Advent Calendars of Sorts

In our house we have a few family Advent traditions other than the usual Advent Calendar of which they always get one each. Sometimes they get the chocolate ones (who can forget the year Boykin ate his way through five of them in a week), once they had a Playmobil one, often they have the Santa cloth one's  with pockets (bought in a Poundshop for 50p each in the January sales over 5 years ago) filled with small toys sweets and good wishes. This year however, thanks to the toy sales in Argos and their newly found love for all things Lego, they have a LEGO  Advent Calendar each.

Actually, some of our traditions take the shape of a different kind of Advent calendar. We have an Advent calendar of books, one to be read every day....

...and an Advent calendar of films, one to be watched every day.....

...always ending with It's a Wonderful Life  and Twas the Night Before Christmas on Christmas Eve.

We also have the Advent Box-of-activities, filled with craft kits, activity books, lapbooks, jigsaws, puzzles and games to be dipped into as and when they feel like it.

These things are all important to my children who have devised many of these traditions and collected many of the books and films for themselves over the years. And our tree reflects this life of constant learning, we have the usual traditional  baubles and seasonal crafts they have done, but we also have momentoes of their projects that are so totally un-Christmas related (spot the tiger from this post anyone?) Some of my favourite decorations come from other Home Educating families from all over the world. We did a swap with other Five in a Row families a couple of years running and they serve as reminders of the fun we had learning with those books as well as knowing that someone else, somewhere else in the world is hanging our home-made decorations on their tree.

Our tree is full of memories and every year it takes just that little bit longer to trim :)

What are your family's Advent traditions? Do you have any longstanding ones or are you just setting out on the journey with your children?

Links to Free Christmas Lapbooks
'Twas the Night Before Christmas
Nativity 
Christmas around the World

My Pinterest boards
Christmas Education - printables, recipes and more
Christmas Crafts

Branch Out World

Visit the Branch Out World blog and Facebook page to find out about the new Picture Book Explorers guides. Downloadable pdfs with a week's worth of lesson and activity suggestions for home educating families and indeed any parent who wants to take their child's learning beyond the confines of the national Curriculum. Aimed at 5 to 9 year olds, they are fully researched and tested to accompany quality British picture books that guide you and your family on a journey of learning around the British Isles.
Available exclusively for sale on Currclick.

Fund Raising Appeal

Two of my daughter's friends from her local Scout group have been selected to go to the jamboree in Japan in 2015. This is a big achievement for them both and a fabulous opportunity. However, they both need to raise £3,000 to get there. Both girls have started their own fund raising ventures and I would love to be able to give them a boost to get there.
All money raised through my Amazon affiliate link between now and their departure in August 2015 will go to their fund raising efforts. PLEASE use my link when you shop on Amazon, it won't cost you a single penny more, but a I will earn a small commission and that commission will go towards helping these girls get to the Scout Jamboree 2015.
Thank you xxx

A Round Tuit

Today was declared an at-home-day as we have been out every day this week so far and will be out early doors for a choir competition tomorrow too. We had a singing lesson on Monday - The Girl is preparing to take Grade 3 Musical Theatre. I will be busy for the next few days making costumes...I have to confess, this is not what I expected for a singing exam. I thought singing exams meant that you just stood there and opened your mouth and let out sweet, sweet music, but no! Musical Theatre is a different fish altogether - she needs costumes and acting skills and all that mallarkey. Not that I'm complaining mind. It's right up her street and she has worked out some lovely routines for her songs. I just hope that my costume bodging making will do her justice...

Tuesday we had book group. We had read Lucy Willow by Sally Gardner. It's a fun book to read aloud - there's lots of scope for the character's voices, the chapters are quite short and the action moves at a good pace. It's all about a little girl who lives on a train and has green fingers. Super green fingers really, as her plants grow inches overnight. There are baddies and not-so baddies, cool pop-stars and footballers, nasty and nice teachers, good friends, a baby brother called Stench and a pet snail called Ernest. Both my children enjoyed it, as did the other children in the group. The story inspired lots of artwork and we left an appropriately seasonal display in our local library :)

On Wednesday we had our local themed Home ed group session. The activities were based on the polar regions and we were visited by an Atmospheric scientist who brought along some equipment and gave us a talk about his work and the extremely cold places he has visited. He did an experiment to make a cloud in a bottle - and it worked!!! He also had a digital machine that measured the particles in the atmosphere. The readings really jumped when he put smoke in the room with a lighted match, but I think the ugh! bit was when he showed us the change in the readings caused by us all entering the room - all those dead skin cells :/
Trying on cold weather gear was great fun :)

They went on to do some other activities after lunch. There was penguin drawing, penguin lapbook-cum-poster, activities to show the differences between the polar regions, an arctic animal quiz and an activity to show clothing and insulation properties. There was also lots of playing outside in the sunshine.


