Not Back To School Day

Yesterday was the first official school day here in Australia, so of course we enjoyed it as any Aussie home educating family should, by spending a day at the beach with friends!


Only a small group, I think the beginning of the year has come around much more quickly than most of us were ready for. But really it doesn't matter how many friends you spend the day with, it is always fun.


C had a fantastic time, as he always does. He is such a little explorer, loves investigating everything and making sure that he never misses out on anything that the big kids are getting into. He'd just had his belly full of watermelon before this photo, hence the pale pink face.



B certainly loved seeing his friends and is more than happy to be back into the swing of things with our homeschool group.



In the far corner of the 'inlet' where we spent the morning was an extremely deep body of water (I didn't realise how deep it was until the tide had gone out) however it was also covered in seaweed. Not that really gross seaweed that floats around and freaks you out when it rubs against your legs. Everyone spent a considerable amount of time exploring the seaweed and wondering what creatures may live there, hiding amongst the weeds.

As the tide retreated the hunt began, the hunt for solider crabs and we weren't disappointed, that's for sure. They are the fastest little critters and can hear you coming some distance away. The kids would be on one side of the 'pool' when someone would yell, "Crabs", everyone would make a mad dash to the other side of the pool where literally hundreds of them were scurrying here, there and everywhere. Most found there way under ground but the odd one got scooped up into buckets for closer inspection.

I was so impressed when I heard B remind everyone that they needed to let their crabs go, he didn't need reminding at all that they really belong below the wet sand and not in their buckets.

The highlight of K's day was finding some type of sea snail, she was so excited, we've never found a creature like that at the sea before so it certainly was interesting.


Since mummy forgot our boogie boards, K borrowed one and had a fabulous time kicking and splashing around in the water. Her confidence this summer in the water has grown tremendously and it really shows.



Now what a perfect spot! Here's a few of the mums (the others are off to the side a little) We had that shade the entire time we were there and apart from the odd adult we had the entire beach to ourselves. Cool breezes and lots of shade right there on the beach (when at home it was a stifling 34 degrees) meant no one wanted to leave.

I couldn't think of a better way to spend our first day of the school year.

Schools Out

Another school year over. Where does the time go? Are we really finished yet another year of school?

K had her kindy graduation day today. A bittersweet moment for both of us. She struggled greatly with the transition of going to kindy at the beginning of the year and I struggled with that too. Seeing my baby girl terribly upset when I left her every time was not easy to deal with and often wondered why on earth I was doing it. Especially since I knew that she wouldn't be going to school. I struggled alot with sending her to kindy and if I should have really bothered.

She has definitely grown alot this year, although it is very hard to say how much kindy has had to do with that. Obviously there are some deifinite positives to going to kindy, some of which include, interaction with other adults, other children (although that may not always be as desirable as what one thinks!!) being able to make lots of mess, working with/alongside peers and probably a few others that I have forgotten to mention.

However, as homeschoolers, I strongly believe that if you are active within a homeschool group, your kindy aged/preschool child has lots of time to play with friends, lots of unstructured craft time, lots of time singing and reading then kindy really isn't worth it.(in my opinion anyway)

K and I have talked today about kindy and how the year went for her, she is sad to see it end but does remember all too well how hard it was for her to go alone with out mum near by. In 3 years time I'll have struggle with this all over again, when I make the decision if I will send C along to kindy or not?

Today, K and her kindy friends played lots of party games and they had a special visitor stop by for a while. K really isn't so sure of this guy, even though he was handing out lollies she still really didn't want to go near him. Can you blame her?


Each child also had their special moment in the spotlight. Where the teachers read out a little piece about the things the child had accomplished through the year. They were given a portfolio, that had had a tremendous amount of work put into it and a small gift. It was a nice way to end the year.


Our homeschool group had a casual year end gathering a week ago down by the bay, cool breezes, good friends, some party food and fun....what more could you want! I have no photo's as I didn't take any, just enoyed the time that day.

