homeschool - the first 3 months of travel
lol - if you get what I mean. Anyway, riddles aside, I did plan the first couple of weeks and then realised that planning everything was a waste of time!
It was so much easier to base the boy's studies around the places we were staying, and what we saw along the way.
I did however, stick to the good old Queensland Targeting Maths (year 2 & 4) every day for a fair hour for both boys, as it is an excellent book to cover Qld curriculum maths.
Below you will find some of my favourite studies we did - from term # 3 ....
The boys drew very cool diagrams from their understanding of the rain cycle, and then made these cool 'rain cycle bags' - using a sandwhich bag, a little water and a diagram on the outside. After about an hour in the sun, the condensation began to appear and after another hour, the precipitation began to appear.... very cool!
We watched some very good youtube footage about the rain cycle and how it plays an important part on our beautiful Earth.... the clips below were the boy's favourites.
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The boys kept a cloud diary for a week using a cloud key pinwheel to help name the different clouds and predict the weather on each day. We also made our own little pet clouds - so cute. | We tried an experiment to make rain using shaving cream and food colouring,.... and our second experiment was making clouds using hairspray and warm water in a bottle - it made condensation clouds - very cool! |
English - Instructional - Blowing Bubbles . . .
A quick session of mind mapping for adjectives, unwrap all the bubble gum, and blow some bubbles. The kids didn't even realise they were doing school work.... they were so excited to tell everyone all about the correct way to blow bubbles - they couldn't wait to write it all down!
Click the above link to see the original idea - it's very cute. |
Our focal point for term #4 English (as a follow up from this term) will be character analysis and comparative texts.
Maths - Mapping; 1770 and Captain James Cook
We covered a little bit of circumference, diameter and radius of a circle and found this youtube clip (above) that made us all crack up.... the song got stuck in our heads for days! Lol - Cahil is watching me write this and just starrted singing the song!!! ...funny how you remember the annoying things. The boys used this information to label and draw their circle diagrams which in turn helped them to understand how the trundle wheel worked. In term #4....We will be covering more in depth history studies about captain james cook, the town of Bowen, the first fleet, Australia Day, indigenous people and how life has changed for them since white man arrived. |
Science - Ocean theme . . .
The boys painted the layers of the ocean - sunlight, twilight and midnight - abyss; and we learned about what lives in the different layers. Our studies began with our discovery of the infamous cone snail. So poisonous you can be killed within 4 minutes by it's venomous poison filled harpoon. The boys were horrified at something so beautiful being so deadly. The boys wrote animal reports about the information they researched, and then made some clay forms of the cone snail harpooning its prey. | This particular topic was to be short-lived, originally planned for a couple of weeks..... next term on, we are still going with it. The boys are thoroughly enjoying this subject and funny enough, every place we come across is overflowing with relevant studies (I guess that is because we have kept our travelling to the eastern coastline of Australia so far) We looked at the poisonous Box Jelly fish and deadly Irukanji since we are travelling north up the coast at the moment - and signs are everywhere about stingers.... beaches now have vinegar bottles ready at hand should you be unlucky enough to be stung by a stinger! I'm not risking it - October is nigh and the stingers are coming! | The boys made blob maps of our planet and marked in the 5 great oceans of Earth; Atlantic, Antarctic, Pacific, Indian and the Arctic ocean. We were lucky enough to come across heaps of hermit crabs while at notch point - and the boys took quite a liking to them. We looked at the hermit crabs and researched them on the internet. It was fascinating to find out about them and watch them in their natural habitat. The boys wrote a very informative report with detailed pictures. |
We learned a lot about these deadly stingers and how to treat someone who has been stung. |
Such a shame to not be able to swim at these amazing beaches we are coming across in the northern part of the east coast of Australia
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