What a hot and busy week it's been! Aside from Sports Day (although we could've gone to the Home Ed one at Alexandra Palace..) we've had all the usual End of Term-ness here.
Monday was Mountains of Washing day - 8 loads to be exact (thank God for the heatwave!) - in preparation for going on our jollibobs tomorrow :-)
Tuesday we tried to head somewhere with water. We got up early, all packed and ready, got there, got the LAST parking space at just past 9AM!!! Water feature was off :-( So disappointed. Still we played in the playground for an hour until it got just TOO hot, then we retreated to the shade for a picnic and some water pistol fun. DD designed her own pair of sunglasses with Sharpie pens and DS just had general outdoor fun.
We headed home around lunch time, as it was just tooooooooooooo hot, picked ourselves some flowers from the front garden -
then headed out to the back garden for an epic hose pipe water fight!
We've been writing to our Summer PenPals (a Home Ed exchange I set up, to encourage the children to keep writing over the summer holidays. So they are partnered with other Home Educated children and need to send their letters on certain dates). DD & DS both have 2 partners each.
We've also been reading our latest Usbourne Books from the fabulous lady I know that sends us a monthly 'surprise' :-) This month was The Trojan Horse for DS and Gym Stars for DD - very happy kids!
On Wednesday we had our End of Term party with a fab Home Ed group we belong to. It was the end of an era as two lovely teen girls head off to secondary schools for new adventures. We celebrated with crafts, smoothie bikes, bouncy castle, face painting, free play, water fights, food, ice pops and emotional farewells.
The next day was our last HE organised trip of this term. Learning all about life in past times. DS's favourites were by far the Blacksmith -
And the local wildlife!
DD on the other hand enjoyed exploring the old houses and imagining what life would've been like long ago...
My own personal highlight what when DD shared her money with a friend who didn't have any in the Museum shop, so they could both get a tiny souvenier. So sweet!
And today has been a marathon wash, clean, pack and sort out the pets session, ready for our holidays tomorrow. Lord Ginger (the bunny) has never looked so clean! :-) Well, he has, but it never lasts long - he is a very playful bunny!
We have a pet sitter coming in to look after him daily, as we don't want to distress him by moving him. She's looked after him before and he's been very happy. She'll also look after the goldfish and the stick insects.
George, the tortoise, on the otherhand, likes to travel so he has gone to stay with friends for his holidays :-)
See you all in a week!
So this week we have celebrated our one year anniversary of Home Educating! Hard to believe it is a year since we deregistered from school and embarked on this journey :-)
On Monday we went to DD's Book Group, which she really enjoys. This week they were doing Roald Dahl - one of our faves. Afterwards we spent the morning at the library followed by a couple of hours at the park with other HE friends.
Tuesday we had a nice At Home day and enjoyed hanging out and creating during Listening Time -
We read another Jack Stalwart and are almost finished reading Fantastic Mr Fox (the only Roald Dahl we hadn't yet read - due to my two lovelies being vegetarians (by choice) and it being rather an adult story!)
On Wednesday we had a celebration - a wonderful day out with 9 other HE families, to celebrate our Home Ediversary! We had a wonderful day (eventually - after an initial hour and a half of melt downs, sensory overload, accidents and "can we just go home's" from poor DS). But the weather held out and the kids played, and played, and played - and socialised, and socialised, and socialised until we finally went our separate ways nearly 7 hours later! DD rated it a 5 Star day lol!!
Thursday was the last gymnastics for this term, which was super fun as they do games (namely Hide & Seek - the kids favourite!) and they had free time on the rings, to do leaping somersault dismounts to their heart's content!
In the afternoon we finished our Sea Life project we'd been working on, with lots of lovely facts about Crabs :-) And got that sent off to the Home Ed family that were waiting for it :-)
And Friday we had another At Home day. The kids helped me with some gardening - weeding, dead heading and cutting back. All valuable life skills :-) And then we went to the park for a few hours - where we discovered DS has a natural aptitude for shooting basket ball hoops!
