Friday Fun

We rounded off the week with another productive fun day.  The day started off as usual with the phonics, number work and letter formation for Pip; Benedict worked on speed trials and a colour by numbers sheet for his time tables.  At snack time I read the first chapter from "The Big Six" by Arthur Ransome whilst the children listened and coloured.

After snack we then worked on a review of yesterday's faith lesson followed by a discussion on how we could grow in faith.  It was decided that our  task for the remainder of this month would be  to read our bibles daily as a means of growing in faith.  Pip chose the story of Noah and as a result felt so inspired to draw her own picture of the ark complete with animals "two by two."  By now it was drawing near to midday, so we stopped working temporarily to say The Angelus.

Whilst the soup was still cooking on the stove (thanks Dave!) we just had time to tackle a quick apple experiment and work out which of the following liquids would stop an apple browning: water, milk, soda and lemon juice.  Benedict of course new the answer but played along and after a twenty minute wait it became clear that, the lemon juice slowed down the oxidisation process.

 

 

 

 



  Just for Benedict's and mine benefit, Dave gave a further more detailed explanation regarding oxidisation, only for the life of me I cannot remember fully what it was!!  I'm blaming the brain fag on the end of day shut down and not my age!

After lunch we made a trolley dash around Lidl and as a treat I bought the children a magazine and a small chocolate treat for all their hard work this week.  This is the first night I haven't had to sit and organise paperwork and planning for the following day, yippee!  I'm off now to sit with my knitting and a warm cup of tea.

Faith and Phonics

Sarah wrote about this free offering in her summer waning daybook post.  Here at number 22 we could all do with some practise in the virtues and to be able to access an entire curriculum for free was a real blessing.

  Choosing a grade level for Pip was easy but with Benedict I decided to opt for the grade 3-5 rather than grade 6-8, even though he would have officially entered grade 6 this time round.  I'm glad I did because even Dave and I had to think of how to help him find the answers!  One of his tasks was to emulate the work of St Jerome and translate the beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-12) into the words a first grader could understand.  I think he did an excellent job:

If you are unhappy God will help you.
When you are kind people will want to be around you.
If you are sad God will give you a hug.
If you remember to do what is right you will be happy.
If you are kind people will be kind to you.
If you think good thoughts you will be near to God.
People who stop fights will be happy.
If somebody laughs at you for loving God it doesn't matter because you will be rewarded.

After much wailing and gnashing of teeth (both him and me!) he eventually settled down to draw a picture of St Jerome, using an icon image as his guide.

 

Pip's Saint of the month is St Martha.  We read the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead and that through the faith of Martha and Mary this miracle was performed.  Pip had to complete a sentence:

"I believe God can ... make Daddy better because he is poorly.  I so wish I had this girls level of faith, unless we become as little children, eh?!

We also read about having faith the size of a mustard seed (Matthew 17 v 20) and that as a result one could move a mountain, so her next task was to draw a picture of her and Jesus holding up a mountain together.

Whilst Benedict was finishing his work, we chose a selection of flash cards and using the magnetic letters Pip had make the matching word, sounding out as she worked.

 

 

 

 

 

 



 It has been a mixed day but I am grateful for the progress we have made this past week.  We have also begun a nightly ritual of playing board games straight after tea and it seems to be working well.  It keeps the kids calm before bath time and bed and gives a much needed boost to the end of the day and is a lovely way to spend time together as a family.  So often we are fire fighting with sickness, disability and home schooling that we forget to lighten up and have a little fun.  So yay for gaming.

Art and Ten Apples Up On Top

We've had another productive day at home.  I'm so far managing to keep both Benedict and Pip on task, with a variety of independent activities intertwined with those requiring input from me.  Today:

Benedict made lunch (carrot, lentil and chilli soup), worked on the re-ordering of his spellings in dictionary format, wrote about his trip to the pencil museum, finished reading "The Prisoner of Azkaban", narrated and illustrated "The Second Day of Creation." 

 

 

The Second Day.

 

 

Pip  worked on her phonics sounds and  coloured in the animal cut outs from Ten Apples Up On Top story.  She had fun deciding which animal was going to "wear" the most fruit!

After lunch, Pip wrote about her day at the museum and drew a picture of what she saw.  She played the "apples on the tree game", completed a farm jigsaw, played number dominoes and matching words and pictures.  The cut out piece at the bottom of the picture assisted with the word recognition and this was re-enforced with listening and looking for the letter sounds at the start of each word.  Her free time session was playing around with the new water colour pencils and observing the effect of mixing colours.

 

 

Farm jigsaw and words and pictures game.

 

 



Ten Apples Up On Top.



Cumberland Pencil Museum

We visited this place today.  It was just over an hour's drive from where we live and although it was a grey day, the surrounding scenery  including  this mountain looked spectacular.  Here are some snapshots of our visit:

 

 

 An old fashioned van.

 

 

 

 

 

 Mining for graphite.

 

 

 Engrossed in a quiz.

 

 

 Trying out the different watercolour pencils.

 

 

 Before the advent of colour it was a case of do-it-yourself!

 

 

 Photographs in black and white and then with a hint of colour.

 

 

 Info on the British Colour Council can be found here

 

 

 Pigment Samples.

 

 

 Working with a "friend."

 

 

 An elephant shaped pencil tip.

 

 

 Tower Bridge made entirely from pencils.

 

 

Despite the museum being quite small, there was plenty to keep folk occupied and we were there for two hours in all, which was great value for money.  As a treat I bought some of the Aquatone watercolour sticks and a watercolour pad for Benedict and Pip.

 

 



The Aphabet Trail

We have been slowly easing back in to a "school" routine.  Pip is following the alphabet path courtesy of Elizabeth Foss and I am finally using the Waldorf Curriculum from Live Ed that was bought late last year!  We are also supplementing from various web sites, as well as text books and work sheets for Benedict.

It's been interesting working with the two of them and Pip has been providing some healthy competition for Benedict!  Her oft repeated phrase is "Right, what's next" and that means I have to be very organised, which I don't mind as my efforts are appreciated.  Here are some pictures of Wednesday's learning with Pip:

 Apple pie. angels and the letter A.



 A colouring sheet whilst waiting for the pie to cook.

A dot-to-dot apple.

 

 

 

 

 Letter recognition and following instructions.

 A favourite Angelina story.

Sequencing and ordering.

 

 

On Friday  Pip completed a handwriting sheet on the letter a, she traced over the letter and then practised writing on her own.  We talked about various things beginning with this letter such as, apple, astronaut, ant, antelope, apricot, acrobat and ape.

  We found an abc of virtues from this site and today's sheet was entitled, "always ask", quite pertinent since items around the house are often moved and "borrowed" without asking.  We pinned our creations to the fridge door.

After lunch we played the "put the apples on the tree game" which necessitated number recognition and counting up to ten.  It was a hit.  Our treat was a "how things work, simple science" you tube programme. 

 

 



Pip's colouring.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today we played the bus stop game, which is a great way of reinforcing counting and familiarising oneself with mathematical symbols phrases:

 

 

 

 

After lunch we read from the creation story in particular "The first day."  Benedict devised his own interpretation of the story and Pip worked on her own craft activity:

 

 

 A day and night wheel.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We also listened to the BBC proms family matinee "We're going on a bear hunt" and both Dave and Pip really got into the groove!



 

 

 

Here's hoping and praying for another productive week ahead.