Another Week Goes By!

I really must get back in the swing of this, although to be honest I haven't had much chance this week to be on the computer. Paul was preaching on Sunday and is again on Thursday (at college), plus he's doing a 'scouts' talk on Thursday too, so he has been busy on here most nights this week. Oh, to have the luxury of two computers!!

Anyway, what have we been up to..? Well, nothing exceptional really I don't think.

MATHS:
Joel has been working hard on addition with numbers up to 20 and started on subtraction today. He seems to have got a fairly good grasp of the idea, although I don't think he would quite manage so well without the pictures and being able to circle '10', but as he is not required to be able to just yet that isn't a problem :) He seemed to get the subtraction OK today too.
Jacob has been doing 'money' which he apparently loves and definitely 'gets', so that's cool, I'll be able to send him shopping for me soon ;) !

HISTORY :
Started looking at ancient civilizations today - REALLY ancient - like UR!! Interesting - as always :)

ENGLISH :
At LAST I am beginning to see my eldest son able to formulate ideas and put them together in some semblance of a sensible order to create writing that is at least a little bit interesting to read! :) Just Write is working really well for him.
Joel today (in Write about Me) had to draw a picture of his favourite part in a film and write about it . He drew a great picture of Medussa hanging onto a pipe at the end of 'The Rescuers' and then wrote. "Medussa got stuck on a pipe and the alligaters tride to get her." (spellings his) I thought this was excellent for a boy only 1 term into 'Yr 1' (just turned 6). His imagination and visual memory are SO much more vivid than Jacob's and it really shows because his creative writing now is almost reaching a level with Jacob's. He simply has more grasp of vocabulary and language usage and yet I cannot think that he has had any more exposure than Jake. It's not that Jacob is 'slow', he just doesn't seem retain what he has previously learned very well and almost has to re-learn things over and over! I'm not particularly worried any more - I just see it as difference in personality more than anything else and I don't think English is ever going to be Jacob's strong point, but we can't all be fantastic at everything we turn our hand to can we? You watch him prove me Oh so wrong now, and get and a 1st Class degree in English some day!!!

SCIENCE :
hmm - well that has taken a bit of a back seat, must get back on track with that one! But Jacob and I did finish off the first section on 'Classification' the other day (i.e. what it means to 'classify' things/beings), next we will look more specifically at how ANIMALS are classified and the main classification groups.

GEOGRAPHY: haven't done it yet this week - probably one for tomorrow.

ART :
Made some 'angels' for the Christmas tree today with lots of glitter glue, paint and red glitter. The girls have this great Advent calendar with an activity to do most days. Today's happened to fit with Joel's bible reading about 'hosts of angels', so we made angels. The kids loved it - I hated it - I just can't bear the mess that that kind of art brings with it, and with carpets everywhere it's not easy to clean up, but I showed brave, happy face and praised the children for their beautiful efforts :) There's still red glitter in the carpet mind!!

SOCIAL SKILLS :
Went to lunch on Friday at a friends - she has 5 children too, three of whom she is currently schooling. They all played fantastically together :) Plus all their usual clubs and activities that they do (which cover P.E. too). They are not lacking in this department for certain!!

R.E..:
Well that's kind of dropped out of my curriculum this term. There just doesn't seem to be the time to take it as a separate topic and to be honest we are covering so much RE in other subjects (particularly History and Geography, as well as Bible study every morning) that it seems almost superfluous. It is a shame though, because I was looking forward to having a good delve into Judaism with the boys. I guess there's plenty more time this year yet though (and in years to come) and I think at some point it will simply 'slip' into place anyhow.

OTHER NEWS :
Well my sickness is all but gone and my headaches - well I haven't had one for over a week now :) But I have learned in recent days that I really cannot travel long distances in cars! I went to a meal in The Wirral at a friend's house, with 11 other home-schooling Mum's on Monday night. We had a fantastic evening - great food, lovely conversation and nice putting faces to names I have known for a while and never met the people, as well as making new contacts. The Wirral is about an hour's drive away from me and going there I felt just a little queasy, but returning home on a full stomach was another matter! I literally dived into the bathroom as soon as my friends dropped me at my door (at 1.30am) and .... (I'll leave the rest to your imagination!) This completely wiped me out for a whole 24 hours. My poor children must think I am permanantly sick at the moment!! My fabulous friend a few doors down took all four of my 'noisy' ones on Tuesday morning, Ellie slept and I crawled back into bed until Helen returned the children - all fed - at 1pm. I then plonked myself on the sofa with pillows and blankets and allowed the children to overdose on TV and Playstation time! Then sent them to their rooms for a 'quiet hour' while a dozed again on the sofa (with one ear on Ellie who was playing in the room). When they emerged - more telly!! Well actually I did try to encourage them to find a game to play together. The boys got out Top-trumps, but ended up throwing them at each other! Joel then took himself back to his bed and slept til tea-time!! Jacob was then bored and consequently could think of nothing better to do than watch more TV (The girls were still resting at this point). I was too ill to persist with the 'go play something' tac, so more TV it was!!

Paul is doing fantastically well so far this year with his course - upped his grades significantly on last year's average. So all this time on the computer is paying off for him :)

Abbie had a podiatry appointment on Monday because she is quite pigeon toed - I think. The podiatrist said that she has one leg slightly longer than the other (mm's, but it makes a difference) and yes, her right foot does turn in. So we are awaiting shoe inserts to help 'correct' the problems. We'll see if they help...

Ellie celebrated her first birthday on Saturday!! We had friends and family over for tea and she had a fabulous time with the chocolate cake I made her!! :)

Pics to follow shortly!!