I Am Sure Captain Wentworth Could Persuade Me...

My first International Swap!

The theme was favourite movie.... where to start THERE??? So many.... I did want to do Ferris Buller's Day Off , because that is right up there.

And so is The Fifth Element, Iron Man; I can't even think straight there are so many! It comes down to a simple question: What can I make without too much trouble sourcing supplies (seeing as In don't know may shops here yet), that won't take too long to make (because I will lose a week in postage) and won't be too 'embellished' to post?!

I am a big Jane Austin fan too. I love almost all movie versions of her books, but which to chose. Eventually I settled on Persuasion. And Rupert Penry-Jones doesn't dissuade much....

But seriously; separated, 'Persuaded' to break an attachment and being heartbroken for years, then to receive this letter? I think I would die! Jane Austin, you give us too many high expectations. But then, that is not always a bad thing....

'THE' Letter...

In the layers of paper, I included an nautical stamp and ledger paper, to represent various aspects of the story. I made a 'seal' out of paper clay (I have mailed sealing wax before without success!) 

 I stained some tracing paper with distress inks and wrote out the letter, and tied it so it can still be read.

I sewed on the lace -unfortunately I didn't have any white, as I would have preferred. And I don't know where to buy remnants etc here yet... :/

Given that I made them in a week, I am happy enough with the product, but I would like more time to explore shops here. A bit difficult with 4 kidlets in-tow and no baby sitters! Still.... it saves me money, no?

Where is the World??

One of my goals in curriculum choices is to give the kids a world view- who they are and where they are; why we are here starting from the ground up! Well, that is that aim! So we are doing a geographical overview of the countries, peoples and cultures of the world. So far we have looked at the main features of North, Central and South America. We have done various map, art and craft work, and some culinary pursuits too! By the end of the year I hope to be in a place where we can look towards learning about Australia; our new home :)

These books are our starting points, along with the usual atlas, globes, DVDs - love the library!

For those of you who didn't see these on facebook, here is our Brazilian Feast that we had on Friday night. It was delicious. The kids loved it; it bought back many good memories from my time there, we will certainly be doing it again!

Mmmmm, Feijoada in the making! With Brazilian soft drink and music :)

Yu-u-u-u-u-my!

It doesn't look like much food on the table, but we ate A LOT!

I am looking at a few books to help us learn Portuguese - wish us luck!

The Big Blue

We are learning about the swimming creatures this year, using Apologia curriculum. Recently we spent a day doing experiments to learn about water pressure, saline levels, currents etc and what causes or affects them. These are just a few pictures, a VERY brief overview!

This experiment helped us to understand how our lungs work, how scuba tanks help us and how amazing it is that fish aren't crushed!

Water temperature and saline levels affect the earths currents. We learned how.

 We learned about echolocation and how cetaceans use their melons ;)  and how sound travels.

I forgot to take a photo of when we measured out the lengths of certain dolphins and whales on our street....
But we drew a life sized Leatherback Turtle there too, and used ourselves for scale. They can grow up to a foot longer than Dad!

Pure serendipity; we went to the markets in the weekend to get our produce. We turn around and there is a Wobbygong shark - right there! I had to tell her to get closer for a photo, she took some convincing!

They aren't pretty....!

Time Goes By

And progressing with history....

We have also learned about Ancient Mesopotamia. I am going to assume you either know the names/places we talk about, or really don't care (because you don't have to. If this was about engineering or something I would skim read and just look at the pictures too!) To complement learning about people moving from a nomadic lifestyle, to the fertile Crescent and into settling villages, towns etc we have learned about the first writing - cuneiform, hieroglyphs etc; and as an extension of that we have made our own version of some Sumerian seals.

First, we make the negatives, and wait for them to dry.

Then you have left over clay to create with....

Then when the negatives are dry, we roll clay over the top to make the positive 'seal's.

Then one has to paint...

And somewhere in here we learned about Hammurabi and his Code. So we made our own... they are one the kids walls. We gave them the first three, then told them to make up some more (within reason - Mum and Dad can veto!) The last few laws get a little silly....

I am MOSTLY happy with this list!

1 - Obey and honour your parents.
2 - Treat your siblings as your best friends.
3 - Love Jesus with all your heart, mind, soul and strength.
4 - Respect everyone's property.
5 - Don't lie.
6- Don't go into anyone else's room unless invited by the owner or parent.
7 - Change your underwear everyday.
8 - Ignore rule number 8 if you don't have any underwear.
9 - Say 'please' and 'thankyou'.
10 - Be nice.

If HE can be silly, so can I!! I won't type these out because she used a marker and you can see them. And you may enjoy the phonetic challenge. I despair over spelling regularly, but if one would rather not waste space in our head on things like that when it could be used for singing, dancing, drawing etc.... We'll get there... eventually!!

Once Upon A Time

Crumbs, it has taken me so long to get these photos off the iPad, get all projects finished and generally get around to posting this.... Which I suppose is good, because it means we have been busy learning...? Right? :)

Here we are, completing the Old Kingdom in our SOTW History studies, and I have to thank the Activity Book they put out and Pinterest as some of the sources for the ideas!

Firstly we made a salt dough map of the Nile River and canals... who knew it would take so long to dry!!

Mixing the dough.... or rather, fighting over who gets to mix the dough!

The Nile, with canals... finger holes that I was told were wells, but I suspect the match some of the gaps around the edge... Seb likes Salt dough....

After three weeks drying, we finally get to paint it! 

Note the rich dark soil along the edges of the canals and river.

Ta-Dah!

We also watched some amazing DVDs about Ancient Egypt. I did try to get them to read books, and they did read some, but never as much as Mummy would like! But we learned that the 'Black Land' was very valuable in Ancient Egypt. Your property was valued more if it was guaranteed to flood! Desert comes from the Egyptian word for 'Red Land', which was much less valuable.

While we waited for the dough to dry, we made some other Egyptian crafts. Below, we are making some 'reed' boats.

Notice our 'papyrus' drying in the background?

Seb gets a bit carried away sometimes... :)

It floats! Hooray!

 

And can carry passengers...

Percy doesn't float... Hello science lesson! ;)

The next day I had some work to get done, so I said 'Bet you can't build me a Lego pyramid....'

It turns out they could.... and no deception was spotted! Then I had some more work to do, so I left them some spare time. I came back and they had built pyramids, sphinxes, rivers (with canals, shadufs, hippos and boats!) team supervisors with whips to keep the workers in line, temples and fields. I was so impressed! Always good to know they have been listening! If only every lesson went that well....!

The next logical step is to learn the art of mummification, right? Yes, that is a Bratz doll - I hate Bratz dolls, but I figured $6 is a good price to bury!

We collected everything we needed...

And after the organs were removed and put in canopic jars (kids a bit disappointed they couldn't actually do that....) the body was dried.....

.... and at the appropriate time, cleaned with wine, then oils and spices.

We added 'protective amulets' - I love Zoe's one that says 'Stay Safe'! 

Et voilà. RIP Brat. Zoe is building a coffin now....

Speaking of our girl, she decided Egyptian makeup (which was expected as a right, even by pyramid builders, who striked over a lack or make up supplies!) was 'pretty cool'!

We even had Eyptian Kofta for dinner :)

Teddy sharing the lesson....

There will be more Egyptian lessons as we go along, but that is a quick overview of some of what we have learned.