He shot hoop after hoop after hoop, from whichever side he stood! So we went to the sports shop and bought a proper basket ball and he is now practising his skills in the garden, and it is definitely on my list to try and find a club we can join!
In the evening we had a bonfire, and roasted veggie sausages on sticks for supper :-) If anyone knows of a veggie alternative to marshmallows we'll be your best friends forever ;-)
Any one else finding the light nights really hard? (Or is that a silly question?!)
Last night was so insanely bright and light that the only person who managed to fall asleep was DH, who'd been at work all day!
So at 10.30pm me and the kids were decamped in my bed, hot, tired/wide awake and wondering what on earth to do with ourselves. I had a little scroll through my Kindle at some of my recent saves and stumbled across this one, that a friend shared recently:-
http://brightside.me/article/how-to-teach-your-child-to-draw-using-numbers-10755/
So we decided to give that a try! I was very impressed with the results :-) (Mine at the top, DS bottom left, DD bottom right).
Now, I am one of those people that could best be described as 'not able to draw' so it was a treat for me to discover my efforts came out resembling what they were supposed to! :-) It was simple, fun and effective and required just enough energy and concentration to tire us all out so we were able to sleep zzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Other highlights this week include making the biggest, most indulgent chocolate cake we could possibly imagine -
Going to Book Group at the library only to discover DD (replace Darling here with Dozy) has returned her library books to the wrong library and we now have to try and track them down or pay for them!
And having to take an hour's detour on the way home because DS only decided AFTER we left the bakery that he DID want something after all, and that something was a gingerbread man. He cried all the way back to the car - despite lots of cuddles, we just had to stop to get his breath back. Delayed processing can be so hard! So we stopped off en route, and picked up this little chap -
and The World was Right again :-)
We've been doing loads of practical real-life maths (ok, ok we've been playing Monopoly alot!) :-) Yesterday I ended up in Jail, with all my property mortgaged and only £4 to my name!! Minus the jail time, felt a bit TOO much like real life to me lol :-)
And the kid's team (The Golden Lions!) won the end of term trophy at the church social group they go to! I was over the moon for them, and so impressed to see the lovely written work they have done this term - learning all about David in The Bible (Religious Education = check :-) ) On a serious note though, it is a HUGE thing for us that there is a social group that both our children can participate in INDEPENDENTLY of us. This has never happened for us - not with Beavers, Brownies, after school clubs etc. But the leaders are great with the children, and give all their time voluntarily and they do wonderful games and activities and learn all about the Christian faith.
I was particularly moved to be told by one of the leaders that DD is "always really good with DS". Apparently she always sits with him and works with him when they do the written tasks. She reads everything for him and helps him spell the answers (reading and writing are still a big challenge for DS, there are definite elements/ suggestions of dyslexia there). He told me "normally the siblings go in opposite directions and can't wait to be on different teams, but your DD is always with DS and helping him." Well, you wouldn't have needed Goliath, you could literally have knocked me down with a feather - this is the girl that could not bear her brother's existence when they were at school!! So you can imagine I was thrilled to pieces and made sure we had a special chat about that when we got home and that DD knew how very happy and proud of her I was.
Now all we need is some sunshine, and the summer can really begin!
This week has been rather an emotional week for us all. Sadly, we received rather a brutal 'uninvite' to a party - which hurt us all quite deeply. Not so much because the friendship is any great loss (we have more self respect than that) but because of the harsh and cowardly way it was done - by text. I had thought, at the ripe old age of 41, that I was far too long in the tooth to fall foul of 'dumping by text' but it seems I was wrong!
What's made me sad is the effect it has had on DS. He has been rather sad about it, very emotional and clingy, and has been complaining of a headache for days (most likely stress-related as we used to get this All The Time when he was at school). It's been really sad to see him like this. He's been bed wetting, we've had a couple of nose bleeds and for the last 2 nights I've had to co-sleep with him :-( I kinda wish our Texter could see all this, and maybe think twice about their behaviour in future.
