Cat Maths!

Here's a cute pic for you of some cat maths! Columbus was 87cm long.

Fusible Bead Designs

The children have spent hours over the last few days designing these fusible bead patterns. You can get the beads and base boards at IKEA. When the design is complete just iron over them (protect the iron with baking paper) and the design fuses together. It's clear to me that the kids have understood the concept of symmetry.

A Cubic Metre

How big is a cubic metre? Well it turns out to be large enough to fit 2 kids inside easily! We made this cubic metre from rolled up newspaper sheets as part of a maths lesson.

Materials

This week we have been investigating materials. What better way to investigate the property of insulation than to make a baked Alaska (above)!

The children also tested materials for their ability to conduct electricity, for magnetism and waterproof properties. We did an experiment to investigate which materials were the most stretchy.

The children also investigated materials used for packing sandwiches and designed their own sandwich boxes:

First they made a net for the box which we imported into the computer and cut out with our Inspiration cutter.

We needed to find out which sandwiches are most popular so the children composed an on-line survey on Survey Monkey.

They then used Word to design some labels for the sandwich boxes.

They then made some sandwiches and packaged them up.

You can view the scheme of work I used here.

Islamic Tile Patterns

Today we have been learning about the beginnings of Islam. The children made these Islamic tile designs using PhotoShop. We first designed  a pattern for one tile on paper. This was scanned into the computer and then coloured, repeated and rotated to make the final design.

By L

By R

By L

Roman Signum

Today the children made these Roman signum. These standards would have been carried by soldiers to identify which legion they belonged to.

The children have also been measuring things using hand spans, feet and cubits like the Romans did. They recorded their answers using Roman numerals.

Camden Wildlife

This week we have been finding out about local wildlife. First we had a pond dip at Mount Annan Botanic Gardens. We caught lots of tiny creatures such as water boatmen, shrimps, water fleas and tiny fish. The big ones got away!

We used the Atlas of Living Australia website to find out what other types of wildlife are living in the area. The children then made these graphs showing the sightings of various mammals and amphibians within 5km of our house.

Local Mammals by R

Local Amphibians by L

Graphing Camden

1800s Jobs By R

This week the children have been using information from history books and information they have collected themselves at the cemetery to make these graphs. You can make graphs like this in Excel or use these online websites: Online chart tool and Create a graph.

R went a little further and calculated percentages along with the mean, median and mode for some of his charts. I asked both the children to do some interpretation of their graphs. You can see some things they found out written alongside the chart.

Camden floods by L

Camden 1800's jobs by L

People buried in the graveyard by L

Types of gravestones by L

People buried in the cemetery by R

1800's land grants by R

First Day At School - NOT!

Start of the "school day"

There are 2 schools on our road; a primary and a secondary. The Kindergarten students start school today. L is 6 this year and would be starting with them if she wasn't home educated. Our first day at school (NOT!) did start a little earlier than usual, we were up at perhaps the same time as those going to school, woken early by the wildlife on the camp-site. I think the children's expressions show that it's a little earlier than they are used to, no 6am starts to the school run here thanks very much!

Camp breakfast

We were down at Canberra, making the most of school kid free attractions. First stop was the very under publicised Geoscience Australia education centre. At the centre you can visit the foyer with its mineral collection and the outdoor discovery walk any weekday. Visits to the education room are allowed any time they don't already have a school visit - just email and ask when. Best of all the centre has free admission and very friendly staff. Add a cafe and reasonably priced shop and what more do you need?

We knew it was going to be a scorcher of a day, around 40C, so we did the discovery walk before it got too hot. This walk around the grounds of the centre is a little over a km and is in fact a scale timeline from the formation of the earth through to the present day. Modern humans are represented by just a few cm. Along the walk are typical rock types from the era along with fossils of organisms alive at the time. I was surprised just how much L was into this and looking for crystals and fossils in the giant slabs of rock.

Petrified tree

Fascinated by huge mica crystals

Banded iron stone

After the walk we entered the building. There are many cases of beautiful crystals and several large specimens in the foyer. Ask the friendly staff for a treasure hunt sheet.

In the discovery room we touched lots more rocks, minerals and fossils. The children looked at specimens under ultraviolet light and through microscopes. There were some experiments  to do such as floating pumice, finding magnetic rocks and testing for porosity. There's lots of information on display in the room and leaflets, posters and models to take away with you.

A favourite specimen

Jigsaw of the Earth's plates

Testing for porosity

What is sand made from?

After that we tried the cafe which is reasonable priced as it seems to double as the staff canteen. We decided that it would be a great place to work when we saw that they have a board game club every other week!

For more science we headed along to Questacon for some hands on experiments. We also caught the collision show hosted by a mad scientist.

Is the crown made of real gold?

Concentration face

Spin art

Video microscopes

After that it was time to head back to camp for a swim in the pool to cool down. So L's first day of school was full of learning and not a text book in sight!