A couple of weeks ago we had our very first family picnic. This was a fabulous day! We are so blessed to be part of such a great bunch of people. We have all become really close friends, this year has definitely been very kind to us in that way. We never would have thought that this time last year we would have had the dear friends that we have today.



Great spot, at the waters edge under a shady tree. It was so nice to have all of the dad's there with us.


Most of the kids (some are off swimming) posing and being silly. I'll be honest and say that my kids having friends was a big a worry for me in regards to homeschooling. We are a social bunch and love our friends and don't believe in keeping to ourselves, our friends are a very important part of our life. So obviously I am ecstatic that my kids have great friends, friends that we want to spend time with outside of group activities and friends that I also want to spend time with YAY! Love you guys heaps :)

So that's it, the end of the 2009 school year. We are officially on summer break (ps for 6 weeks) so whilst my posting about school activities will be little to none over the next few weeks we'll still be very busy, busy learning, busy having fun and busy enjoying life.

Check out what others have gotten up over at The Preschool Corner and Homeschool Highlight Reel.

Ocean Lapbook

Thanks so much to everyone over at Homeschool Share, we put together this Ocean Lapbook whilst we were away at the beach.

I knew I wanted to do something on Oceans whilst we were away (posts about that are here>> and here>> )but I needed it to be simple ....I didn't want to spend hours gathering everything I needed for this. Thankfully Homeschool Share had eveything.


B's cover page. A water colour inspired by the gorgeous art work in the books by Kim Michelle Toft and Allan Sheather.



Inside his open lapbook. The files for this included, poetry, rhymes and songs. Various counting activities (all of which were a little young for him but we included one for review). The creatures that live in a Tide (Rock) Pool. A Five Senses booklet, all about using your senses at the seaside. Plus a neat little booklet on Seagulls. Here's some close ups.



Seagull Booklet


Tide Pool Booklet


Poetry


Counting


Five Senses


Rhymes, songs and poems


This is K's cover page. Essentially they completed the same lapbook each, just with a slight variation or two.


K's has different counting activities. She also did a couple more art/craft activities than B.



There was also a 'What begins with O' wheel that we included in K's.



This did not turn out how we expected but it is included none the less. A beach contact collage. Unfortunately there was just too much sand and the sticky back paper didn't stick very well so everything moves around inside.


And I'm just showing off B's Watercolour again (before I cut it in half) I was very impressed with this. He doesn't have the same love of painting that he has for drawing, simply because of the control aspects. He has complete control over a pencil but at this stage not over paint and at times it does things he really doesn't like. However he spent quite a but of time working on this piece over the week and I think it looks great. Check out his blown blue coral, pretty clever!



Our Ocean display at home on top of our science shelves.



Bits and pieces we have collected over time.



K purchased this Klutz Mermaid scence book whilst on holidays. It is very cute just much smaller than I had anticipated.

Overall this was a simple yet fun week learning about oceans.



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Books we read and looked at:

Picture Books

One Less Fish ~ Kim Michelle Toft
Magic Beach ~ Alison Lester
There's A Sea In My Bedroom ~ Margaret Wild
Sea Secrets ~ Dawn McMillan
All You Need For A Beach ~ Alice Schertle
Cork On The Ocean ~ Mark Sommerset
The Bay ~ Ron Bacon
Sailor Bear ~ Martin Waddell
Beach Treasures ~ Helen Lunn

Other

Beach Boy ~ Nicola Smee (easy reader)
Starters - Shells (easy reader)
Smile - We Like Water (easy reader)
My World of Geography - Oceans
Hidden World Oceans Lift The Flaps
Water Worlds - Sea Shores
Australian Guide To Beaches and Rockpools ~ Bob Winters

Other Resources

Homeschool Share - Oceans Lapbook

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Beside The Seaside

A beach side, 'do nothing' holiday. Or a week full of fun learning experiences?

It all depends on ones' perception I believe.

We homeschoolers really are a very different breed.

Like you didn't already know that though!

The longer my kids have been at home the more I realise this to be true. Take our recent week long beach holiday in my parents caravan (thanks mum and dad) for instance.

