Nature Study in Australia: Winter

These are some of our recent nature gleanings. On a visit to a local park this very tame rabbit was having breakfast and remained totally oblivious to us and we were able to have an unplanned nature study observing him/her feeding.

 

We've used Nature Studies in Australia by William Gillies this year for studying Natural History in Australia and finished it the other week so now I'm reading The Wilderness by Amy Mack (1922) aloud. It's only 26 pages in length but it fits in nicely with the course from U of N. A free online version is available here.

 

Last week we had a walk down near the creek after quite a bit of rain. We have a waterfall that gives a spectacular display after a good amount of rain and this was the first time that these two had seen it like this. My granddaughter (who's nearly 3 yrs old) pointed to it and called it a shower. 

Here they are having a good splash in a puddle. My grandson (nearly 2 yrs of age) calls any body of water a puddle including the river we visited a couple of months ago.

Miss 15 yrs and I signed up to do the free University of Newcastle's Natural History Illustration course. Hails had already done it about 2 years ago and wanted to do it again so I joined her this time.

This is my rendition of an echidna. We usually see about one a year around our area and I sketched this from a photo as they don't hang around for very long and start to burrow if they sense people are near.

This was this week's lesson was about 'developing good observational skills and accurately recording every detail you see in front of you; looking at both positive & negative spaces, breaking down complex subjects into simplified shapes & depicting a three dimensional object on a two dimensional surface.'

This is my drawing from that:

 

And this is Hails' drawing of a fox and the stages she went through in doing it - yes, she leaves me for dead, but she is very encouraging and likes me drawing (well, trying to) with her. 

A wattle in bloom... a little earlier than usual

Some fungi after all the rain

We've seen some new birds on our birdfeeder or on the camellia trees nearby but haven't been able to identify them yet. Our lyrebird makes an appearance from time to time and today we saw a black cockatoo in a tree just up the road. and we've had our yearly sighting of an echidna.

A Homeschooling Year for a 9 year old Girl - Ambleside Online Year 3

Portrait by Berthe Morisot 1886

Moozle completed Ambleside Online's Year 3 which covers the late 1400's-1600's (Renaissance to Reformation) about two months ago. She was eight years old when we started Year 3 but turned nine a few months later.
The scheduled books and time period of Year 3 didn't require much adapting for our Australian context but I did do some substitutions, additions & subtractions which I'll share in this post.

History & Literature

We used some of the chapters from This Country of Ours, especially those scheduled in Term 2, because of their connection with British History eg. Sir Walter Raleigh, the Cavaliers and the Pilgrims.

We skipped American Tall Tales and substituted A Little Bush Maid by Mary Grant Bruce & didn't do Pilgrim's Progress because I'd already used it as a family read aloud the previous year.

Shakespeare and Plutarch

Moozle has been listening in when I've done both of these with her older siblings for some years and this year she decided to try doing her own written narrations. I wrote about that here.

Just be aware that she's a girl and an avid reader and that the three boys above her wouldn't have done this in a fit. It was a pleasant surprise to me to suddenly have another child who loved to write as it hadn't happened for quite a few years.

I also started studied dictation with her around the time she started to write and have seen some improvement in her spelling which used to be woeful.

Natural History

Warrigal the Warrior by C.K. Thompson - as a read aloud

Wonderland of Nature by Nuri Mass - for help with nature study. We also use The Handbook of Nature Study and participate in the Outdoor Hour (see link on side bar).

Bush Stories by Amy Mack - this is out of print but I found a copy in excellent condition in a secondhand Aussie bookshop which sells through Abebooks. The book I have was a reprint done in 1983.

I read aloud Pagoo & Secrets of the Woods - natural history is a favourite topic for this young lady and she's loved everything AO has scheduled plus our Australian selections.

Food & Nutrition

This eBook is quite a good introduction to food and nutrition for a child especially if you are familiar with Nourishing Traditions as the author shares a similar view to those expressed in that book. I bought my copy when the author was offering about 25% off - I don't think I would have paid the full price of $19.95. But then again, I haven't seen much else on food and nutrition for this age group. There are 15 short chapters with a colouring page, which we didn't use, plus a word puzzle at the end of each chapter (she loves these). We didn't start the book until about half way through the year so we're continuing with it in Year 4.

The Body Book for Younger Girls

I used this book as a framework for talking about puberty and the changes girls go through as they approach this time in their lives. The book is quite well done and is written for girls of 8 years and up to read on their own. I read it aloud and skipped bits and pieces that I didn't think were applicable - nothing inappropriate but just unnecessary for her at this stage (bras, boys, tampons, body image).

