Homeschooler Savvy

Australian Crawfish - Yabbies (Freshwater Crayfish)

I cannot agree more with Louisianna Sue - it's good to be home!  Nothing like a feed of yabbies to give you that "at home in Outback Australia" feeling......                                                                   

Here is a photo of the yabbie fishing technique - fishing line with meat tied onto the end, pull in slowly, splash the yabbie out onto the bank.  Of course, yabbie pots are the easiest way to catch them.....but not as much fun as launching the yabbie onto your friend (watch those claws!)

Aussie Kim

Cultural Education - Australian Outback Roadtrips

For those not used to driving in the Australian outback, here is a pictorial of what the roads look like.  It has been a wonderful season, many places have had rain, some after waiting 5-7 years for a decent shower.  I had trouble finding my friend's place because I couldn't recognize the normal look of the place because the grass was so high.  Last time I drove there, there was no grass....

Here's what driving in the outback consists of:

1. First, find (and follow) the road carefully ....

(Yes, this is a government gazetted road - it's on all the maps of Australia!)

2. GRIDS - to keep the stock in the very large paddocks, without having to get out and open a gate!

3. GATES - Make sure you have a handy dandy gate opener in your car....

4. AVOID THE ROAD TRASH (TUMBLEWEED)

5. KEEP YOUR EYE ON THE CLOUDS, out here, more than a 10th of an inch will get you stuck in the mud if you are in a car (with a LONG walk to civilization), two tenths of an inch, and you can't get through some places in a four wheel drive...

6. Watch out for the native wildlife crossing the road - kangaroos and emus.  I don't have pictures of them crossing the road, as I saw alot less than normal, due to the oodles of grass.....

Aussie Kim

March 9th - Pause for a peaceful sunset

Peaceful sunset photo - COLD winter afternoon................

Note the pair of Eurasian Collard Doves on the branch on the right - also watching the sunset?

What a difference a day makes!

Here we are in the Carribean and I am getting news of 8-10 inches of snow in Mississippi.  I love snow, but it never snows in Mississippi... ok, almost never snows....  We go away for 3 days and it snows.  The weather bureau has predicted snow for 3 different events so far this winter and all of these events turned out to be no shows (or should I say no snows?).  We go away and...well, you know how it goes. 

Just to make you feel better about me doing it tough in the Carribean, here is a photo of the first day at the beach (beach?). 

This is a photo of the second day at the "beach"

And finally I have also included a photo of The-Man-Of-The-House snorkelling around looking for his prescription glasses on the sandy bottom - we think they were in his pocket when he went snorkelling about an hour before.......

So what's the lesson here for homeschooling?  I will have to think about that, a good one would be: Don't snorkel with your prescription glasses in your pocket.....Another would be, even bad weather blows away if you wait long enough...

Teaching kids Calligraphy

With cell phones, instant text messaging and email, the art of calligraphy is now normally only reserved for artistic activities.  However, give your kids a chance to learn how to write with pen and ink, and you never know, they MIGHT even be inspired to write a letter... Calligraphy is good for kids for a whole range of reasons.  But for me I like it because it is an activity that requires patience and focus and is fun.  All you need are some nibs, a nib holder, inks, watercolor paper, and a font guide. 

The ink is going to stain so put old clothes on and have paper towels handy.  Expect a mess and you won't be disappointed with your kids!  The font guide can be an alphabet printed from a word processing package using one of the fonts which you like best from the selection. 

Sometimes I do this for the words I want to write in calligraphy - print them out in the font I want so I can just copy them out as I go rather than having to refer back to the alphabet for each particular letter. Shown here is a fancy calligraphy pen as well - kids love these feather pens, nibs are interchangable.

Want to reinforce something in particular?  Then get the kids to copy it out with the calligraphy pens. 

“Love your neighbor as yourself” is much more eye catching with flowers and love hearts in the margins.  As the kids sit there and patiently copy this out, they will absorb the message as they go.  This is written in Lucinda Calligraphy font (my favorite font for calligraphy in MS Word)

The key to good technique is to move your arm to get the curves rather than the pen.  Hold the nib at a 45 degree angle to the paper.  The thicker the nib the more dramatic difference there will be between the fat and thin parts of the letter.  If you are just starting, practice shapes first, such as circles and triangles.  It takes practice and repitition to understand exactly how much ink to keep on your nib, and exactly when to dip the nib back into the ink.

