Saturday 8 August 2009

FIAR and Beyond ;0)

We're back on with workboxes at the minute. My 2 children are very happy about this which makes me very happy too :0)
Everything seems a bit random at the mo because we're taking full advantage of all the free stuff that's on offer during the school holidays. We're very lucky in our area that the local council puts on activity days at the museums and libraries all for free. This week we saw a local poet at the library who kept the kids enthralled with his very energetic style of making poetry interesting. We made balloon propelled cars at the museum and the girl impressed the museum staff with an amazing map she drew. We also went to see 'Monsters vs Aliens' for free on Bookworm Wednesday.
We've also been to a Safari Park which the kids loved - especially seeing as how a baboon sat on our sunroof and promptly pooed!!!! It was all really exciting - camels put their heads in the cars and we got to see wilderbeest racing each other too. It's so much better than any zoo I've been to. Just being able to see them running about in a more natural enviroment with SPACE. Oh, and there was a baby rhino too - aaah!

Yesterday we went to Spurn Point and got swarmed (literally) by ladybirds! I've not seen any at all this year anywhere else so it was quite amazing and a little bit disconcerting for the childer :0( Still, it was lovely - the sun shone and the beach was practically deserted.
Workboxes...that was where I started.....
The boy baked biscuits, sponge printed Scooby Doo symbols for his Scooby Doo lapbook that he's making, Mega English, car mat and cars, Electromag, maths activities, Grassland animals activity book, Humpty Dumpty sequencing activity that my mum gave us, games, large size KNex, A Hand for Spelling workbook and jigsaws.


The girl skipped, sewed, worked on her Little House in The big Woods Lapbook (so far so good), did MEP maths, Mega English, Handwriting, and her new Beyond Five in a Row stuff :0) I split the activity over a few boxes so that it didn't look too overwhelming for her. She listened to the first chapter of 'The Boxcar children' and we did the first lesson suggestion on nutrition. This is a really useful topic for us to do and I've included the boy in on it as well. It's an ongoing topic really but it was nice to focus on it and introduce it in a meaningful way rather than me just telling them what's good/bad for them.


They're both members of The Great Grub Club so we made use of the activities on that site, read the magazines which coincidentally came 2 days before, played online games, printed out a minibook to go with the FIAR manual, made a collage of an Eatwell Plate (rather than the US equivalent food pyramid), planned healthy meals and picnics - which also ties in with last weeks challenge from the Nature Detectives Club. (Don't you just love it when things synchronise perfectly and unexpectedly :0) ?) I'm going to extend this activity in our everyday and let her plan tea and picnics for 2 days next week when her friends are coming to stay.
picnic menu planner
lesson plan and printables on nutrition

We also did some combined workbox stuff about seasons/adaptations/world. Nice hands-on activities from Teacher Book Bag for August. There's a few activities from this that will go in workboxes, but the season one is part of an ongoing project from them that is added to every month. Again, it was an activity that I spread between more than one workbox.

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