Always we begin again

Thankfulness is at the core of St Benedict's rule.  The first rule is simply this:
"Live this life and do whatever is done with a spirit of thanksgiving"


By nine o'clock this morning breakfast had been made, the table cleared, pots washed, clothing on the line to dry and we were ready to go with home school.  Whilst I attended to kitchen chores Benedict read The Enormous Crocodile by Roald Dahl.  We then worked on his spellings for the week.
By then it was time for circle time, we read the creation story in his children's bible and he answered the questions at the bottom of the page.  Next it was outdoor time for bean bag toss and number counting, followed by cuisenaire maths, this went down like a lead balloon!
Benedict redeemed himself by reading The Weight of The Mass book to Dave and then it was time for tidy up prior to lunch.
After lunch he had computer time with Dave using microsoft word he typed out the short poem by Christina Rossetti " Who has seen the wind?"  This was akin to a teeth pulling exercise and in order to prevent a total mutiny I sent him outside into the wind to collect our windfall apples dotted around the garden!
Seeking peace and quiet at my end, I baked some treats for tomorrows Not Back To School Picnic with Sarah and her girls in Derby.  Benedict was quite happy in the caravan listening to Enid Blyton's " Five on Kirrin Island" and drawing as he listened.  This was them followed by more reading.
Just before tea I made another attempt at some maths and this time he was in a more receptive mood, using one of his work books we looked at odd and even numbers and coloured in the squares in the appropriate colour.
I think we are turning a corner with the bed times, thank you God for the changing season and darker evenings!  Praise God this has been the second night running Benedict has been asleep by quarter past eight!

Round Up Time

We've had a busy week in the "school room" in the loft and Benedict has achieved quite a lot of work.

Monday 10th May -

 Benedict wrote the numbers and corresponding words from 40 - 60.  His handwriting is much improved and he has worked hard at keeping the letters neat and on the line.

He drew a small picture of a boat and accompanying sea creatures.

Read " The Victorian Adventure" from The Oxford Reading Tree Level 8.

Practical Life Skills: organised the recycling, swept the dining room floor and cleared the table after lunch.

Independent reading after lunch - Benedict chose a diabetes information book which is solely geared towards children with the condition.

Independent writing - Benedict wrote a letter home as an evacuee during The Second World War.  His writing deteriorated and concentration waned towards the end.  He was very tired both physically and mentally.

Benedict has worked incredibly hard today and I am very pleased with all his efforts.

Tuesday 11th May -

Peculiar BM's all day, swinging from one extreme to the other.  Despite this he did manage some work - he copied out the evacuee letter with correct grammar and spellings, practised this weeks spellings, read "The Surprise" from The Oxford Tree Scheme, constructed a complex marble run creation and made a picture scene with modelling clay.

Wednesday 12th May -

Drew a picture to accompany the evacuee letter.  In it he added barrage balloons, an anderson shelter, sandbags, gas masks and an incendiary bomb.  He was able to describe in detail the function of each item.

Mathematics - Tens and Units using cuisinaire rods.  We listened to the Times Tables soundtrack game.  He needed a lot of help from me but we had great fun!

Copied numbers 60 - 80 and their corresponding words whilst listening to "The Junior Jug Band - Songs to Sing".  The tape was sent to us from our friend in Canada and when he'd finished writing he did his own jive movements, the rhythm was quite infectious!

Using numbered cards as a visual prompt he counted in 2's, 5's and 10's.

Read "William's Mistake" from The Reading Scheme.

Thursday 13th May -

Today should have been our Home Ed Group meeting but due to a lack of numbers it was sadly cancelled.  The lady who runs it had put time and effort into organising a theme for the day and I felt for her that, only two of us had bothered to reply to her e-mail stating we wished to attend.  Benedict was very disappointed and asked could we do something "fun" rather than stay at home.  We had a treat lunch at our local "Frankie and Benny's" and then paid a visit to the shoe shop.  Pip was lucky she got a pair of slippers and shoes at less than the cost of her first pair!!  We couldn't find anything for Benedict so I think we'll have to look further afield.

All things considered it has been a good week!

Home Ed Group

Yesterday we joined in with our local group that meets on a fortnightly basis.  The lass who runs the group is very organised and usually sends out a mailing listing proposed activities, yesterday's itinerary included:  decorating a bottle/jam jar to make a vase, planting seeds, a recorder lesson and learning circus skills.  Benedict decorated his bottle with the Moomin characters and Pip planted Livingstone Daisies as well as attempting to eat the soil!  It was Benedict's first attempt at learning the recorder and he did well, it's just up to me now to encourage him to practise before the next meeting.  He also had a go with a Diablo, it was a shame Sara was not with us as she could have taught some tricks to the kids.  The rest of the time was spent charging around the adjoining field playing frisbee and kicking a ball around.

After lunch Benedict planted seeds with Dad in the greenhouse and then visited his old school to borrow more books from their reading scheme.  Whilst he was out Sara sat with Pip at the table and the two of them had fun making swirls on the paper.  Tea time was soon upon us and Benedict helped chop the tomatoes waiting to be fried and Pip as ever was to be found on my back!

Benedict's photo of his efforts.

This morning we worked on subtraction skills using the Cuisinaire Rods, counted in two's and worked on the two times table - Benedict is still having difficulty remembering the answers for the tables but I know that at some point it will click.  This is what happened with his reading and now he is a voracious reader!  After this Benedict followed the guidance in the Usborne I Can Draw Series and drew a beautiful reindeer to add to his collection of a monkey and a bee.  He has also read several books of his own choosing including The Tale of Mrs Tittlemouse by Beatrix Potter.  As I write he is now resting in bed as I'm sure he is brewing an infection, again!