Thursday we went to the martial arts group, home again, then out again to choir.

So today, being Friday, we took it easy. The Boy built a Technic Lego cherry-picker, the Girl made jewellery and I read The Fearless Treasure to them. They practised their times tables - The Girl has pretty much got them all except for the 8x table. (Why is 8x6 and 7x8 so hard to remember? I had trouble remembering them as a child too.)

And  finally, after 2 years of planning and many months of saying 'I really must get round to it' - I finally got round to it :) We now have a timeline that goes beyond the year 0 running up one side of the stairs...

..

 ....to join the one that leads up to year 0 running down the other side of the stairs :)

It's not very pretty - yet - but it's there and I'm looking forward to filling it. The Boy made a good start, by adding what he considers to be the most important event in the last 2013 years - 1963, the 1st Doctor Who episode ;)

Do you have a timeline in your house? What would be your must-have event of the last 2013 years on it? I would love to see pictures of timelines and how they work for you - just in case I have to rejig ours :)

Useful Penguin Links
Unit study - scroll down for penguins
Penguin lapbook for littlies
Free Penguin Lapbook
Loads of Penguin activities




 

This Week We...

... went to see Horrible Histories Terrible Tudors at The Lowry. Apparently, there were a hundred Home Edders in our group but unfortunately we weren't all seated together so we didn't get to meet many of them. The show was OK, The Girl thought it was aimed at younger kids as she found some of it a bit 'cheesy'. The premise of the show was that 3 people were teaching the horrible bits of history to the children and a school inspector type-person had come along to make sure they taught the nice bits about the Tudors and didn't upset the children. The actors weren't the TV cast and it was a schools performance with school related jokes. My kids didn't seem to think they'd learnt anything new - but then they've watched all the Horrible histories on i-player anyway. I learnt that Mary Queen of Scots wasn't the same person as Mary, daughter of Catherine of Aragon! (Don't tell my dad I didn't know that already ;) The 3D stuff in the second half was fun and there were a few goo laughs, but I'm not sure I'd go again :)
The day before that, we had our first ever visit from the LA. We live in an authority where HEers have a good relationship with them and they actually try and help us. I'd consulted my kidlings as to whether they wanted a visit or not and informed them they didn't have to speak to her or show her anything if they didn't want to. We've actually met her before so I knew beforehand that she is friendly and supportive of HE. Well to be honest, I didn't get much of a word in .They showed her their latest Lego models and sewing projects and then The Boy pulled out every lapbook they've ever made. It was a really easy visit and the kids enjoyed it and the lady from the LA seemed to enjoy it too.
I know lots of people don't like home visits, and I'm not sure how I would've felt about it if i hadn't met the lady before and also heard from other local families about their experiences of her visits. Personally, I found a visit much easier than having to write a letter or ed. phil. - my main worry was that I hadn't vacced up that morning.
The kids have actually had coughs this last week or so which has meant that a lot of their usual activities have been missed, but they seem on the up again now thankfully. Thursday, they went to Little Ninjas as usual. The Boy has moved up a group now so we're only there for an hour instead of two. While I miss sitting chatting with other parents, and they don't get to play with their friends the same, it does mean that they get maths etc done before we go. We went to town afterwards because I want a watch. It's probably about 20 years since I last owned one and I was really surprised to find that I can't find a wind-up watch for less than £300. Obviously, that's far too much money for a watch that I'll probably lose, but still. This getting older mallarkey is really setting in now.....
We had a mostly-at-home day today. The day started with some woolly garden squatters



We're not quite sure how they got in, the gate was fastened and everything :?
The Girl was a bit upset because they'd trampled on her garden and eaten the flowers off her primulas :( Luckily, she hasn't planted her new plants yet.
Today was a day for Hama beads it would seem :)

