Beach camping

For the first time, we joined a local group of homeschoolers on their annual camp in Lorne.  The camp site is nicely tucked away and just a stroll from the beach.

I'm so glad we went!  There's just nothing like the sound of the ocean to lull you to sleep ... and then the racket the cockatoos make to wake you up again at sunrise!!

Upon arriving home, I could finally see the photos taken by the children whilst we were down there (the batteries had run out by the end of the 2nd day).

 Okay!  We're awake already!!

 If you really want to impress us campers,

you all have to sing in unison!

 A beach stroll with friends.

Thank you for dropping by!

Have you heard about 'The Letterbox Project'?

Today was the 3rd anniversary of the horrific fires that swept through Victoria and devasted so many lives.  It's the day now known as "Black Saturday", and it's still a very raw topic to those who have been affected.

Despite all the blackened areas still existing, one group of people are inspiring the community to come together and add colour with some beautiful mosaic letterboxes.  I saw a report on the ABC tonight, and it brought tears to my eyes seeing these wonderful people working together for such a lovely result.

This has been the inspiration of Marion Oakley, and I think you'll agree with me that the results are stunning, physically and emotionally on those people who have had the opportunity to work with Marion.

Please, take some time to check out the story I viewed by visiting ABC OPEN online here. It's only just over 4 minutes and well worth watching.

Thank you for dropping by!

Excursion to the Dolphin Research Institute

We had another excursion yesterday.  This time it was a really long drive away (2hrs) and an early start, but very much worth it.

The Dolphin Research Institute is located in Hastings, Victoria.   We signed up for the two sessions: Through the Eyes of a Whale, and Don't Pee in My Pool.

Through the Eyes of a Whale

Lots of enthusiastic discussion on different types of whales and their behaviours.  We heard the different whale songs, saw photos and videos of whales in the local area, as well as some wonderful TRUE stories about sitings that kept the children (and parents!) enthralled.

We had the opportunity to feel some teeth from a sperm whale.  The females' is considerably smaller than the males'.

Sperm whale teeth.

The male is the darker/heavier on the left, and female on the right.

Also passed around were some baleen plates, which were really quite heavy. Apparently, once a whale dies, all the baleen plates fall out quite readily.  This is also the part of the whale that was used when making corsets.

Whilst feeding, whales usually turn on their side; once they engulf the water with their food, they become very 'front heavy'.  We saw some footage of a whale feeding near the surface of the water, taking a huge gulp, which caused the chin area to expand as it would on a pelican's bill.   The throat grooves then slowly contract, as it sifts the sea water from it's meal.

A very heavy vertebrae from a humpback whale had been found on a local beach, which led into a discussion on whales' and dolphins' skeletal structure.  The dolphin's skull was used to show how the lower jaw was hollow, which is how the dolphin hears via vibrations.

 The hollow lower jaw of a dolphin.

This then led us to go into another room and explore what it's like being inside a humpback whale.

Inside the whale, the children sat along the centre to get a feel for how big one of the smallest whales are. They were told a true story about how a man had survived being swallowed by a sperm whale.  The story can be read at the Killer Whale Museum, in Eden NSW.


Don't Pee in My Pool

After a break for lunch, we were back to learn more about how pollution from our drains affects the marine plants and animals.  The children were taken to a nearby drain, where all the rainwater from the street works it's way down to the sea.  It was awful to see so much rubbish there!  Mangroves were growing, and some small fish and crabs swimming around in the shallows.

Finally, a game to let everyone burn off some energy before the trip home.  A game of tag was set up, with a long rope used to make a huge circle.  Three hula hoops served as 'seaweed' safe places, but had a limited safety time of 3 seconds before players (fish) had to move into 'open water' again.  Those who were 'it' were the hungry seal and dolphin, where soft toys were used.    The game was made more difficult once the seaweed safeplaces were removed.

 A great day out.  If you can get here to book a group session, I'd recommend it!!

Flowering gums and lorikeets

It's a lovely time of the year when so many native trees are in flower.  From my kitchen window, I have a view into my next door neighbour's garden which is planted with a variety of native plants, including some lovely gum varieties.  At the moment she has one in full bloom with it's big beautiful red flowers (Eucalyptus ficifolia).

Early evening, as I'm getting dinner prepared, a mass of rainbow lorikeets come in regularly to visit and feed on the nectar from the tree.  I can clearly see their antics from my kitchen window.

I've taken these photos as best as I could from the back veranda, with zoom on at the maximum and the steadiest hand I could manage.  The colours are just lovely!

Once this gum stops flowering, the birds usually find my apple tree quite appetising ... at least they give fair warning that they are coming. :)

Point Wilson

If you should head to the south-eastern arm of the Ninety Mile Beach, make sure you take your insect repellant! Mozzies are everywhere. But, if you can handle that, there are plenty of beautiful beaches to enjoy. We head that way regularly now to visit the children's paternal grandparents.

Point Wilson was one place we hadn't explored on our ventures that way, so we decided to head down there last Sunday.

There was plenty of evidence of wallabies and kangaroos, but we saw neither. However, we did see plenty of these plants:

Teatree (Leptospermum)

Pigface (Carpobrotus rossii)

It was a very pleasant walk from the short bush trail to the beach / jetty.

Mariposa couldn't wait to get into the water. Little fingerlings were swimming along the coastline, about where her feet are in this photo:

Of course, there's nothing like a mango feast after a couple of hours exploring at the beach!

Family movie

I first saw this film on a family night out in the 1980s. Now my children have discovered it and have been enjoying watching it in fits of laughter.

