Friday Fun

We actually sat down to "school" at 9am this morning, fully clothed not still in our pyjamas!  First up was the next book in The Oxford Reading Tree scheme entitled"The Laughing Princess"; Benedict read confidently and as usual enjoyed the accompanying illustrations.  We then spent the next 30 minutes working in the primary maths book and to follow on from  earlier in the week, we were still counting in twos.  I could see this was still a problem so I set Benedict an independent task and worked on a visual aid to hopefully help with this current difficulty.

  The task that I set was choosing an activity to reinforce the passage we had just read in " The Way, the Truth and the Life Series".  Benedict chose to draw a picture of himself and then narrate ways that he could spread happiness to others.  His answers were:  Give money to people in Africa so that they can buy food, help look after Pip, help in the house, visit the sick and do as I am told.

An hour and a half had gone by since we had began working so I called time on our formal learning session this morning and Benedict disappeared upstairs to play with his lego.  Whilst we had been in the front room Dad and Pip had been in the lounge playing with the wooden jigsaws and stacking cups.  Whilst Benedict and Pip were happliy otherwise engaged I made mixed vegetable soup for lunch, followed by bananas and custard as a treat.

After lunch Benedict disappeared into the caravan with big sis Sara and two hours later proudly displayed this marvelous creation

Trying to look fierce!

Back view.

This was then followed by making a den for both him and Pip

After tea and baths we opened a package containing these:

I vaguely remember using these at school when I was small. 

Benedict was instantly drawn to these tactile wooden rods and with enthusiasm began working through the suggested puzzles.  The first was making different lengths of trains using the rods, what a great activity for this train mad boy!

Spacial recognition and adding and equals.

The reverse process, having to find two rods that will match the already given answer.

And what was Benedict's take on all this...

...this picture says it all!

Number Grids and Counting in Twos

We swapped rhythm today and did our own thing in the morning and once Pip had settled for her nap we used the computer and gemstones to help with this weeks maths topic.

After tea Benedict and Dave began working on the Meccano space shuttle:

A Trip to the Garden Centre, Art and Building a Weather Station

We made a much needed trip to the local garden centre to buy our stock of seeds, ready for Spring sowing and hopefully Summer/Autumn harvesting.  Using the seed packets as a guide Benedict copied some of the writing and accompanying drawings as part of his handwriting practice.  Here is a photograph of his efforts:

Our next activity was constructing the weather station.  This was a Christmas gift from cousin Sue and Dave and Benedict had great fun piecing together the various components.  As of today we have an outside thermometer attached to our back kitchen window, a barometer on the inside kitchen window bottom and an anemometer (which measures wind speed) on a garden chair on the back lawn!  There's plenty of wind whistling round the house tonight so I bet that last little gadget is whirring like crazy!

Piecing together the anemometer and Benedict testing to see if it works!

Our happy engineer with the finished product.

In-situ and ready to go!

We also had a visit from Nanna and Grandad H and Uncle Andrew.  Benedict as always loves seeing other family members but the highlight of his day was being carried around on Uncle Andrews shoulders, it's amazing what you can see from such a great height!

Hmm are they discussing the dust on top of the bookcase I wonder?!

Sadly Uncle Bernard was unable to visit but he sent Benedict and Pip their Christmas presents!  And true to form Uncle B was spot on, Benedict's is a Meccano set for building a space shuttle!  A handy hands on activity linking with our on going Space project.    

Maths, Hot Chocolate and Feeding the Birds

Our homeschool opened this morning and we set to with our Maths workbook.  Benedict worked on "Tens and Units" and counting in two's, fives and tens.  He found the counting quite difficult and it became obvious that, we found our first gap in his maths learning.  We used a number grid to help him count and he was able to see patterns forming.  It is likely we will use this counting system as a guide for practical work for the remainder of the week.  He finished his morning studies by reading The Treasure Chest again; he seems to have really developed an interest in reading and will voluntarily bring books to share with either me or Pip.



After lunch Dave, Sara and Benedict went on a jolly to collect wood for the fire and visit the birds.  He is now currently in the workshop with Dave tinkering with metal and wood just before bed.  It has been a good day and it was lovely that this morning he said, " I really like homeschool mummy we get to do interesting things!"  Here are pictures from our day:

Number grid for fives and tens

Colour by numbers.

