Earth Sciences Project

For the next couple of weeks we are going to be working on Earth sciences. We are using the Rocks, Minerals and Soils unit study from Intellego along with Mr Q Earth sciences, our experiments book and lots of specimens we have collected.

We have a big collection of books to read from our own collection and the library.

We have lots of rocks and minerals that the children have mainly collected on the beach,

We have been learning about the layers in the Earth and made this ice-cream Earth with a crust, mantle and core.

We tried out the famous Mentos and Coke experiment to make a geyser.

We'll be doing some more experiments and making crystals over the next couple of weeks.

Cooking Cakes

The children have been doing some cooking this week; none of it very healthy as usual. L cooked carrot, oat and orange muffins whilst R cooked pancakes with mango purée and ice cream. They also cooked corn and cheese bread, which neither liked although it tastes quite nice to me.

The Hoarder's Art Room

Nothing to do with home education but I thought some of you might like to take a look at my new blog The Hoarder's Art Room. It's a showcase of my own artwork.

Bringing In The Harvest

Today the children harvested their onions and carrots. There was much hilarity when they saw some of the weird shaped carrots.

Murramarang Camping Trip

Over the past week we have been camping at Depot Beach in Murramarang National Park near Batemans Bay.

The forecast was for 7 days of heavy rain and thunderstorms! Luckily we had only 1 really rainy day. Our activities included bush walking, beach combing, looking for fossils, geology, gold panning, museums, golf, and swimming. We spotted plenty of wildlife including kangaroos, snakes, sea eagles, fish, crabs, octopus, and hundreds (and I do mean hundreds!) of disgusting leeches.

WWII  Lookout post

We made a visit to Mogo Gold Rush Colony where we found out all about the gold rushes and how people lived and worked. We even panned for real gold.

 

We saw the rock crusher in operation.

Death Mask

Barber's Chair

Undertaker

At the Inn - 5 people would share this sack bed

Printing press

Printing plate

Wasp's Head

Fossils

O'Hara Island

When it began pouring down we retreated to Batemans Bay shell museum.

Next up was Batemans Bay Old Courthouse Museum. The museum was pretty interesting. Each room had a different theme such as home, war, school, farming etc.

Later we took a rainforest walk and soon wished we hadn't as we became covered in hundreds of gross leeches!

At the botanic gardens the children chatted with the volunteers and examined objects on the nature table. We managed to spot no less than three red belly black snakes on our walk around the gardens.

Octopus on Depot Beach 

Blue Tongue Lizard

Crazy Golf