Monday, August 31, 2015

Mulberry Magazine


I was so excited to see the release of Mulberry Magazine, a brand new digital homeschool magazine!

From your first glimpse you can see that a great deal of thought, planning and preparation has gone into the magazine.

The photography is stunning, the articles, informative, interesting and well written.


I love the inclusion of both an art idea section and the simple yummy recipes.

This is a long overdue addition to the Australian Homeschooling Community and I am so happy that Grace and her team have taken the plunge with this endeavour.


As always with any product to help ensure the success it requires the community to make the commitment to subscribe.

Visit Mulbery Magazine at their website.

I've already devoured the first issue and I can't wait for issue two to arrive in my inbox sometime in October.

Happy Homeschooling,
Kylie
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Thursday, August 27, 2015

O is for Owl ~ Throwback Thursday


This is a little "Throwback Thursday" post today simply because I can :-)

Seriously though if you haven't spent some time learning about Owls I highly recommend it.

We had such fun with this topic.

In the full post I have shared books, crafts, note booking, owl pellet dissecting and more.

To see all of the details simply click here

Happy Home Educating,
Kylie

Monday, August 24, 2015

The First Australians - A Brief History Of Australia



If you've been a reader for a while now you already know that we participate in a small home based micro school or co-op with three other families.

I have been writing down some details to share with you all about how these days work and how simple it is for you to have a go at getting one off the ground. I hope to have that post to share with you soon.

One of the subjects we decided to focus on this year was that of Australian History. We have our kids break into two groups, a lower high school aged group and a primary aged group. I chose to work with the primary kids for this topic.



I really wanted this introduction to Australian History to be as fun and as interactive as possible, so rather than trudge through various texts or long narratives I chose to put together A Brief History Of Australia, using picture books, crafts, You Tube videos and lapbooking activities.

The first topic we covered was the always fun and interesting First Australians. I only have one hour to cover everything that I want to, so it is quite a fast paced block of time, but that generally keeps all interested as we are always changing gears.

I had booked earlier in the year a group visit to the always fabulous Ngutana Lui, preparing for the fact that we would be covering this topic. I had no idea that when I made the booking it would coincide with the exact same week we did this mini study. Don't you just love when things work out like that!



For each brief history lesson I wanted to try and follow a similar predictable pattern, each topic will be based around a picture book. Some of them were tricky to find and if there were any issues all of the topics are covered in The Australia Book, so really you could get by without any of the picture books at all.

There are so many children's books available about our First Australians that I thought it would be a really simple exercise to choose which book would be our focus.

It was not!



I really wanted the story to show the traditional way of life and not just focus on dreamtime stories or a particular topic. In the end I decided on You and Me, Murrawee. It is a lovely story and does cover some way of life elements.


Whilst I read the children water coloured an A4 timeline colouring page. They will continue to add to these with each lesson to create a quick glimpse full colour (brief) timeline of Australian History.

I'm sharing this download with you, via a link at the end of this post.

We spent time chatting about how early Australians lived in comparison to our current day way of life.


From there it was time to get our hands dirty with some dot painting. I encouraged everyone to first watch an artist at work to view their technique and the things they included in their pieces.

Whilst we painted we listened to and watched a few animated Dreamtime stories.

My kids are not first timers to the dot painting technique. Not only did they complete some lovely art during their visit to Ngutana Lui but they've also explored dot painting during art lessons, like this one here and this particular post, which is still one of my most visited blog posts.


During the last few minutes of our lesson we recapped all that we had learned by completing the first mini book in the series. I gave the kids total autonomy as to what they added in terms of written details inside their booklet. I wanted them to record things that were important to them.

We will continue adding to the mini books with each history lesson and will compile them into a lapbook at the end of our unit.

To download the First Australians Colouring Timeline Page please visit this link.

Be sure to keep an eye out for future posts in this Brief History Of Australia series.

Happy Homeschooling,
Kylie
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Looking for more Aboriginal related activities?
Have a look at my Aboriginal Themed Board on Pinterest.

