scientist who has no qualms about putting their lives or the lives of their friends, relatives and chickens on the line for the sake of progress.

The information is sound and broken up into snippets easily digested by the young mind. Each page is peppered with cheeky illustrations that bring the text to life.

There is also a link in the book to the Usborne Quicklinks Website were you can have ago at being an inventor yourself in the safety of the unexplodable internet.

Anyhoo, I had set Sabrina up on the rug with her wooden blocks while we read our two pages above her on the lounge. We were reading about the invention of the wheel. We hit a bit of a brick wall when the idea of rolling logs to transport stone was mentioned, Lilly just didn’t get it, I don’t know why, the poor child must be deprived in the rolling things arena. So I commandeered a bunch of Sabi’s blocks for an object lesson.

Then of course they had to make it cooler.

Because they were having such a ball with the blocks I let them stay on the floor while I read our lesson from The Story of the World. I think this was probably the book I was trying to buy when I bought the other one as well.

I like this book, the kids are hooked on it which in my mind is the best rating a school book can get. If it doesn’t hold their interest they aren’t going to learn anything other than how to look like you are listening while you are actually daydreaming about fairies. 

The Story of the World is history for the classical child apparently, I didn’t know mine were classical, I have always thought of them more sort of bohemian or even abstract at times but there you go.

The book combines factual accounts, ancient myths, legends and fictional stories based on life in the time you are looking at. It also explains, through the use of story telling, the definition of Archaeologists and Historians. My children now think of themselves as Archaeologists because they used the discovery of buried artefacts and other forms of physical evidence to prove beyond a doubt that the people who owned this house before us had a dog. Their scientific proofs are: A dog bone with teeth marks found under the house, A half chewed tennis ball found buried in the garden and the handle on the washing line was chewed to bits. Total geniuses.     

The chapter that we read was about the first nomads becoming farmers. As I looked up from my reading about a girl and her family who had recently come to live on the banks of the Euphrates river and were being taught how to place seeds in the rich soil of the river bank to find….

..our own fertile crescent appearing on my lounge room floor. The more I read the more they added to their model, like the horse because the girl in the story ate horse meat so we know there were horses. It was very cute, I couldn’t stop smiling as I read watching their big round eyes hanging off every word to see what else they could add. But then the inevitable happened and as I read through the last paragraph I was constantly interrupted with plaintive cries of "AHHHH, Sabrina has her foot in my Tigris River!!"  "Sabrina just threw a farm house at the Fertile Crescent!" and "Ahhh now she’s put the trees in the Tigris and run off with the Euphrates!!!"

"But They Are My Blocks!".

So this is us learning about how people in the past made their clothes colourful. We used instructions from the Scope website found here.

First we tore up strips of fabric.

We made a mordant to set the dye to the fabric.

To make the mordant mix half a cup of salt with 6 cups of water and a piece of test fabric.
Bring to the boil and allow to simmer for about an hour. Then leave the mixture to cool.

To make the dye you need to boil what ever plant material you have chosen for an hour. I chose to use a few plants that I knew would work and then let the kids have a guess at what other ones might dye the fabric. Pictured above is one of their guesses, carrot. You will need to strain the dye if there are any large fibres. The kids were super keen to see if it had worked at this stage and dipped tissues in so very quickly a rainbow of soggy wads of paper coated my bench.

our pots of dye ready for the fabric

After an hour of boiling the fabric in the dye we got to see if our experiments had worked. Lilly is holding up the result of our beetroot dye.

Eli is holding up the one boiled in raspberry dye.

Lillian’s sad face because her experiment with grass didn’t work.

The fabric just after it came out of the pots.

Drying on the line.

The yellow is Turmeric which worked brilliantly. The pink is Raspberry also worked well but a lot of the colour rinsed out. Next is Beetroot which worked but but after the first wash the bright red turned to pink which didn’t make Eli happy. Then carrot which, after looking so bright and orange when it was first dyed, sadly washed out completely in the first wash. The purple at the end of the line is Blueberry and this one held it’s colour well.

The kids then picked their favourite colour and dyed a plain white t-shirt. Grandma kindly sewed the test strips into a skirt so we had a whole outfit made colourful just like the people in the past used to do it. 

Just to make it a little more real I read Charlie needs a cloak

and The Goat in the Rug

to the kids both books take the reader through the clothes making process from shearing an animal to wearing the garment. Here is a link to a pretty cute animation of the book Charlie needs a cloak. 

(sorry it’s not the best photo I can’t figure out how to get a good shot without the glare off the lamination)

We are all sick here, well Lani is probably better but the rest of us are still coughing spluttering and going through boxes of tissues faster than the respect leaves a room when Mark Latham enters it.  As we haven’t been able to go to any of our regular activities I needed something that they could work on instead. Specifically something they could work on quietly, by themselves, without asking me too many questions so that I could take a Panadol, sit on the lounge chair and hope the room would stop spinning.

I found a triangle grid printable here and printed off three on plain paper then one sheet of each colour which we then cut along the lines producing a table top full of mini rainbow triangles. After a very brief chat about tessellations in paving and mosaic art works and pressing on them the point that the shapes touch but do not over lap I went off to cuddle a sick baby on the rocking chair.

They were occupied gluing triangles onto the template long enough to let me get Sabrina off to sleep and even have a little vacant mind time to myself.  And to top it off they were quiet pleased with the result so was I so I asked them whether they wanted to laminate them and turn them into place mats. They were thrilled by that idea and wanted their names on them. In a moment of inspiration I thought of a way of squeezing two lessons out of a veg out afternoon. I got them each to type their names into Word then, with my guidance, alter the height of the letters, highlight the text and change the font type (all new concepts for them) we then glued their names on and laminated the place mats in time to eat junk food off them as we watched Food Revolution (a bit of an education fail there but I’m sick).

