Term Four Evaluation

Read Aloud Books:

Picture Books - 

"The Exploration of Africa" by Tim Cooke
"Spiders and Other Arachnids" by Ron Thomas
"Deadly! The Truth About The Most Dangerous Creatures on Earth" by Nicola Davies
"Australian Geographic Australia's Most Dangerous Spiders"
"Rainforest Insects and Spiders"
"Sophie Scott Goes South" by Alison Lester
"Animals Under Threat - Mountain Gorilla" by Marianne Taylor
Usborne Discovery Snakes by Rachel Firth & Jonathan Sheikh-Miller
"Rhinoceroses and Hippopotamuses"
"Animals on the Brink - Rhinos"
"Rufus the Rhinocerus"
"Sky Watching - The Stars" by Carmel Reilly
"Blast Off Let's Explore the Moon"
"Blast Off Let's Explore Mars"
"Our Solar System - Saturn"
"Our Solar System - Neptune"

Chapter Books - 

"My Australian Story: Escape From Cockatoo Island" by Yvette Poshoglian

Independent Reading:
see written list ~ 

Other Reading Activities:

Reading Eggs online program

Maths:
Maths Plus Year 3 textbook
Advanced Primary Maths Year 3 textbook 

Continued work on 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle some evenings with mum

Khan Academy website

Cool Math Games website

Mr Baker's Puppies Logic Puzzle (printable)

Ice Cream Stands Logic Puzzle (printable)

*worked on this together and needed some online hints

Pentanimos Puzzles

Shapes Puzzles

Tangram Pictures

The Birthday Logic Puzzle (printable)

Various Brain Teaser Puzzles
Number Jacks website and videos

Handwriting:
Foundation Handwriting 2

Writing:

Started writing an Angry Birds Despicable Me book

Scripture and Character Building:

HSIE:

Geography - 

Africa Unit Study involving...

* memorizing the countries of Africa using an online map quiz program

* reading books about Africa, its people, climate, animals, etc

* watching documentaries
* listening to African music
* watched Paul Simon's Graceland DVD
* watched a youtube video of a baby giraffe being born

History-

Read "My Australian Story Escape From Cockatoo Island" by Yvette Poshoglian

Science and Technology:
Egg in Vinegar Experiment
Watched various episodes of Deadly 60 TV program
Watched David Attenborough "Life" program about Mammals
Watched David Attenborough "Life" program about Reptiles and Amphibians
Lego Challenge: built simple catapult and tested it with ping pong balls
Milky Plastic Experiment (warm milk and vinegar)

Spelling:
daily oral review of weekly lists as sourced from year 3 lists on the internet

(20 words per list)
written test taken every Friday
used Spelling City website for spelling games and quizzes

PDHPE:
walk to and from the library
walk to and from the shops
walk to and from various parks
free play at various parks

riding scooter

Creative Arts:
Watched and discussed various episodes of "Dancing With the Stars"

Socialization:
weekly attendance of Sunday School
weekly attendance of story hour
attended 9th annual family reunion
play dates with friends

Other Activities:

Played a variety of board and card games

• Rummy-O
• Yahtzee
• Snakes and Ladders
• Skip-Bo
• Flinch

Imaginative (self created) Lego games with his younger brother

Excursions:

Tour of Cockatoo Island
Taronga Zoo - focused on visiting the African animals

Homeschool Group Topics:

Due to illness, weather problems, previous engagements, and distance of events we were unable to attend Homeschool group regularly this term.

Term School Holiday Events:

Attended local Carols in the Park event
Attended Christmas Day church service

Week Eleven ~ Last Week of the Term

Our last week of the term included some Christmas preparation as well as winding up our structured learning time.

Monster took his maths test and did very well and I'm pleased with his spelling scores and handwriting he has completed this year as well.

So here are a few extra activities we enjoyed during our last week of this school year.

 Decorating the Christmas tree...

All three boys enjoyed the chance to decorate this year.

Munchkin enjoyed helping daddy mow the lawn.

We got several books read through the course of the week... despite adding an unscheduled trip to the doctor's office into our week.

 Finally, the most exciting point in our week was spotting a Tarantula Hawk (or Spider Wasp) dragging away his catch of a Huntsman Spider across our yard and into the neighbour's driveway.

Week Ten ~ New Games, Toys and Lots of Outdoor Play

No photographs of structured (written) learning so instead I share the other stuff!

 A park near us has been renovated recently and we've just discovered that it is open and ready for exploration.  This week we enjoyed an evening play time.

 Then it was off to a different park to work on our balancing skills...

Games and puzzles filled our evenings...

And there was MUCH excitement when a package filled with new learning/educational toys arrived.  All three boys were thrilled with the Wedgits and Munchkin especially liked the threading kit and sorted and played for quite a long time.

Week Nine ~ Storms and Other Stuff

I am MUCH happier with my photo selection for this week compared to last week! 

Of course, this is only the highlights of our week...

Munchkin (2.5 yr old) LOVES to borrow my camera so here are a couple of photos from his point of view!  There are usually LOTS of blurry photos that I have to delete but periodically there are some brilliant ones!

 More work was done on our current puzzle - Elephants in Namibia to go with our Africa unit study.

 Fun and games before bedtime with the Munchkin who was really enjoying his new sunglasses and one of our pool noodles (which doubles as a light saber since we don't actually have a pool).

 He also had some fun spinning...

 The boys spotted this spider on a walk to check out a new park.

Munchkin took this photo - again he is beginning to surprise me with some of his photo taking skills.

 The new park is AMAZING!!  I think the boys and I will be spending a LOT of time here in the near future!  Unfortunately we picked a stinking hot day for our first visit - the good part of that was we nearly had the whole place to ourselves!

We have been having thunderstorms nearly every afternoon/evening and the boys really enjoy watching the clouds build!

Our read alouds this week focused on African animals, with a snake book added for extra FUN!