Thursday, March 31, 2011

World Wide Wanderings: If The World Were A Village

Before diving in to our 'wandering around the world' I wanted to get everyone thinking about the world in which we live.

If The World Were A Village was a perfect introduction to the realisation that the world isn't really as big as we think it is.

From Amazon,

 There are currently more than six billion people on the planet! This enormous number can be difficult to grasp, especially for a child. But what if we imagine the whole world as a village of just 100 people? In a time when parents and educators are looking to help children gain a better understanding of the world's peoples and their ways of life, If the World Were a Village offers a unique and objective resource. By exploring the lives of the 100 villagers, children will discover that life in other nations is often very different from their own. The shrunk-down statistics -- some surprising, some shocking -- and David Smith's tips on building "world-mindedness" will encourage readers to embrace the bigger picture and help them to establish their own place in the global village.

B completed the mini booklets that can be found over at Homeschool Share, to add to his geography notebook. K sat in on the many readings we had of this book and the discussions that those brought about it. I think a great deal of this was beyond her, so definitely something we can revisit down the track.


B always prefers to complete his own covers for his lapbooks and notebooks.


The mini booklets show all of the statistical information conveyed throughout the book.


You can view a slideshow of the components of  the book at this link.

Visit the Miniature Earth Project here.

For any Australians this is a link to a Practical Ideas for Promoting Mathematics document, at the end they cover 'If Australia Were A Village' very briefly.

A thought provoking look at the world in which we live.



Tuesday, March 29, 2011

We Have Dancers

So proud of my little girl! She's struggled for nearly 3 years with the constant desire to attend a dance school. Struggled because she hasn't been able to overcome her fear of the situation...heading off into the unknown so to speak.

During this time we have sat in on and even tried to participate in lessons at various dance schools within the area. All to no avail. Except for a term of homeschool dance classes which she did participate in very sparodically.

So instead she has been content to dance at home, spending nearly all of waking hours dancing and putting on choreographed shows for her family.


Not any more, well she still dances at home and performs for us all of the time, but she has also been attending Jazz classes around the corner for about six weeks now and loving every minute of it.

This was huge for her to overcome and I am so proud of her for doing it. She is blossomng into a confident young lady.

B has also been heading off to dance class, with a weekly boys funk group which is enjoying immensely.

Sunday, March 27, 2011

Picasso - An Arty Crafty Party

This week's Arty Crafty Party's theme is Picasso.

Please share all of your fabulous Picasso studies, creations and works of art via the linky below.

Are you new to An Arty Crafty Party? Be sure to famililarise yourself with the participation guidelines before you link up your posts. They can be found at this link.

I can't wait to browse around the links that you all share this week.

Grab the code below and add our button on your blog and thanks for linking up!



Our Worldwide Classroom




Friday, March 25, 2011

World Wide Wanderings: Pangea

The supercontinent. We briefly touched on Pangea and the theory of the supercontinent. A very fascinating topic and one we will look at more closely during earth science, when we cover plate tectonics.


B completed this notebooking page to include in his geography notebook. I'm not sharing the download to this one due to the images. If anyone would like it you will have contact me via email.

I spent some time searching for a realistic pangea simulation on you tube. There is alot there but nothing that I would say is fabulous (well at least nothing I found).

The following is the last 600 million years of earth's history




This one is quite interesting, showing pangea and then a prediction of 250 million years into the future. Surely gets you thinking.




If you have completed a study on Pangea we'd love to see it. Please link up your blog post in the linky below.



Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Family Fun: A Trip To Sandgate & An Ice Machine

We recently took a drive over to Sandgate. A smallish bayside suburb approximately 40 minutes from home.

I don't ever remember having visited Sandgate and our kids certainly have never been there before.

We have an Ice Machine over that way, yes rather strange I know but the kids have heard dad talk about his Ice Machine since before Christmas so it was high time we took the trip over so they could see it in all its' glory.

