SURPRISES

Aren't kids funny creatures! Just when you think you have them sussed...

Today Joel was doing a maths activity on graphs. It involved the other children too and was basically 'the memory game'. They had to see who could remember the most objects out of 10. I had no doubt that A would do best (and she did) and that P would really struggle. Initially with the removal of single objects from the tray P couldn't see what was missing hardly at all - probably once out of 20 times she got the answer. Then I removed the tray entirely and asked them to recall the whole lot. JI did the worst (typical 9yo bouncy-brain!) and P remembered all but one! I was amazed. This girl is so like her eldest brother it is unbelievable. She has definate memory problems (JA has auditory memory problems) and will forget an entire lesson 5 minutes after it is taught, even if she has done some practical work on it. I always thought she was a tactile learner - now I'm beginning to wonder... HOW did she remember the 9 things? She wouldn't be able to tell me so I guess I'm just going to have to figure it out! Reading has been a real struggle. JP only helped her a little, with its songs and stories, but Headsprout did the bulk of the work this time - and it's visual! Am I going to have to go and buy a mass of multi-media materials for this little one? A visual learner - now that could be a lot more expensive, as most of the materials I have are either auditory (cheap and chearful, but I don't have that many coz it's not our style), or tactile - rods, bricks, shapes, cubes, lapbooks, magnetic words & letters... I could go on and on! She is learning with what we use, because there is of course there is a visual element to it, but I'm wondering if there is something out there that could help her more? I've toyed with Maths-U-See in the past and decided against (more financial outlay), but now I'm thinking again... If she is visual it might be what she needs, but how different is it to Miquon? I need to investigate.

6 years in and still I don't have this home-ed lark down cold! LOL I don't think I ever will. Some days you do one thing and its brilliant the next it falls flat - and vice versa! One day I might find a 'rut' that works for us all - but I doubt it! It feels like this is an ever evolving form. No one year looks quite the same as the one before or the one after, but the kids are learning, growing and developing enquiring minds & a love for Jesus - what more could I ask? :-)

Our morning has consisted of Maths activities (memory games), trampolining (PE), reading quietly, Bible study - CD and book called "When Dragon Hearts were Good", which came out of a short discussion the boys had with Paul at breakfast table about age of the earth! And now they are all doing Dance Mat (PE again and Music - coz it involves a lot of 'listening to the beat') and C is in here with me doing a peg-board picture (ancient things with plastic 'pegs' and a white square board with loads of holes in. It was actually mine when was a kid!).

So is the shape of our Thursdays and the kids really look forward to it. The rest of the week is pretty intense, so so do I!!

Now I need to go make lunch (left over lasagne for those that want and tortillas for those that don't) and tea (cook the chicken, coz tonight's tea only needs to be heated under the grill for a few mins) and then find something fun for the kids to do this afternoon (I really should be more organized) while I sort out the mountain of washing there always seems to be in this house! I have an idea to do 'squirt painting' in the garden if the rain holds off long enough for me to get it sorted. Basically collect old Heinz Tomato Ketchup bottles - the really big ones with the valve-lid - fill with watery paint of various colours and then squirt at huge sheets of paper (back of wallpaper is great if you have some- which I don't, but the Ikea big roll of paper is good to). This is definately an OUTSIDE messy activity that is best done when the grass needs cutting - so all the painted bits get cut off, or when it's about to rain - to wash away the mess! We've not actually done it before, but I'm sure they will all love it!!

While I'm here - this a picture C coloured on poissonrouge yesterday - I thought it was very lovely. As he paints one side the symetry is done for him, but all the same - the colours and placing of them is great for a not yet 3yo I thought :-) I love that website and I can't keep him off of it. It has done wonders for his mouse skills and now he uses it independently. Before he started using it he had no mouse skills at all, but this was such a high motivation for him he learnt really fast!