The Gods Must Be Crazy is all on the circumstances which arise when a Coke bottle falls from the sky in the Kalahari. Once found, it becomes a means of discontent, so the bushman goes on a journey to return it and thereby re-establish harmony amongst the tribe. Of course, he's not experienced white culture, and the narative presents in a 'child like' fashion as he makes his observations and experiences. It's about the differences in cultures, with lots of slap-happy comedy thrown in and light look at some of the harsher realities of war also.

Wordless Wednesday: Cavorting Corellas

Reflections on the week

We've had quite a successful start to the homeschooling year. Maestro still likes to just 'get on with the job' and works through his books in a very orderly fashion. Mariposa alters her routine; one day beginning with Maths, another day Music or English. I'm especially pleased that her reading has gone up a level as she's beginning to become much more fluent. She told me her secret today: "If I sound the word out in my head, I can just say the word and then I read quicker!" YAY! She's getting it!

I've been catching myself out, wondering WHY my children have learnt so differently. Sometimes I've thought it's because I've not spent as much time with the younger as I did the elder. Firstborns always get lots of extra one on one time. But, in fact, they do learn so differently, and it's taken me time to realise what makes the lessons 'click'. I'm realising I need to ask the children, "How would you figure this out?" or "What made you think of using that (word, sentence .. ) ?" This is where I begin to really enjoy teaching, and I'm not teaching a class of 25 children anymore, they're MY CHILDREN!!

As we've been plodding along through the week, mindful of all the recent events with the bushfires and how that's affected friends, the focus has definitely been shifting from ticking off the list of work to be done. Instead we've really been focusing on talking about events, helping those we can, and trying to take better care of our animals and plants (the silverbeet is trying to make a comeback). The children are keen to become wildlife carers after seeing a flyer on the supermarket notice board, but after looking up some information, I don't think we'd be qualified enough to do this. However, we've heard they do need clean pillowcases, so we can still donate and help in some small way! Becoming a carer may be something to work towards after we get more training.

Sometime during next week, we'll be getting ready to organise restructuring the chicken coop. I've been sketching out a few plans and I asked Maestro to help measure it out today. The aim is to enclose it a bit more, into a cube shape, with a separate nesting box accessible from the outside. We'll keep the plumber's piping as the frame, so it'll stay light-weight, but I want to weather proof it some more (perhaps with plywood?) and discourage some cheeky crows and carrawongs from stealing our eggs. I'll keep you informed about our goings-ons in that department. :)

Another great idea I want to consider is making a homemade wind generator (thanks to Fliztea for letting me know about this!) I think this would be a great project for hubby and Maestro to work on together - and of course us girls will probably be just as keen to get involved too!

Our learning area

Our area for doing the children's lessons has gone through many, many changes. Firstly, we always used to work on the kitchen table, with a bookshelf to hold all the paper and craft gear, an alphabet frieze along the top of the wall (actually, that's still there!), and a wall to post up displays of work.

Then we began our renovating and a huge rumpus room became 2 rooms: a bedroom and a 'learning room'. Our learning room has the schooling tables and materials all in one corner, a piano and lounge suite, plus more bookshelves for books and games.

The table the children used to work at used to be smaller, with smaller chairs, until Maestro sprouted and we just had to upgrade. So my parents very kindly gave us a trestle table which works perfectly.

Are you like me, though, and have to try numerous combinations and arrangements until something works 'just right'? I just couldn't get my area to 'work' until the end of last year. I'm really happy with this set-up now, though:

Since it's a trestle table for the children, putting it in the middle of the room seemed a good idea, but it wasn't getting dismantled. So, it was put toward the back window, parallel to the bookcase. We had been given ... (in fact, all the furniture in this photo has been given to us, so I am most grateful for family and friend's generosity) ... given a buffet cupboard, which holds the art/craft supplies, various other stationery and new 'school' books.

Then I thought I'd like to have a table just for me. So, the desk I was using for my sewing area was brought in and slots in just nicely. It's working well, as now I also have a neat sewing table to make my drapes. ...... Oh yes, the drapes! (That's what I'm frantically trying to complete. Only about 3hrs away from finishing this one window.) You can see them on the LHS, not yet hung properly as I need to get a new rod on which to put them. Those verticals just have to go. They're old, faded and just don't work anymore. Here's the pretty fabric I picked up last week:

The buffet top is going to work nicely to display our books in use, any special 'show and tell' items the children will collect/make (much like a nature study display), plus a calendar I made to help Mariposa with learning dates. It is just a printout with the list of days, months, year and numerals, all laminated. They are then stuck with blu-tac onto a laminated page with "Today's date is:" on the top.

In the book holder is my book on Australian Birds (a 1967 edition). I'll display a new bird each week for the children to learn about (this week it's Galahs). We'll also be reading through the Great Composers book, focusing on a composer a month (or as I figure it out .. nothing in concrete yet!) and listening to their music. Our current read-aloud is Enid Blyton's More Adventure on Willow Tree Farm (this was one of the treasures we found in an antique store on our vacation).

My bookshelf is just crammed with lots of books, math manipulatives and readers. I like how it's all there, on hand.

On the opposite side of the room, the games shelf; pretty well stocked, too.

In front of this shelf is our 2 seater lounge (currently covered in drape material - thus not photographed, lol!). It's great for getting us together for read-alouds, and the children enjoy being comfortable whilst reading to me.

Well, I'll leave it there for now, as there's a day's work to be done. I'll post about my drape making adventures soon.

Dolphin Rings

My sister emailed me about this beautiful clip on YouTube. I always thought bubbles naturally rose to the surface, but now I know not always. Watch this amazing video about the secret playtoys dolphins create under the water.