I think they look quite circusy and now the kids think they know all there is to know about tessellations, can’t wait to blow their minds tomorrow when I show them this one, and this one and a few of the ones on this Totally Tessellated site.

Oh and if you think tessellating is just serious maths business, check this out.

As part of our investigations into healthy food we decided to do a mini unit on food production and help grandma out with her veggie garden. We cleared a patch and under Grandmas direction and planted two different types of potatoes only Lilly insisted on writing out the labels so good luck to grandma figuring out which one is growing in each row.

More Green being educational. Physics done dishwashing liquid bubbles style sparking  a conversation covering spheres, domes, surface tension, solutions and the colours spectrum.

To see everyone else’s Green posts head over to Hello Owls.

There has been a lot of backyard culinary creativity going on around here. Lani, Eli and Lilly have all been totally hooked on MasterChef and Lani is thrilled that Adam her favourite since about half way through took out the honours last night. She would like to be a fan of Japanese food (which Adam cooked a lot of) because it’s so pretty, but like her fractured relationship with strawberries, she has learnt that just because you like the look of something doesn’t mean you can stomach the taste.

Since their sudden interest in food I have been noticing many food related schooling opportunities. We have been shopping and cooking together, reading the labels on the back of food products and talking about all the additives and preservatives that are hidden in food. Alanah has also asked to stay up and watch Jamie Oliver’s show Jamie’s Food Revolution which we decided to let her because it shows quite dramatically the difference between healthy and processed foods.

So when the kids went to see Wombat Stew I wasn’t surprised to see their passion for cooking to develop into a passion for cooking lumps of backyard goop. After tipping out yet another plastic bucket full of gooey brewy brown goodness that had found it’s way into the house I had a brilliant idea. I’ll get them to create their own masterpiece meals then write down the list of ingredients used so that we can make our own Gooey Brewy recipe book. I thought we can even have a go at being food stylists and photograph the finished dishes. How brilliant am I, I crowed inside, I can even turn mud into school work!

I’m pretty sure the bible has something in it about crowing. I’m also pretty sure we have all lived in this world long enough to guess the lesson that was about to be learnt, It wasn’t the lesson I intended but it did have to do with cooking, well eating at least, eating a specific type of pie…

I presented my Really Cool Mum schooling idea as a surprise when they were having an outside break after maths. I waited positively glowing inside for the squeals of delight. The two girls were sufficiently impressed and ran of to hunt down the best ingredients our backyard could produce (please note we don’t have a veggie patch). Eli however stood stock still staring at me, a look of horror slowly consuming his features. “I’m NOT doing that” he finally blurted out followed quickly and firmly by a “I”M GOING INSIDE!!!” “Oh come on Eli” I responded softly “It’ll be fun” (doesn’t that just sound like one of those teachers) I even offered to help him with the writing thinking that might be the problem. “YOU”ER NOT GOING TO MAKE ME DO IT!!!!” he screamed backing away from me outstretched arms protecting himself from the horror of mud pie schooling.

Now I don’t know whether it was PMS or just not being back in the swing of things after the holidays but this performance was like a red flag to a bull. Fully aware that my gardening neighbours were only 5 millimetres of metal away from us and with all the blood in my body rushing to my cheeks I growled back “Yes I am, this is school work and you are going to do it” (Grrr). And as the girls skipped happily around the backyard filling their buckets with twigs and leaves Eli and I performed a dance that would put any pantomime to shame. He ran, I followed. He climbed over play equipment, I followed. He dashed through the dark garage, I followed. He clambered on top of a rickety pile of old furniture and perched like a living gargoyle baring his teeth at me, I yelled “Get down here now” He responded with “YOU can’t get me” and then just in case the lovely neighbours weren’t worried enough already “DON”T MAKE ME DEAD”

It was at this point I think that the sense kicked back in and I asked the bleedingly obvious question “Why don’t you want to do it?’” “I don’t want to get the yucky stuff on my fingers” he said  “but you are always making soup and potions in the backyard, you like doing it” (That’s why I thought of this totally stupid idea) “No I don’t” he shouted down indignantly “Lilly makes them for me so I don’t get it on my fingers”  “oh” I said.

See this is the reason I chose home over school, so that if anything stressed Eli out he would be able to approach the task at his own pace. So that he would be free from pressure and here I was practically dragging him kicking and screaming into an activity that was causing him anxiety. granted he can sometimes refuse a task just to be defiant and I am pretty sure he has touched gross things before but that is beside the point. He was stressed and after all my back patting earlier I turned out to be the worst educator in the world that morning. Let’s face it people my pride was hurt by his reaction and instead of focusing on the ones keen to do the activity I entered a battle of wills I shouldn’t have been in.

I apologised to Eli told him he could go and find something else to do and walked over to help the girls. The girls and I had fun, the rest of the morning played out as excepted and low and behold as Lilly was plating up Eli rocks up cool as a cucumber with his bucket full. As soon as he had time to think it through he wanted to join in and was just as keen as the girls.I’m not sure how much education the kids got that morning but I learnt my lesson and the dish I plated up was flavoured humble.

Lilly’s Snake Stew

Alanah’s Zebra Stew

Eli’s Red Belly Black Snake Stew (He did do the writing, in fact he insisted only I have temporarily misplaced his writing book, see what a bad mother I am)