Homeschooling Jan - June 2014

OK so my monthly updates have slid out to term updates, now to a 6 month update! We're just too busy living life to blog it!

Creative Arts

This continues to be Billy's focus. He has weekly music (singing & trumpet lessons), is heavily involved in drama and has this year started with a Scout media unit (JNN) to learn and take part in producing, filming, audio, and editing short video segments.

• Music
• Weekly singing and trumpet class
• Drama
•  As well as weekly drama class, he was backstage crew for Upstage Youth Theatre's Romeo & Juliet production - including taking part in all day bump in (technical set up of lights etc).
• He took part in audition workshop
• Went to the Gloucester Shakespeare Festival and watched "Much Ado about Nothing"
• Participated in a Bell Shakespeare drama workshop
• Is involved with weekly JNN TV Media unit training - filming, editing, audio etc
• Art
• Regular visits to Maitland Art Gallery

 

Bell Shakespeare Drama workshop

 

JNN Media Crew - editing room

Cast & crew of Romeo & Juliet

HSIE

    Australian History

• Historical walking tour of Maitland
• SteamFest
• Tunnel tour of Fort Scratchley

Historical walking tour of Maitland

Fort Scratchley Tunnel Tour

 Other cultures

• Chinese night at Scouts - ate food, made kite, discussed Chinese culture

Maths

• Billy is working through the Maths OnlineYr 6 curriculum
• Some exercises from Targeting Maths Year 6
• Everyday maths - cooking, measuring, budgeting etc

Science & Technology

• Billy watches lots of science videos including the VSauce and Veritasium channel.
• Heavily involved in creating videos including use of programs such as Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe Photoshop, Avid

English

• Read "Refuge" by Jackie French, "The Road to Gundagai" by Jackie French, "So Much to Tell You" by John Marsden as well as listened to numerous audiobooks.
• Writing short films, plays and stories.

PDHPE

• Participated in the Homeschool Swimming carnival
• Participated in weekly Archery in Term 1
• Did an overnight hike in Brisbane Water National Park
• Took part in Menu planning for hike - discussion on nutrition, hygiene
• Basic First Aid training (emergency DRABC, snake / spider bite treatment, recovery position)
• Bowling

 

 

LOTE

• Italian classes (Term 1)
• Duolingo Italian app

Scouts 'Curriculum':

• Citizenship badge

• Knots, bushcraft construction

Making a Rope bridge

• Community service 

• helped out with crowd control at SteamFest 
• Colour Party (flags) at Region AGM
• Working bee at hall
• Masters BBQ fundraiser
• Clean Up Australia day

Clean up Australia day

As well as plenty of time spent hanging out with friends and family.

Homeschooling monthly memories - July 2013

This feels like the geocaching edition of our homeschool post :) It's formed a big part of our life in June and has resulted in lots of cool learning.

Scouts 'Curriculum':

• Scouts has involved campcraft skills, ropes/knots etc.

Intentional Learning:

Creative Arts

• Finished editing the Zombie movie and made a DVD cover for it.
• Drama classes.
• Singing lessons & started learning trumpet as well. (Oh my aching ears!)

HSIE

• Australian History

• We're reading "A Waltz for Matilda" by Jackie French 
• Our geocaching has taken us to a lot of historical places around the area including:

This 'tempietto' is a water-fountain built as a monument to West Maitland's first mayor, Richard Alexander Young

A monument to the dairy farmers of the area.

Christ Church Cathedral, Newcastle, and gravestones dating back to the early European settlers in the area.

The graveyard at Cathedral Park is one of the earliest burial grounds in Australia and was featured on Tony Robinson's Time Walks around Newcastle.

Rose Cottage, Newcastle's oldest surviving building.

A lane-way in Maitland, decorated with a mural of the history of the area - but also the site of a public hanging - yep, our history is covering everything!

A local barn decorated with an historical advertisement for the wonder-cure of the time.

Maths

• He continued using the Mathletics curriculum.
• Real-life use of Maths in cooking, measuring
• Coding puzzles 
• Longitude and latitude practice - reading and following the GPS
  

Science & Technology

• Java coding
• Photoshop
• Researched different operating systems and set up Ubuntu Linux to trial

English

• Watched the "Animated Tales of Shakespeare - A Midsummer Night's Dream"
• Learning about definite / indefinite articles

PDHPE

• AFL / AFL training
• Archery

Italian

• Back to Italian class

As well as plenty of time spent hanging out with friends and family.

Homeschooling monthly memories - April 2013

April was taken up with school holidays, so most of the regular activities were paused for a few weeks. I'm sure he did more than this during the month, but I wasn't recording, so I'm going off photos and my very poor memory :)

Cubs 'Curriculum':

The cubs had former Olympic road cyclist Scott Steward talk to them about bike and scooter safety.

Billy marched with his Cub pack in the ANZAC Day march. (For the non-Aussies, ANZAC Day is our to remember those who have fought and died at war.)

Intentional Learning:

Creative Arts

• Lots of movie making and editing
• Billy took part in a 2 day Glee-style Musical Theatre workshop during the school holidays.

HSIE

• Australian History

•  Billy created a video about ANZAC Day

• We finished reading "Pennies for Hitler" by Jackie French about a German boy who escapes from Germany to London and is then evacuated to Australia during WW2.
• Also read "Hitler's Daughter" by Jackie French exploring the idea of Hitler having a daughter.
• We went to Steamfest - a local festival celebrating everything steam - steam trains, steam engines etc. Billy also had a lovely chat with a coin collector about old Australia currency.

