So where in Australia are we 'travelling' at the the moment?? Kakadu and Arnhem Land with the help of the beautiful books above. We've been learning a lot about Aboriginal culture and about the nature of this part of Australia that we've never seen for ourselves.
We went on a nature walk to see what we could find in our own backyard, not quite as impressive as Kakadu but still nature all the same. One thing that did stand out was the different smells of different leaves. We had lavender, lemon verbena, rosemary and a geranium leaf, all with their own distinctive smells.
Jaden finished reading 'Tom Appleby, Convict Boy' and wrote up a fabulous book report about it. I was really impressed by how much history info sunk in by reading it as a novel through a convict's eyes. He kept coming out and saying "mum did you know..." and it was usually something we'd already talked about that had obviously gone in one ear and out the other, but through literature it stuck (yay for books!!!) He is now reading "The goat who sailed the world" also by Jackie French, about Captain Cook's travels. (He was meant to read that one first since Cook had to check Australia out before they actually sent the convicts here, but he'd left it a friends and we just got it back last week).
In science we're doing the unit on the lithosphere (the top 2 layers of the Earth), so since our next lesson is on caves we sat down to watch one of the 'Planet Earth' documentaries. It showed some amazing cave formations, one in the USA had spectacular crystal formations!! It's not open to the public and it took them years to get permission to film it. It took them days of crawling though to get to the 'chandeleir ballroom' which was breathtaking. Another cave in Borneo was much less impressive to me cause it was filled with the hugest pile of bat poo covered with crawling cockroaches, so gross!!!!! It always amazes me though seeing so much diversity and beauty on our planet how people could not see the hand of a Creator at the helm of it all and think it just evolved by random accident?????
Jaden is also excited that his science course starts this thursday. 10 weeks of chemistry with other home schooled kids, he's counting down the days (science is his fave!!) :-)
So what's everyone else been doing?
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4 comments:
You are doing an awesome job with the Australian Book Traveller, I'm inspired. We are not rushing through it. I'm going to go and find some of those books you mentioned. I'm so glad that Jaden is finding it interesting, it makes all the difference. Take care
ps your little Bethany is so beautiful and I'm sure the next one will be just so as well.
Thanks Renelle. We're not rushing through book traveller either. I have changed the way we're doing it and 1 day a week we are doing history and 1 or 2 days a week depending on what else we have on we are looking at the place and state we're focusing on at the time. Trying to read "The Australia Book" as one unit was ridiculous cause it just rushes through our whole history and none of that would've sunk in, so we're doing it bit by bit over the year and tying it in with the other books. So at the moment we're looking at Aboriginal culture and history, and also early explorers, then when we get to Vic we'll be doing the gold rush, bushrangers etc, trying to make it a bit easier to navigate.
I'm also rearrangng the order, we're doing the outback ones after these ones cause to me that makes more sense, then we'll start term 2 with the anzac ones to fit in with anzac day. I love the beauty of a plan that gives you guidance but allows you to completely change it all if you want LOL.
Looks really great. xo
Hi Caz,
It looks as if you're really enjoying working with Jaden, and he's enjoying what he's studying. :D
Have a wonderful week,
Blessings,
Jillian
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