World’s Largest Solar System Drive

We’re home again from the Australian Rainbow Family Gathering, which was fantastic, and though winding up, is still going on for anyone able to get out to Glen Davis in the western Blue Mountains.

Littletree and I drove down together (well, I drove, and she was the navigator – she’s learned a lot about reading maps and road signs on this journey)! We took the drive slowly, spending 2 days to drive the 12 hours from home – mostly because we wanted to stop in Coonabarrabran on the way and see the World’s largest scale model of the Solar System – the Virtual Solar System Drive.

It was well worth the slight detour to go see it as well! Littletree has been very passionate about astronomy for a few years now, even to the point of saving up to buy her own telescope.

I’ve gotta say: the Solar System Drive is really cool. It’s a scale model of the solar system on a scale of 1:38million. The Sun is represented by the 37 metre Siding Spring Observatory telescope dome, which is huge.

At this scale, Pluto is around 200km away in Tamowrth and the size of a billiard ball

The earth is about 5 minutes drive from the Sun, and around the size of a Basketball

They actually have set up planets on billboards on all the roads leading to Coonabarrabran and the observatory, as if in orbit, so you can see each planet more than once on different roads (so you can drive out to Dubbo and there’s a Pluto there as well).

Littletree was so excited to see all the planets, and we got to learn a lot about them on the way – as well as getting to take regular stops in the middle of a long drive.

It’s amazing to see the scale of the different planets and really get a feel for just how big everything is, and just how much space there is in space. According to the solar system drive website: “If you’re travelling in your car at 100km/hr along the Solar System Drive, you’d be “virtually” hurtling through space at a million kilometres per second - more than three times faster than the speed of light!”

 

So from the Sun, it takes a minute to get to Mercury

and another minute or two to get to Venus

Before passing by Earth and on to Mars, which is tiny

Then we drove about 20 minutes before coming across the gargantuan Jupiter

Saturn is not only huge, it has rings

Uranus

 

Neptune

and little Pluto at the end. We really got a sense of hurtling through the immenseness of space. Littletree was especially excited to see the telescope itself, though we couldn’t actually look through it.

and the view from the observatory was pretty amazing as well

We had such a great time exploring the solar system!

Balinese Music Workshop

This week our homeschool group hosted a Balinese music workshop with a traditional orchestra including gamelans – it was totally awesome!

The kids had a great time helping to set up

and then listened as the instructor taught us about the instruments and we learned a few words in Indonesian

We got a quick demo of all the instruments, and then it was time for the kids to have a go

They had a great time making a tremendous cacophony which eventually sounded like good music, here’s a short clip about halfway through (they did get better, but I didn’t film it)

Now we’re busy packing to go to the Australian Rainbow Gathering, not sure when I’ll get to post again :)

Bloom!

More signs of Spring!

The Birthday garden bed we made for Purple is really taking off – everything is lush and thriving, we’ve even started harvesting for salads :D Here’s how it looks 4 weeks on:

And there’s beautiful flowers blooming all around the garden; many of which are growing wild.

These delicate purple flowers are only about 1cm tall (1/4”) – I love the macro zoom on my camera

These were surprise flowers a friend gave me – we planted them not knowing what would bloom and they’re *gorgeous*

These were flowers Littletree planted in her own garden bed last year

and these were high up on trees down in the faerie forest: 

Even better: there’s peaches budding on a tree too!

Dread beads

I recently got some new beads in my hair – gorgeous hand-made glass beads from a friend of mine

They look awesome in my hair – I do, of course, have a lot of little decorative things randomly in my hair. Most of it has been put there by other people; I’m not really into adorning myself, and have a philosophy of “keep it clean and let it be” when it comes to my hair.

But I was especially honoured to get personalised Emu Beads in my dreads (You can see more of Emu Beads HERE)

 

And I realised it’s been almost 15 years since I had these dreadlocks – the longest ones go past my knees! I had one that was to my ankle, but I tripped over it a few months ago and about 45cm (18”) snapped off the end (it’s still long enough to sit on though).

So I thought I’d do a dread FAQ to mark their 15th birthday! post your questions if you have them in the comments section and I’ll do a dread post in the near future.

Spring Faerie Skirt

We’ve been celebrating Spring around here; the signs of the seasons are in full force.

I taught Littletree how to make daisy chains from dandelions growing by the path as we walked to the village, where we found at the post office: Littletree got a package in the mail from my good friend Lea

A hand-made faerie skirt!

It’s definitely been a faerie-themed month. Heck, I’m having a faerie-themed life!

Littletree Gets Political

Littletree has been taking her role as wildlife warrior quite seriously lately, constantly on the lookout for animals that need rescuing, especially since she rescued a turtle crossing the road when we were on the way to the Australian Unschooling Conference.

This week at the village market there was a stall set up for people to write letters to government members protesting the Repco Rally – a motor race that goes through national parks and wildlife areas in our region.

Littletree was most disturbed about the race, as it goes through areas where there are threatened and endangered marsupial species and the race is held during their breeding season. This means that the stress from the noise alone could cause the animals to miss their breeding season or even die from stress in some cases.

So Littletree wrote a letter to the Minister, in her own words “I don’t want the rally because it is killing animals”.

I felt really proud of her for standing up for something she believes in; writing letters to politicians is a huge deal, and she felt really great to do it. I haven’t seen her motivated to do so much writing all in one sitting before. :)

Then we had a long talk about how our political system works and how laws are made, and lobbying and how people putting pressure on politicians can make a real difference.

Fire Station Tour

Last week our home school group went for a tour of the Fire station, which was really cool. The kids got to have a question and answer session with some of the Fire fighters

Followed by a tour around the station

Then we watched one of the fire fighters putting her full suit on

and had a look at the Fire truck

The kids kept asking the fire fighter what happens if they run out of hose. He insisted that they have loads of hose. Then one child asked, “but what if the hose gets burned in the fire?” The fire fighter again asserted that they have plenty, and opened up the hose storage. Not to be fooled, the children asked what happens if even that hose runs out. The fire fighter, undaunted, opened up yet another hose storage compartment and assured us all that there was more than enough hose, and no way they could ever totally run out. Littletree of course, pointed out that unless they have infinite hose, it could at some point, run out. The poor fire fighter didn’t stand a chance against the logic of unschooled kids! LOL

The kids all got to climb up into the cab and have a look around

and best of all they all got a turn of the fire hose!

which was perfect for a hot, sunny day

It was a great day, and of course the kids all got fire-safety promo goodie bags :)

Learning to Read

Littletree has been really inspired to learn to read lately, and she practices writing a lot as well. The other day, quite out of the blue, she said she wants to learn to read Hebrew.

We have a big stack of Hebrew learn-to-read books that Purple brought back from Israel one time, only Littletree wasn’t interested in them back then. So I got them out and dusted them off and we sat down and went through the first one together.

First I read it to her once through, and then we looked at all the individual letters and talked about what sounds they made. We have a set of Hebrew alphabet magnets on the fridge, so we got those to help us as well.

  

After about half an hour of practicing together, Littletree was able to read through the whole thing, she was so excited and proud of herself at the end she made me take a video of her reading it.

And then it was on to the next book…

I love that we’re a multi-lingual household and I love that it was totally Littletree’s own intrinsic motivation and choice to start learning to read :D