Saturday, August 22, 2009

Our week of learning - 23rd August - Birthday party edition!


We focused mainly on life skills this week - ie cleaning, weeding, shopping etc - ready for his party tomorrow (Sunday). We had smatterings of "school learning" in there as well though :)

Current Readaloud: Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (adaptation)

English: Lots of reading. At our homeschool meeting, we had a "Collectors Day" - he took along his collection of AFL bits & pieces (posters, footy cards, hats etc), and gave a short presentation about what he collected.



Maths: He picked a 5th grade CD game out of the library called "ClueFinders". Some of the puzzles on there involved maths & logic, and he was giving them a good go - even if he did have to use a calculator for most of the maths..

Science & Technology: Another puzzle on the ClueFinders CD involved manipulating wires and batteries to form circuits. I don't think he's ever done anything like that before but soon figured out how to make it work.

Working in the garden also led to discussions on how rivers are made, and how seeds move from place to place by birds, wind etc.

We also had a discussion on where babies come out, due to a friend's Mum being overdue having her baby. *blush* - I think I handled it matter of factly! He was a c-section, so he's always known that the doctors cut me open to get him out, but I figured when the opportunity came up that I'd better tell him how the rest of the world's babies appear! Let's just hope he doesn't think to ask how it gets there in the first place - I'm not ready for that one yet :)

HSIE (Human Society and it's environment): With his Joey's unit, he went on a nature walk on Thursday night. They did a nature scavenger hunt - eg looking for the biggest leaf, a part of the food chain, something with chlorophyll in it; and a worksheet on what habitats they could see in the immediate area eg rocks, logs, grasses etc.

Creative & Practical Arts: Back to drama this week.

He's also been spending time on a "Toon Creator" site where you can use predefined "Ben 10: Alien Force" backgrounds and characters to make cartoons. He's been doing it for a couple of months, and this week I noticed how detailed his cartoons are getting. I think originally he'd have 5 or 6 fairly basic scenes, now he's making them with 40+ detailed scenes. I was also quite amazed to see his use of perspective - making the character smaller over each scene as they "walked" away. All that time watching cartoons is good for something :)

LOTE (Languages other than English): Nothing.

PDHPE (Personal Development, Health & Physical Education): Circus class - his skills are really showing improvement at circus. He's slowly getting better at both the devil sticks and the diabolo, and this week was able to do the group skipping - running in to the turning skipping rope, having 3 jumps and running back out again. When he started last term he couldn't run in *or* jump the rope!

Life skills (cooking, gardening, housekeeping): Gardening, cleaning, grocery shopping - he's been slave labour this week :) (Well, a very spoilt slave anyway!)

He made chicken schnitzel for tea one night - he pounded the chicken to flatten it, and did the coating. I cooked it up though. That's the first time I've let him touch raw chicken - I've always been pretty paranoid about it, but I made sure he washed his hands properly afterwards - no ill effects yet! It tasted pretty darn good too!

2 comments:

Amy said...

I think life skills should get a lot more attention than it normally does! After all, that is the main premise right? That they will eventually turn into independent little beings living out there on their own. Right??? Please say yes here, even if you don't agree with me!
I laughed about the baby talk. When I was pregnant with Jonas, Toby was right into it. And had NO hesitation to give people specific details if asked. It made for a lot of blushing on the adults part but Toby was unfazed. To him it was just science.

Kez said...

lol Amy - yes I agree with you! (I do really, I'm not just saying that!)