ABC LAPBOOK

I am busy putting together an ABC Lapbook for Ellie (and the kids that come after her!). I'm uploading all the files over here;
Lapbooklessons

You might need to sign up (free and junk-clean) to get it if you are interested, but the site is well worth being part of :)

The RSS feed is linked here.

HAPPY EASTER!

Hope you all had a fantastic Easter. We had our little Nathanael dedicated and all our extended family on Paul's side came for the occasion. It was a fabulous day and so great to have the whole Hampton 'dynasty' together - 13 children (plus a couple of friend's kids), four couples and P's Mum & Dad. My aunty was in Spain and my Nan had to stay home to look after the cat (don't ask!), so sadly they could not join us. I highly recommend the Sainsburys 'platters' if you ever need to cater for loads of people and want low hassle, easy clear -up, excellent, tasty food. It was enjoyed by everyone and there was masses left over for a couple of meals afterwards. It was probably only as expensive as catering myself might have been - worked out to about £3 per head and we were making it the main meal of the day, so you could get away with spending less.

After the hoards went home two of the girly cousins stayed behind for a couple of days - the girls all get on so well together. It's bliss: I haven't seen much of them all day. They have just played solidly at one thing or another with an hours worth of Hama-beading thrown in for good measure in the middle of the day J. We will take them back to Birmingham on Tuesday.

I am busy trying to plan for the new term…Hmm what shall we do? Abbie has all but finished IScience 2 (so that's the whole years work done in less than two terms - she is a quick worker), so I need to think of what to do for her. I might just get her to tread water with Science and see the year out on Education City and Brightmindsonline. That would be a nice reward for working hard J. I think she needs to be more mature in her thinking to move on up to level 3 though.

HISTORY - We're working through a project on Greece (using a EMC History Pockets - excellent), so that we will continue with.

'A Child's Geography' continues, and all the children are loving it - even the writing up bit.

ENGLISH… nothing to change or add in there. Phoebe has at last completed the Reception year Literacy on Ed' City. I just want her to finish of the 'letters and sounds' section - not that there is anything there she doesn't know, but it will be great review before we move on into Jolly Grammar and Year 1 work, where I think she will notice a change of pace. She is doing well now. She is almost a 'year behind' but I think that gap will narrow now that she has reading under her belt and everything is beginning to make more sense to her. I might start JG with her before next September if I think she is ready. Meanwhile we will tread water with 'Starfall' (including the printed materials) - again review in the 'learn to read' section, but it will build on her skills in the next level - which she can't wait to get to! I have begun to introduce joined writing to her as I think this will assist her reading and writing (it has with my others) because it flows better. She is only 'writing over' just yet and only in handwriting practice (a sentence a day). The rest of the time she can write however she likes. I usually find joining begins to happen by default after not very long.

MATHS - no changes needed there. Keep going with Miquon for the girls (once a week). Phoebe has completed SPMG Year 1 and ploughed through the first book of her Singapore MPH 1A already (a couple of weeks) and Abbie has almost finished the last part of SPMG Year2 maths, so she will go back and finish of 2B MPH (which will seem a synch to her now I'm sure). Joel is completing SPMG Year 4 (last book) having skipped the textbook work almost entirely (too easy on the whole and he could do the workbook with very little difficulty). There were very few new concepts in here, but he has enjoyed elements of it. Anyway - back to MPH 4 now and he can't wait! J Also continuing to use Smartkiddies a lot - love it!

MUSIC takes the form of Joel learning on-going piano and drumming (more-or-less self teaching), the odd bit of flute with Boo and occasionally a more formal lesson from our 'Tune-In' books - that's always fun and the little ones often join in with that too.

ART - continue with Artistic Pursuits and occasional lessons from 'teachartathome' freebies.

I'd like to spend some time this term doing a review of the years learning, so that the children have a real sense of what they have achieved this year…need to think about that some more and how I can put that together. I don't want to re-teach it (in case of having forgotten any!), but to help them to see just how much we've covered in a year and how much more they know now than in September! It might just blow my mind - let alone theirs!!

