How we homeschooled today #50
Aboriginals, a theatre trip, and resisting temptation in a bookshop
If you haven’t sent me your ‘why we homeschool’ paragraph/list, please hit reply and do so now! And if you have no idea what I’m talking about, see yesterday’s post. I’m really enjoying seeing everybody’s different reasons and can’t wait to share.
And please do pass it along to any other home educators you know who’d like to share their ‘why’. Deadline for responses is this Sunday evening. Thanks!
Today the children had a theatre treat with the grandparents. Thanks to the marvellous list, we got handwriting, Multiplication by Heart, and a page of The Humans done before we went out.
Regular readers will have seen me talk about The Humans already, but I can’t stop myself recommending it again. Today we read one double-page spread on Aboriginal Australians. We learnt that Aboriginal cave art is 40,000 years old (for comparison, the cave paintings in Lascaux are a mere 17,000 years old). Aboriginals also win the prize for the oldest axe (‘oldest known axe’, corrected my daughter), at 65,000 years old—more than 15,000 years before other cultures would learn to make similar tools. We learnt about the Aboriginal belief system which prompted comparisons with what we have read about Greek and Norse mythology.
We also learnt that ‘Aboriginal’ means ‘original inhabitant’ in Latin, which made us connect the words ‘inhabit’ and ‘habitat’, which come from the Latin word habitare, meaning to live or dwell. We learnt that changes in sea level mean Australia would once have been larger and connected to other landmasses.
All this, from a double-page spread that was mostly pictures! We have borrowed this book from the library but I am fighting the urge to buy us our own copy.
Whilst the children were at the theatre I browsed in a bookshop. I was sorely tempted by:
Blue Machine: How The Ocean Shapes Our World
An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden World Around Us
And The Maths That Made Us: How Numbers Created Civilisation
I resisted temptation and we were home in time for tea and pyjamas.
Reading in bed: More of Kevin Crossley-Holland’s Norse Myths, and more Time Chronicles.
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What show did the kids see please?