The Homeschool Hive: Australia

Thursday, October 3, 2013

Animals, Landmarks, Money and Language Of The Land Down Under

Today we have studied many of the diverse animals of the land down under. The girls and I were both surprised to learn how small a duck billed platypus is when it's born. The mother lays an egg and ten days later it hatches. The baby platypus is the size of a lima bean at that point! As adults they are not very large either. The adult platypus is the size of a domestic cat. I always thought they were larger than that.

Another thing we were amazed by is that the platypus is venomous! Well the male is anyway. He has poisonous spines on his hind feet that he sticks into another animals when he is threatened. The male doesn't sound too cuddly. I look at, Perry the Platypus, in a whole new light now. tee hee Below are all the things we covered today during school time.

Here is one of the videos we watched today that you may be interested in viewing.

A video on recreating the Sydney Opera House. McKenna was interested in what a model looked like and I found this for her.

We also learned a song about the Kookaburra and listened to it's laugh.

Coloring and info page for the Duck Billed Platypus

Koala @ Answers In Genesis

The Great barrier Reef @ National Geographic

Ayers Rock

A fun quiz about Australia and other info

We also learned about Australian dollars and checked out what they look like.

Australia For Kids easy to follow info for the little ones.

We finished up by watching a video called Waltzing Matilda. The girls and I loved it. There were many landmarks and slang terms throughout the video and helped us understand them better.

I hope you enjoy the videos as much as we did and can use the links I've shared!

Monday, September 30, 2013

Australia Unit Week 1

Today we began our unit on Australia. The girls watched several videos about the Aborigine people, learned to locate Australia on the globe and learned about several native animals to the continent. We discussed marsupials and what they are and how they carry their young in pouches. The girls were surprised to learn that not just baby kangaroos are called Joeys.

We also touched briefly on the Great Barrier Reef. Throughout the next two weeks we will expand on what we learned about this reef in our Oceans unit.

Our craft for the day was making didgeridoos. Each of the girls decorated their didgeridoo and then proceeded to make music with it. If it could be called that. I'm not sure I would agree that, that is music. Life has been a whirlwind lately and I don't have a lot of links, but I will share our pictures of the learning that took place today.