Follow Kylie @ Our Worldwide Classroom's board ABORIGINAL {Australian} Unit on Pinterest.
 
This post is linked up to:

Christian Montessori Network

 

Monday, August 17, 2015

Word Families with United Teaching



Have an early reader on your hands? Then you will definitely want to take a closer look at these Word Family practice sheets from United Teaching.

Disclosure: We were sent these from United Teaching with the purpose of reviewing to share with you. All opinions expressed are those of myself and my son.


We are heavily focused on learning to read with our youngest right now so when I saw that United Teaching had been busy creating Word Family practice sheets we jumped right in.

The things we love most about these are the super cute images, he really does love to spend time finishing them off with just the right colour choices.


The ease of use, seriously  there are no need for instructions at all, just print a sheet and you are on your way.


My son really appreciates that each sheet is short and to the point. He isn't asked to sit there forever and trudge through it.


Best of all, he loves that he gets to use felt pens on all of his schoolwork and I love the price!

Seriously if you have a child in the early stages of learning to read go check out all of the Word Family packets that United Teaching has available. They will work great as a supplement alongside any reading program you may be using.
United Teaching Blog

Thanks to United Teaching for sharing these packs with myself and my son, so that we could share them with you.

Visit the United Teaching website
Visit the United Teaching store

Happy Homeschooling,
Kylie



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Thursday, August 13, 2015

The Truth About Sugar - FREE Notebooking Pages


The BBC documentary 'The Truth About Sugar' aired here the other night, hubby and I sat down to watch and I really felt it would be a good one for the kids and I to spend some time on. They are used to mum nagging about too much sugar so I figured hearing it from experts can never hurt in any way.

Their jaws were gaping hearing and seeing some of the information, especially the daily sugar intake of most people, against what the World Health Organisation recommends.


I whipped up a few different notebooking pages for them to be able to record some of what they took in from the documentary.

They really enjoyed working on these, especially my youngest. He has drawn bad sugary foods on the left showing a sick sad man with heart disease and on the right he has added fruit with a very happy healthy man. Love it!


If you missed seeing it on television you can view the documentary via you tube.

If you would like a copy of the "Truth About Sugar" notebooking pages please visit this link to download them.

I would really love to see how these are used by your kids so please be sure to let me know if you do use them.


Happy Homeschooling,
Kylie

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Tuesday, August 11, 2015

Ngutana Lui - Aborignal Culture Centre

This post has been sitting in my drafts for some time now, so I figured I should get around to actually sharing it with you all.

Earlier in the year we took a large group of home schooled children to spend a day immersed in Aboriginal Culture at the educational centre - Ngutana Lui.

During that same week we were studying the Aboriginal Culture with our micro school group at home, so it was perfect timing!

Everyone got to try their hand at boomerang throwing, some of them were really very good at it too.


They had fun with ochre face paint, traditional story telling, song and dance. This was such fun and was so nice to see each and every one of them having a great time!


Of course no day spent learning about Aboriginal Culture is complete without a spot of dot painting.

Throughout the day the kids were broken into 4 groups of approximately 20 children in each. They rotated through the various workshops. A couple I didn't get the opportunity to photograph, were a bush tucker walk, where they learn and understand all about the various native foods and a hands on interactive lesson on clothing, fibres and animals.

At the end of the day everyone came together to hear the majestical sounds of the didgeridoo.

If you live in south east Queensland, I highly recommend arranging a group visit to Ngutana Lui. This was our second visit and it won't be our last. Considering it only costs a few dollars per child, it is one of the most well organised and well run educational days that we have ever attended.

Visit the Ngutana Lui website here.

Happy Homeschooling,
Kylie
Come on over and join me at

Facebook ~ Pinterest ~ Instagram ~ Google + 

Looking for more Aboriginal related activities?
Have a look at my Aboriginal Themed Board on Pinterest.

Follow Kylie @ Our Worldwide Classroom's board ABORIGINAL {Australian} Unit on Pinterest.

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