Back to school!
Ballet Girl is off on her adventures, Monkey Girl begins her fourth and final year of her US High School Diploma and Panda Girl heads into her second year.
Monkey Girl is also beginning six months of auditions and university applications for ballet universities, as well as training hard for her final ever ballet exam, Advanced Two.
Panda Girl is producing some incredible paintings and is beginning a portfolio of interior design work, an area which she hopes to pursue to degree level and beyond.
The Boy and Sunbaby started the term with a thematic unit about biodiversity and ecosystems. For Sunbaby this meant lots of fun activities based around animals. For The Boy it meant a good deal of reading, writing and comprehension work as I prepare him to start his High School Diploma in two years.
Choosing which animal belongs in which ecosystem.
Gaining a general understanding of the world's ecosystems and how that breaks down into concepts such as communities and species etc.
The Boy made a rainforest - a tiny, self-sustaining ecosystem in a bottle. I can confirm, six weeks later, that the grass seeds he planted in there are now half way up the jar.
Gluing her own gorgeous baby face onto animal bodies!
Compared to her three older sisters, her interest in drawing and colouring has been slow to take flight, but she is now a busy little colour-er, and my second lefty :)
Teaching the water cycle to his biggest fan.
Food webs and Linnaeus classifications for The Boy, and cognitive development work (matching, initial sounds, adding, spot the difference, number work) for Sunbaby.
The affects of bioaccumulation in the food web
Playdough volcano and river vocabulary.
A seahorse stained glass window for Sunbaby.
Matching and counting
Vocabulary for The Boy
Echidna fun with echidna modelling, learning about monotremes and catching ants with a sticky tongue.
Leopards today!
Colouring the world!
Working on spelling and vocabulary
Sea play
Learning about swyfts and their migration.
Cats!
Fun with paints
Making a case for rainforest deforestation - learning to debate even if you don't agree with what you're debating about!
Sunbaby made the cutest rainforest ever
Pandas!
Chameleons
Making flies (I've used this manipulation forever to make the children eat a healthy seed and raisin / blueberry snack!)
Reading out loud
Sunbaby's painted rainforest
Animals and their babies
The Boy made a poster about the sharp decline of Swyfts in Britain.
While Sunbaby made some fluffy owls.
Rainforest comprehension work and some blue painting.
A splash of jumping frog science with a tissue paper frog, a static electricity ruler and some water.
Requesting help from the sister who happens to adore poetry is a wise move when writing a rainforest acrostic,
Working hard
Understanding the formation of an oxbow lake.
Koalas!
Layers of the rainforest
Investigating the Loch Ness Monster! The Boy had a fun morning using investigative techniques, report cards and evidence cards to decipher the mystery of Loch Ness.
Some fantastic work by The Boy including shark comprehension and statistic graphs, coastal erosion, rock cycles and tectonic plates, lizards, koalas and emu reading comprehensions, a penguin quiz, the human impact on ecosystems, animal adaptations, tributaries, flood plains, estuaries, deltas and river sources, dam debates, how to write a report, and ocean layers.
The chemical formula of photosynthesis.
Ocean animals
Owl puppet play
Elephant stickers
Animals cards
An hour of anything you like - to finish our project.
All done!
Rolling straight into our next unit. Watch this space!
