NATURE STUDY

I have reached the conclusion that in our house nature study just “happens”.

 

The year started with us looking after our friend’s spiny leaf insects "Felicity" and "Cheerful" during a heat wave. Poor "Cheerful" died but "Felicity" remained very happy with the fresh leaves we brought her every few days and the thorough misting she got from me at least 2x a day as I determined to return her alive!!

 

 Then there was the dead inchworm caterpillar moth that resuscitated itself once home in our schoolroom to live quite happily on our shelf of videos.

Next, Lachlan (4) found the largest preying-mantis we have ever seen knocking on the glass schoolroom door.

 

 But nothing would have prepared us for yesterday's little” adventure”!! I was turning into the driveway, after dropping Caleb (16) at chess club and stopped the car near the front garden to open the gate. Creeping tentatively out from under the lavender bush I spied a flash of feathery movement. Getting out of the car and bending down to investigate I saw several baby bantams! (We have silky bantams; 7 females and 3 roosters which we were given free by our zoo when they were too young for sex to be determined, hence the 3 roosters!!)

 

Now for several weeks "Snowdrop" had been escaping from the backyard, returning as regular as clockwork (almost to the hour!)every to days to feed voraciously for 20-30 mins before disappearing again.

No amount of searching either yard had helped us to discover where she went. We figured she’d gone broody as bantams are renound for being but hadn’t counted on the eggs.

 

Our bantams are very seldom layers. We might get 1-2 eggs per week from the lot of them!

Anway, Duncan (21) and Hannah (14) helped me to rescue the mum and babies (all 7!!)from under the bush and put them in the cardboard box.

 

We figured they must have hatched just that morning as the inside of the egg shells were still wet and the chicks still had traces of white on their little beaks.(egg tooth?)

 

So here we were with a nursery to house safely and my dh who would have easily just made something up from scrap, uncontactable and 600kms away working at a uranium mine!! 

Fortunately being home schooled children they are used to “thinking outside the square” and Caleb came up with using the shell of an old chest of drawers and covering it with some wire-netting scraps. It is working well. I think for the rest of that evening we were all in a state of shock!

 

As I watched Snowball tenderly shuffle her babes under her wings and a sound of pure contentment which sounds uncannily like cats purring come out of her throat I couldn’t help marveling how wonderful the timing of our God is.

 

This hen chose the stupidest place to have her chicks. Our front yard is unfenced and frequently patrolled by cats and I’m fairly certain a blue-tongue lizard! Yet barring one egg which didn’t hatch, they have all survived. (Normally on Fridays Caleb goes to chess with another home schooling mother and also this particular Friday we were planning a visit with another home schooling family. So for me to be in the front yard at that time, well!!)

 

Appologies for the length of this posting but I thought this was too exciting not to share! Will keep you posted with the progress of our little family

Working with an aspergers child

Last year was a difficult year for Toby. His occupational therapist says that 7 is an age when boys are frequently “picked up” as having sensory issues. The regime we established of regular brushing/bone bumping and deep pressure all helped considerably. I think seeing a psychologist was also beneficial as it helped me to step back from situations and be more focused in my observations + I think it helped Toby by equipping him with tools he could choose to use in certain difficult situations.
Over the summer hols. we were less rigid in our routines and yet “meltdowns” were few.
One practical difference was Toby having a room of his own. To be able to have a space he owns as his (even if shared with 4yo brother) + can choose how it is ordered has almost literally made him stand taller! Also beneficial has been giving him a chore that is just his to do: feeding + watering the silky bantams + the new black hens + collecting their eggs.
Physically too he has made great strides. He self corrects his posture in piano and violin playing more and more and his handwriting is developing into a more confident style.
Still the difficulties that come with being this “personality” shade will not disappear. Last week issues were demonstrated to remind me of this:
1. a very fidgety T. during piano lesson; cause: tag on top irritating him. Solution: remove all tags from clothing!
2.a wriggly T during violin practice; cause: sand or grit between toes. Solution: take a break in practice and clean toes!!
3. a large “meltdown” during a playtime with other families. Cause: uncertain, possibly others not keeping to the rules as he perceives them. Solution: at the time big brother Caleb successfully used re-direction and several other wonderful friends of Toby were also happy to be involved in this. I have since spoken to T, and suggested that we take a bag with us(to include his favourite book he is reading, special soft-toy that Dad brought back from Alice, a snack he likes, maybe the Draw-write now books or some other alternative). If he feels he needs a quiet time he is to go and get the bag(or maybe Caleb and I to get it for him)+ take it to a quiet place until he feels able to join in again. I reminded him that at least one other member of our regular group often feels the need to be by herself and that this is an acceptable and reasonable alternative to a “meltdown”.
I am grateful to God for giving us Toby. Each person is made wonderfully and Toby is no exception. I would not want him to change or be anyway less than the Toby God has made him. Our role as parents is to equip him to be just that!

