Three Names Lapbook

Waheey!! I got my camera back :0)
This is The Boy's Three Names Lapbook. He finished it last week. We had a lot of fun doing the lessons in the FIAR manual and added a couple of our own. It's quite a long story so he didn't want me to read it every day. I just reread the necessary pages to him and he enjoyed looking at the pictures and recapping the story. I think the bit he enjoyed the most was learning about tornadoes. It started hailing today and he looked really excited asking if there was going to be one.
Anyway, here are the photos :0) Unfortunately, I didn't get photos of them pretending to be a tornado.

This is our tumble weed substitute.......being blown across the 'prairie' by a hair dryer


These are our pet tornadoes

Instructions at
www.tornadochaser.net/tormake18.html

Instructions at
www.tornadochaser.net/tormake17.html

Here is his lapbook. Readymade minibooks from HSS, others by Boykin.

These are the books we used






Other things to buy
Resurrection Plant

Busy Weekend.

Umm. Five days since my last post and what have we done? Lots actually :0)
The Girl went to the theatre with some friends to see Huck which , by all accounts, she enjoyed. The main thing she wanted to know was why it was ok to smoke on stage when you're not allowed to smoke anywhere else in the bulding. Not that she smokes, obviously. She's only 9. That was Thursday. She did some maths before she went and a page about verbs.
The Boy in the meantime watched Scooby Doo in French = how-to-get-to-watch-more-TV lesson no.1 - choose a foreign language on the DVD audio menu. He did some maths too for his FIAR book. I'll do a separate post about this when I get my camera back....
They both went to choir and then home to bed so I could write my essay - which I am still doing now as you can tell :0)
What did we do Friday? Coo, seems ages ago now.... more maths, playing out, read about Tornadoes, hid in the cellar from an imaginary tornado and both kiddywinkles twisted like cogs around each other pretending to be wind, rain and hail etc as they acted out being tornadoes. Not that you'd think they'd need much practice judging by the child debris strewn around our house!
Then we went swimming with some friends, nearly got lost coming home trying to avoid rush hour traffic but actually ended up being quicker.
Saturday was Science. Happy children :0) We made pet tornadoes and a jar of smog. That definitely made a big impression. The Boy has been telling everyone he meets all about them with very detailed instructions. Even the bloke who came to plaster the hole that got made on the stairs when we were moving a wardrobe.....
The afternoon was spent at the Music for Youth Festival that her choir was singing in. What a lovely afternoon.
Mother's Day :0) I got a lovely bracelet of purple and blue beads and a card that The Girl made at Brownies and a photoframe from The Boy. Unfortunately for him (or me?) he's too young to go to any groups that do that kind of thing so he was a bit unprepared. Not so his ingenious sister who raided the random present drawer for the photoframe and recycled the card she gave me last Mother's Day by putting stickers with his name on over where her name was written :0) She was the one who worked out how to make the pet tornadoes work properly too.....
I also got breakfast in bed and the all important cup o' tea. I even got a text from my eldest ;0) Well chuffed!
The rest of the day involved lots of family, a dance mat party and meeting up with old friends who we haven't seen for two years. Not that you'd have known it, the kids all got on like a house on fire and built den city in my extremely patient and tolerant mate's living room.
Today it was back to the grind, yes, they did some maths, decoded the letter received for tomorrow's story circle session, played with Barbie's, played Muzzy on the computer, played out, had tea with friends, played games, went to Brownies, read books, danced, did puzzles, went exploring, read more books and went to bed. Which is where I'm going too. G'night.

Still no camera :0(

I really must get on to my son and find out if he's finished with my camera yet.....
We had another local group meeting today, this time the theme was Incas. We had a variety of activities, maps, planting, potato printing, gold mask making, story writing, Macchu picchu stuff, crime and punishment games and spicy hot chocolate :0) The best bit. Yum!
Me and The Girl did a bit of research the night before, reading this and doing the question sheets at the back. It must've been a freebie at some time - I collect them ;0) Luckily, someone on one of the forums I'm on suggested checking your PC when you need something rather than trawling the internet,just in case you already have it. So I did, and I had. Hurrah! I'm glad we took the time to read it all as it inspired her to come up with a game to show their crime and punishment system. Surprisingly, all the children were happy to have their hands amputated and be pushed off a cliff ;0/
The Girl spent ages on Tuesday writing out her letter for Story Circle. She translated it into code too. I think it took about 3 hours altogether and looked beautiful when she'd done. She even decorated her own writing paper. Made me wonder how kids in school get on. How do they fit in all the things they have to do every day? Or do they never get to finish anything properly or to the best of their ability or to a quality they're happy with?
We had to go into town that day as well. It was a bit weird really as we walked from the car park to the opticians and saw no other children at all! Not even pushchairs. I felt like Caractus Potts having just landed in Vulgaria with my two and had to stop myself looking for the child catcher. Ice-cream! Lollipops! All free today!!
You see, I do need my camera... photos are better than waffle :0)