Be forewarned, this is not visually exciting but the kids were very keen to see it and how it worked and I figure there is probably a family member or two that wouldn't mind to have a sticky beak at it also.


The Ice Machine is situated on the main thoroughfare through Sandgate, in front of a Bait and Tackle store and across the way from a Service Station.


B especially was keen to see the workings of the machine and now we can tick off some 'technology learning' too!


Here they are refilling the bags. The machine self fills bags and spits them out of the front.


C and K played happily under the stairs after they had finished their look at the contraption.




Of course once the 'money compartment' was opened everyone ran to have a look.

And what's a visit to an Ice Machine without taking home a bag of ice! Waiting patiently, it's a little noisy.


And there's the glorious bag of ice everyone was waiting for.



We took the opportunity to spend some time over near the water whilst visiting Sandgate. There is a lovely long esplanade with many shady trees that were all being used by locals.

The kids spotted this rather small playground immediately and spent some time playing on and around it.


The tide was definitely out but this provided loads of little pools to paddle and play in whilst we made our way out to the waters edge.


There were several schools of tiny little fish in these pools that everyone wanted me to capture on film. A completely impossible task. We all know what fish do if you even come within a few feet of them! That didn't stop everyone chasing around though.


The higlight was the many jellyfish washed up on the shore, this one was particularly large.


All three wanted to bring it home and cook it. Yes you read that right, they wanted to cook it!!


Of course what's a day by the water without fish and chips under a shady tree. (not quite sure what C and DH are discussing there)


What's the one thing that are always around wherever folks are eating, near the sea. Our good friends the seagulls!!


It took C and K all of about 3 seconds to 'shoo' them away.




A lovely way to spend a few hours with my gorgeous family.


Monday, March 21, 2011

School Room Display Boards

After seeing these on a few blogs lately I finally decided to go grab some simple cork boards to display the children's work.


Nothing fancy, but they have made a nice addition to the room, I often find one of them standing in front of their work and admiring it.

The display boards make it easy to show dad the things they have been getting up to during the day also.

There is no real routine to these, when the boards are full they get emptied and all papers get filed away.

Each child has their own board. That was one of the reasons why I held off for so long on putting them up. Wall space is scarce in this room and I wanted to be certain that we were using the walls to their maximum potential.

For now we enjoy having these and since I hung them with 3M tape they can easily be removed if we ever need that wall space again.

Saturday, March 19, 2011

An Arty Crafty Party: Whatever The Weather

This week's Arty Crafty Party Link Up is all about the Weather.

Share all of your fun weather crafts, art and fun hands on activities in the link up below.




Thursday, March 17, 2011

World Wide Wanderings

We are about to embark on a journey.

A journey of a lifetime to faraway lands, magical places that we may only ever get to see in books and documentaries and in our dreams.

We'll map our journey, chart our course, look at many geographical terms along the way.

There'll be reading, loads of reading. Picture Books with Five In a Row, where they work in. Myths, Fables and Legends of the various countries we find ourselves in and other great reads that we will no doubt find during our travles.

For sure, there'll be activities, crafts, lapbooking and notebooks, cooking, drawing, painting and many other hands on fun activities as we travel from shore to shore.

We have our passports ready and waiting, our bags are packed and we are ready to set sail.

But first, we may need to gain some background knowledge about this vast world of ours. So we'll probably find out about the continents and our oceans first, via some entertaining fun.

I hope you'll come along for the ride.

We are looking forward to participating in the Geography Link Up as we begin our journey.

Stay tuned for the fun!






Monday, March 14, 2011

St Patrick's Day - Arty Crafty Party

 Paddy's Day is just around the corner, it's time share all of the fun, hands on things you and your kiddo's have been doing together to celebrate and learn more about St Patrick and the country of Ireland.

Add your links below.

Please ensure that you are familiar with our guidelines for participating in the An Arty Crafty Party, before adding your links.

Looking forward to seeing all of the fun in one easy to use link list.