The book covers pre-puberty and puberty in a practical and sensible way. It has 109 well illustrated pages and I spread it out over a few months. 

 

Instrument - Cello

After having piano lessons for a couple of years, Moozle started cello lessons at the beginning of the year. She has always wanted to play this instrument and is doing well. We started off renting a cello but when she outgrew that one we decided to buy one secondhand. Hopefully, she won't outgrow this one too soon. This is one drawback to starting stringed instruments with younger children. We have four different sized violins that one of her older sisters went through. We didn't have to worry about that with our children who played the piano.

Highland dancing

Moozle entered her second competition a few weeks ago. At her first competition she knocked the swords as she danced. That instantly disqualifies you so she had to stand in 'first position of arms' until the other dancers had finished. This time she won first place in The Lilt and second place in The Swords, which delighted her no end.

Highland dancing competitions are quite challenging in that you gave a group of dancers on stage - there were six for most of the dances at this last competition. The dancers are in various levels so you could have a ten year old dancing alongside a 20 year old. They often have different steps to their dances and they are all dancing at the same time with a couple of judges watching their every move. They have to really concentrate on what they are meant to be doing - a good test of their attentiveness.

Timeline

 A very simple one:

We use an extra large spiral drawing book just to keep everything in the one place. At some stage I may pull the pages out and connect them all up in chronological order. She's marked in our Plutarch men in another section.

Geography

Charlotte Mason's Geography book. There is a link to it on the AO website.

Explore His Earth - Moozle loved this book and I posted our schedule, with videos and other things we used as we read through it here. (We skipped most of the activities suggested in the book.)

Updated to add: We also did Marco Polo: His Travels and Adventures, by George Makepiece Towle and used The Adventures of Marco Polo by Freedman for mapwork.

French

Free resources we used are here.

Music & Art Appreciation

As I've tended to do all along, we mostly studied different artists and composers to the AO term selections.

Moozle read Hildegard's Gift by Megan Hoyt and listened to a couple of Hildegard's compositions but we didn't spend a lot of time on her music.

We did spend a few months on some Spanish composers, which was wonderful and I chose some pieces that featured the cello and other stringed instruments.

Marc Chagall was an artist she enjoyed.

I posted some of the folksongs related to the Year 3 time period here.

Handicrafts

English paper piecing - this is the current project which might eventually turn into a cushion.

Another sewing project in the past year was this bag holder. 

She enjoyed trying her hand with some basic leather work & is keen to do some more projects.

Memory work

Scripture - we all do this together. Which reminds me - I need to update our list and put it up on my pages index at the top of the blog.

Poems -  Poetry is another area I often tweak to better suit our situation and interests. Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll, The Eagle by Tennyson and The Arrow & the Song by Longfellow were some that Moozle chose to memorise on her own. My Country by Dorothea Mackellar, an Australian poem, is one that she enjoyed also.

This is a poetic narration she did based on a story form The Jungle Book:

Some of the free reads that we don't have were substituted with Australian titles:

Verity of Sydney Town by Ruth C. Williams - this is a better fit for Year 5 historically but I added it because I thought Moozle would enjoy it more now than leaving it until later and the setting is an area we are familiar with.

Seven Little Australians by Ethel Turner

The Australian Twins by Daphne Rook

The Bush Boys by James Tierney

Enemy Brothers by Constance Savery - I added this as a night-time read aloud because I love the story and Moozle kept asking me if she could read it. It's a wonderfully rich book and I'd always planned to read it aloud to her at some time as I'd done with her older siblings years ago.

Updated to add: I was intrigued by some references the author made to the sword Chrysaor and an Elizabethan poem and finally found out some things about them recently.

Devil's Hill by Nan Chauncy is out of print but if you find it it's a good fit for this age group.

Nature Study in January

At the beginning of each month I read from Amy Mack's Bush Calendar (free online) which I linked to here. At the end of each chapter she has a list of flowers to be found in bloom, birds that are breeding, birds that are arriving or departing - January doesn't have as much going on as some previous months.

We found this interesting fellow the other week - the larva of a Saunder's Case Moth (Metura elongatus). We had some friends visiting at the time and one of them said it might be a cocoon stick insect so we googled the name and found a picture and we were able to identify it easily as it is quite distinctive. It's very large for an insect and I was trying to get my mind around what kind of monstrous moth would develop from it. Apparently it's not so monstrous at all.