So this week has been about hugs and healing. Lots of time, lots of space, lots of fun.
We had a fab time with a group of HE friends at an outdoor play park mid-week - including lots of the kids building dens for slow worms to hopefully entice some in before our next meet up in a few weeks :-) DS absolutely LOVED this, as it is all about nature and outdoors - his favourite things.
DD also had a great time just running around playing and having singing contests with her friends.
We had a nice afternoon today just hanging out and building Lego and restoring DS's slightly battered self-confidence -
And DD has been working hard on a Sea Life project. We had some-one ask if we would like to do a Sea Life project swap with them and being it is one of DD's favourite subjects she was happy to oblige :-)
She's also had an amazingly good sort out and tidy up of her room, already sold a few bits online and the rest we are taking to a carboot sale tomorrow - no doubt we will end up coming home with more than we took! Especially books lol :-)
Other things we have been doing over the past week are lots of lovely Relaxed Learning. We are in to the summer term now, and winding down towards the holidays just as school would be.
We've done lots of Listening Time - we are working through the Jack Stalwart books and enjoying reading non-fiction books together.
We had a fab taster session with a local Forest School where the kids did fire lighting, den building, sawing and making wooden necklaces and lots of lovely outdoor free play in the woods :-)
DS is doing amazingly with Scratch programming. It's something he has really taken to, and the fact he has to program the instructions is doing wonders for his literacy skills!
DD continues to come out of her shell and pursue her own interests. Only this morning I found these beauties in her bedroom :-) I don't know if you can see them clearly but there is a map of the world with animals from certain countries, and a picture of The Needles in the Isle of Wight. So proud!
The kids also decided they were going to do bird watching together and built this super cute 'Hide' -
DS is nestling inside it in this picture! DD had a clipboard and was recording their sightings! They saw wood pigeons, robins, blackbirds and wrens :-)
And, of course, on Friday we fitted in a lesson about The Battle of the Somme, in honour of it being the 100 year anniversary of the commencement of the battle on 1st July this year. The kids did a little write up of what they had learned and we sat and had a time of reflection in honour of those who had given their lives in the battle.
We will remember them x
Last week we had our Geography Club (a monthly HE club that I run) and we were learning about Egypt.
DD & DS both worked really hard on their Show & Tells -
DD started out researching tourism in modern Egypt, then she did a bit on temperature, population, places of interest, the Nile - and it grew until she included heiroglyphics and her papyrus painting!
DS did his project on Nile crocodiles. He researched in books and on the computer and found out some interesting facts such as when a baby Nile crocodile is ready to be born, it calls to it's mother from inside the egg and she then helps it to hatch.
And I was super proud of them standing up and doing their bit, even though we were a bit thin on the ground this month so they were a tad self-concious but their confidence won through and they did a great job :-)
After the Show & Tells we had our usual table activities and food tasting. This month we had the opportunity to try pitta bread, houmous, babba ganoush and Om Ali (a cream & pastry pudding with nuts and dried fruit) -
We used this recipe from Eat Like an Egyptian, which also tells the history of this traditional dish - http://www.eatlikeanegyptian.com/Recipes/Desserts/OmAli.html
For our table activities we had word searches and a worksheet on The River Nile (both from Twinkl - http://www.twinkl.co.uk/resource/t2-h-367-ancient-egypt-wordsearch-differentiated) and a couple of crafts -
We had Egyptain head-dresses (again, from wonderful Twinkl - http://www.twinkl.co.uk/resource/t-t-15589-egyptian-snake-head-band ) and making our own pyramids (from fabulous Usbourne book Egyptian Things to Make & Do - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Egyptian-Things-Usborne-Activity-Books/dp/0746097735 ). We were very pleased with the end results :-)
And, for those that wanted to, we couldn't resist making some Lego pyramids too :-)
