Christmas and Piccies

Here's hoping you've all had a fantastic Christmas. Ours has been lovely, despite E & C having chickenpox! But it's been just us - no visitors - and that has made it really quite a special Christmas in many ways. Lots of time to open the presents and play with them all - it really has been great :-)

I'm fiddling about on the 'puter today and thought I would eventually post up the pictures of some of our lapbooks. So here is the PLANTS one that we finished ages ago, but I never got around to photographing - click on it to see it all;

Plants lapbook

And here's a couple of Christmas in our house, just 'cause!

Princesss Jasmin on Christmas morning (she wore this to church :-) )

Snowflakes on the windows

Shepherd Boo in the church nativity

Crafty Hours

As you know we are on go-slow, so today we did Bible study, a few maths challenge questions, a little bit of Grinch lapbooking for Joel (girls have finished their Merry Christmas one - will post pics when I've taken them), and this...

Lots of DecoGeomag-ing. I picked up an absolute steal at TKMax - the biggest set imaginable, worth £120 for £40. I could not resist it, even if it did come out of the Christmas budget and as all the oldest four had fun with it today I figure it was well worth it. In fact I added to our collection also, because in the works they also have panel sets for £2 atm. So now we have a vast collect of geomag (ordinary, pastels (well we will have these when the girls open them at Christmas), glow-in-the-dark and deco panels. I think I'll stop with it now - especially as I never envisaged I'd ever be able to have this collection with it being so pricey usually - thanks TK and The Works!! :-)

This is Abbie's butterfly;

From geomag creations

This is Phoebe's flower;

From geomag creations

This is Joel's star.

From geomag creations

Here too is a picture of Jake's completed bird.

From Bird art

Supposedly taking it easy!

How can a take-it- easy schedule (or supposed lack of it) cause me to be more stressed out and tense than chivvying the kids along all day with ‘book-work’? How is it that my 8yo son says he would rather do boring exercises in a ‘sentences to paragraphs’ book than make a ‘You’re a mean one Mr Grinch’ lapbook. Sure he’s happy to read the book and watch the film - just don’t ask him to think about anything in any way, or ask him to put anything he learns down on paper in such a way as that he has to ‘think’ how to write it. The cutting out is OK for a bit, but don’t ask him to use a bit of glue - “I hate getting sticky!” How is that my 4 & 5yo girls can happily get-on with their “Merry Christmas” lapbook with minimal assistance whilst my 8yo seems incapable of putting any thoughts on paper without my constant assistance? And at the end of a day like today I turn around to find my home trashed by my 3yo because she has severally lacked in attention from me and really should have had a sleep this afternoon if I could have found a moment to settle her - let alone the baby (who fortunately did have a sleep this morning - phew - at least I don’t have to feel SO guilty)!

Now comes the next mammoth round of chivvying - the clearing up session, interspersed with swimming lesson runs and trying to cook tea (a bung in the oven as needs must tonight - Paul is too tired and I am too stressed to not burn anything more fancy)!

Jacob had his school Christmas play today (and tomorrow). Paul went this afternoon (a 20 mile round trip cycle ride) to watch and said Jake was very good. I get to watch tomorrow night - looking forward to that :-)

I though maybe - if we can get the lapbooks finished by early next week we might make lots of deccies and perhaps even put together a mini-nativity to perform to Jacob & Daddy this year. It would be good ‘speech’ practice. That said - they are all in the church nativity on Christmas Eve, but not all of them are speaking and those that are, are reading, not reciting in way.

I’m hoping one of these afternoons I might get to trip around blog land and visit some of you. I seem to have lost touch with you all a little just lately :-( and it’s mainly because I have been off the scene - and my rss feeds don’t work with Thunderbird (which is much preferable in all other ways to Outlook - which I hated). If I can figure out my feeds that will make life much easier - any hints anyone? Jax..?

Anyway - need to go cook tea - that’s my chill out time gone!

