March Learning Adventures

 March flew by. Simply flew! I was a little remise in recording our learning adventures this past month, but here are some bits and pieces that I remembered to write down :)

 William playing with matching some sight words

One day in the kitchen I watched William pick up one of Jonah's secret seven books while he was eating his porridge. He looked at the cover and then opened it and really looked at some of the pages. I remember this is how it started with Jonah - he did the same thing with Bridget's books and shortly after was reading himself. It was a struggle to hold myself back from asking him if he could read any words, but I didn't. I didn't want him to know that I saw, I just enjoyed watching the process happening again! His pencil control, writing and colouring have all of a sudden improved immensely. I guess that's what happens when you are seven.

 We visited Pieter and Michelle one weekend and stopped off in this gorgeous cafe/second hand bookstore in Yass on the way home. Jono found this rare book on Byzantine Jewry, which we just had to have :)

 Bill copied this painting from the Wild West book that Lusi gave him a few months ago

 Jonah turned himself into a formidible samurai! 

 The highlight of the month was definately the air show! A whole heap of vintage planes flew in and living right next door to the airport we had front row seats for the spectacular air-o-batics! 

We started working through the e-books from Food Renegade, and they have been a wonderful addition to our slow food journey. I mostly like that the topics give us the opportunity to discuss why we are moving further and further away from processed, sugar filled foods and why eating whole, local and organic as far as possible is so important for our health. The books have given me a structured way to include that learning for the kids, and at this point I like that! Bridget reads a chapter to me and we discuss it, and then she and I help read to the boys from their book and help them with the activities. So far we have learned about how digestion works, what food does (builds my body, gives me energy, keeps me healthy or repairs me when I'm sick), and the dangers of 'nutritionism', the difference between real and fake food, and some of the research findings of Weston A. Price.

The boys did some maths word problems together, played dominoes maths, and everybody worked on their Hebrew.

The boys printed off Billy the Kid wanted signs, and dressed up as wild west newspaper men to make a newspaper article about him and made their own books about guns!

and here's the library borrow list for March!

Star Wars Episode 1, The phantom menace [DVD]
Mythbusters [DVD] : sharks special
Mythbusters. Volume 21 [DVD]
Aircraft carrier [[DVD]
Picasso
A closer look at Aboriginal art
Rock the body : mythbusting adventures into the amazing world of the human body
Five on a secret trail [book]
Poems to make your friends laugh [book]
Specter of the past [book]
The Courtship of Princess Leia [book]
Rogue planet [book]
The story of arms and armour [book]

February learning adventures

 February was quite a full month! Firstly, here are some random videos we watched from the collection at The kid should see this

 

Bridget watched this chemistry vid from Khan academy

We started Hebrew/Jewish studies at Cheder, but due to the hassle and amount of travel involved, have decided to do the curriculum via distance ed. at home. But Hebrew is being done everyday now!

We had another scary visit from 'Billy the Kid'

We learned a little more about Picasso. This is Bill's interpretation of The 3 Musicians.

 and this is mine :)

While Bridget and I were at BatMitzvah class Jono took the boys the National Gallery. They both spotted a Picasso without any prompting!

Bridget found this spider on a bean bag. Yuck.  At least they got to look it up here http://australianmuseum.net.au/Spotted-Ground-Spiders

 February has been STARWARS month! We watched the oldies - A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. The kids explored this website to learn more about the series  http://www.starwars.com/explore/encyclopedia

We also watched Exodus again, which is a favourite around here :)

We saw a video on how chicken wire is made, but I can't seem to find that link right now....

The boys got interested in Ninjas again (probably due to karate and starwars!) Jonah poured over these two pages
http://asianhistory.about.com/od/warsinasia/p/SamuraiProfile.htm
http://asianhistory.about.com/od/warsinasia/p/NinjaProfile.htm

Jonah is reading the most beautiful book and learning a lot about the history of weapons in general

Swords by Ben Boos

Bill had a 7th birthday!

and among other things got Battleship and a gardening game where you have to plant in companionship to avert the pests eating your crops!

Snowy had ANOTHER five kittens. Joy. She will be getting the operation after these ones have gone!

Bridget's reads for the month - (sensing a theme anyone?!?!)
Star wars : the prequel trilogy
Outcast
Force heretic III [book] : Reunion
Destiny's way [book]
Star wars: the empire strikes back [book]
Attack of the clones [book]
The approaching storm [book]
Solo command [book]
Wraith squadron [book]
Star wars: heir to the empire [book]
Crystal star [book]
Mark of the crown [book]
The Star Wars trilogy [book]
Star wars: dark force rising [book]
Specter of the past [book]
The death of hope [book]
Allies
Secret weapon 

Jonah's reads - (many of these he reads to Bill also)

Five on Kirrin Island again
Swords : an artist's devotion
The Theft of the Samurai sword : Japan
Five have a wonderful time [book]
Five get into a fix [book]
Poems to make your friends laugh [book]


Karate is going very well for all 4 of us (yes, me too!) Bridget is learning strength and lengthening her calf tendoins.

We watched a heap of Mythbusters! Bridget scrapbooked for January.

and is enjoying her new English text, Move into English 2 

We have been researching our family trees. Jono's family name is Wertheimer and much to the boys delight we found our coat of arms

 Medieval Knights have made an appearance during February and there has been much shield and armor making

I picked up a couple of beautiful Australian landscapes oil paintings from the op-shop for 30c each (the poor artist!!!), and the kids enjoyed copying parts of them

 

well, Jonah was a little distracted. He's blessed with a one-track mind :) But Bridget really captured the whole concept of light I think! 

and finally, he's a sample of Jonah's cursive which he is very proud of :)

Some learning adventures for January.

William worked on sounds by playing a number of phonics online games.

We watched alot of MythBusters, which everyone loves! Grandma gave the kids season 3. 'The Brown Note' episode was one of the favourites!

We read Tin Tin comics + watched the original cartoons. Planning to see the new motion pic in the next couple of weeks :)

We did pages in our Signpost maths workbooks and Pascal Press handwriting books. Jonah is very pleased that he can almost write in cursive. 

We watch a David Attenborough doco about Humpback Whales. 

We played heaps of Poptropica. Jumpy Bug rules. 

Our resident artist Bill attended a children's art workshop at the Gallery. He did a landscape class and a collage class where he decorated his own chair.

Jonah finished up the Secret Seven series and is now onto reading the Famous Five. He is also reading 2 chapters of Torah daily now.

We did CityScapes using oil pastels on black paper.Thanks to Creative Jewish Mom for the inspiration!

Bridget's novel reads for January : Anastasia, the last Grand Duchess, The red shoe, The complete Peanuts. 1971 to 1972, Little Princess The Secret Garden .

We all watched Robots Treasure Island Bear named Winnie The adventures of Tintin
We also watched Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland (the one with Johnny Depp). Bridget in particular was completely intrigued with the special effects and watched the making of the movie a number of times.

We started our Famous Artists study with Picasso.

Everyone is now doing Martial Arts and loving it! (even me!)

The boys looked up and printed out historical flags for the First and Second World Wars in order to make their soldier games more authentic. Here's Bill as an Israeli soldier. He has also appeared as a Saudi, a WW1 German and a WW2 Japanese soldier (Jonah is usually the 'goodie'. At least Bill got to be an Israeli for a day!) 

Phew! that's just some of the things I want to remember for the month of January :)