TOBY’S(8 years) COURSE FOR THIS YEAR

TOBY’S(8 years) COURSE FOR THIS YEAR
(adapted for Toby from Mater Amabalis: http://www.materamabilis.org )

RELIGION: 3 times a week plus adoration 1x weekly and cogs(Catechesis of the Good Shepherd) 1x weekly
1.The Life of Our Lord by Marigold Hunt. Term 1 +Term 2 (weekly)The First Christians by Marigold Hunt
2.Jesus Light of the World 1x weekly for sacrament prep and put revision questions on cards for memory work
Lent Catholic Tales for Boys and Girls by Caryll Houselander
Easter The Young Life of Saint Maria Faustina by Clare Jordan Mohan Weekly
3.57 Stories of Saints by Anne Heffernan (weekly)Term 1: pp.7-99, Archangels to St.Helen (18 lessons)Term 2: pp.100-162, St.Martin of Tours to St.Margaret of Scotland (12 lessons)Term 3: pp.163-220, St.Francis of Assisi to St.Catherine of Siena (12 lessons)* use illustrations from chapters for him to make his own saint book by months

MATHS:dailyAddison Wesley book 5

ENGLISH:dailyHandwriting without tears + grammar sheets continue* gradually introduce ideas from The Writers Jungle

LITERATURE MYTHOLOGY: 1x weeklyThe Children’s Homer by Padraic Colum Term 1: Children’s Homer - Troy: Chapters 1 to 10Term 2: Children’s Homer – Troy: Chapters 11 to 20Term 3: Children’s Homer – Troy: Chapters 21 to 23; Odyssey: Chapters 1 to 7Term 4: Children’s Homer – Odyssey: Chapters 8 to 17

Shakespeare 1x weeklyThe Tempest; Macbeth; As You Like It* listen to part of play each week + learn/read extracts together

LITERATURE: some as readalouds and some as independent readers
All-of-a-Kind Family by Sydney Taylor
The Wizard of Oz by Frank L.Baum
Five Little Peppers and How They Grew by Margaret Sidney
The Treasure Seekers and other books by E.Nesbit
The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling
Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild
The Princess and Curdie and The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald
The Secret Garden and A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Emil and the Detectives by Erich Kastner
Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry
Peter Pan by J.M.Barrie
Kensuke’s Kingdom by Michael Morpurgo

BRITISH HISTORY: aprox 2x weekly
Term 1 Hillayer Ch 38, 39.40+41,42+43,44,45,47,47, 48, 49, 50, 51,52,53(1x weekly,2xweekly every 2nd week)OIS( Our Island Story)re-read 22-34(have him read independently)(1x wkly)
Term 2 (1216-1378)Henry III to Edward III)OIS 35-48(Recommended Reading: Castle Diary: the Journal of Tobias Burgess, Page by R.Platt and C.Riddell –Hillayer 54-57 with both bks it makes 2x weekly
Term 3 (1378-1509) Richard II to Henry VII)OIS 49-61(Recommended Reading:The Woolpack by Cynthia Harnett)Hillayer 54-57 with both bks it makes 2x weekly
Term 4: ( 1509-1601) (Recommended Reading Cue for Treason by Geoffrey Trease)OIS 62-73

ANCIENT HISTORY: 3x weekly The Story of Greece by Mary Macgregor
Term 1: The Gods of Greece to Lycurgus
Term 2: Draco and Solon to Socrates
Term 3: Xenophon to the Fall of Greece

GEOGRAPHY
:(1) Asia;Water Buffalo Days: Growing up in Vietnam by Quang Nhuong Huynh (Vietnam)Miss Happiness and Miss Flower by Rumer Godden (Japan) – fictionDaughter of the Mountains by Louise Rankin (Tibet / India) – fictionThe Journey of Ching Lai by Eleanor Frances Lattimore(2) Deserts My Sahara Adventure: 52 Days by Camel by Lawrie Raskin
(3): Jungles Jungle Islands: My South Sea Adventure by Maria Coffey
(4): Arctic / Antarctic By Truck to the North: My Arctic Adventure by Andy Turnbull
Montessori geography cards working through the following:Land + Water formsParts of A riverParts of a Mountain Parts of a Volcano/Maps:north/south/east/west;latitude/longitude;legend/key;globe

SCIENCE: Apologia Botany and 1x a week nature walk and use of a nature diary

LATIN listen to CD daily + DVD weeklyLatina Christianna 1

ITALIAN dailyRosetta Stone

ART STUDY: 2 x weeklyGothic and Renaissance ArtTerm 1: Giotto and Saint Fra Angelico (where applicable these can be incorporated in evening prayer time)Term 2: Leonardo da Vinci and Sandro BotticelliTerm 3: Michelangelo Buenarotti and Raphael

ART +CRAFT: weekly activities

I have reached the conclusion that in our house nature study just “happens”.

