Our week of learning

Documenting our learning journey; with two children learning from home and one at school.

Last week I visited the ‘Tyrannosaurs – Meet the Family‘ exhibition (currently on at Te Papa museum, Wellington, till 8 February 2015) with my four and eight year old daughters. It was really fascinating to stand up against a real T-Rex skeleton and appreciate how huge they were!

We learned about the T-Rex’s relations, when they first ‘arrived’ on the planet and how they were different to other dinosaurs. A great exhibition with a mixture of skeletons, touch screen interactive learning games, cinematic displays and interactive videography.

The girls brought their learning home with them and spent some time colouring their own T-Rex and writing about what they had learned.

On the ‘home economics’ front (mixed with applied mathematics!) there has been lots of action in the kitchen. Our four year old is delighted with the ‘Little Cooks’ Dora Explorer magazine (which I subscribed to before we left for California and the magazines – along with cooking utensils – kept arriving fortnightly at our house in Wellington whilst we were away!). This week we’ve made home-made burgers, chunky hummus, number cookies, a healthy breakfast of layered muesli, natural yoghurt, peaches & raspberries, pancakes and omelette.

There’s also been mathematics online using ‘Mathletics‘ for our eight year old and ‘Starfall‘ for our four year old, imaginative maths games using dice, coins and coloured blocks.

Physical education is part of daily life, with a climbing frame, trapeze and trampoline used several times a day! We’re also enjoying supporting our eight year old in her new team sport love – softball! She has a fellow homeschool friend playing in the same team and they enjoy meeting up for practice during the week, as well as training once a week. The games, on a Saturday morning, are always fun to watch.

There’s been a huge level of animal loving going on in the home too – with our new pets (definitely deserving of a blog post of their own!). Our eight year old wrote a lovely blog post about her new pet dog here.

On the reading front I’m getting stuck into the first book in ‘The Heroes of Olympus’ series, by Rick Riordan, with my eight year old daughter. We are taking it in turns to read the chapters – but are so engrossed in the story that sometimes read ahead independently – leaving the other person to ‘catch up’ (so we are juggling two bookmarks!).

Our four year old is enjoying the lovely ‘Hairy Maclary‘ books by Lynley Dodd.

Meanwhile, our oldest daughter has completed four weeks back at the school she loved before we left for California. She’s slotted straight back in, made some lovely friends, and is enjoying tap and jazz dancing in her free time (as well has hanging out with her best buddy next door and her sisters!).

This is a weekly round up that I aim to do one a week – usually over the weekend – which helps me review our progress and think about the week ahead!