First Studies in Insect Life in Australasia by William Gillies told us quite a bit about the Case-Moth: it can remain without food for a long time; it doesn't behave like a normal moth and can take two to three years to go through its life cycle from egg to perfect insect. The mother moth lays her eggs inside the case in spring; in December the caterpillars that develop escape from the case by lowering themselves on a very fine thread to the ground or a plant below the mother's case. An hour or two after this the caterpillars have each woven their first case.

The little case-moth larva carries its home with it wherever it goes, holding it straight up but as it grows it becomes too large to be easily carried. Up to this time the case has been made of silk and bits of leaves but now the caterpillar begins to weave and add to the length of the case using bits of stick - very clever.
Now the case is no longer held up above the body. The caterpillar still moves around but when it gets tired, it fastens its house to a twig by a thread of silk and swings there until it decides to move again.

In about eighteen months after the caterpillar was born the time arrives for the larva to become a pupa. The insect fills up the case with silk and old skin and about six months later the moth emerges (around May to October). Apparently there are few creatures that have more enemies than the case-moth!
There are some good photos of the moth here. And some artwork from a natural history artist here.

St. Andrew's Cross spider

The case-moth is a weaver but the St. Andrew's Cross spider (Argiope keyserlingii) sews - a very nice zigzag at that. Well, that's what I told my daughter. He is actually an orb-weaver spider. This one is probably a male as he's not too large. The female is about three times his size. Fortunately they are non-venemous and not aggressive which is a pleasant change around here as we have some nasties - funnel webs for example,  which are both aggressive and highly toxic.
So we don't go barefoot outside and we stomp on our shoes before we put them on.

Nature Study in Australia - some free books to download

Brush-tailed Rock Wallaby

We have wallabies come into our garden from time to time but we hadn't seen any for a while and then this fellow turned up the other morning. We managed to get this photo but you can see that he was very intently watching us and he didn't stay for long. We have had a family of them in the past complete with a joey. I've had a gardenia, just to the left on this photo, which has never flowered and I think it's because the wallabies like the young leaves.

Some wallaby facts:

• They are distinguished from kangaroos mainly by size. Wallabies are generally found in rougher terrain; being smaller they can jump around the bush easily, and whereas kangaroos tend to be of a uniform colour, the fur of the wallaby is more variegated.

•  This particular wallaby is classed as vulnerable. They were found in abundance many years ago but in NSW between 1884 and 1914 bounties were given for their skins on more than half a million of them.

• The Brush-tailed wallaby was introduced successfully to New Zealand in 1870 and to Hawaii in 1916 

I've mentioned before that we use the  Handbook of Nature Study which is quite useful for us but for our uniquely Australian flora and fauna we need to look elsewhere. A couple of years ago I picked up First Studies in Insect Life in Australasia by William Gillies for next to nothing at an op shop. The book had at some time probably belonged to a student teacher - Sydney Teacher's College was inscribed on the inside - and the book was obviously written to primary school teachers. Much of what the author writes echoes Charlotte Mason's ideas on the study of nature:

'An excellent rule in the teaching of Natural History to children is, that the lesson should be given, not on the frog, but on a particular frog; not on the spider, but on a particular spider; not on the robin, but on the particular robin that has perched each autumn morning on the school fence.'

I'd been trying to find more of his books secondhand but by chance I found that Cornell University has some of them archived. I've downloaded them onto Kindle (not well-formatted) and as PDFs (my preference, as I have an ipad). If you have trouble downloading leave me a comment and I'll see if I can help you somehow.

Nature Studies in Australia

First studies in plant life in Australasia, with numerous questions, directions for outdoor work, and drawing and composition exercises

I've also found some books by Amy Mack. I read that she lived not too far from us and she recorded the wildlife around her as the city of Sydney was growing and the development was encroaching on the bush. We have a tract of bush behind us and even though we are only about 5 minutes from busy major roads it provides a safe corridor for natives such as the wallaby - unless they are unfortunate enough to get hit crossing the road which has happened from time to time.

These are lovely books and I was thrilled to find them free online.

Books by Amy Mack The Wilderness and  Bush Days

A Bush Calendar by Amy Mack Harrison (I presume this might be her married name?) - records the months of the year with information on what flowers are blooming, which birds are arriving and which ones are breeding.

Insect hotels?? 

Do people actually buy these? A new development in our local area