Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Dancing, Numbers, Astronomy.

Our dancing class recommenced this week, so we had our first lesson in timing and harmony for Rockabilly.  I'm not expecting to get to most of them, since baby no 4 is due so soon, but hopefully I'll be able to watch some and get some direction from Willow, on anything that I miss.  It's been great getting into going to these lessons and seeing how everyone is learning something from them.  Even Arden who sits and draws, whilst the lesson is on, has picked up a few of the basic foot steps.

This week Arden and I have been working on numbers- using the JUMP curriculum and also modelling them in modelling wax.



Gabriel has been working on the second half of his astronomy block. He's been looking at moon phases, and constellations this week as well as doing some reading and writing about Venus.  Our form drawing took the form of an old style compass to compliment this week's work.









This is mine.





Willow has been busy working on her last segment of history for this block- reading Dr Zhivago, and looking at the Industrial Revolution, WW1, WW2 and the period of peace in between. I decided that Dr Zhivago would make a good book for this period, as it covers the Russian class system, the Revolution and  changes occurring due to war- so a fairly broad scope of some of the issues of the time. She's decided to make the focus of her written piece, this time, about Cadbury, and how ethically minded he was regarding his workers.

Meanwhile she's getting very adept with her circus skills. Here's a one handed handstand!



Thursday, June 6, 2013

Astronomy, Drawings, this last Week

We've had a bit of a quieter week this past one; there was a public holiday Monday, so we only did main lesson, since Damien was at home.  We also had a look around town to see what was happening for WA day.

Gabriel moved onto his astronomy block this week, and we did a few interesting exercises out of the book that we're using.  My only complaint about the book, is that is doesn't translate some of the sections for the Southern Hemisphere as well as it could, for someone learning astronomy.


These are our moon calendars, taken from an exercise out of the 'Sky Phenomena' book, and adapted to suit the Southern Hemisphere.




We also had a drawing session where we imagined what it might look like to see the full earth from the moon- this is my picture.


 This is Gabriel's picture.

This is Arden's picture of outer space, that he did at the same time.

And here are Gabriel's zebra sketches, and shading experiments from this week.



Willow has been working on setting up her etsy account for her business, so we've been opening bank accounts and sorting out PAYPAL for her.  She's also ordered some new wool for further projects, and is awaiting it's arrival.