Thursday 28 January 2010

The Waterways folk

We met at a friends house this morning with some nice ladies from British Waterways, who are bidding for a pot of money to provide Home Educated children with some educational sessions.
It went reasonably well, I think. The children certainly enjoyed it and it was nice meeting some new HE parents. Some of the older children will be taking part in a presentation which will hopefully result in the money being released. I have some reservations about the suitability of the activities the waterways folk are planning compared to the ages of the children who attended today - but we will see...
(Thanks to Ceri for the photos)

Tuesday 26 January 2010

Back to business

Back to Home Ed group yesterday, after a 6 week break. The session was a creative one, everyone brought in as many boxes (the bigger the better) as they had left from Christmas as the children (and the adults) got creative with them. There were boats, robots, cars and everything inbetween. Emily and I made a hovercraft.
It has returned to its former states as a cardboard box now, all the knobs and levers have fallen off.

Today we have been busy with "real HE stuff". This morning stated with me reading Emily a chapter of "Matilda" by Roald Dahl. Then we got ALL the craft things out and made a get well card for my sister in law, which Emily wrote beautifully. He writing really is improving, The various materials I keep giving her to write with seem to be making her think about the way she forms her letters. Afterwards we made lots of little paper people.


This afternoon Emily has made labels for our cross section of Planet Earth, and again surprised me at the amount she can take in. We only discussed it once and she was able to tell me which part was the inner core, outer core, Mantle and crust (and then if it was solid or liquid!). She does like working on a project.
She then played with the Cuisenaire rods, whilst I did a bit of housework. Then we looked through the recipe books to find something yummy to bake. Again, she surprised me with her ability to read the ingredients lists.
We made chocolate buns, and decorated them with icing. They didn't last long.

Thursday 21 January 2010

Making the most of the space!

We finally made it to the Space Centre, and fought our way round through the 700 schools that seemed to be visiting at the same time. It was VERY noisy which meant that we had a double dose of over excitement to deal with; however it was also very good. We particularly enjoyed the Space Theatre show.



Emily as usual found every "face looker" in the place and demanded a photo...



Yesterday we started out very grumpy - so decided to go to the local Country park for a good walk and a hot chocolate. After that we played with the exhibits in the visitor centre and discussed insulation and wildlife gardening. We have decided that we have a very wildlife friendly garden as we already have most of the suggested wildlife friendly items (pond, log pile, hedge, fruit trees etc) in our tiny garden.

Monday 11 January 2010

Another week that flew by...

We've continued to be busy, James and Kate are completing their UCAS applications this week. The deadlines Friday, so we are hoping they make it. Unfortunately they don't seem terribly motivated, so we are hoping they get finished!

On the other hand, Emily continues to want to go go go...
We have almost completed our space project. We have investigated the planets, the sun, comets and moons. We have discussed galaxies and solar systems. We have looked at books and video clips of mans space exploration - both sucessful and tragic and to finish we will be treating ourselves to the trip to the Space Centre later this week.


Emily has been working hard on her hama beads, she has worked out how to follow complex patterns and just gets on with these herself.



She has also been busy this weekend making wooden models from kits. Here are the Spider, Butterfly and Dolphin she made. She needed a little help with some of the difficult parts, but mostly managed with just a little encouragement.



Wednesday 6 January 2010

SNOW!!!

We watched the children go to school - and then we went and played in the snow!!


We came home to discover the boiler had broken again - no hot water and no heating! AGGGHHH!
Thankfully we have a couple of electric heaters so we're not freezing.