Reading around

The problem with not blogging regularly is that it takes all evening for me to read around everyone's blogs and catch up (I am a very slow reader & I like details!!), but I'm done now!

On Wednesday we did our first Geography lesson. We learnt the compass points, the difference between a map and a globe and made (well folded together really) this little hexagonal 3D globe which came with the bundle. Then I got the kids to label a floor map of our house, which they really enjoyed and it meant working out which way to hold the map to figure out which room was which. After that they each drew a map of our walk into town, which is a very simple straight line route, but they had to fill in the land-marks, like the railway line & the job-centre, any roads we cross and a roundabout, etc.. That was fun too. Next week we'll talk about continents and countries (although they do already have a vague idea of the difference between those from playing 'globe trotting' - the ELC version of Twister with the seven continents and the main oceans marked on) and then perhaps onto looking at China. I did consider starting closer to home (and still am actually). I need to look closer at the materials and visit the library. What is distinctive about the UK...? I wish we could have made that meet up in London! We have also some made some Swedish friends recently - maybe we should start there...? On second thoughts, I think I will start in Europe, especially as we are 2/3 through completing a jigsaw map of Europe. We could use that as a reference point and I could let the children 'pick a country' to look at. Yes, I think that might work! :) The good thing about the GTG curriculum is that it is a framework and not overly prescriptive. It encourages a continent by continent approach, but it doesn't matter which continent you start at. And it is also 'unit study' style, so there's lots of ideas in there to use.

No art today, but Cath has promised me a double helping in the next two weeks (she had double booked herself for today :( ). The boys have done some nice pieces in the 'art-notebooks' though. I think she'll be impressed. They did them completely unassisted and I was certainly impressed - better than I could do for sure and in just one lesson!!

The boys were dragging their heals a bit by the end of today - but then so was I, so I guess it showed!! They really do work well though on the whole and we do pack an awful lot in sometimes. I was ready to jack it in before them today though. They requested to do some 'Treks' (which is health-ed), but ran out of steam half way through the topic (cleanliness) and as I didn't have much left to start with I struggled too! Still we did it and it wasn't with tears or anything so that was good. Next time I think I will say when I've had enough, even if it's before them!! Children are not always the best judges of what they are capable of are they?!. I was very pleased with them both today though, when they both got full marks in their spellings (10/10 for Joel & 24/24 for Jacob). Admittedly Jacob's were 'easy' for him, but I thought we'd start the term off with a high success rate to encourage him. Joel's I thought were quite tough (words like 'thinking'), but apparently he thought not!! I've been using wordsearches for spelling practice midweek (thanks Merry for that idea) and it seems to be paying off as well as being enjoyable for the boys. :)

Going to bed now. I'm feeling very tired of late. Feel like I wish it was half term already!! Dunno quite what happened to my 'take it easy' week? Somehow I'm just not too good at that and I feel like I need to keep the children busy to keep them out of trouble, or from bickering all the time. Not sure which is more wearing - squabbling kids or having to constantly think about what we're doing next. I think the former in the long run actually!

Night Folks.