Number Bonds Lapbook (1-10)

If you want the file to make this let me know - I have it as a pdf :-)

Consolidation!

Just to let you all know that I have added a link in the sidebar to a place where you can see ALL the lapbooks we have made in one place (you can also CLICK HERE) - and from now on I shall try to remember to store future ones there too. We are going to lay 'normal' school down this week and do a Christmas Lapbook (or two) I think now, until we break-up. We have covered tonnes this term and I'm really pleased with how the kids have worked :)
Lapbooks we are about to do; "Merry Christmas" & "You're a Mean one Mr Grinch" (both from www.liveandlearnpress.com)

Finally Blogging

Finally Blogging!

I am eventually emerging out of the yuckyness of early pregnancy, but not yet out of the ‘completely wiped for half the day’ phase. So school is still pretty much a mornings only affair atm until I get some stamina up!

We did eventually make it to Blue Planet after our disastrous day and we had a wonderful time. The kids were great and we all thoroughly enjoyed it. When I looked back over the day before I was actually quite astounded by how much protection I think God gave us that day. It could have been a whole load worse; We could have taken the right route to our destination and then either been stranded on the Motorway with a flat tyre and no emergency cover, in the cold and with 3 kids in the car, or worse had a serious accident on the motorway because of the flat. I believe the lengthy diversion afforded us time to avoid the motorway and be in a safe, warm place with the children, with access to a telephone directory! I also believe God sustained the tyre until we got there!!

The holiday makers had a fantasic time too and enjoyed a lovely afternoon at the Spinaker Tower in Portsmouth while they were away.

Anyway - that was weeks ago now! Life has trotted rapidly towards Christmas since then (deep breath in…). I have been busy re-working MPH 1A with Boo and she seems to be ‘getting it’ very slowly. We re-did the test on Thursday and she did manage to complete it all, but still only managed 60%. That said I recognise that that is a marked improvement from ‘blank’! I still feel though we need to stay put for now so I’ve bought an Usborne sticker maths book for her and also have another ‘ground work’ book that will be fun for her to work with for a bit. So we’ll do those until they’re done and then I think we will just move on. I won’t redo the test again. She seems to have the mechanics now, but still lacks some understanding, so it’s that I’m working on for a bit.

Reading-wise she shocked me last week by picking up a grade 3 Ladybird ‘easy reading’ book and attempting some of it. She then decided it was a bit tough and scaled herself down to a grade one book (the princess and the pea) and read it in two days. I have quite a collection of these from my childhood and she has decided they are what she wants to read now. I hadn’t even considered that she was ready to read them yet and was giving her much easier books, but she has proved me wrong! She is now reading Jack and the Beanstalk - which is a grade three book, and albeit slower she is doing fine with it! She really has shocked me and amazed me - just like my boys did :-) It definitely seems to be that golden ‘6’ in my family that is such a milestone and she’s not quite there yet!! I am also so pleased that she is already willing to make her own choice of reading book and to ‘have a go’.

Aside from the academics we have been doing some fun stuff too and I’ll blog some pictures of some of the children’s artwork in a mo. We are using ‘Artistic Pursuits’ atm and we are all finding it quite inspiring as you will see from the result :-)

For all of these the children drew the pictures, coloured them with soluble crayons/pencils and then watered them to get a painted effect.

This is Phoebe's painting - I was very impressed :-)

This is Abigail's. She had a VERY little help from me on this, but it is pretty much her work and gorgeous too I think. I'll post up what she copied another night.

And this is Joel's. Also pretty good :-) imho!

Jacob is doing one too, but it's only drawn so far. I'll blog that too when it's done.

There probably is masses more I could blog, but I have a mess to sort downstairs and late nights do not agree with me just now, so by the time I’ve blogged the piccies and sorted out I’ll need to hit the sack. I will try to keep up to speed a bit more now I’m feeling a little more human again!!

Oh - and Ellie turned three on Monday! We had a little party for her :-)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY PRINCESS!!