They've also done maths, English, listened to The Fearless Treasure, music practise, visited friends, been to scouts and started preparing for a singing exam - actually that was The Girl. The Boy visited friends too, listened to the book and did some maths but mostly he has done Hama beads :)

Letter to a Fellow Blogger

Dear Here We are Together,
Thanks for asking how we are, so nice to hear from you. I hadn't realised how long it was since my last post, thanks for the nudge ;)
We might have been quiet on here but in real life, we have been very busy. Like so many other people we had Christmas and all the eating, drinking, shopping, visiting and presents that come with it :D Once again, we had a delicious Christmas dinner made by my lovely eldest DS and his fabulous girlfriend.
The next few weeks seemed to disappear in a whirl of birthday preparation as Boykin and The Girl have birthdays a week apart. This year, involved a Laserquest party for small boys and a super-organised sleepover for The Girl and her friends. She really has got great skills as a party planner and, if all else fails, I can see her making a living in something along those lines. Her friends enjoyed themselves and went home with packed party bags full of the usual tat but also with some handmade extras :)
In and amongst all this, we had the usual round of groups and activities. The Boy gained his Bronze Award in Beavers and has moved up to Cubs. The Girls has reached Gold 1 at Rookies at swimming.
- As I type, I'm looking out of the window, she is checking for weeds in her garden still in pyjamas and dressing gown :) -
We have rowed Cowboy Charlie, partly as our Five in a Row studies but also because we chose 'Westerns' as a genre to read for bookgroup. It was a book we enjoyed, especially as it was a biography about an artist we'd never heard of - Charles Russell. As well as looking at some of his 4,000 pictures, this also led onto lots of discussions about Indians, eating Cowboy pancakes (Oh yes, we did pancake day too:)), reading other books and watching a couple of old westerns. The Boy even wrote a letter to his Grandad to tell him about it :)
Both children have moved onto their next MEP maths books - yr 3 and yr7. That's going ok, lots of new things to learn and The Girl is keen to do the interactive tests on the website. There's still the usual complaining about not wanting to do Maths but more often than not, they get on with it and do 30 minutes with few problems.
Today though, we're having a maths free morning because my bright spark of a son swallowed a 1p coin yesterday and so we sat in casualty for a couple of hours, getting home about 2.30.We were seen quite quickly initially, but had to wait around to see the Dr before we could leave. the Boy was perfectly fine and the coin had already left his stomach. We now know what his insides look like. The staff were great and explained his x-ray to him. I took our bedtime book to read The Fearless Treasure and we sat and watched BBC2 clips while we waited. I'm so grateful for our NHS service, I would hate to live in a country where you can't just turn up in the middle of the night at the hospital for fear of the cost.
We've had a couple of themed local group sessions already this year, the last one being about machines. I found a series of interesting lenses for learning about simple machines which start here, the links to the rest of the series are at the bottom of each lens. This is something I want to follow up on with the Boy, he loves all this kind of thing :) He's just discovered Technic Lego and has spent quite a bit of time playing with that recently, he got a set for his birthday :)
- Boykin has finally woken up and has gone straight to his Lego box - I hope the lack of maths doesn't encourage him to swallow anymore coins ;) -
Life's been pretty good to us all in all recently. I've been given a lovely new computer desk by a good HE friend, which means I've been able to get on with some writing projects much more easily and I've done lots of decluttering thanks to the inspiration provided by both the New Year and your Facebook page . We are still a very cluttered household, and probably always will be, but there are now 3 much tidier bedrooms and a much improved living room. I just need a couple of sets of low shelves with built-in shoe rack to complete my living room vision......
Last week we went to Coniston with some friends to stay in an independent hostel. We were truly blessed by the weather and did some walking - The Girl went up Coniston Old Man while me and The Boy visited Coniston itself, a lovely little village full of slate houses complete with an Honest Shop.
This week we have enjoyed gardening and sewing while The Boy had a great day out with his Nana in Carlisle. I'm looking forward to seeing his photos when we get them developed :)
I just want to say that I enjoy your blog and the calm, relaxed feel that comes from it. It sounds like such a contrast to the hectic state of affairs at this end :)
Thanks for your comment and thanks for reading my blog.
All the best
Belzi xx