Muru Mittigar

Today our Homeschool group visited Muru Mittigar, an Aboriginal Cultural and Educational Centre. 34 children participated in some hands-on cultural encounters with a couple of Aboriginal guides, and totally enjoyed themselves!



They tried their hand at painting, listened to a talk about traditional weapons, implements and fishing baskets, and were impressed with the skills of the fellow who played some didgeridoo



After lunch there was plenty of time for free play running around and checking out the various 'camp sites' with unlit fires and humpy's around the fantastic grounds. Here is Daniel at the front of one, wearing his favourite shirt of the moment. As soon as I wash it, he's wearing it again. Can you make out what the logo is? too cool for school !!



A big crowd pleaser was the boomerang throwing and catching demo...with a couple of turns at throwing one themselves.





There was also a talk and guided tour around the garden area of native plants to learn about Bush Tucker. The weather was gorgeous, the place was very well presented, the talks interesting....and all the children had such a good day - living, laughing and learning.

What Horse Breed Are You?

We had a giggle answering the questions at

http://www.geocities.com/hlquiz/index.htm?200820

Tony would not play the game because he thinks these sort of quizes are silly and innacurate LOL, but

I am

What breed of horse are you? Find out!

Sarah is

What breed of horse are you? Find out!

and Daniel is

What breed of horse are you? Find out!

Amusing!

Hot Ice

Have a look at this Chemistry experiment which we are SO going to do!



Amazing, don't you agree?

Elizabeth Farm excursion

We've been out and about on quite a few excursions lately. A couple of weeks ago we visited Elizabeth Farm at Rosehill/Parramatta. Now this is a really nice and well maintained place. One of the things that struck me was how quiet it was as we walked around the grounds - rather amazing considering how close to Parramatta the house is! The creek where the settler's used to collect water is now a concrete canal, that was a jarring image and did not help us in our imaginings....nevertheless, Elizabeth Farm retains, and offers, a lovely sense of days long gone.

Something we appreciated was being able to touch items in the house. At first thought, you might prefer more authenticity and want the furniture and furnishings to be preserved originals. But because everything is a copy, we were free to touch whatever we wanted. To sit at Elizabeth's desk, to lounge on the chairs, to sit at the table...Sarah was even able to play a song on the piano in the retiring room! Nothing was roped off or out-of-bounds, which satisfied all our senses. There was one point, when we were relaxing in cane chairs on the cool verandah, watching butterflies flitting through the flowers in the sunny garden, where none of us wanted to get up again! Oh, to while away an afternoon sitting there reading and looking! Aaahhh, that would be bliss! Naturally, if we were dreaming of doing this in days long gone, we would have wanted to be free to do that, and not have been one of the hard-working, long-working servants or convicts!

We were well informed of all the house's history and shown over the home by our very own personal tour guide. He was a nice volunteer fellow who was full of interesting snippets about how life in the House would have been for the Macarthur's and their servants. John Macarthur was a rather controversial man who seemed to be involved in a lot of trouble making to protect his own interests. Whilst he is credited with being the father of Australia's wool industry, not enough credit is given to his wife Elizabeth, who managed the Farm quite successfully whenever John was back in England for years at a time, usually having to account for trouble he had been involved in back at the colony!

Sarah & Daniel were quite taken with the home and want to re-visit. I am thinking of organising to go back as part of a homeschool group excursion, because they set up some activities for school kids, which would be interesting and fun as well.

After our tour of the home we sat for a lovely Devonshire Tea in the Farm's Cafe, and talked about how nice it would be to live in a more rural setting, complete with a rustic, old-fashioned house. Both the children are now convinced they want four-poster beds, with very high mattresses, but Daniel is adamant he will not be using a commode! Give us the Farm House...but give us modern conveniences as well - bathrooms, toilets, internet access and electricity for starters!!!



We've also read a 'My Australian Story' book called The Rum Rebellion : The Diary of David Bellamy - Sydney Town 1807-1809. An interesting read which gave us more insight into life in those early days of the colony. John Macarthur's involvement with events that led to the military marching into Government House on 26th January 1808 and imprisoning Governor Bligh, eventually led to his being sent back to England (again) once Governor Macquarie arrived to sort out the mess and free Bligh. Now there was a man who was hardly done by! The mutiny on the Bounty was not the last of his troubles by a long shot. Anyway, as for the book, I was sorry I had not taken it with us when we visited Elizabeth Farm, because it would have been quite pleasant sitting in the grounds reading aloud another chapter to Sarah and Daniel.

Here's a page on the Rum Rebellion from Sarah's Australiana book

Maritime Museum Excursion

What a wonderful, sunny day this was when Tony took the day of work and we enjoyed a very liesurely ride into the city on board the Rivercat, mainly to explore the Endeavour replica at the Sydney Maritime Museum!

A fascinating place with excellent displays! We spent hours and hours wandering around, and being able to go outside and tour the ships on the Harbour was great as well. Sarah's favourite was walking around on board the Endeavour replica - gosh, all the crouching and back-bending that was required below decks would take some getting used to! .... and what a slow voyage it must have been back in 'the old days' as the children called them! I thought the room space allocated to Sir Joseph Banks was the nicest spot on board. Right at the back of the ship, lovely light and quite a spacious room. Should have been Captain Cook's quarters, but he gave them over for Banks, whose family had apparently put forward quite a tidy sum of money.

Daniel's favourite was the Destroyer named Vampire, I think it was the guns ! Certainly not the sleeping quarters...which were not as tiny as the Onslow submarine! Have you been inside a sub? Tiny, tiny, tiny! Here's a photo of the Endeavour replica.



And a photo from just one page of Daniel's 'Australiana' book recording some of his learning about the First Fleet

Australian History - Aboriginal

We have enjoyed spending the past 3months learning about the early days of our country's history, and we are not finished yet! This time Sarah & Daniel are each using an A3 sized art journal to record information, and paste in pictures and photos taken on our excursions. We'll probably keep going with it for another 3 months before we take a break and move on to another unit study.

The children have been fascinated to discover that many suburb names in Sydney are actually aboriginal words, and at one stage they were busily checking maps and signposts to see if they could find others. A new development close by has even been named after Pemulway, so of course we visited and did some shopping there. My kids looked at the area with something like history-awakened eyes, and as we wandered around we discussed Pemulway's anger and hostility towards the white invaders, as he viewed them. His reaction was quite a contrast to other aborigines such as Bennelong who was more helpful and co-operative (well, after he got over being captured in the first place) I set Sarah to considering whether the whole event should be viewed as an invasion...or colonisation, but so much depends on which side of the fence you sit on, or your own worldview. At any rate, we had some interesting discussions.

This week we are joining one of our Homeschool groups for an excursion to an Aboriginal Cultural Centre where the children (about 30 or so) will be able to taste some bush tucker, do some aboriginal painting and decorate a boomerang, as well as try to make some good sounds come from a didgeridoo - well, the boys will be. The girls are not allowed to touch the didgeridoo....hmmm!