Medieval Birthday Madness

Cricket & Fish have been holidaying with their dad so I was very pleased to hear Sir Lucas would be celebrating his birthday at Kryal Castle. When I arrived Fish's shoes, socks and feet were soaked from the puddles in the maze. Fish later showed "sufficient skill with the bow to be of service in protecting King and Country" and was "made an honourary member of the Castle Guard". He is now a Castle Archer.

I couldn't keep up with Cricket, so I took in the Full Flight Birds of Prey display: meeting a peregrine falcon, owls and eagles.

Other home educators ... 1

Someone new joined the autonomous education network at mc2, and diving into the web from his blog (Living in a Deschooling Madhouse) I surfed to Diary of Home Education Nobody. Entry 001 triggered my own awareness of the challenge to provide evidence of Cricket's & Fish's learning. I don't actually 'have' to provide evidence to anyone just now, so the challenge is partly seeing it for myself. I don't want to spoil the boys' enjoyment of their life-learning, so why do I ask them to write about it?

• At the very least, says one of my justifications, some brief note by which they can practice handwriting.
• In the process may be practice at generating written words from thoughts (I'd be content with personal spelling)
• Habits can be helpful: and I am thinking that this kind of writing can help them develop habits of:
  
• reflection on performance/development/process
  
• documenting either objective data of their exploration (like Daniel does in Star Gate) or
  
• deliberate thinking (I'm thinking of showing them deBono's CoRT or at least starting with PMI or Thinking hats)
  
• sometimes writing can help reinforce learning
• Maybe it will help them become aware of what they are learning so that when asked they can answer with more than "I've been playing the computer and watching DVDs"
  
• I feel a need for some sort of documentation, and I don't want to spend my days following them around with notepad and pen.
  

Still, I need to keep requirement to a minimum (to be consistent with my philosophy of autonomy) ... yet I am the guide so maybe for now I need to focus on:

• pointing out the use and practice of various forms of documentation in their areas of interest
• finding reasons that have meaning to them.
  

Popeyed Fish

The Js visited yesterday, buzzing excitedly about the show at the Begonia Festival. J1 insisted we "come see" PopEyed - some sort of balancing act.

Fish loved their show so much we went back to see it again yesterday, and then again today. I have to admit my own hands hurt from clapping.

While PopEyed's website will give you an idea of their acrobatics, it can't convey the cleverness of the "Russian" theme they use to tie some fun family comedy to the the eye-popping balancing.

Ambushed

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig7/rowntree1.html

Ballaarat Astronomical Society

Cricket, Fish, Oma and Mum joined the Ballaarat Astronomical Society tonight, intending to return frequently to the Ballaarat Observatory . What a thrill to see Saturn for real.

M.A.S.H.

New Year's Day spent watching fifth season of M.A.S.H. Cricket's New Year gift, followed by Fish's: Stuart Little collection. Cricket commented that one of the scout leaders in Stuart Little 3 hadn't been a very good example of honourable behaviour.

Licola 2006

Darn. Cricket's first game back for 2006 is on 28th January - smack bang in the middle of our annual home educators camp. We'll be sorry to miss it this year, but not sorry enough to do the 5 hour drive for half the camp!

QuadrapopTree: Science Lists and Sites for Teens

Hey boys, the science links offered by Quadrapop could lead to interesting things... like BBC Science & Nature where you can meet the goat bred to spin spider silk.

reading and writing

Today, I built, wrote and read five new words: log, bat, fizz, red, sum. Mum dictated the spelling of a word I chose: NAQUADAH. Naquadah is a rare resource that is on the tv show Star Gate. Now because I have worked so hard I am going to play Cricket's Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic game.

Star Gate - Upgrades

The Tok'ra gave three members of SG-1 arm bands which increased their strength, speed, and reading speed. While SG-1 wore the arm bands they: ate lots of steaks and destroyed a Go'auld battleship before the time limit ended.

Prefixes, Suffixes & Syllables

Grumblingly, for mum's sake, I worked through some workbook pages about prefixes, suffixes and syllables.

I want to have a nap now.

I want to have a nap now. However, mum wants me to type stuff. Today I learned that mum is mean. Fish and I have been playing star wars today. I’m going to learn history of English colonization. I’m going to learn more about WWII.

Eureka

We drove to the Eureka Centre today to reflect on the anniversary of the Eureka Rebellion.

Cricket today

Game Stats: Bowled 7 overs - 2 wickets
Fielding - 1 catch
Batting - no runs :-(

Sky High / Shark Boy & Lava Girl

Last night Cricket & I watched Sky High with Emby while Fish watched the other with Grub & Merry.

They both enjoyed the movie they saw, though neither will take the time to say much about why just yet.

Massive Nature

I wandered into the lounge to reconnect with the boys after reading an email from their father in which he requested instructions as to the boys' "schoolwork" to do during their next visit to him. (Yeah, not one to appreciate gestalt learning)

Cricket and Fish were watching Massive Nature and during a break told me that their father had coerced them into watching an episode during their last visit with him, ie they were not permitted to play a computer game and had to sit and watch, even though that particular episode (on penguin migration) just didn't capture their interest. Weird... no coercion needed here.

Inventors

Fish is fascinated by the concept of invention in recent months. So while I was in the library the other day I collected some books that might interest him - about inventions and inventors. The first he perused was "My book of inventions by Jimmy Neutron" "as told to" Lara Bergen. Then he asked me to read to him "Inventions that have changed the world" by Rod Rees

Ninja: Japanese or Chinese?

That was Fish's recent question while I was driving. Now we guessed Japanese, but were confused because we are aware of many chinese martial arts so we decided to check the internet later. Naturally the microcassette recorder that we bought for just such a purpose was not in the car again, so it is just as well I remembered it later.

Oh - our guess was correct, and the boys were amused by some of the things we found along the way, such as Ninja vs. Killer Tomato

Hands on with Wild Action

Cricket, Fish & I joined Merry, Emby & Grub at at Wild Action show learning about Australian animals. We touched a live baby salt-water crocodile, ring-tailed possum, python snakes, a turtle, green tree frog, skinks, phasmids and a tree goanna.

The entertaining, high-speed delivery introduced us to the different animal body coverings, dietary requirements, habitats/environmental needs, morphology, habits (nocturnal/diurnal, arboreal/terrestrial, camouflage & other defence strategies, reproduction.

Computer Repair 101

We finally went to fix the CD-Rom drive today, bought a replacement to install ourselves. One screw and the cover came off, unplugged the old CD drive and replaced it - straightforward really.