Feeding the birds.

Big sister helping aswell.  The reward for feeding this menagerie, was a well deserved hot chocolate with marshmallow topping in the visitor centre and another chance to watch the birds from a picture window.

Pip not wishing to be outdone also had time in the garden, boy was it cold, brrr!

A mountain climber in training... this gal takes after Grandad N , I'll have to buy her crampons and an ice axe for her next birthday!

A Thomas jigsaw just because.  
 

Weekly Round Up

It has been a mid term break in these parts so we shut the homeschool for the week and did our own thing!  Not that we ceased learning, after all we learn new things all the time, young and old!  Here are some pictures of our week:

Jen and Catherine trying to put Pip's slippers on and true to form this little gal would not sit still! We always have fun when we visit these special friends!

Setting the table with pretend food, pizza by the looks of things.

All togged up ready for our walk with Aunty Maureen, our goal was threefold: controlling blood sugars, appreciating the blue skies and sunshine and looking for nature on our walk into town.

Interesting art displays dotted around the Tourist Information Centre.

Celebrating Art and Music.

Benedict pretending to be the bird!

All smiles!  We had just been admiring the view of a snow capped fell.

Berries for the birds.

Our evenings have been spent reading, knitting and in Benedict's case junk modelling!  This little chap loves nothing more than a roll of sellotape, pair of scissors and assorted odds and ends:

Harry the diesel.

An assorted obstacle course!

  

A Sociable Day

Benedict has had several hypo's since yesterday and since his concentration is always affected as a result, our focus today has been practically based.  This morning Benedict helped with the supermarket shopping, weighing items, reading labels and asking for goods at the deli counter!

After lunch he helped clear the table and then played with lego upstairs until it was time to wrap up warm and spend some time in the garden.  Both him and Pip enjoyed the fresh air, playing with the toys, exploring the frozen water butt and wheel barrow and observing and listening for birds.  It was Pip's first time in the garden as a toddler and she thoroughly enjoyed herself.

Aunty Maureen and Uncle Bryan also popped in for a cup of tea and brought some bird watching DVD's.  We will enjoy watching them and in doing so improve our bird identification skills, which in mum's case are very basic!  Here are some garden pictures of today:

A long suffering baby sister experiencing her first bike ride with an over enthusiastic big brother! 

 

Are The Children All In Bed?...

 ... for now it is 11PM!!  Nope, not a fat chance!  Postman Pat was the order of the day here at chez chaos last night when Benedict was on his usual I'm not going to sleep mode and rather noisily disturbed Pip in the process!  Princess Pip had of course already had four hours beauty sleep and was ready to party!  She decided to put her hard earned climbing skills into practice and got into the toy basket for a closer peak of the televisual feast.  I know what you are thinking, why didn't she move the toy basket?  If I did that, she would then have had unlimited access to the surround sound system, set top box, DVD and Video players!  So I decided to take a snap shot of her achievements instead:

Taken with flash

Trying to grab a remote control from the fire guard  

As I write Benedict has been in bed since 6:30 PM which is unprecedented and Pip settled at 7PM her usual time.  Am I dancing around the dining room table with whoops of Yes!?  NO... I'm not going to count my chickens, I will breath  a grateful sigh of thank you God when we have made it though to the morning, hypo free and not bleary eyed!!  Until then I'm enjoying  the peace and quiet.  I'm off to sit by the log fire with a hard earned cup of tea!!

Space Cooking

All astronauts have to organise their own catering and those ready meals supplied by NASA leave a lot to be desired!!  On today's menu was Rock Cakes!  Here are the pictures from today's baking session as supervised by Dad:

Ingredients at the ready

Concentrating hard

Rubbing in the dry ingredients

Having fun getting messy!

The best bit and cooks perks, eating the leftovers from the bowl!!

If you want to see the finished articles check out the Kitchen Angel blog tomorrow.

What else did we do today?  Reading, lego building, writing a shopping list for mum and completing three pages of Maths from a colourful work book.