Maths

• He continued using the Mathletics curriculum.
• Graphing of data.
• Real-life use of Maths in cooking

Italian

• He had his last lessons of Italian for a while. Classes aren't running in Term 2 (as his teacher is off to Italy!) but we will try to keep up practice. 
  

Science & Technology

• Watched episodes of Scope
• Watched the documentary Stephen Fry's Top 100 Gadgets
• Set up a Minecraft Server hosting company and is running into real-life difficulties of getting clients to pay!

English

• Read "Staying Alive in Year 5" by John Marsden
• Reading Rangers Apprentice Book 2
• We went to an author's talk by John Marsden, author of the Tomorrow When the War Began series. We enjoyed the school talk so much, we went back that night for the adult talk.

Billy meeting John Marsden and getting books signed

PDHPE

Playing AFL games 

Went ten-pin bowling with friends

As well as plenty of time spent hanging out with friends and family. And lots of cooking with only minimal supervision.

Finger buns

An old classic - jam drops - using my grandmother's handwritten recipe!

Homeschooling monthly memories - Mar 2013

I'm not sure where March went. I know we were busy! (So busy in fact, I haven't updated the blog in that long - sorry!)

 

Cubs 'Curriculum':

• The cubs took part in 'Clean Up Australia' Day.
• He attended a weekend Cub Leadership course.
• Billy has been recently made a 'sixer', the leader of 5 or 6 other cubs. He and the other sixers in the group had to plan and run one of the nights, with each sixer getting to run 1 or 2 games each.
  

Intentional Learning:

Creative Arts

• Drama classes.
• More movie making, green screening. 
• Learning how to do image manipulation using Photoshop.
• Visit to an art show.

• Took lots of photos of the recent floods

HSIE

• Australian history
  
  • We read 'A Day to Remember' about ANZAC Day
  • We watched the Tony Robinson 'Time Walks' series where he digs into little known history of ten Australian cities.

• We're reading "Pennies for Hitler" by Jackie French about a German boy who escapes from Germany to London and is then evacuated to Australia during WW2.
• He watched lots of Brain Pop movies, BTN and BTN Specials.
• He investigated various Australian inventions.
• Lots of discussion about floods, coupled with real-life observations of the changes of water-level, speed of water, damage caused, smell afterwards etc.

Maths

• He started back on the Mathletics curriculum.
• Real-life fractions with halving recipes.

Science & Technology

• Watched episodes of Scope and Backyard Science
• We watched the International Space Station go over one night. (Gee it goes quickly!) You can see when it will be overhead using this site.
• He put together a Solar House kit.

Italian

• He's still doing Italian lessons, plus watching La Mappa Misteriosa.

English

• Reading Rangers Apprentice Book 2
• Scripted and recorded a podcast about homeschooling and sent it in to Behind The News.

PDHPE

• He's taken part in archery, martial arts and AFL training.
• Watched "My Great Big Adventure" on the ABC school shows about body image.
• Scootering and learning how to ride his skateboard.

As well as plenty of time spent hanging out with friends and family. And lots and lots of cooking with only minimal supervision.

red velvet pancakes

Turkish delight

very sad gingerbread man!

Homeschooling Monthly Memories - Feb 2013

Back into it for another year. He's pretty much doing the same activities as last year, so not a lot of change in our schedule.

Cubs 'Curriculum':

• At cubs, they've been busy doing lots of "cub-related" things - promise and law activities and cub traditions, as well as playing lots of games.
• They had to take their favourite book along to show the rest of the pack and talk about it. Billy chose one of the books from the Alex Rider series by Anthony Horowitz.
  

Intentional Learning:

Creative Arts

• Drama classes. He's been hanging out for drama to go back for the year!
• Movie making, green screening and made a film dolly using his skateboard :)
• Visit to the art gallery and trying still life drawing.

HSIE

• Australian history
  
  • Billy listened to the audio book of "A Rose for the ANZAC Boys" by Jackie French.
  • We've been reading "Rotters & Squatters" by Jackie French

• He's been researching Maori tribes and legends for his International Culture badge at Cubs.
• We read the legend of Odysseus blinding the Cyclops.
• We're reading "Pennies for Hitler" by Jackie French
• He watched lots of Brain Pop movies - the focus this month has been on American Presidents. 
• He's watched BTN and BTN Specials

Maths

• We continued reading Awesome Arithmetricks and played many games of "Assassins" - a multiplication card game from the book, to practice times tables.

Science & Technology

• Made Gummy Bears to explore the science behind gelatin.
• We watched the Richard Hammond Engineering Connections Series 2 videos 
• More Java mod programming for Minecraft
• Watched episodes of Scope
• Watched Science videos on the One Minute Physics YouTube channel 

Italian

• He's started back at Italian lessons, plus has been watching La Mappa Misteriosa.

English

• He wrote a letter to a penpal in American for cubs.
• Has been reading "How the Aliens from Alpha Centauri Invaded My Math Class and Turned Me Into a Writer: And How You Can Be One Too" by Jackie French
• Reading various Alex Rider books
• Learnt more about similes, metaphors and themes

PDHPE

• He's taken part in archery and martial arts.
• AFL training has started back.
• Watched "My Great Big Adventure" on the ABC school shows
• Participated in various events at the Homeschool area swimming carnival.

As well as plenty of time spent hanging out with friends and family, cooking etc. He's really getting into cooking lately and his skills are improving tremendously. He's making a lot of things without help or with only minimal supervision.