Busy week so far...

It's only Thursday and we've been so busy I can't remember what we did on Monday! Ah well, it might come to me by the time I've written the rest of it :0)
Tuesday we had book group in the afternoon. Over Christmas we all read different books that were somehow related to the season. The Girl chose the MacMillan Book of Christmas which contains a mixture of short stories, poems and carols. We didn't read all of it, but then it's not that kind of book. It's more a book that you could get out year after year. They both enjoyed the Naughtiest Little Sister story the most and I have a feeling that they may want to borrow this book from the library again next year :0)
We did do other things that day, like maths and cooking and playing with friends but we failed to go swimming (New Year's resolution broken already).
On Wednesday we went to our local monthly themed meeting where we did lots of ativities related to China. It was a very busy session with some new families and that New Year feeling of renewed energy and enthusiasm :0)
Activities included

Building The Great Wall of China

Tasting Chinese Food

Chinese Calligraphy

Learning about Chinese New Year

Playing Mah-Jong

They could also learn about Pandas and make a minibook, colour in maps of China, write a part of a cartoon strip of a Chinese story, learn about the I-Ching, make paper lanterns and play that extremely famous chinese playground game Grandmother's footsteps ;0D

They had a lovely day and I think the Boy's shirt will never come clean. White shirt+muddy grass+ lots of boys=Daz challenge failure :0)
They both managed to go to their swimming lessons on time where The Girl stayed completely dry. She's doing lifeguarding now and they were doing CPR stuff.
Thursday, I wrote lists of everything they needed to do and everything I needed to do. I'm finding that list-making makes life less stressful and gives me headspace to engage more with what I'm doing rather than spending all my brain power on trying not to forget to do stuff that I haven't done yet. It helped. We got lots done even though we changed the list halfway through the day and went to visit friends instead of doing history (their list) and vaccing up (my list).
And Monday, The Girl had a cornet lesson and the Boy went to Beavers. She was pleased to bring home her Grade 2 Cornet certificate even though she insists she's never doing a music exam again. The Boy was equally pleased to bring home another badge for me to sew on :0)

Kitchen Sink Science

Today, Boykin got to have a go with his Slime kit and made fish eggs, worms and leeches. He really enjoyed himself, which is good, but I didn't think there was enough of an explanation of the science behind the experiments for my liking. I know next to nothing about polymers and even though there are plenty of websites that explain it all, I would just liike the bit of information that is specific to this set and the experiments he is doing. At his age, I think any more than that would be too overwhelming and a just a bit meaningless. Apart from that, all the websites I've come across use borax and his kit uses sodium alginate. So, I've sent an email to Interplay to see if they can tell me what I want to know...




In the mean time, I found this site with some useful explanatory hands-on activities using spaghetti, paper chains or sweets and cocktailsticks. (Luckily, I have loads of paper strips already cut out for the paper chains that we never got round to making for Christmas. Hurray!) It also explains a bit about the 'fish eggs' and 'worms' the Boy made today :0)

Happy New Year...I hope

Well, here we are. 2012. Last year was a bit manic in some places and calm and lovely in others. We had a good Christmas with lots of visting, lots of visitors, lovely food and too much alcohol. (That bit was me, not the kids). For the first time in my life, I realise that I have to do exercise to keep in shape and maybe stop eating quite as much chocolate and cheese as I have this last month :0(
Anyway, in the spirit of new year, new beginnings, we're back into learning mode with new enthusiasm - from me at least. Actually, we're always in learning mode, but in our house, when I say, 'Let's get back to work' it means 'Let's get the maths books out'. And so we did, yesterday, for the first time in what seems like ages. They behaved as if it has been ages too even though it's probably only been two weeks. My maths-head Boy seems to have forgotten how to add up one digit numbers but can spot multiplication/division connections at ten paces. The Girl, meanwhile, seems to have forgotten every single times table going and wants to reread Sir Cumference and the First Round Table and get on with some Geometry. I think she's a bit fed up of the section she's been doing in her book and wants something with more pictures. It all got ever so slightly emotional for a few minutes there and reminded me why we don't do school holidays.
Personally, I wanted to go easy after that so I picked a new Five in a Row book to do. Easier for me that is because it's all planned out for me and they enjoy the stories and activities too :0) We're rowng The Duchess Bakes a Cake and learning lots about castles as we go. I'm thinking a visit to the Royal Armouries might be in order either later this week or sometime next week. I'll do a more detailed post about this row when we've finished it :)
They both got some science kits for Christmas (thank you Father Christmas and our lovely friends) so today -after maths and FIAR - they got a couple of them out and they started to make fish eggs and perfume. This involved lots of shaking containers - while watching Merlin..... (goes with the castles, see?) In fact, one solution took so long, we're waiting for it to dissolve overnight as an alternative to my poor Boy shaking his arm off for 20 minutes or more .... both options being given in the instructions which we didn't realise until I read to the bottom of the page and he'd been trying to get all the powder to dissolve for a whole episode...
Boykin has therefore announced that he's doing science BEFORE maths tomorrow - so there ;0)

After that, we went for a swim. (See, I was serious about the exercise thing.) Well, actually it was a fun swim. Which was lots of fun but didn't really involve lots of swimming. Ho-hum!

Things they want to do this year:
A cooking/food/gardening project
More workboxes
More Science
Less History (I don't think so!)
Less Maths (No Way!)
More swimming and walking (Yes!)