Sunny swimming day :0)

Everyone got up bright and early in the hope of getting all their work done in time to go for a paddle today. Maths took ages - Boy has just moved onto lesson 96 of Yr2 MEP. He's just starting on division, which he's finding a bit of a challenge so full lessons suddenly take ages. Meanwhile, The Girl, who wanted to be doing what she'd be doing if she was in school, jumped from Yr3 to Yr 6 MEP. We took a couple of weeks off from the curriculum to concentrate on multiplication tables to try to make it more manageable. She's just learning long division this week. It's coming along nicely, but again, full lessons take ages. Consequently, we're doing half hour stints, regardless of lesson plan starts and finishes. It works for us, keeps them interested and stops me them from becoming frustrated. There's some new stuff been added to the MEP pages, like answers, an overview and a facts sheet :0) Love it :0) It's going to make the next few years so nuch easier. It also means I can see what The Girl has missed by jumping two and a half years :0)
This week we are also, very gently, rowing The Tale Of Peter Rabbit It's a story my two both know and love. We've done some of the HSS lapbook a few years ago when we took my Mum on a visit to the Lake District for her birthday :0) So I decided not to do the lapbook, but instead stick mainly to discussion.
Yesterday, we found the UK on our world map and then found the Lake District on our map of Great Britain. We also revisited the Cumbria notebooking pages & Beatrix Potter timeline I made for them. We used the discussion ideas in the FIAR manual to talk about relationships and keeping safe.
Today, we played with onomatopoeia (again), made up some descriptive sentences, and discussed why the books were small and tried to find out which illustrations were omitted by the publisher in 1902.
During all this, we had a text from another HE family who were planning on going swimming in a little local res. Perfect timing :0) So, after lunch and the hanging out of washing, we set off to join them - complete with rubber rings, goggles, wetsuit and a big boat with a doll in it :) Needless to say, they got a few amused smiles on the way, not least because they decided the best way to transport the rings was to wear them round their middles ;0)

Anyway, we had a lovely afternoon in the sunshine. They swam, I chatted, got sticky cutting oranges and then raced them both back home in time for dancing. A bit of a difficult race as we came home as we went, but with the addition of a Pringles tub full of tadpoles balanced in the boat with the doll :0o

Here they are after being transferred to a jar

They both gave me a lovely present too :0)

 I really love how the Girl made the jar fit the flowers...

A lovely touch :0)

Needless to say, I'm a very happy mummy today :0)

"Today, I'll be the teacher ...

.... and we'll do maths, english, geography and gym :0)" said The Girl.

Needless to say, The Boy was a very happy pupil ;0)

Royal Armouries Home Ed Trip

Hmmm! We do other things besides going on trips.... honest ;0)

Today we went to the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds, which kind of tied in with our trip to Fountains Abbey what with it being a Tudor workshop. That's about the only connection because it was about Tudor weapons and the Field of the Cloth of Gold. We watched a short film and had a short talk and then a short play with helmets, armour and weapons, old and new.

 

We also did a workshop where we embossed designs on thin copper sheet, good fun, but I suspect very much easier than embossing real armour...

The Girl had a lovely time taking lots of photos and PandaBoy had a lovely time playing spies with his friend :0) He did look at one or two things in and amongst and picked his favourite object to photograph.

He was intrigued by the idea of moustache armour :0)

Other things they liked were the shop and the interactive exhibits. 

We didn't get to see all of the museum, mainly concentrating on the tournaments gallery as it connected with the workshop. We saw Henry VIII's armour and also, armour that was made for little boys. 

In the other galleries, we saw some very strange looking guns going way back. I hadn't realised they'd had guns as early as the 15th century. They don't look like they'd have been very accurate, but I bet they were very scary! I'm not keen on guns, but have no qualms about bows and arrows or swords for some reason, although I wouldn't want to be in a battle with any of them.

We even found an archer from the Wars of the Roses, which we had been reading about in last months bookgroup book -

I like it when a visit ties a lot of learning together :0)