Bus/ Life Learning Week 14

Monday 4th August 2014

Miss Personality read some books while eating breakfast.
They are called puzzle books, with different themes.
A bit like the Where's Wally books.

After she had finished all her personal jobs, and had a jump on the camping grounds trampoline.
I asked her to do an activity each from her 2 different lap books.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.
http://www.homeschoolshare.com/cloudy_with_a_chance_of_meatballs.php
When we had read the book together, there were some words that she had struggled to pronounce.
So I had lightly underlined these words in the book, and asked Miss Personality to find these words in the dictionary and write/ type out the word and its meaning.
She is not a keen writer, to the point where she will just shut down and resist doing the activity.
So I have learnt that it doesn't really matter if she hand writes it or types it, as long as she is doing it.
And at the end of the day, they have to enjoy what they are doing or else, she won't retain any of it.
Learning is meant to be fun :)


Had lunch.

Then did an activity from her volcano lap book.
http://www.homeschoolshare.com/volcanoes.php

She had to draw a volcano.
Read an article - Volcanoes and the Puzzle Piece Earth.
Then cut out and create a booklet.
Included information like - How is the earth built?, Why are oceanic plates heavier?, How are volcanoes and earthquakes similar?

Lovely grandma, had managed to buy off a relative a laptop.
She then gave it to Miss Personality.
She was so excited and happy, words could not describe it.
So mum spent some of today setting it up for her.
Loading up minecraft, putting photos and videos on it that she wanted.
Especially loom band tutorials :)

Later we caught the bus into town so Miss Personality could go to Musical Theater.
Dad picked us up after he finished work and then we went to a friend of dad's, who had 3 children around Miss Personalities age. We stayed for dinner and Miss had an awesome time.

Tuesday 5th August 2014

After having breakfast, doing all her personal jobs and putting away her clean clothes from the washing mum had done the day before.
Miss Personality then went and checked the washing machines in the camp grounds laundry room to see if the wash cycle had finished.
I asked her to then put them into the dryer and put the right amount of coins in to turn them on.

Using a dictionary and ipad, Miss Personality is looking for the words and typing out the meanings of them .
There were words she couldn't find yesturday. So mum went to the library and got a better dictionary for her to use.

Then I asked her to go through the book 'Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs' and make a list of all the compound words she could find.

Then she did 3 pages of her maths workbook, which covered dividing by 3's, fact families and dividing by 4's & 5's.

Then Miss Personality read to me the information sheet for her next volcano activity from her lapbook called Anatomy of a Volcano. She then cut out the labels and glued them in the appropriate places on the picture of a volcano. She also coloured in her volcano.\

She then did some more minecraft on her laptop.
Later watched dvd 'Shanghia Noon' while playing games on the ipad.

Wednesday 6th August 2014
Miss Personality new we were being picked up at 8.15am, so she decided to set the alarm on her watch, so she wouldn't sleep in.
A lovely lady at the hair salon which is also a training school, asked if she could do a finger wave on mum's hair. She offered to pick us up, as we no longer had our own car.

After Miss Personality had done all her personal jobs, she decided to make a gymnast on her loom, as a way of saying thank you, to the lady who was picking us up.

While we were at the hairdressers, Miss Personality got asked if she would like to be a hair model for some of the students who were learning to be hairdressers. Which she was more than happy to do :)
Before each student could work on her hair, she had to fill out a client form.

First she got her hair braided by one student.
While she was getting he hair braided, she decided to share with them her passion, which is loom banding and minecraft. They were very patient with her while she enthusiastically chatted with them :)

 Next she got to have her hair washed at the fancy (her words) sink by a different student.

Then she got her hair blow dried by another student.
Miss Personality also tried to entice a few of the girls to buy some of her loom band bracelets.
Anybody who knows Miss Personality, knows that she is super chatty, so she just loved having all these big girls fussing over her and chatting away with her.

After all the students had finished playing with her hair, she spotted some mannequin heads that the students used to practice hair styles on.
Mum was still getting her hair done, so she asked if she could play with the mannequin head.
She put curlers in, taught herself how to do a simple plait/ braid.
Put hair ties in and created her own hair style.
Later one of the students who had blow dried her hair, showed her a book with hair styles in, and then showed her how to do a twist braid on the mannequin head.

.She had so much fun, she didn't want to leave when it was time to go home :)

When we got home, Miss Personality went and did some minecraft on her laptop, till the caretakers son came home from school. Then she went outside and played with him till it was time to have dinner.

As a part of her wind down process at bed time, she will go to bed for 30 minutes and read a book.
Her latest interest has been Harry Potter movies and books.
So when we were at the library we found audio versions of the book.
So she will listen to the book, while also following the story in the book.

Thursday 7th August 2014

Miss Personality started off her day, reading a puzzle book while eating her breakfast.
She packed all the things she would need, and then went off and had a shower in the camping grounds showers. These are coin operated, so she has to make sure she gets everything she need to get done in 5 minutes before the shower hot water turns off.
When she came back she finished all her personal jobs.

I asked Miss Personality if she could take a $50 note to the camping grounds office and ask them if they could exchange it for 4 $2 coins and 4 $1 coins plus the extra. As we needed more coins for the camping grounds washing machines. She absolutely loves running little errands like this for mum, as it gives her a sense of independence and she also gets the added bonus of being able to use up all her words, that she seems to have bursting out of her, at every chance she gets :)

When she came back, she did an activity from her Volcano lap book called  Dead, Alive or Just Sleeping.
She read to me the article that came with the activity, then for the activity, in her own words had to explain what 'Dead', 'Alive', and 'Just Sleeping', meant.

Miss Personality had a bit of a melt down when asked to tidy up her writing and to proof read her work.
It resulted in her spending some time out on her bunk bed to calm down.
We have found that when either of us starts to raise our voices in discussion, that it is time for us to walk away from each other and calm down.
We had a chat after she had calmed down.

Then mum decided that it was time to put some more fun into our day.
So I suggested playing a game of monopoly together, which Miss Personality was super happy to do.
I was very impressed with a bit of maturity that Miss Personality demonstrated while playing monopoly.
Monopoly can be a great game for some many things, like adding, subtracting, taking turns, reading, understanding a bit about owning property in regards to mortgage, working out the change to give players when buying property and many other things.
But it can also bring out some situations for them to learn other skills like the emotions that arise when you win or you lose the game.
I noticed that Miss Personality handled that fact that she wasn't winning, and did not give up.
Showed determination to see the game out to the end, even though it wasn't going her way.

I then asked Miss Personality if she could use my iphone camera to take photos of the motor camp, so that I can do a blog post about it at a later time :)

When she came back, Miss Personality had an interesting discussion with me, about the differences she had observed between the movie and the book of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

Miss Personality then used her laptop to watch a downloaded You Tube tutorial on making a Katy Perry with her loom bands.

She also did some minecraft and then went outside and played with the caretaker's son till dinner time.

Friday 8th August 2014

Miss Personality chose to start her day by watching  a dvd's today.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

After that she got out her laptop and wanted to make a butterfly with her loom band off the downloaded You Tube tutorial. She found it a bit of a challenge so changed it to making an elephant, but then she found that a bit to tricky too. So then she changed to a bunny bracelet.

Watched dvd Dante's Peak.
This is about a dormant volcano that erupts near a small town.
It was a great way to see what Miss Personality had remembered about what she had learnt about volcanoes so far. As I could here her using words like 'pyroclastic flow', and talking about lava bombs and things :)

Then she watched dvd  Shanghai Knights.

Miss Personality then made mum a bracelet using her loom band.

Then spent the rest of the day playing with the caretaker's son till dinner time :)