KLA Thursday - HSIE

HS what? Ugh. Acronyms like that make me shudder and bring back memories of a blonde teacher with a musty mothball accent who insisted no indigenous people were needlessly killed by European arrivals to Australia. Hmmm, why did I choose to home school again? No need to rant here.
Anyway...
On the education department's website HSIE section under Change and Continuity I found:
Students will learn about:
• events and stages in their lifetimes
• people in their families, past and present
• people who have met their needs in the past
• places in the their immediate environment
• changes in their lives, both past and present
• changes to people and places in their neighbourhood
• Aboriginal Dreaming stories as a reflection of the creation of Australia
• the structure of students’ families



So uh, how do we cover this at home without a curriculum? Well, it's pretty hard not to. Last weekend was a pretty significant event in M's lifetime, actually in mine too. I'm halfway to 70, eek! Many people in her family have contacted her about it funnily enough.
Getting older brings plenty of questions about "when you were 5 Mama?" the natural progression of ensuing conversations pretty much covers the second, third, fifth and seventh points. Did I say pretty much? This is my daughter we're talking about. "Tell me a story about when you were little/I was little." Repeat ad infiinitum...I doubt there's any material left uncovered.
As for places in their immediate environment, in the past month M has of her own accord made a map of our house and the route to the local shops as well as talking about making one extending to the local school (where her ballet classes used to be), library and Catholic Church hall (where her ballet classes now are). Of course there's always looking at our house on google maps (doesn't everyone do that?) and scrolling from there to other places of interest and following the flashing blue dot on an iphone map while driving. Can't forget all the historical pictures of our town on the walls of the pub and Indian restaurants we often eat at - those cover number six as well. As does her keen interest in the two houses constructed earlier this year a couple of blocks from us. We passed those almost everyday on our walk to the local shops/library/ballet class.
That leaves only number seven - dreamtime stories. Well, we have plenty of books but I also love these
Marmoo and Biamee
Gotta love what one USA unschooling parent called "The Youtube Curriculum"

Unschool Monday - screentime

No, not a self-righteous post full of impassioned arguements for or against. Just a description of our day. M's day at least involved a lot of it. A lot. She grabbed the iPad and started playing her new Magic School Bus app before even getting out of bed. Actually most of the day was spent with that app. It would possibly be an understatement to say she loves it. She also tinkered around with a few other apps - mostly phonics/spelling type ones and currently she is on a youtube enabled Magic School Bus marathon. I think we're on maybe the fifth one for the day. I politely suggested this might be the last one since (appropriately) she is booked in for a CSIRO run chemistry workshop at the local homeschool co-op tomorrow morning.
Joining in with owlet

More "school"

Piano, violin, two sorting activities from BFSU and in the mail today came a phonics/writing workbook that M had requested "so I can read little words like you", so she did a page of that too. Currently M is painting the air drying clay that we modeled last week and A is throwing his crayons across the room and attempting to stick glitter on his picture. Should go and help him...

Unschool Monday

Joining in with Owlet et al. Today Child the Larger:

• Sketches planning, more sketches and more planning for the movie M woke up on Saturday morning wanting to make.
• All of the mazes from the local Library's "school holiday entertainment pack". Wow, I'm impressed with her maze solving ability.
• Used water colour pencils to paint colouring pages from same (note to self - water colour pencils would make a good present).
• Painted a diorama of mountains against blue sky (acrylic paint this time)
• 4 pages of Miquon Maths Orange Book.
• Carried around the broody chicken, pushed her in the wheelbarrow and swung with her on the swing seat (chicken didn't like swinging very much).
• Watched segments of the latest Tinkerbell movie seeking inspiration for her own endeavour.
• Watched all of The Princess and the Goblin (I love the flute in the soundtrack)
• Quizzed her brother endlessly about all his new words (many many many)
• Listened to an audio book
• Op shopped
• Walked in the cold cold wind and
• Asked a million challenging and insightful questions

Child the smaller:

• Answered correctly every word his sister quizzed him about (since she had just modeled it for him when asking)
• Made quite a few deliberate jokes
• Was adorably cute despite the fact that he
• Insisted on the millionth read-aloud repetition of "Sparkle Fun Christmas Shapes" in that way only toddlers can
• Delighted me with his little pre-sentences such as "Mama. Apple. Up. Cut." ... "Shankyyooo."

And much much more between them of course.

India again

Maybe as soon as January. Really. Or maybe not.
Who knows.

India?

That's all.

What we've been doing

 This is M helping P paint a stupa at a hospice (Karuna) in Brisbane. As I mentioned we recently got home from our second big road trip in a few months. This one was really big. From here to Brisbane, stopping a couple of times on the way up to camp then to the Sunshine Coast, then back to Brisbane for a day and night, a night in Ballina and then P pulled off a masterful feat on superhuman effort by driving all the way back from Ballina to the mountains in one afternoon/evening!
P studies Tibetan Buddhist art with Andy Weber who is only here once a year. We arrived in Brisbane a few days early so P could help with the stupa painting at Karuna as per the photos and then headed up to Chenrezig Institute for the real work.
Gosh it was a tough trip, but brilliant at the same time. We arrived at CI late at night & transferred the children straight into beds in our dorm. First thing next morning while walking up to breakfast the director stopped M and I, gave us big hugs and said "Welcome Home!". Ah!
Many more stories to tell of course, but that's enough for now.