February 2013- Late Summer

(First published at Sandbox to Socrates http://http://sandboxtosocrates.com)

I decided to start our nature study journalling with the beginning of Daughter's first year of school, which began around the end of January here in Australia. Naturally, it took a month to get around to it. Since I can't remember the truth, I'm going to pretend that was deliberate, as I had come up with a brilliant idea to visit each of the major terrain types in our state, once each season. We live in 'dry woodlands.'

I need to get another pet hate out of my system, if you'll bear with me.  I think it is silly the way Australians whinge about the seasons not conforming to an inverted Northern Hemisphere system, when the Indigenous people have perfectly good and, unsurprisingly, more accurate calendars of their own. I am on a one-woman crusade to try and make people notice this and post a link featuring our local indigenous calendar (which seems true to the Melbourne area and a fair chunk of central Victoria) whenever it comes up in online conversations. Which it just has. Heh. http://www.herringisland.org/seasons1.htm (If the link is broken, google 'Aboriginal seasons Melbourne' and something suitable should appear.)

Just so you all know, I have great plans for my daughter's handwriting to end up better than mine. I do my best to encourage her to narrate the captions for her pictures, but as I said in the previous post, her learning challenges (Echolalia) get in the way a bit. So, for the foreseeable future, any writing in the journal will be a team effort.

This is the one hand-drawn picture she did about our first round of nature study tours. We went to the Hattah-Kulkyne National Park (would link if I could find a site with decent photos) to see the Mallee and Inland waterways terrain types. Lovely scenery, nearly went insane with the flies trying to climb into our eyes, ears, and noses. What you see below is an ant hill.

Her contribution to the notation was "the sand was orange and the ants were black."

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Rose-Marie was one of those enthusiastic planners who began researching when she was pregnant with her first. She wanted to homeschool because it sounded like an affordable adventure, then she met her kids personally...

Her young daughter has Echolalia and some processing issues so isn't speaking fluently yet. Her young son has retained primitive reflexes and autism. While there may be a deity somewhere who knows what's going to happen with this kid, he/she/it hasn't chosen to inform us. They live on a hill in rural southern Australia without enough solar panels and like it there.