Author Archives: Mama

The Worlds Greatest Artists A Unit Study

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While traveling around the net looking for resources on the Greatest Artists I came across a wonderful Unit study from Erica over at Confessions of a Homeschooler.

I am yet to actually use this but it looks very interesting and quite promising, which is great. This unit study uses many of the books I have at home in our collection as it’s basis, which is even better for us. But don’t fear if you like what you see in Erica’s Unit study of the World’s Greatest Artists, but don’t have the books, you can buy them for around $5 – $6 each from either book depository ( for Free world wide shipping) or Fishpond (for free shipping within Australia).

Please don’t forget to check out the FREE downloadable Greatest Artists Unit Study from Erica at Confessions of a homeschooler, I know we are going to enjoy using it and hope that if you check it out -  that you will also.

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The World Greatest Artists – Vincent Van Gogh

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This year we are studying the Worlds Greatest Artists.

So this week we have spent time looking at Van Gogh. The children are already familiar with some of his work, thanks to a Doctor Who episode called “Vincent and the Doctor”.

Anyway we started out reading a book called Van Gogh by Author / Illustrator Mike Venezia ( we actually have quite a few of his Greatest Artist books in our own collection)

The children loved this and enjoyed reading about Van Gogh. This book is easy to use, entertaining and informative. If you have never checked out of of Mike Venezia’s books, I would highly recommend that you do.

After reading the book and discussing the art work presented we then watched a few YouTube Videos about Van Gogh. Even though these were only 5 or so minutes long, the children enjoyed the different styles of delivery presenting the life of Van Gogh.

We then re watched the episode of Doctor Who – “Vincent and the Doctor” to see how many real facts they recreated in this story that were true to Vincents life. The children enjoyed pointing out the facts and inconsistencies, such as Vincent would not have met monsters back when he was alive.

Other things we enjoyed included viewing Vincent Van Goghs Works here – Van Gogh Museum

Reading some of the letters written by Vincent Van Gogh to his brother Theo and his friends, Gauguin, Bernard and others.

Learning more about Vincent here – at  Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam and by reading about him at the Vincent Van Gogh Gallery

The children are looking forward to our next art lesson when we further study Vincent and this paintings.

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Our Monitoring Visit.

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Earlier this week we had our monitoring visit. This is where the Monitoring Officer is sent out to our home to ensure that the program we wrote about in our family report is actually happening in our home.

The children love the opportunity to share their work with the Monitoring Officer (MO) and spent much of the morning collecting and displaying many aspects of their work ready for when the MO arrived. They love this experience and the feedback they receive. We have always found our Monitoring Visits to be a friendly experience, which is great.

This year (for us personally) the emphasis at our Monitoring Visit was different to other years as this year we had two children registered, so the MO had to deal with both my children and what they wanted to share.

The children and I were quite excited about the whole experience and a great afternoon was had by all.

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Our Plans For The Year

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Aussie Not back to School Blog Hop – Our Plans for the Year.

We set out the year agreeing that 2012 is to be a year were we place a huge emphasis on the earth, its creatures, people (past and present), culture and connections and we have and will be continuing to make this our focus. We have devised five main steps that we are incorporating this into our daily lives and homeschooling that we feel these will help us achieve this goal.

Each of us has created our own set of goals for the year, past experience shows us that these work well in helping us achieve our own goals for the year and make us more accountable. I thought long and hard about the goals I would set for myself this year, and tried to focus some of them around our theme of connections, the earth and people.

This year has also seen us introduce a new way of setting out our learning year. The planning phase of our learning is always a tricky one for me, as I not only home educate the children, but also work part time. So for me planning out our new year early in 2012 was crucial. But very rewarding.

Through multiple planning phases and keeping on target through family meetings we have set the following as our loose plan for our learning in 2012.

  • Grow our own vegetables
  • Having No Electricity Days
  • Enjoy a lot more Nature Walks
  • Caring for Animals and dealing with issues that may arise
  • Historical play – Already we have enjoyed The Shingle Strike
  • Hands on Archeology 
  • Researching Family History
  • Making Home Made gifts
  • Letter writing / penpalling
  • Focus on reading as it is the National Year of Reading in 2012

For anyone who is interested in our curriculum which is a forever ongoing and changing  activity in our house, we currently have the following curriculum organised and being used in 2012.

Thanks to Kylie of Our Worldwide Classroom for organising this Blog hop!

Our Worldwide Classroom

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