To many this simply would have been a 'relaxing week doing nothing much except going to the beach.'

For us it was,



Full of the that word - socialistaion - and spending lovely quality time with friends.


Lots of exercise swimming, running on the beach and learning to use a Boogie Board.



Sandcastle building really does require alot of thought and planning, so there was definitely alot of that going on.


We all enjoyed spending plenty of quality family time together


It was C's first week long beach holiday, his senses were on fire. Next time you go to the beach just try and see it through a toddlers eyes and it really is such a wonderful experience. Isn't that one of the greatest things about having little ones, being able to relive all of those firsts again, seeing them and being apart of those experiences right along with them


And it just wouldn't be the beach without seagulls. I think (like most toddlers) these things were definitely C's favourite. Every which way he turned there they were. Which way was he to run, just run, here there and every where. The damn things kept running away on him though, talk about frustration.

The bigger kids among us did a spot of reading on seagulls and included a mini book about them in the Ocean Lapbook we worked on during the week.

From the beach at night we could see the red and green lights from down at the Bar. B was very intrigued by them, so one afternoon we took a drive and a stroll to see them for ourselves.

After our stroll we spotted these Sea Eagles perched atop the Coast Guard Tower. Even with our frequent visits to this beach side town I was never aware of the Eagles. Apparently they had built their nest in the tower of the Coast Guard.

So what's the Coast Guard to do? Build those Eagles a new tower right next door on the power pole. Then they just moved their nest right across. Sounds simple enough, right? Well they're still there and were pretty sure we counted 4 at least one of which was fairly young.

We could have spent hours watching them. We were lucky enough to witness a catch. Too far away to see exactly what type of fish but it was so very intriguing to watch none the less.

C spent some time chasing a turkey in the park, whilst B and K played on the playground.


Windy afternoons on the beach brought out this man on his umm, contraption. "It's a skateboard with a parasail." It was truly one of the funniest things to watch, scooting along the beach, it was pretty damned fast too. But gee it must of given him a good work out. He needed to stop regularly to catch his breath and rest his arms. And yet he came back again, each afternoon there was enough wind to get his, contraption, going.


Having a baby that sleeps 2 - 3 hours in the afternoons meant that I needed to take along plenty of quiet things to do. Lego is always a great way to idle away an afternoon. We had plenty of books, games and art bits and pieces. K painted and/or created at least one piece every single day. Her water colour control is definitely developing nicely.


She is very good at (and has always been) creating with minimal supplies. She jumped on her bike one afternoon, collected flowers and made this collage.


This little jellyfish was firstly stabbed with a stick (gee I sure hope it really was dead) and carried all the way up the beach to the van. It was poked, prodded, dropped in water, inspected, cut open and rolled in sand.

That reminds me we had plenty of discussions about tidal movements and all of the treasures (or junk) that gets washed up on the beach. We found a dead puffer fish, loads of shells, gorgeous shiny, smooth stones, blue bottles (lots of those) and of all the horrible things a dead rat. There were a few theories about how it got there and how it died......but overall just seeing it there was pretty darn gross.


The Coast Guard Tower.

I also took our Oil Pastels and once again K set to it, creating. She's been busy of late with people, always drawing , aren't they just the cutest.



B painted this Butterfly to give to a friend for her birthday.


The kids missed an Art Lesson whilst we away. After chatting to a friend we tried to recreate it as best we could. I didn't have much of an idea and hadn't seen any of the finished pieces. All I knew was that it was a landscape, where the children got to explore backgrounds and foregrounds. B started in water colour and added the finishing touches in oil pastel.

So we might not have completed any worksheets or written in any workbooks, or even considered the ABC's or 123's but wow when you look back over it all like this what a week full of fun learning.

Sun, Surf, Sand

I know I haven't been around much these past few days I've been busy with the family. Busy sitting in the sand and watching my brood. Oh and I've been taking lots of these too!

Now don't you worry we haven't been completely slacking off (although taking holidays when we want is definitely a plus for homeschooling) we've been non stop since we got here but this is just a quick hello. I'll post more photo's in a few days time when we return home.