Our Trip To Australia

Our first stop in our Christmas Around The World tour was Australia. We read some great books and learned a lot, not only about Christmas in Australia, but also about the history and culture of the country/continent.

Here are some photos of a couple of Australian Christmas crafts we made.

Making Crackers for our guests who will be here Saturday:

Per the instructions, I told the kids, "Write either a fotune or a Christmas wish on this slip of paper and put it in the Cracker." When I asked Thing 4 what she wrote, she said, "'A Christmas Wish', just like you said to."

(Hair brushing is so over-rated, doncha think?)

We loved making this Bay Leaf Christmas Tree. It smells so good!

Now on to France!

How To Crack A Whip

We started the day studying about Australia. As often happens, one thing led to another, and we ended up somewhere completely different. You gotta love those home school rabbit trails.

This afternoon, we spent a ridiculous amount of time learning about how to crack a whip. I'm not sure what the practical application is of this knowledge, given that we don't live on a cattle ranch and Harrison Ford pretty much has the market cornered when it comes to whip cracks in movie sound tracks and Jimmy Buffett songs, but we learned about it, anyway.

This is an excellent "How To" video on whip cracking. My kids found it quite interesting and entertaining. Now Thing 3 wants a whip for Christmas.

December Lessons

When we started this journey, I promised my children that in December we would pare our work to the minimum (Math!) and we'd do lots of Christmas-y activities.

I found this great Christmas Around The World unit study. We are starting it tomorrow, and I am so excited! It is a literature-based unit study (which I love), and we will create a lap book as we go. I've always wanted to try lap booking, but have found it somewhat intimidating. This unit study has great lap booking resources, and makes it look pretty easy, so I think this will be a good way to start.

The unit study is fairly complete and incorporates geography, history, culture study, music, cooking and crafts for each country studied. I have stacks of books from the library, with more on the way. (I think I pulled something carrying them to my van today.) We are ready to go! I'll try to post updates as we travel around the world.

Other items on our agenda...a trip to the Philbrook Museum for the Festival of Trees, watching several different versions of A Christmas Carol, writing a Christmas limerick and making Christmas cards to send to our relatives. We'll be baking, making Christmas crafts and some home made gifts, too.

I need a break from "real" school at least as much as the children do!

Thanksgiving - OE Style!

On Monday, instead of our regular Science class, we had a little home school Thanksgiving feast. It was so much fun.

First, one of the moms made Pilgrim Hat cookies with the children.

Then we made butter for the bread.

For some reason, it took longer than usual, and a whole lot of shaking, to turn this cream into butter.

We thought it would never turn to butter.

By the time it did, we were all sweaty and I was too worn out to take a picture. You have my word, however, that we did have fresh, homemade butter for our bread.

Then we had a yummy Thanksgiving feast together. 13 children, 6 moms, and 1 dad sharing friendship and food.

Is there anything sweeter than this?

I'm very thankful that I am able to Otherwise Educate my precious children.

And I'm thankful that I have a husband who not only supports this crazy experiment, but encourages me. He was at this party because he enjoys experiencing these special days with our children. However, I forgot to take a picture of him. This little boy looks like a miniature version of him, so use your imagination.

Not only does he look just like his daddy, he's just as sweet, too!

Inside Recess

Stair Surfing!

I just love the laughter I get to hear all day!

Traveling School ...

One really cool thing about Otherwise Educating is that we can do it anywhere...like today when we took a field trip to the salon so the teacher could get a pedicure.

Last week, we took our little home school on the road and headed to Indianapolis for the Bands of America Grand Nationals Competition where we watched Thing 2 and the High School Marching Band compete.

That's my kiddo there, second from the right. He's so good he plays two French Horns at the same time. Or maybe he was carrying someone else's horn. I can't remember. Either way, he is a very talented horn player. But I digress...

It's great to have the flexibility to travel with our family during the school year without having to worry about make-up work. We worked ahead a little before we left so we didn't have to take any work on the road with us. There are so many opportunities to learn when we're away from home that I don't see the point in complicating things with school work.

Reading a little while waiting to go into the stadium.

We got to see the Berlin Wall show again. It is the show that I mentioned here that caused us to study the Berlin Wall. We also heard some wonderful music and saw some incredible marching shows. I love Arts Education.

We visited the Children's Museum of Indianapolis while we were there.

This is the best Children's Museum I've ever visited. It was an awesome field trip!

We got to touch real dinosaur bones and talk to a paleontologist who was working on a field cast. So cool!

We shopped in an Egyptian Marketplace...

...and visited an Ancient Egyptian Temple.

We visited the Tree of Hope and added our promises, and I made a mental note to work more on spelling with Thing 4.

We looked at some real germs.

And we had a lot of fun.

Ewwww...

In Science today, we learned about worms. The kids made a worm habitat.

Complete with live worms.

Then it was time to dissect an earthworm. I don't mind telling you that I refused to take part in this activity. Instead, I acted as school photographer. Someone had to capture these photos for our yearbook.

It seems that someone inherited my aversion to all things disgusting.

Getting braver.

"Ok, I'll watch while someone else does the dissecting."

Conquering the fear.

"I LOVE WORMS!"

What a great class! Thanks, Ms. A!