Saturday, March 26, 2011

Rocking the education thing the homeschooling fun way

So, this homeschooling bizzo got cranked up again.
Printed off a shedload of worksheets for Aspie teen to explore the Bunjilaka Gallery at the ever-fabulously-wonderful Melbourne Museum (available on the Melbourne Museum website).

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Gotta love these critters...or, maybe...not?
I swear it was a Pokemon in another era...

This helps him know ahead of time what work is expected of him, how much work he has, the style of the questions, what he needs to look for and gives him time to get himself into the appropriate headspace.

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A teaser!
A tempting little peek at the Big Future Tutenkhamun exhibit being unpacked...

Got the Aspie teen in there after lunch - after he'd had a minor meltdown over the fact that he'd outgrown a bajillion pairs of jeans ( and kept that fact to himself) and had nothing to wear (except the squillions of shorts he'd been living in for the past few months) but a quick trip to the op shop by his father got it sorted...and a couple of belts were bought as we had to ditch all the belts in the house after Certain Incidents happened a couple of times and hiding places were all found and the last time the police came........where was I again?
Oh, yeah, we got to the museum late but that was no biggie as we were concentrating on the one gallery and everything else was a bonus.

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 Thought of Jah Teh when I cast my baby blues over these magnificent samples.
Have plenty of shots of the other pretties, will post more in future posts.


Sticking to the K.I.S.S (Keep It Simple Stupid) principal works well, totally removes the pressure and the kid teen is happily able to concentrate and learn.

He burbled about happily, filling in the worksheets, noting info, watching re-enactments/movies, filling his store of knowledge up a bit more and making mental connections between his previously learned info with the new facts he gleaned yesterday.
Cos he's a visual learner and presenting the practical component under his very nose what he'd learned the theory of suddenly pieces many seemingly random bits of info into a complex tapestry of facts in his mind.

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 Yes, even shoving this under his nose gets a big thumbs up.


Cos he was settled, under no pressure, no one was harping at him to finish the set work, to send it in by a certain date, to critique his knowledge and put a value on it.
No offense to teachers out there but that is how he feels, that he doesn't measure up cos he needs to take his time to focus, concentrate, absorb the information and process it without the pressure of time frames hanging over him, catching up/keeping up with peers or his never-far-away ingrained fear that he'll fail.

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If fear of failure was to have a visage then I think this pretty much fits the profile.

We popped into a few other galleries while we had the time and had a ball, the best was in the rainforest gallery where we we able to watch 2 male Satin Bowerbirds (the ones that collect all things blue) court and woo the equally gorgeous-but-adorned-in-green females of the species whilst weaving and building their nests.
Seriously, take your kids to see them, you'll never get that close to them in the wild and they are amazing!
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Got loads of pics, difficult to tell which one is which til I post them so I'll probably post more in later posts - really attractive birds so easy eye candy in any subject.

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Go on, you know what caption I had in mind when I took this....
"Crabz! I haz them!"

3 comments:

None said...

Lurve that he is making connections. It's such a wonderful feeling when things match together in your head and suddenly make sense. :-)

Anonymous said...

Sounds like it was a good day..........after the pants episode.........LOL

what a great mum you are.knowing how your guy ticks!!!

River said...

It's great when they burble about happily. So much easier than meltdowns. I find visual learning is helpful sometimes too. The bowerbirds sound amazing. I've read about them but never seen any.