Friday Funday

What a lovely day we've had :0) We got up nice and early, it's so easy when the sun is shining. It was one of those seemingly rare days where we didn't have to go anywhere or meet anyone. It just felt relaxing from the start. Now, don't get me wrong. We've not been lazy - far from it. We've just been easy. No rush. No stress. No deadlines. No being late. Lovely!

The Girl did the next page of her maths book. We're using the lesson plans but it's mostly just going over what we did in the Yr 1 book. It feels like a bit of a step backwards in some ways but she's happy to do it although we seem to have stopped the song bit in the middle of each lesson. I'll stick it back in if she asks or when the work becomes more challenging for her again, whichever comes first.

She also wrote her letter for Story Circle - a local creative writing Home Ed group that we go to. The challenge was to pretend to be a fictional character and write a letter or send an invitation to a friend, or write to an agony aunt. She found it hard to get going but once I took the Boy into another room to do his Five in a Row book she was well away. Tomorrow, she's going to write it up neatly and look at the spelling and punctuation. She likes writing letters so the actual format was familiar to her. Then the letter is to be actually posted to another member of the group to be brought to the next Story Circle session.

We're rowing Three Names this week. It's a story of a dog and his owner who live on the Prairie, probably late 19th century. I'm going to post all about it when we've finished :0). The Girl came and joined us for the lessony-type bits at the end.

Their monthly magazines came today too. They get a magazine subscription from my mum for their birthdays. They love it, a year long birthday present :) Last year they had NG Kids and NG Little Kids but this year they have DiscoveryBox and StoryBox. I like them cos there is no advertising and they're educational ;0) They like them cos they're bright, full of stories, have puzzles and quizzes in them and they're educational. They always lead to some sort of discussion - the comic strip in the Girl's was about 19th Century child labour with a short piece about modern-day child labour. For the Boy, one of the delights is the serial wordless story and the comic strip superhero called Samsam - same name as his doll :0)

Oh and this afternoon. What joy! You should've seen their little faces :0D Proper beaming they were. And if my eldest DS hadn't borrowed my camera for his Uni project you would've seen their little faces. We did Thomas Edison. Today's BYFIAR lesson was chucking eggs!!!!! Not chuckie eggs, no, they really were chucking eggs. Yes!
In the story, Edison and his family are moving house. How ingenious. Have a lesson on fragility and packing. She took half a dozen eggs, threw one sans packaging as the experimental control to see if it broke. Prediction - yes, it will break. Result - yes it broke :0) She spent the next hour wrapping the remaining eggs in various bits of packaging and taking it in turns with her little bro and his mate to throw them as hard as they could up the garden to see if they would break. Only one survived, which surprised me cos there were some VERY well packaged eggs. Being a true scientist-in-training she recorded all her results on egg-shaped pages for her notebook :0) Most effective packaging = egg in empty toilet roll tube which was in turn wrapped in tissue paper and stuffed into a cardboard box. Lots of sellotape was involved too.
SO wish I'd had my camera! I heartily recommend EVERYONE to try this at home with their kids. Loadsafun! :0)

Purim

Today we celebrated Purim. We had a very lovely afternoon at a friends house with a couple of other Home Ed families. It was so lovely to be with them. To not have to explain, defend my choices or worry about what they thought I waas up to. So nice just to relax :0)
The children dressed up, cheered and jeered, made sweets and hamantashen, played out and generally had fun :0)
Purim is a Jewish festival to mark the anniversary of the Jewish people being saved by Esther (Hooray!!!) and Mordecai (Hooray!!) from being put to death. This had been authorised by King Xerxes and plotted by Hamam (BOOO!!!).
Queen Esther and King Xerxes :0)

There's more stuff about Purim here.



The kids made sweets and gave them to each other as well as taking some for friends who weren't there.


Many hands... Who says Home Ed kids don't know how to work in teams? Add sugar and food-colouring and they are VERY co-operative - until they've eaten it that is ;0)






Poppy seed twirl filling.




Hamamtashen.

It's a tradition to give gifts of food to family and friends and to give charity to the poor. You are also supposed to listen to the story of Esther from the Bible (which we did). The bit we couldn't do - it being a Home Ed gathering, children being present and driving home to be done - was get absolutely blathered :0/ Shame! ;0)