Edited To Add:  A phone call from the GP this afternnoon confirmed my suspicions, another kidney infection is brewing, so another course of anti-biotics, the second set this month.  Benedict as usual is very matter of fact about the whole thing, good job too, I suppose!

We've Been...

... digging for dinosaurs, creating with Lego, reading, reading and more reading, cuisinairing, mask colouring, planting and watering and asking many questions too numerous to list and some for which I did not have the answer!  Daddy is a fount of knowledge so we always defer to him otherwise Yahoo makes a reasonable alternative!  Here are some pics from the past week:

Pip has two main areas of "learning" at the moment.  First up his her speech, she babbles loads and attempts to make words, mama, dada, rara (for sara), bir (bird), boo bear  and she loves singing the first bit of row, row the boat.  The second area is her physical development, not only can she  climb onto the window bottom, fire guard and play kitchen, she has now worked out how to get onto the dining room chairs.  Hmm, so all the stuff we normally pile into the the middle of the table will now have to find a permanent home elsewhere.  I'm seriously considering letting her loose in the garden all day and she can attempt to climb the trees instead of the furniture!  I thought our Sara was fearless but Pip wins the gold cup hands down!  Still, you cannot be cross with her, especially when she usually looks like this:

Oh to be a toddler, what fun! 

   

A Late Round Up!

Despite whacky BM's Benedict actually achieved quite a lot of work last week, below is our resume of accomplished activities.



Monday 15th -



 Numeracy - Cuisenaire worksheets/number stories using the rods and counting in two's up to the value of 50.



Home Front - Cutting and gluing the base plate for the Anderson Shelter/Garden Model.  Benedict also watched the second instalment of The 1940's House entitled "Women at Work".  Since the Grandad in the programme was "away on important war work", the eldest boy Ben aged ten years, assumed the role of The Head of the House.  The war cabinet asked him to undertake the role of Fuel Warden, he had to calculate the family's fuel usage and reduce consumption as per the guidelines of the day.  The family were only allowed three bucketfuls of coal per day to run the boiler, all lights had to be turned off in rooms not used and each member was only allowed one bath per week of no more than five inches of water.  Benedict was especially keen to undertake such a role in this house, so watch this space!!



Gardening - Planted more seeds and watered the existing seedlings in the mini greenhouse.



Literacy - Benedict has just moved up a band to level seven of The Oxford Reading Scheme, he read the first three books in that series: Red Planet, Lost in the Jungle and The Lost Key.



Tuesday 16th -



Literacy - Read The Broken Roof from The Oxford Reading Scheme and when tested on his spellings knew them all apart from the word "said".



Numeracy - Cuisenaire worksheets on interchanging numerals and rods to make number stories.



Space Odyssey 2010 - We looked at The International Space Station (ISS), we discussed the similarities between the ISS and an ordinary home, what materials are used in the construction of the ISS and why and what work is being carried out on the station.  Using his Space book as a guide Benedict coloured in a printed sheet of the ISS.



Wednesday 17th-



Literacy - Spellings, knew them all apart from "are", read The Motorway from the Oxford Reading Scheme and practised handwriting using the rhyming word sheets.



Numeracy - Two times table using the clock face and printed cards and Cuisenaire worksheets for addition tables and number patterns.  Benedict found looking for a pattern really easy with the rods but found the addition table more challenging when using a number sequence.



Home Front - More work on the Anderson Shelter/Garden model.



Thursday 18th -



Science Meet with the Lancaster and Cumbria Home Ed groups.  Everyone met at the Maritime Museum and representatives from British Energy, Lancaster City Council Library Service and The Sea Life Centre led workshops on Electricity and its generation, Weather and The Solar System and Rock Pool Life.  The activites were enjoyed by all and it was good to meet with other local Home Ed families.



Friday 19th-



We spent the day with the Cumbria Otherwise Group.   After a bring your own lunch the kids and adults settled down to painting miniature canvasses.  We were blessed with lovely weather and Benedict had fun running around with newfound friends.  In fact he had a hypo as a result of all the extra activity!!



Below are sample pictures from the week:

Times Table Clock Face

Cards covering the clock face.

Using the rods in preparation for interchanging rods with numerals in addition tables.

Life in the rock pool.

Inner strengthening supports for the Anderson Shelter.

Using a CD Rom package to design your own car!

  

A Trip to the Theatre

A trip to our local theatre was on the cards today, Benedict visited this place:

... to see this production:

It was a welcome respite for him since he was still suffering from multiple hypo's, another three yesterday, which is six in 36 hours and therefore an average of one every six hours.   Needless to say his concentration has been zippo.  To further complicate  matters, the cannula site became blocked in the middle of the night and he woke at five this morning with very high blood sugars and feeling sick.  In the end I had to give an emergency injection to bring his readings down.

We had a visit to the hospital today to change our insulin pump for the paradigm veo and whilst we were there he had a really bad hypo, the lowest I've seen him drop and the medical team were totally at a lost as to why it should be happening!  I've reset all the basal rates and am hoping that, things will settle over the course of the next few days.

As I write it is 7:30 pm and he is currently palying with the cuisenaire rods by the fire in the lounge.  He loves working out the problems in the accompanying work book and the added bonus (excusing the pun!) is he's exploring Mathematics at the same time.  

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!