"Time" and Other Happenings.

In addition to our regular maths programme we have begun our main lesson work for this month, which focuses on time and seasons.  Yesterday we explored the different ways of telling the time and our associated practical activity was to make our own sundial:

 Such a simple activity but what a great visual way of illustrating the movement of time throughout the day.

Whilst Benedict was helping Sara in the garden Pip and I actually managed some quiet time together.  We set out the Happy Land village and it was lovely to hear Pip narrating little dialogues as she moved the characters around the play mat.

We had two sets of twins in one house, their Mummy and Daddy must have been very tired!

 "Say cheese!"

We had a rubbish clinic appointment and I left the meeting very disillusioned.  Several times Benedict's consultant proffered conflicting and ill informed advice and I repeatedly stood my ground and fought our corner. After having left the consulting room our dietician gave me a pat on the shoulder and reminded me that, I'm doing a great job and his kindness was gratefully appreciated.  To cheer ourselves we had coffee and gluten free cake at The Whaletail Vegetarian Cafe.

This morning we wrapped up the ten times table by using the Montessori multiplication board as our visual aid:

Benedict really enjoyed the therapeutic nature of placing a bead on each corresponding hole and observing pattern formation.  After this we worked on place value and addition of thousands, hundreds, tens and units; once again the Montessori tools came in very handy:

The individual tiles are a great way of assisting with "trading up" of numbers, so that 10 lots of 100 tiles are then traded for a singular thousand tile.  We filled the sheet with sums and written number values and decided to call it a day with regards to numeracy.

Our literacy work was "alphabetical order" and Benedict had to arrange words in dictionary formation.  The exercise became a little more complex when he had to begin arranging words with the same initial letter and was therefore looking for differences in the second/third letters of each word.  This exercise is fairly familiar to him, as we often arrange our weekly spellings into dictionary format as another way of reinforcing the learning process.

By now it was nearing lunch time, so we just had time to read two chapters of our shared reader,"Five On A Secret Trail".

After lunch Benedict and Pip had fun making a castle in the lounge using assorted furniture whilst I tackled kitchen clean up.  It was then time to undertake our practical activity for the afternoon and in a nod to the slighter colder early mornings/evenings we decided to wash our woolies the old fashioned way!

I am ashamed to say the water was very dirty and we had to refill the sink with fresh soapy liquid between each batch!  Note to myself - wash woolies on a regular basis!  Pip was very sweet she was wearing my as yet unwashed "glubs" and was very reluctant to part with them, only the promise of another available pair, would then see her placing them in the sink to be washed!

Free time heralded once more and both kids went in opposite directions, Pip shared some books with me and as always I'm continually surprised by this wee gal. We were reading the "Peepo" book and she announced, " That baby's blue shoe is missing!!" Not bad for two and a half, eh?!

After tea Benedict worked on the Seasons.  I made a list of family member's Birthdays and he had to name where they belonged on a Seasonal calendar, as well as writing about his favourite season:


"My favourite season is Winter.  I like the Christmas decorations and Christmas pudding.  In this season we celebrate the birth of Jesus.  The weather is cold at this time of year, so we have to wrap up warm."