The Ood

Today, Boykin has become an Ood. If you're not a Dr Who fan, this probably won't mean very much to you at all. The mask was free in his Dr Who comic, the translator is his own design made out of a yoghurt pot stuffed with cotton-wool held in with sellotape and attached to his mask by string :0)

Here he is doing maths. He's using his cuisenaire rods to explore factors of 12 by building a wall.

Friday Fun School

Fridays for us is the continuation of a long-term project that The Girl decided on :0) We're making a family lapbook based on Harry potter and the Philosopher's Stone. We start by reading a chapter, then watching the corresponding part of the film. This leads to all kinds of discussions about the choices the scriptwriters have made and whether we agree with them or not. They have some ongoing minibooks that they add to when necessary and then choose something from each chapter to make other minibooks about.
They like to have something to do while they listen to the chapter - sewing and jigsaws are their choices of the moment :0)

It's an easy-going project which usually invloves some craft and dressing up as well :0) This week Boykin is wearing a scar and carrying a wand (alongside his sonic screwdriver of course).

Retrospective Spiders

This is one of the first lapbooks we made way back in 2008 :0)

I did have lots more photos of all the things we did but, in the process of writing this post, I discovered that CD is not the best method of storing photos :0( Fortunately, we still have the lapbook and I was able to salvage a few pictures. There's no hairy tarantulas to look at or any of the other crafts we did though.

Lapbook photos

I glued two opened-out document wallets back-to-back to make a double-sided lapbook. Each side had a flap made out of an A4 folder which I stapled together along the long open side and across the bottom so that it could hold worksheets and artwork. I attached these to the centre panel of each folder with duct tape. One side of the lapbook was about spiders in general and the other concentrated on The Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle.
Each child made a collage of a spider in a web on the front of their flap. Boykin was only just 3 at the time, so his spider collage was a means to help him learn about numbers up to 8. The Girl's spider web had printed spider vocab words as some of the strands of silk.
I made some of the minibooks in octagonal shapes to go along with the 8 theme and the Girl had a very long accordian book of the 8 times table. A lot of the minibooks are made out of worksheets that I have printed 4 to a page. My favourite minibook design has to be the foodchain one - it folds up so small but has a surprising amount of space. We made some sequencing cards by making rubbings of the webs in The Very Busy Spider book which I laminated for durability. In fact, I laminated lots and lots of bits and bobs in this lapbook - my laminator was a very new toy back then :0) To keep the lollystick puppets in place in the lapbook, I stapled two strips of cardboard togather at regular-ish intervals and then glued the back of one strip into the book. I just slotted the lollysticks in between two staples. It works really well, none of the little puppets seem to fall out accidently, and they are easy to get out when you want them.
We also went to a Zoolab display and saw tarantulas, made woolly webs and spiders, did lots with play-doh, acted out Little Miss Muffet at least 100 times (really), sang songs, read stories, watched videos and made lots of spider shaped food for a feast with friends :0)

Spider shaped feast

The Girl with her 8x table minibook :0)

Useful Links
Very Busy Spider themed printables  - we used lots from here :0)
Spider Anatomy to label
Spider Alpabet printables and activities
Incy Wincy Interactive set  - I adapted this just a bit :0)
Spider activities and worksheets - including the worksheet that I cut up to make the lifecycle wheel
Spider themed printable maths games and activities - scroll down to Very Busy Spider section
Lots of blank mini-book templates
Three-square mini book - like the food chain one
Little Miss Muffet minibook - near the bottom of the list
Learning Page - free membership gives access to worksheets and printables incl. spiders
Very Busy Spider Unit
Spider minibook and photos
Spider maze
Spider colouring pictures
How to freeze a spider's web
Spider crafts


Books we used




Films we watched

Historical Food

Today was our local Home Ed themed group meeting - Historical Food aka Food through the Ages. Food based themes are great to do with a mixed age group of children. There's something for everyone and always something new to taste and learn.

The time periods covered were Ancient Egyptians, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Stuarts, British Empire, Victorians and World War II. Most of the cooking activities were sweet, except for WWII when sugar was rationed so instead of icecreams they had carrots on a stick which instantly transformed into swords for three musketeers :0D

The Girl enjoyed making rose water creams and tasting lots of Victorian sweets and puddings while Boykin had a go at making the oldest known sweet recipe - Tiger Nut sweets from Ancient Egypt. A sticky combination of dates, cinnamon, honey and sesame seed (I think). The mum who took that activity emailed the recipe through and The Boy ordered asked me to print it out  immediately. He loved them so much :0)

They made some 17th century knot biscuits and tried some chutneys etc that came from the times of the Raj along with tonic water to stave off malaria. Roman food was more biscuits and cucumber soaked in honey - very nice according to The Girl.
I took some barley stew and ryebread. I felt like I was cheating a bit because, rather than doing something new with my kids, I used the Anglo-Saxon recipes we tried a couple of years ago. However, it was popular with The Girl then and it still is now :0)
We set up a book corner to go with our theme and The Girl very much enjoyed reading some of them to other children.

A timeline was made, and interestingly, we learnt that the first Indian restaurant in Britain opened in 1809 while the first fish and chips went on sale in 1858.

This is a really great site for cooking historical food with kids :0)