Douglas is a CFS (Country Fire Service) volunteer so we were invited to the birthday celebrations. There was also the commissioning of a new fire unit. I caught up with some old friends and met some new people too. It was a lovely afternoon.
Here are all the volunteers-
I’m very proud of Doug!!!
I said I would post before and after photos and I forgot to take a before photo. This photo sorta shows what the ground was like before.
This is my weed mat garden bed. I’ve planted ‘Honeypod’ peas and cherry tomato seedlings today. The peas only take 5 – 6 weeks to mature! I’d like to plant some corn but I’m not sure about the water requirements.
I’ve got more weed mat so I’ll be using it in another area of the back yard. I”m making some liquid fertiliser – chook poo and water, leave it for a week or two, water it down if it’s strong and water plants.
Read some more of Jackie French’s “The Wilderness Garden” this morning. I’m following her instructions for a weed mat garden. I bought some weed mat today, it’s very cheap and some seedlings, cherry tomatoes and peas. I’ve got a trellis for the peas and can stake the tomatoes if needed. I’ll take some before and after photos and post them here.
The seeds I was raising have died before I could even plant them out in the garden 🙁 I had silver beet, celery, carrots, spring onions and parsley which have all died because of the unusually dry and hot spring. I’ve got strawberries, coriander and a small potted parsley which are surviving. I haven’t planted anything else yet I’m still making up my mind what to plant and what not to with the weather being so dry.
I love Jackie French’s gardening books and the column she writes, From Season To Season, for Earth Garden magazine. I noticed on her website she’s put a list of what to plant in October. It includes some of my favourites, so I might give some, or all, of these a try: carrots (again), lettuce, silver beet (again), corn, tomatoes, zucchini and radishes. But I’m going to have to do some serious water conservation and recycling, not that I don’t at other times but I’ll need to do even more to get a decent garden going this year.
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Jackie French, Veggie Garden, Earth Garden Magazine
This is another question I’ve been asked. This is only my view on it. I don’t know about all school subjects at all levels. Jessica is year 8 and Douglas is year 11. As we come to new subjects I learn right along with the kids. Some things Doug is teaching himself and I don’t need to be highly involved. I can give help or advice as needed or just point him in the right direction. With Jessica we mostly research and learn a new topic together. Doug helps Jessica with her Maths as it definitely isn’t my best subject, although I keep working on it 🙂
We probably won’t cover every single subject and topic which are covered in schools but I don’t see that it matters. As long as my kids can learn how to teach themselves I’m more than happy. They may go on to TAFE or uni or apprenticeships etc to learn specific skills when they’re older.
I’m often asked do you have school holidays? We do have school holidays off from slightly more formal learning but in my opinion learning never stops. Jessica is often making up songs, cooking, doing stuff on her computer, doing craft etc. regardless of school holidays, weekends or night time. She still helps me teach computer classes in the holidays too. Doug’s working at McDonalds and he’s learning mysql and php too. School holidays are a bit of a break for me from organising and marking their book work though.
I’ve written here about different styles of homeschooling before and what sort of style we use/follow but I’ve been thinking about it a bit more since we had our yearly visit from the Education Department to gain our approval for continuing homeschooling for another year and this is what I came up with. I do follow the unschooling/natural learning/authentic learning ideas to a point. So we have lots of unplanned just ‘learning from life’ happening BUT we also have some bookwork happening in the background. I see the bookwork as a back up to the natural learning. Neither one is the focus for us. The ‘life learning’ isn’t the absolute focus with no structure or bookwork etc and the bookwork/structured learning isn’t the entire focus either. Sometimes the natural learning stuff can be my ideas/parent driven or just totally the kids ideas and going with what they want to do. Also the bookwork or more formal, structured work can sometimes be totally the kids’ choices and motivation. For example I haven’t directed or asked Doug to study networks or php he’s just asked me about it and researched it of his own accord.