The year started with us looking after our friend’s spiny leaf insects "Felicity" and "Cheerful" during a heat wave. Poor "Cheerful" died but "Felicity" remained very happy with the fresh leaves we brought her every few days and the thorough misting she got from me at least 2x a day as I determined to return her alive!!

Then there was the dead inchworm caterpillar moth that resuscitated itself once home in our schoolroom to live quite happily on our shelf of videos.
Next, Lachlan (4) found the largest preying-mantis we have ever seen knocking on the glass schoolroom door.

But nothing would have prepared us for yesterday's little” adventure”!! I was turning into the driveway, after dropping Caleb (16) at chess club and stopped the car near the front garden to open the gate. Creeping tentatively out from under the lavender bush I spied a flash of feathery movement. Getting out of the car and bending down to investigate I saw several baby bantams! (We have silky bantams; 7 females and 3 roosters which we were given free by our zoo when they were too young for sex to be determined, hence the 3 roosters!!)

Now for several weeks "Snowdrop" had been escaping from the backyard, returning as regular as clockwork (almost to the hour!)every to days to feed voraciously for 20-30 mins before disappearing again.
No amount of searching either yard had helped us to discover where she went. We figured she’d gone broody as bantams are renound for being but hadn’t counted on the eggs.

Our bantams are very seldom layers. We might get 1-2 eggs per week from the lot of them!
Anway, Duncan (21) and Hannah (14) helped me to rescue the mum and babies (all 7!!)from under the bush and put them in the cardboard box.

We figured they must have hatched just that morning as the inside of the egg shells were still wet and the chicks still had traces of white on their little beaks.(egg tooth?)

So here we were with a nursery to house safely and my dh who would have easily just made something up from scrap, uncontactable and 600kms away working at a uranium mine!!

Fortunately being home schooled children they are used to “thinking outside the square” and Caleb came up with using the shell of an old chest of drawers and covering it with some wire-netting scraps. It is working well. I think for the rest of that evening we were all in a state of shock!

As I watched Snowball tenderly shuffle her babes under her wings and a sound of pure contentment which sounds uncannily like cats purring come out of her throat I couldn’t help marveling how wonderful the timing of our God is.

This hen chose the stupidest place to have her chicks. Our front yard is unfenced and frequently patrolled by cats and I’m fairly certain a blue-tongue lizard! Yet barring one egg which didn’t hatch, they have all survived. (Normally on Fridays Caleb goes to chess with another home schooling mother and also this particular Friday we were planning a visit with another home schooling family. So for me to be in the front yard at that time, well!!)

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!

Incidental Nature Study

Our nature study this week has reminded me of how much incidental learning goes on in a family that loves to learn together.
Firstly there is the mystery of where the white silky bantam"snowball" disappears to and why she ALWAYS comes back exactly every two days...can birds count, at least to two! or more practically does she consume just enough food to last 2 days; although how she eats the same amount so that her returns are always at the same time of day and never a day longer or shorter is a puzzle we have yet to solve.

Secondly"don't assume its dead just because it doesn't move". Toby and I were down at the river after piano during the week. we were actually searching for lizards but spied this "dead" moth and decided to take it home for the nature table. Toby carried it very carefully in the car on a piece of bark. Much was our surprise the next morning when we found "mothy', as Toby so originally called the insect, resting quietly on one of the bookshelves in the schoolroom! A thorough investigation then ensued with Duncan on his return telling us it was an inchworm caterpillar moth and with us noting how well its top surface camouflaged it as compared with its beautiful underside. Several blurry photos later!!

Finally Lachlan spied a giant praying mantis on the glass door of the schoolroom, on Saturday afternoon. Both he and Toby set off in haste to catch flies for our elegant visitor. Much later Toby came to me with a birds-eye illustration he had made of the mantis, which I shall put in his nature diary. All this with no planning/organizing from me...hmmm, pause for reflection.