Week One of homeschool for 2006

Clive left on Friday for 2 weeks of work at Beverly. He phoned Sat. night. Apparently there is only one phone for the 100 workers and you have to put your name down for your 40 minutes allotment per day. He says temps. have not been too bad so far(40C's) but that last week it reached 54C! On the plus side the food is good and there's plenty of it.They work 12 hour days starting at 6.15 am.This first 14 days is a probationary period but if he and his employers feel they suit each other, there's at least another 6 months work up there.T+L are very keen to find where dad is working on a map.

Caleb's initial reaction to this weeks work was not favourable but it has been revised since. In fact I think he quite enjoyed his Beowulf readings for the week! And of course his unit on WW1 history was greeted with enthusiasm.But nothing pleased him more than the cleaning job he has at church, especially as Father Lew has decided to make him solely responsible for the cleaning.

H. enjoyed her schoolwork. May need to revise using Lingua Mater and substitute Help for Highschool by Julie Bogart.Now we just need to save for that $1000 violin Jenny says she would benefit from!

T stands so much taller since he + L have their own bedroom. I have discovered how much he thrives on a little responsibility.No meltdowns yet with music practices and he appears more aware of how he should stand/sit with violin + piano.Interesting though to observe he and L at the zoo earlier in the week. They seem to talk/laugh louder etc than other children in public...wondering if this is partly aspergers or combination of that and typical behaviour of homeschooled boys their age.

L has managed well moving from preschool to schoolwork.

Nature study: 3 of interest this week

1. "snowball" one of the white silky bantams is still escaping out of the yard. We have all searched the front yard thoroughly to no avail. But exactly on time every two days she returns to their run, eats great amounts before sneaking off again.We are fairly sure she has gone broody somewhere...where?

2.T and I after piano lesson went down to the river near Tamara's place to take photos for Flat Stanley project.T spied a moth which he happily carried home on a piece of bark. We felt confident it was dead.So great was our surprise when we discovered "dead" moth on one of the bookshelves in the schoolroom. D when he returned home was able to tell us it was the moth of the caterpillar family called"inchworms". We had already noted its great camouflage colours on top and its beautiful underside

3.L spotted a beautiful, large praying mantice on the glass-door of schoolroom. Both he and T have been very happy to find flies for the mantice while it visits us.T has drawn a detailed birds-eye view of the mantice which I shall put in his nature diary.

So another week of reminders of how much learning goes on incidentally in a family that love to learn!