THE FROG-ACADEMY

Yesterday and today…

Yesterday was OK. We did music in the morning looking at sound patterns using Carnival of the Animals. I managed to get a fab book from the library;Carnival of the Animals: Poems Inspired by Saint-Saens' Music with CD (Audio). In fact I’ve ordered it from Amazon I like it so much.. The children really got the idea. I sent them out to the garden and around the house to listen for sounds to draw. They did very well at it..

Maths was a bit of a trial with Joel, but he did it in the end and not too badly. He was fine with the times and divide, but got in a flap when he saw that with the second exercise he had to addition and subtraction mixed in too - and it was with those he got some wrong! How can addition be harder than division?!? It was stuff like 205 + 698 = ? that he was struggling with. He simply does not remember to make the 698 up to 700 to simplify his life. Or if he does he will do something like 205 + 700 + 98 ! = … (like what is that all about!?). It is a little frustrating to say the least. Today he has done a revision exercise which I always use as a kind of mini-assessment of where he is at. I’ve not marked it yet…

Science was fun. We finished off about molecules moving - namely water molecules. It was very simple and I should have taken some pics (sorry folks), but I always forget to do that in the nub of things. We had four jars of water; one hot, only ice cold, one room temperature and one of brine. We dropped a couple of drops of blue food colouring into each and talked about what happened. We also put drinking chocolate in hot and cold water to see the difference with a thicker substance. I used stones in a pint glass to illustrate molecular movement, diffusion and saturation. I put loads of little stones in the glass and then some small coloured counters in on top. We talked about the brine. And then I shock it all about (to demonstrate the molecular movement) and the children saw how the coloured bits ‘mixed in’ with the stones. Joel did a lovely write up and Boo was able to dictate to me what she had learned. Not sure how much Phoebe understood, but I think she will remember it when we revisit it in years to come -as we will in this house!

Joel then wrote the middle section of a story I am getting him to write. It started as a quick write, but he only managed the beginning that day, so I said he could add the middle yesterday and the end toady. He thought of the end on the first day, he just didn’t have a middle, so today should be easy as he already knows what he wants to write.

In the evening I had worship practice and went back to my friend’s for hot chocolate and a chat until 1.30am, when I borrowed her bike to peddle home at break neck speed! Thankfully it’s only a few minutes ride away. I need to go there more often; it was a lovely evening :)

Later…. Joel’s story is very good :)

Today we made a rainbow, learnt about seeds and planted a few runner beans for observation purposes. I’ve know we’ve done it before, but it is fun and reminds the kids what they saw before. This time they have to draw some pictures. We still need to do ‘how seeds travel’, ‘plants we eat’, ‘bulbs’ & ‘what plants need to grow’ - that’s a lot to cover in two weeks (two lessons), so we might have to do a few extra sessions. Joel did his maths revision (test) and only got 71% which I was not impressed about. I have warned him that if he doesn’t sort himself out by the revision test at the end of the book we will have to redo 2B (which I really don’t want to do! Boo did o’clock and half past with time and found that easy enough.

Anyway - ‘time of the month’ and I have a migraine so I’m signing off and hitting the sack - leaving P with all the kids to organize with chores and getting bed. I hate doing it, but needs must…