Homeschool Heart Studies

A while back I bought a quarter of a beast and was asked if I would like any of the offal. I asked for the heart thinking that we would dissect it with the kids. I loved dissection in school! And the kids don't seem to be that different.

Daddy being a doctor knows all about the heart, so today was his lesson. He really got into it and so did the kids. We didn't ask them to get out their pencils, but they couldn't help themselves. Tiger and Princess were taking notes and asking for the spelling of different parts. Tank was drawing his own diagram of the heart, and he had it looking pretty good too.

Daddy talked about the four chambers of the heart, how the blood is oxygenated and how the heart has valves to keep it going back the wrong way. He cut out a valve to show the children and they talked about how this is a life saving operation for some people where they replace the valve with a pig's heart valve.

Each of the kids got a chance to feel the scalpel in their hand. Daddy was concerned that they understand just how very sharp a scalpel is, and nervously we watched on.

All of our kids were deeply engrossed in what they were seeing. They asked fantastic questions.

This is one of the reasons we homeschool. Our kids getting expert information, no holes barred, all questions thoughtfully answered.

Sister's Beach, Tasmania

Looking into Bass Strait

On Tuesday we woke at 3am to get to Brisbane. But our plane was late leaving. We arrived in Hobart and had lunch there. On the way to Sister's Beach we stopped at Campbelltown and played at a park there. But we had no idea just how far it was to Sister's Beach (North West Tasmania) and so we had to stay in Devonport.

The next day we went to the beach at Devonport and played at the rock pools and got wet, and then played on the awesome play equipment. The park was close to the beach and we saw a ship come in. By late afternoon we arrived at Sister's Beach and went down to play the beach before dinner.

On Thursday we had planned to walk around Dove Lake at Cradle Mountain, but we were all really tired from our big first day. So we went to Rocky Cape Cave. Before visiting the cave we went to the little beach there. The water there was gorgeous and again we got wet! We couldn't go into the cave because of the Aboriginal significance. They used to feast on shell fish there and we could see the midden (left over shells) everywhere. In the afternoon, after a good sleep by all, we took a walk to see the local caves. We left rather late, and on our way home Princess, Joybug, Mummy and Baby were a bit slow in walking. By the time the girls reached the car the sun was down, but there was still enough light for us to see the way to the car.

On Friday morning, whilst Mummy and Daddy finished the clean up of our lovely little holiday house the kids went for a wander down to the creek. Tank came back all excited. He had seen a platypus! Tiger saw it too! We all walked down and stood around quietly watching for another 15 minutes, but the platypus was too shy. It's known that a platypus lives there.

Tasmania Spring 2014

Cascade Female Factory (Hobart) ...our only entire family photo.

We have just returned from our annual holidays. This year we took 2 and a half weeks together. Just as we were deciding where to go for our holidays a wedding invitation arrived from a dear friend in Tasmania...so our destination and timing were chosen for us.

We had a fantastic time! We carefully chose an itinerary, and wrote it down in our family holiday journal.

Our journal is now an amazing record of a wonderful holiday, from which we will share our adventures.