Busy lives has led to inefficient blogging..

At the same time as becoming much more relaxed about Home Ed, I also seem to have become very lax at blogging. 

We have covered so much over the last 3-4 weeks.  We have visited so many places and met with so many people.   To list a few:

The boy decided to learn about Volcanoes so we did a few experiments, looked at a few books and did this great colour by number:

The children both helped me make Butternut Squash soup, but both refused to eat it..

They made birthday cards for my dad. 

 

We visited Milestones, Manor Farm and Fordingbridge Roman Ruins (not all on the same day).

 

The boy decided he wanted to learn about Jungles so we went to the library and got some books, we watched the relevant episode of David Attenborough, The Living Planet and I got lots of craft things ready to make our own mini-rainforest.  As soon as I did this, the boy decided he would prefer to learn about deserts and proceeded to make his own mini desert with sand dunes.

 
The one on the right is made by the girl.


We have also visited Basing House, beautiful and a lovely day out with good friends.  Not to mention, many family walks, making autumn salt dough decoration, playing with Lego, doing some pages from 'Draw, Write, Now', playing board games, using Mathseeds and Reading Eggs and baking gingerbread halloween biscuits.  Too much to mention in one post so maybe I should learn some organisational skills and post more regularly!  

Finding Our Groove

Since wednesday, things have been starting to settle down a bit.  Or I have started to panic less.  The children are happy.  They play really well, some great imagination at work through all their games.  The boy has also chosen to do some writing by himself.  He is much more reticent to read but some theorists recommend that writing comes before reading so no pressure.

On Wednesday the boy started a new french class - he needed me with him for about 5 minutes but then he warmed up to the other children and the teacher and I was able to leave his side fairly quickly.  He looked like he really enjoyed it too.  In the evening the two have their Taekwondo class.  It is really cute and I think it is great for some self-discipline - and, most importantly, they both really enjoy themselves and are proud when the figure out how to do things correctly.

Thursday we spent the day at home doing lots of crafting, playing games and painting some autumn pictures.  We followed this up on Friday with a forest walk looking at different types of trees and leaves and the kids did a little experiment of their own - how deep is the stream.. deep enough to flow over the top of and into the wellies!  So we came home and made banana bread (Nigella recipe from How to be a Domestic Goddess).

They did a fantastic job of dividing up the tasks between themselves and they were even able to tell me the whole process and the ingredients later when we were eating it.

On Saturday I made the mistake of investigating a shop called The Range.  I half wish I hadn't.. It's motto seems to be that if they don't sell it, you don't need it. And it is SO cheap. Lots of lovely crafting activities came home with me for future projects.

The week ended with a trip to the Zoo - we have been members of Marwell Zoo for a long time but were not aware of their Junior Members club until recently - this is great as the kids get to learn a bit about different categories of animals, they get a wander around the zoo looking for and at specific animals and then they get to do a bit of crafting at the end.  Win win for my two.

And how did Monday come around again so quickly..

A new week and more structure.

Did I say more structure?  Well that didn't last long. Not even long enough for us to have breakfast.

Yesterday we went to a safety day where lots of children got to meet and have presentations from the Police, the Fire Service, The Red cross (First Aid) and the RNLI.  The Police were great, the kids got to try on some of the uniform and hold handcuffs and a baton.

The Fire Service were great, and they even got to use the fire hose, wear the helmets and pretend to drive the Fire Engine.

The Red Cross were.. well, I don't know.. as the boy got suddenly ill and needed to be taken home.  Pity as I was looking forward to the RNLI but now we have a project for another day.

The rest of the day was spent lazily watching The Return of Big Al (a Walking with Dinosaurs documentary) and reading books.

Today didn't start too structured or well either - the boy refused to get dressed before 10am and the girl was not much in advance of the boy.  Both were doing Hama beads though for a large amount of time. I am chalking this up to time spent working on creativity and fine motor skills.

After a quick sprint to the shops and the library we were back to more creativity - making and playing with glitter play-doh.  I adapted several recipes from online/pinterest and will post the recipe I came up with later.  It worked really well and the kids helped with all stages so a multi-learning experience.

A very long dog walk later and we were running a bit behind schedule for dinner.. oops.  Luckily we had the ingredients for a speedy homemade Pasta with Pesto recipe - I think it took not much longer than opening a jar of the shop bought stuff but with much more flavour and a lot less salt.  We even got to enjoy it with the wholewheat Moose pasta from Ikea.   I was amazed but the kids inhaled the lot and asked for more.  A rare treat for me!

Maybe more structure tomorrow?  Perhaps not..

The rest of the first week and the help of good friends.

The rest of the week has been great.  Wednesday was really hot so we headed over to the Lido.  The water was cold, I mean really cold.  The girl nearly turned blue and I lost sensation in my legs.  But it was blissful to then sit in the sun to warm up.  We came home to finish making the jam - I think the kids were unimpressed with the process but very impressed with the end results..

We've continued to do some Reading Eggs and Mathseeds lesson - the boy loves it, the girl not so much yet.

Yesterday morning I had a hospital appointment at 9am, not a convenient time, luckily a very good friend offered to look after the children to save me having them in the car for the 2 hour plus round trip.  I think she was crazy as her children are in school and she had 4 on scooters to control, but I am, as ever, eternally grateful.  In the afternoon we spent the day making paper boats, looking at the alphabet (jumping on letters on the trampoline) and the daily dog walk with blackberry picking - the boy wants to juice his into a drink.

Today has been more relaxed - a looooong trip to the forest with the dog.  It was beautifully quiet and the kids could run around on all the play equipment without worrying about bigger or smaller children being in the way. And the dog could run around without me worrying that she would jump excitedly over other people.

Then we got home to the delivery of our Home Education jumpers bought from pinkgiraffe.co.uk  - the kids were very pleased.

Next week, we need to get some more structure.. if only for my benefit.

Day 1 and 2

This week most children went back to school.  Mine did not. I have started the week anxious and excited about this new journey I am on with my children.  I am happy to have them at home and not have any of the anxiety, pain and sorrow that went with school (all of one year for one child) but I am also worried that I won't be good enough for them or that I will forget to cover something really important and prevent them from fulfilling their life's dreams..

Day one:

We covered one lesson on Reading Eggs and then met some friends for a picnic - easy does it!

Day two:

Lets learn to ride bikes.. Not so easy does it.. The boy has become terrified of falling and hurting himself so it soon dawned on me that this was not going to be a skill learnt in one day.  After an hour we caved and came home for lunch.

We then decided to make Jam.  A first for us all.  We didn't get too far into the process as the rhubarb needs to 'macerate' overnight to make it all soft.  But they did learn a new word - 'macerate' -pretty impressive for a 4 and 5 year old I think.

                                      

We plan to start more formal learning next week.  But it is good to get some stuff covered this week in readiness and also to have lots of fun.

Tomorrow - lets go swimming at the Lido.