The Week That Was - It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas

This was the week where we wrapped up most of what we've been working on this term. Technically the last week of school for us, we are officially on summer holidays, although we do have a couple of things to attend next week. Book work at home is done, we had our last small group co-op meet and our last Christmas Around The World meet for the year.

 

We completed our Biomes Unit last week, which left some space during co-op day this week for us to take a closer look at a couple of famous people. First up, Neil Armstrong and secondly Louis Braille. Here the kids tried their hand at creating their own Braille Alphabet and then worked on writing their names in Braille.

Our unit on Simple machines was also completed, the kids explored Pulleys and Gears, here they are looking at gear Ratio.

We've had an amazing year with this group of families and have almost finished planning out our year for 2015. If you haven't tried this style of learning I urge you to give it a go. Flexibility, team work and an open mind is key, but if you can keep those things in check I am certain you will have a blast. Go grab a family or two and plan some fun learning adventures to have together next year.

We hit the shops this week, admiring all the beautiful Christmas decorations. Yes sure you could take plenty home, but where on earth do people store all of these things throughout the year??

In the end we did bring home a couple of new items and have been busy all week displaying them around the house. We enjoy admiring our, "Dreaming of a White Christmas" area, since we would need to travel a great distance to experience such a thing. Here in Australia we can only dream of all that snow, whilst we are sweltering in our heat!

Whilst we were out and about we spotted this guy so took the opportunity to have the annual snapshot taken. This is the second year in a row the B has said he won't go sit with Santa. Last year I was able to persuade him and this year I had the help of Santa, not quite sure what will happen next year. I just thought kids would sit on Santa's lap forever, don't they? Aren't they doing this even when they 30 something hehehehe ;-)

 

There was a good chunk of time spent handwriting Christmas Cards. C6, was most proud he diligently sat there (over the course of the week) and wrote out just as many cards as his brother and sister. Every now and then stopping to tell me that his hand was sore, but on he trudged. The beauty of truly finding something they desire to do!

Whilst we haven't officially been out to see the local Christmas lights as yet, we are lucky enough to have this pretty cool house just two doors down from us. As you can imagine we walk and drive buy this place several times in the lead up to Christmas.

We had another visit from Dr Joe (we are doing a 5 week Space themed Science Club). Here he discussed how liquid nitrogen and liquid oxygen are used in space. Of course he had to start the show with a bang....block your ears everyone! Yes that was a balloon!

After discussing the relative size of the planets in relation to the sun....that's my son hiding behind the big white umbrella sun there. The group each made a scale model of the Solar System to take home and add to their collection of science related toys they have made over the past few weeks.

Finally we wrapped up our Christmas Around The World unit this week also, by visiting Italy and looking at all of the festivities they include in their celebrations during this time of the year.

After having visited all of those countries we simply had to end with a feast from around the world and that is exactly what we did! It was wonderful and the kids all tried dishes that they may not normally eat on a regular basis.

After lunch surprise gifts were waiting under the tree for everyone and they all got to take home their much loved hand made tree decorations. This was so much fun to explore with friends.

That was a very full but also very rewarding week for us all.

This post is linked up at Collage Friday and Weekly Wrap Up head over there to check out more week in review posts.