I was having a moment in which I was thinking how bad I’ve been with the home school thing in the last little while due to us moving between houses (before we started house sitting), me being sick (it was a really bad week for me), me having assignments to do and the presence of Netflix in some of the houses we were staying…..

DUH, it is so easy to forgot that it’s not what I do, being all knowing ‘n’ all, to make her learn it’s what she is self motivated to do/learn/see.

So in the last week and a bit she has thought about these things – well these are the ones I know about because there is some thing “TO SHOW” for this thinking.

She has learnt how to make paper darts and it’s like the springs of last year and they get made over and over…

Making pottery – lots of talk here about clay, kinds of clay, what can be made, what she would do etc. This is due to a ‘seed’ of us becoming obsessed with Pottery Throwdown to the point we used up all of Nana’s data watching the only two seasons. It is even one of those weird elimination competition things – though all power to the competitors who were kind and generous to each other and were modelling all the way that this was a learning experience and they were learning during the process, and from each other. We saw kindness and collegial support.

Helena built this – using a scoring technique to join the branches on in a way that was less likely have them fall off.

Helena has also made this: A volcano. The sides of the canvas show the top view, burning houses… a tsunami, and some plate tectonics..

It represents some of the facts that are up on the poster on the  loo wall in Nelson. I think she sees it as formative assessment?

This is the plan for the week – it was her idea for her to start writing this part, and it says Te Papa so that we can look at the information on Volcanoes and Habitats. Short and Curly is a philosophy podcast… the question is an ongoing curiosity – doesn’t need the instant answer, I’m leaving it so she can develop her own theories.

This is her Habitat work from this week which involves a lot of conversations with the little guys to make sure they were all right!

H “This one is lion’s and it is occasional trees which are these two bits and then grass in the middle, and this one is meerkats cause it’s got like it’s sand and a circle like meerkats hole… and then this one’s kiwi’s cause its like brown-ness then pink-ness for the worms… and this one is monkey’s. It’s a tree and this one is sharkey’s and it’s got like these water drops coming off it as well as having sand at the bottom and having water…. and this is sheeps it’s different kinds of green on the A. This is also Sharky’s cause he got two because there was too many letters and this is just meant to be a stone T and this one’s Giraffey’s, it’s like a giraffe S for HABITATS.”

She has also read and read, and in a discriminatory way rejecting the “boring” books, and done some glitter painting art on sticks – bookmarks.