And then the Day was Gone...

Some days just are over before you know it, and today was one of those. It seemed to get off to a slow start and trudged along, but never seemed to really get going. We did some English this morning and finished the day with a quick 20 minutes of Maths, but in between seemed too much of a slog for nothing much achieved. I tried to do some history with them both. Before lunch we finished off looking at how each of the first three kings of Israel was good and bad and what they did that pleased and offended God. After lunch we looked at the division of Israel into the two nations of Israel and Judah. For myself, being no bible scholar I’m afraid, it was new learning and that can sometimes be fatal for the kids because I am too interested to keep it at their level. I think I managed to explain in quite well on this occasion though and, coupled with the maps of the land that they coloured and I outlined, I think they understood it OK in the end. Joel then did a crossword as revision of the section we have just finished. Now we move on to look at the rise of Assyria and then of Babylon. Those topics I should be able to broaden a little by having a look more widely at the Assyrian & Babylonian civilisations, but I don’t want it to get too big. I’m thinking that maybe the children might be more interested in the tapes now too - as least Joel might be, but I think they might still be a bit above Boo’s head - sadly!

Other good things that did happen today were some ‘stile’ work, which did involve some written spelling practice too, (tick that off my list for the week) and Ellie enjoyed some time on “Dr Zeus’s ABC” CDRom, with Phoebe and ‘Fred the Ted’ (the playgroup bear on his travels to our house this week) looking over her shoulder.

I was hoping to do some of our plants projects today and for Abbie to get some computer time. I’d also wanted to finish off our “I can do anything…” poem, but neither of these things happened. We did manage to do some rhyming practice in history though - just one of the fun exercises that go with it, so maybe that might have helped when we come to finding rhymes for our poem, but it looks like that will be waiting ‘till Monday now. :( And sometime I’d like to do some more of our “Super Science Concoctions” (a fantastic freebie download I got the other week and started with the children. They loved it but we haven’t done any more yet… same old, same old!!)

We didn’t even get any reading practice or tricky words done today. Jake has spellings to learn tonight so I might still be able to squeeze some reading into the day!

Just for those interested in such things;

Current books being read in our house;

On Abbie’s reading list is; “Josie the Jumping Frog” by; Anne Cassidy
“Nick’s Birthday” - Jane Oliver
“The Princess and the Pig” - Usborne Castle Tales
“Little Lamb” - Kim Lewis
& a collection of the ‘Train stories’ from Usborne.

Joel is reading “The Phantom of the Subway” - Geronimo Stilton (Scholastic) ….” and then he has “The Popcorn Pirates” (Alexander McCall Smith) on his ‘next’ list

Jacob is reading “Horrid Henry’s Nits” - Francesca Simon (nice!) & “Revolting stories for 10 year olds” - Helen Paiba.

I am reading (each one very slowly) - “Use Your Head” - Tony Buzan
“Rachel’s Tears” - Beth Nimmo & Darrell Scott
& “We’re in this Together” - Celia Bowring

Paul is reading “What’s so Amazing about Grace?” - Philip Yancey” & “Too busy NOT to pray” - Bill Hybels,

Together with the girls I am reading - “The Pony Mad Princess - a surprise for Princess Ellie” - Usborne
To Abbie I am reading “The Mill Girl” (one of the ‘my story’ books)
To Phoebe I am reading “Sharing a shell” - the Gruffalo guy. We’re reading that too. :)
Ellie’s favourite book atm is “I Spy…” - a book where you have to hunt for various objects in the big picture.
Together with the boys I am reading - “Circus of Adventure” - Enid Blyton of course - when and if I can ever get them to bed together at a sensible time, or in a sensible mood these days
To Joel I am reading “Stories for 8 year olds” - an allsorts book.

So for someone who is not that into reading there is quite a bit of reading happening here at the moment, which is good. :)