Chickafinty ~ A Life in the Laundry

Everything you ever wanted to know about...SPACE

• the planets are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune Chickabid
• Pluto is a dwarf planet Chickabid
• Mercury is the second hottest planet even though Mercury is closer to the sun than Venus Chickabid
• Venus is hotter because its atmosphere is very thick.  The thick atmosphere makes Venus hotter because it stops the heat escaping Chickabid
• the sun is much bigger than our planet, Earth The Duchess
• Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars are rock planetsChickabid
• Jupiter and Saturn are gas planets Chickabid
• Uranus, Neptune and Pluto are ice planets Chickabid
• all the planets are very far away from each other Chickabid
• Saturn and Uranus and Neptune have ice rings that go around them Chickabid
• there was a man who walked on the moon and his name was Neil Armstrong The Duchess
• the moon is smaller than the earth The Duchess
• the orange fuel tank on the space shuttle wasn't always orange The Duchess
• the first two space shuttles had a white fuel tank The Duchess
• they stopped painting it white because it was less heavy when it was orange The Duchess
• Neptune is closer to Pluto than all the other planets The Duchess
• the Moon is a very cold place at night, and really hot during the day Chickabid
• twelve people have walked on the moon...Chickabid
• there were seven moon missions, but only six of them got to land on the moon's surface Chickabid

more information coming soon along with some videos that we have found and pictures of our lapbooks about Space.

 

 

Progress report

Well.

It's the end of Semester One and the traditional reporting season has arrived.  Our homeschooling experience is 6 months old and it would seem appropriate to look back on the last six months and look at how far we've all come.

DESCHOOLING

At school, everything fits neatly into a box.  We've only got five hours of classroom time a day, so there has to be a definable purpose in everything that we do.  It has to fall under one of the key learning areas, it has to be outcomes based, it has to be assessable, preferably immediately or at least by the end of the week or the end of the unit.  Literacy takes first place and absorbs the first two hours of the day.  Maths takes up another hour and the remaining two hours are divvied up amongst the other four KLAs, or those two hours are devoted to the lastest thought bubble from the Board of Studies...the COGs unit.

Homeschooling is NOT like that.  Homeschooling is more about home than school.  It's about learning through life.  A large percentage of learning doesn't fit neatly into a box and it's really hard to quantify and record. 

The academic part of the day is relatively easy to report on.  We spend the morning doing maths, phonics, spelling, grammar, reading, copywork and writing.  We watch For the Juniors and write reports.  We draw, sing, use the computer, write narrations, cook, garden (or just dig!), and we talk.  We talk lots.  I answer questions all day long.  Easy questions like how do you draw a map of Tasmania freehand, to difficult questions like how does the space shuttle get into space...questions that stretch my (considerable) general knowledge to its fullest extent...questions that require a "I don't know.  Lets' find out!" answer.  A lot - and a mean a LOT - of learning is incidental and culmulative.  It's jolly difficult to record this kind of learning.  At school we're constrained by timetables, by delivering curricula to a large number of children with hugely differing abilities.

Where homeschooling is concerned, deschooling has been my biggest difficulty.

(more coming)

Home School Inc

I'm having difficulty working out how to record the work we've done and assess the kids' progress.  I found Home School Inc which looks fantastic.  The main impediment o going ahead and using it is that the computer is in a different room to where the kids are working right now.  As soon as I have my back turned they tend to get a bit silly and giggly.

I'm going to throw caution to the wind this morning and dump all that remains on the craft/study desk onto the dining table and then set the kids to work in the "new schoolroom".  It's not ready yet but we need to get the kids in and working there anyway.

Home School Inc

I'm having difficulty working out how to record the work we've done and assess the kids' progress.  I found Home School Inc which looks fantastic.  The main impediment o going ahead and using it is that the computer is in a different room to where the kids are working right now.  As soon as I have my back turned they tend to get a bit silly and giggly.

I'm going to throw caution to the wind this morning and dump all that remains on the craft/study desk onto the dining table and then set the kids to work in the "new schoolroom".  It's not ready yet but we need to get the kids in and working there anyway.