Category Archives: beach

Greetings world!

Well we have just started another school year here in the land of Oz…. or Aus! We made good use of our ‘holiday time’ visiting beaches, friend’s pools and also rugging up in blankies on cold days! The weather has been unbelievable! Thankfully we only had a few days of extreme heat! February is the hottest month for us…. it can get to 40-44c locally. This week we had temperatures go from 28 to 38c. It was a bit of a shock! We’ve seen floods above and below us in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria…. there has been snow and it EVEN rained on Ularu! Quiet a memorable holiday season! Here is a link for some revealing before and after aerials of Queensland.

Regular school goers will be back in their plastic seats on the 31st January but we officially started back on Monday the 24th. It was my Nana’s birthday and we had a special lunch to remember her and then visited her resting place. My lovely Nana generated love with her generous hugs and yummy rock cakes! She always talked about others and cared deeply for her family and friends. In her 70′s she enrolled in a year long TAFE course in computing and received 97%! She was a wonderful, strong, supportive and genuine lady and would be now 80 years young.

Our lesson for that day was ’what will my legacy be?’ We discussed what type of people we are and discussed what new things we wanted to explore this year. Now my children know a bit more about our family history and we talked bilingually as my profoundly deaf Aunt was with us that day, so we discussed all sorts of things in a mix of speech and Auslan (sign language).

What will be your legacy?

On Tuesday we had some sit down lessons! Both M and D have requested that I give them some structured lessons this year and they went VERY well indeed! This is to take the pressure off them to generate ‘things to do’ and also because late last year they twigged that there were many things that they wouldn’t know to ask about or learn themselves. Basically they are motivated by a strong ‘need to know’. I’m VERY happy to oblige them! But what to cover? After letting them go pretty much free recently after we covered the state curriculum, which wasn’t the most exciting bits of learning there are so many subjects and topics I haven’t thought of in a while.

I follow both the Montessori curriculum and the NSW Board of Studies curriculum. The former is hard to duplicate in a home-school environment without a large class of multi-age children. The later is very limited and currently is being reviewed by the BOS. I’ve been browsing online at as many of the Montessori/Home Education blogs as my sleepy eyes will allow and I’m beginning to formulate an excitement for Montessori learning that truly I’d only ever really ‘fantasised’ about before.

My renewed direction is based on the prepared environment. With the help of the Flylady (www.flylady.com) I must say my home is flowing and I’m definitely ’Flying’. Finally Loving Yourself is the ultimate aim of this method of ‘domestic order and routines’ which is a great platform for what I plan to do over the next few weeks. I’ve got a deadline for re-registration in March, for home education with the Board of Studies, so I hope to have it all done by then. I will need to list what needs to be done and timetable it in for it to happen though. Giving each job a ‘place to live’ in time and on a calendar means it has purpose. It’s all part of becoming ‘more Montessori’, giving everything a place to live. I know I’m repeating myself as I pretty much have set up a new room at the beginning of each year, but there is a reason for this.

At the end of the holidays I moved the home ed room into the smallest of the three bedrooms we have. The largest still has M and D co-habiting peacefully. So now I have the middle sized room which houses a wrap around computer station for 3 laptops as well as an electric piano. As I have an informal slat based bed without a headboard etc I’ve turned it into a large daybed so my room is in fact a media room. D will be 7 and M 10 in March so this space just for media really suits what they are doing with making music and movies, as well as online learning such as ABC Reading Eggs and Khan Academy.

The small back room which has a full length mirrored built in for ALL of our clothes and linen is now also lined with bookshelves, on the other three walls and there is a round table in the centre. So far it’s been a very productive room but I can see that it is in desperate need of that ‘home beautiful’ makeover treatment! This is the exciting part! There are several challenges such as all items on the shelves are needed and have no other place to live and as such make the room feel crowded, doubly so with one wall, to the right, being mirrored!

On the left, which you can not see at all, are three tall book cases FULL of books and supplies such as paper etc. More photos to follow but for now I will do the research necessary to work out what to do and then formulate a plan. Any suggestions will be warmly received.

Thanks

What did you do this July holidays?

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Welcome to the wonderful world of Plasticine!

M was very industrious today making more objects for mini pretend play with her 6 year old brother. She is a wonderful leader and they have had a very happy, fun filled first day back at ‘school’.

Along with this we also covered telling the time, reading and M also converted fractions to decimals and decimals to percentages. D put a load of washing on while M put away the dishes (that was their ’2pm job for the house’ which has really helped me to keep on top of things as well as including them in maintaining their own space).

Before we launch into a very studious Term I thought I’d share some images from what we’ve been up to this past two weeks. Cold and wet wintery days mostly but we managed to squeeze out some sunny days to go to Town Hall to soak up a Choir concert and then run around in pure excitement,

eat healthy bananas (see the long hair! I’ll save you that drama!) needless to say my fussy eater can handle having to eat bananas to make up for not eating other healthy food… he lives mostly on vegemite sandwiches!

Also during the two week break we got to climb in the Tree Tops, go to the beach, climb a net at Joeys, attend a family wedding, catch up with two very special mates and travel down to Sydney by train with some equally special mates to see Disney on Ice at the Acer Stadium where the 2000 Sydney Olympics was held! D even got wet running under the waterfall that used to be the lit ring of fire during the games.

M blindfolded walking around the circuit… amazing!

Can you see how proud M is of D… their relationship is WONDERFUL!

We’ve really missed our mates… watching M and D so effortlessly slip back into their very easy friendships was inspirational to say the least… real friends really are the ones you don’t HAVE to see all the time, but when you do… ahhh it’s golden!

He did it!!! Go you Joey you!!!

and then he did it again, and again and again!!!!

D has really transformed since turning 6 years of age… it’s reminded me of what Maria Montessori wrote about each age and the transformations that occur at the end and the beginning of each 3 year period. As he is moving from the Absorbent Mind to a more Reasoning Mind we are seeing how beautifully his personality is remaining intact. I felt the same when M turned 6, taking many photos of her at that age too! Such a happy age for both of them. The only significant difference is that D has no desire to attend school, whereas his sister wanted to try Kindergarten at the age of 4 3/4 years. By the time she was six we were exclusively unschooling her at home (her and I). We’ve continued to ‘work together’ as really it’s more about her education than my experience teaching. She asked me to send her to school, to then home educate her, then to another school and then home again. I did send her to a very good local primary school for a whole year however that only strengthened her resolve to self-educate and use me as a resource. I’m VERY happy to do that for them both. D has had an easier time, knowing all along that he doesn’t want to attend a school. He’s very happy within his family, friends and larger social group and is free to learn how he wants, when he wants.

D is a reluctant reader still but is almost there! He is beginning to decode words and guess what they might say… today we played a quick 5 minute game of ‘eye spy’ where I said “I spy with my little eye, something in this room and it’s a…” then I would write the word on our white board we have in the kitchen… here is a picture of it that I took in Term 1 while M and I were brainstorming a story/script/movie/animation.

After being able to work out…

banana, apple, fridge, pot, rug, bottle, floor, his confidence really shot up…

back to the holiday news!

Three hours on the train down to Sydney, it was the first ever train trip for the youngest one!

The Incredibles with Micky and all of the crew!

D and yet another mate watching from our very special ‘suite’. Having the chance to view this from our own balcony, with lunch in our room behind was VERY special!

The pirates were AWESOME!

Then it was off to play in the park before getting the train home. My Friend C and I took turns taking each of our collective four to the toilet! Four trips!!!