Watercolor paper will soak up the ink really well, giving the finished product a better look.  Also, you can use watercolors to decorate the margins to give the work a real professional look.  If you can find some illumination, it can be photocopied and cut out and stuck onto one side of the calligraphy as a quicker way to a great looking finished product.

Old English font from Word:

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

You can buy a Speedball nib holder and 6 brass nibs for about $12, the nibs are interchangable.  A bottle of really good black or colored ink (big enough for many pages of writing) will set you back $4-$6. Add some watercolor paper for $5 or so, and you are ready to go. 

Aussie Kim

Pause for a peaceful sunset - Canoing the Mighty Mississippi

Of the places I've been and the things I've done, one of my favorites, is canoing the Mighty Mississippi River with RiverRat and guide John Ruskey.  Here is a peaceful photo of him paddling in with a group one evening.

This is one of those timeless photos...

It could have been French fur traders two hundred years ago.  If you ignore the hats, it could have been Indians even further back.  Ruskies website is here www.island63.com.

Aussie Kim

The Gin Show - an agricultural experience

Every year we make it into downtown Memphis to wander through four floors of agricultural booths containing absolutely every thing related to cotton, and then some!  This year we made it again.  Our kids still want to climb onto the tractors, combines, spray rigs, cotton pickers, etc etc and search for the horns.  Generally you can score at least one or more yard sticks (almost meter rulers), pencils, pens, caps, flashlights, bottle openers etc etc with the most diverse range of company names on them.  The highlight for the kids of course is the candy that people have in their booths.  It is there to lure in the prospective farmers to investigate and then purchase their wares... however, knowing that the kid taking the candy may be a prospective client's kid, they are generally always encouraging to the kids, "go ahead, take a handfull." with the mums in the background saying "one or two that's all..."  Some stalls give out cokes, and every year you can be sure of a cup of icecream from one of the stalls. 

The people watching is half the fun.  There are those dressed in tie and suits, those who it looks like just hopped off the tractor, the 4H kids, the school expedition kids, the homeschooled kids.....

All in all we had a good time, the prize for the best T-shirt of the day goes to this fellow we passed near the tractors....I have zoomed in on the shirt to protect him from his wife (or tractor dealer)....

Aussie Kim

Solar prints for kids (and cub scouts)

One of the Bear Cub Scout requirments is to make solar prints of three kinds of leaves.

It is part of the group of activities for the Nature Crafts elective.  Other requirments include making a display of eight different animal tracks, collecting and pressing ten kinds of leaves, eight kinds of plant seeds and mounting and labeling ten kinds of rocks and five kinds of shells, building a bird caller and building a waterscope.  As you can see this really does give them a good introduction to the variety in nature.  I thought I would show what the solar prints looks like.  If I was a bit more of a dilligent unschooler I guess I could have gone into the chemistry behind it all, but I haven't...yet. 

You are supposed to be able to buy special light-sensitive paper from hobby shops or nature centers, but since I live out in the boonies, I ordered it online (I love the internet!).  Alternatively you can always use dark construction paper, but your wait time goes from 5 minutes to a day or two.

You put the leaves onto the paper, cover them with plastic or glass to hold them down, leave them in the sun for about 5 minutes or until it changes color, place them in water (to "fix") the image for a couple of minutes then lay them flat to dry. 

It is really neat to watch the paper fade, then get bright again in the water, and to watch the image change from negative to positive and back.  Of course, given a free hand the kids would have used up the entire packet.  The paper cost about $20 for sheets.

Well worth it for the experience, and neat outcome.  Of course, with digital cameras and printing photos from your home printer, this younger generation normally have no knowledge of what a negatvie is in the 1970s-90s "non digital camera" sense.  This is an activity which makes chemistry look like magic and is lots of fun.

Aussie Kim