Sunday, March 13, 2011

An Arty Crafty Party

Lately I have found myself spending a great deal of time searching through various linky lists looking for specific hands on and art and craft activites related to our themes.

There are some wonderful link lists out there, with a myriad of ideas. For someone with very little time the sharing that takes place in the online homeschool community is nothing short of amazing.

However I want all of the ideas on one topic/theme all together in one easy to find place. You do too right? I mean I'm not asking too much, am I? That way there would be no need for me to spend a couple of hours look backing through the archives of the various linky's/meme's that I frequent.

I could just add everything over to my tagfoot page, but you know that takes time, quite a bit of time, and whilst I use it alot and really like my tagfoot page with its' easy to find categories, I love the thumbnail images that a linky list provides, all conveniently together.



So An Arty Crafty Party is born!

These will be weekly link ups on a chosen theme/topic, although I will probably leave the link list open so you can come back and add to that particular theme at anytime in the future. Old  and new links alike are all welcome. Links for the younger ages right through to us mature folk are encouraged too.

Art and Craft is a very open ended topic, any links that are hands on and creative in some way and that relate to the theme are welcome.

To join in the fun you simply need to place our button somewhere on your blog or in the blog post you are adding to the link list and then go ahead and add your links.

Grab the code below to add to your blog for the Arty Crafty Party link up.





Our Worldwide Classroom



Following are some of the upcoming themes.Links have been added to existing themes.

St Patricks Day
Weather
Picasso
Spring
Easter
Space

When adding your link be sure to include appropriate details in your link description. For example, you've created Paddy's Day Rainbows with your toddler and tissue paper. The link description could read - "Toddler Tissue Paper Rainbows"  detailed descriptions along with a thumbnail image make it super easy for visitors to find exactly what it is they are looking for and in turn your blog.

I sure hope you'll join in the fun.


Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Bambino Academy - Play Things

This was a quick simple piece to put together, if I can do it, anyone can do it! Thanks to this blog for first showing me how, although it's so simple you really could figure it out on your own.

C now has an Underwater Felt Play Mat.



Materials I used:

1 Piece of A4 sized Green Felt (seaweed)
1 Piece of A4 sized Tan Felt (sand/ocean floor)
1 Oversize (roughly A3) Piece of Blue Stiffened Felt (ocean)
Iron On Fuse Webbing (from the sewing department)
1 Tube of Ocean Life Creatures ($10 from Toyworld)

Not picture but also required:

Scissors
Lead Pencil
Iron

** I chose stiffened felt simply because that was all they had in the size I wanted. It easily slides into the cupboard, but if you would prefer to roll it away be sure to find regular soft felt for this.


Putting It All Together:

This didn't even take half hour to do!

1. I roughly drew the sand across the bottom of the Tan Felt. Since it was A4 I needed to do this twice, one piece slighlty shorter than other. Be sure they are the same height so that once they are attached the sand flows evenly across the ocean floor. You will have a join in your sand doing it this way, but I didn't mind.

2. Cut a piece of Iron On Fuse Webbing as close to the same size as the sand you just cut as possible. Place the sand onto the webbing and iron carefully with a dry iron so it attaches. Peel the backing away and place sand into position on the ocean floor area of the large bule felt piece and iron once again.

Do the same thing with the 2nd piece of sand, you will need to be a little more careful with the second piece, ensuring that your joins match up and that you are covering to the edge properly. You can use the iron to 'spread' the felt a little, mine was actually a couple of millimetres too short but I pushed the felt with the iron to move it across.

3. With the Green Felt piece roughly draw a few pieces of Seaweed and cut them out. You could fuse these into place but I chose not.

4. Add your animals.


5. Introduce your child to their new world of fun.

C played with this all day on and off the first day I put it together. I love that for now it is as simple as just as a play mat but it will grow with him. For now we can tell stories, sing songs with and about the animals.

Later on I will be able to put together 3 part cards for these creatures for him to first learn their names, label them and then go on to learn more about the individual creatures themselves.


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