Week Two…

Trying a new font - for MichelleJ

We seem to have a bit of a poetry thing going on here atm and after tea tonight each child got to read out this weeks 'piece'. In our History studies of Greece this week we were looking at Lyric Poetry and each of them had to write a poem about an emotion or feeling.

Abbie wrote;

Happy,

When I am happy I giggle and I laugh,

I like being happy!

I am happy when I see my cousins

I am happy when I am at ballet.

When I am happy I giggle and I laugh.

I like being happy!

Joel wrote;

Lonely

A poor orphan child.

His parents have abandoned him.

He's left on the street,

Begging for money and food.

For only a box to sleep in,

Only a newspaper for a blanket.

Hoping that some day, someone would take him,

From that dark, dreary, cold place,

Take him to love him and care for him.

Pheobe wrote;

Hurt.

Wonc (once) I got hurt by a ball

On the trampoline.

And I hurt my leg.

They each had to then illustrate their poem and they did a good job J

Our new curriculum seems to be going down well on the whole and the children are beginning to get into the swing of things now. The GP English I especially like although it is considerably more stretching than anything they have used in the past and they consequently, are each needing a significant amount of help with it. I think once they get a real handle on the expectations of the text they will be fine. Even so, they have all produced some nice work so far. Joel chose to write a newspaper report on the 'evacuees' this week and I really like what he did. It was short and concise, but it said all it really needed to and the headline was good.

Joel has had real problem this week with his maths and we have had some major kick-offs from him. He has been on a 'word-problem' section and he got himself in a real tiz with them. They were not particularly difficult but he has convinced himself he can't do them. He is actually quite fine with all the numbers and the operations (generally), but working out how to solve 'real life' problems just throws him. He seems to get really confused with terms like 'each' and 'per'. I seem to remember JA being the same, but much younger. So, my plan - bless him - is to give him more of the same over the next few weeks until he 'gets it', I'm not going to stop him progressing on, just adding in a bit of 'evening work' in the form of word-problems and hopefully get him manipulating the numbers without such a major flip-out!

We did Astronomy this morning and everyone seems to be enjoying that J. We began by filling in the mini-books for the stuff we learnt last week and gluing all of them into our new note-lap-book-folder! Jacob made a great Mnemonic for the planets; My Very Energetic Marsian Jumps So Uncontrollably, Never Pauses. I thought it was even more clever because it distinguished the two M's and made sure he could remember which was Mars J. After they had done some pencil work they cut out next weeks mini-books while we chatted about 'The Sun.' Then I had them all spinning in circles around each other on the trampoline - orbiting and rotating like the sun, moon and earth. That produced lots of giggles and dizziness (and a few sulks too from JI who thought HE should be the Sun first - sigh) and generally got the message across. This was followed by trying to burn a leaf in the sun with a magnifying glass (to show how the sun might 'burn' your retina if you stare at the sun), but the sun was not intense enough. One to repeat in the summer (and to do with chocolate on a hotter day too!), but they could see the 'sun beam' on the leaf and how it was intensified through the bent glass, so that was not a complete loss. I can see this book is going to be a big hit and even more fantastic is that it reinforces what we have been learning in our Geography Curriculum all last year and into this too.

The worst part of today was when JI decided to 'run away' for about 45mins. He had a falling out with his bro' (tell me something new) whereby he simply would not let JA join in with 'his' game, would not share anything with him and would not accommodate any of his ideas. When I told him that he had to start lettling JA in on his games, being more flexible and realising that the whole world did not centre around him and his whims, he stormed out! I let him go. I knew he would come back soon enough. None of my kids are like me enough to have the courage of their convictions - thankfully!! (By 10 I had seriously run away at least twice, for several hours and had no intention of returning home at all and would not have done if 'others' had not intervened.) Anyway JI snuck back in and slinked of to his room, avoiding a whole afternoon's work (Mental Maths, Art and ICT (making a P.Point presentation slide show about our family/school). When he eventually did reappear downstairs and decide to enter back into family life you'd have thought nothing had happened. I wasn't going to push for an apology this time. JA did not seem to expect one - he was just relieved that JI was home and OK (he was really worried, bless him) and JI acted all sweetness and light for the rest of the day - even when I said he had to do his Mental Maths if he didn't go to club and that he couldn't go on the computer until after he would have been home from club! Trouble with JI atm, is that you just never know how far his molten larva will spread and how long it will retain its heat! Part of me wonders whether I should completely turn the pressure off him and not force him to do school at all. He would not be allowed square screens between 9 & 4 and all the others would be 'doing school', so they would not be available to play with him. I just wonder (a) what he would do with his time? and (b) whether he would get so bored with his own company that he would they choose to come and join back in with us to alleviate the boredom? I'm toying with the idea, but I'd have to explain it well to the other children or it would simply seem very unfair on them, which is not what I am trying to achieve. I just want a less reluctant, more friendly son/learner in my home.

That's it for tonight - Bed calls!