And then of course I am starting to think about having Jake home again next year (Yr 7) and what we will use for him… It's not so far away now and I want him to be happy with the materials I choose. So far I have this as a starting point;

Writing Strands - pitching in at level 4, with level 3 to hand as a fall back. He had a look at the books the other day and felt he could tackle level four, so I'm going on his judgement, and I think he is probably right.

English Grammar (for students) - to help tighten up his grammar.

Mathematics AU - because I think I might be asking for trouble if I start him back on Singapore Maths - he has unhappy memories of 3^rd edition! Not only that, but he might test in at the same level as his brother which would not be good for his self esteem (although it might work out ok in other ways). I MAY buy him the MPH (level 4) workbooks too and see if he can pull up a little. I think Singapore maths would be more stretching, but he would not be ready for the higher levels (any of them) and the Maths AU will be more than adequate for him to attain what he needs to. I like the fact that there is a built-in reporting system with this too, which would be useful in the long-run.

Science - probably go with Singapore I-Science, either at level 7, or maybe even as low as level 5, because he is not fantastic at science, by his own admission he does not have that kind of mind, and this is where Joel will be at, so it might be fun for them to work together on stuff - or it might cause fights - not sure! I also have Exploring Creation with Astronomy on my shelf which we could spend a year working through with everyone and that would be great fun I think, especially if I pair it with the Live-n-Learn lapbook to go with it, although Joel is not keen on covering 'space' - however I think they would enjoy it when they got going with it.

History - He'll have to jump in where we are at, which might be round about Romans by then. I know he has done Rome in school, but not like we do it! And that will just mean he can build on his knowledge and help me out a bit!

Geography - He'll do what we do and I'll assign him appropriate work.

Music - likewise

Art - likewise, although I do have higher grade material, if he wants to work through that more independently.

RE - I guess we will need to start looking at some other belief systems pretty soon, but I want to tread carefully with this, as, of all of my children, Jake is the least certain of his faith. I might, therefore, spend his first year at home going over some of the basics of our own faith, chatting with him tonnes and shoring him up before we go exploring!

Languages - he has done a lot of French at school (one of the teachers is Maurtian) and I'd like to keep that going, so may need to invest in something like Le facile Francaise, as my French is too rusty (and never really was that good) to go solo teaching it. Coupled with Ed' City I think that should do it J

I think that will get us going J

Sorry if I bored you all - but making a record even for myself can be helpful at times!

Natty Chatters

I thought you might all enjoy this :)

PREPARING FOR EASTER

Well the autumn term is already over and the summer term upon us. As we drew this term to a close we spent the last week contemplating the Easter story. My girls especially seem to have grasped ahold of it this year and this morning I woke to Christmas music, for lack of Easter music. It seemed they really wanted to hold something of the specialness of today - Good Friday. We talked about it is called 'good' when something so sad happened and we chatted about why we have eggs and bunnies as symbols of Easter when they are nothing to do with Jesus. Perhaps next year (I was too late this to think of it) we will do a 'meaning of Easter' lapbook (or such like) to help prepare us better. Meanwhile, yesterday we made these from an idea on TeachArtAtHome (I really like this website). They came out really well. To see the close-ups go to my picasa album.

And Ellie did these and is very proud of them J

Then the other big event of the week is that Caleb had his first haircut! Here's the before & after pics!

My Page - Lapbook Lessons

My Page - Lapbook Lessons

At last somewhere to keep all my lapbooks tidy and together on the net! You have to sign up to view my page (I think), but it's free and non-spammy. Takes about a day to get membership confirmed, but well worth it for all you lapbooky people out there (and not just to see my page!)! Have fun!

The idle parent: the less school, the better - Telegraph

The idle parent: the less school, the better - Telegraph

Have a read - interesting, well written arguement :-)