Life, Love & Literature

Just another Home Education blog

Seaside Project

One thing I am really keen for the boys to develop is group work skills, not just work­ing along­side oth­ers.  With a few friends I’ve been work­ing on set­ting up a group for mid age kids, but we have been ham­pered by the lack of suit­able venues.

In the mean time we decided that we’d make the most of the local envi­ron­ment and do a bit of a sea­side project.

So on Thurs­day we met at South­sea library, where the chil­dren shared hol­i­day pho­tos and mem­o­ra­bilia.  We made a list of things the asso­ciate with the sea­side and set out on a walk to see what we could see. 

Yachts at sea

The prom­e­nade

Ice cream ahead

Shar­ing a scooter is not the most effec­tive means of transport

nei­ther is read­ing as you walk (we found a stall sell­ing lovely crafts and some sec­ond hand books )

 

We ended up at Cum­ber­land House.

Igua­nadon!

Han­nah show­ing Sam some rock con­tain­ing fos­silised shells

It will be lovely if we man­age to sort out the details and set up a work­able group.  In the mean­time the sun shone and we had a nice day out.  Although I did learn that the 1A bus does not go to the very and com­ing home from South­sea through Fare­ham instead of Gosport takes a LONG time!

No Comments »

Back to ‘school’

After the sum­mer break we’re now ‘back to school’.

Jack cracked on with some maths, eng­lish and science.

Includ­ing this news­pa­per report

Sam did some of his workbooks

Sam’s read­ing focused on ‘ng’ digraph so we dug out;

how much he read and how much he can quote from mem­ory I’m not sure.

They learned intro­duc­tions and fam­ily titles in Latin

Geog­ra­phy, we looked at coastal land­forms and made a beach in a tray to show how beaches are washed away.  We started off by mak­ing some rock pil­lars from play­dough and put them down one end of the tray (cheap cat lit­ter tray — my top tip — any­thing involv­ing glit­ter or paint or mess gets done in the tray).  Then we cov­ered them com­pletely in sand.  Poured water into the other end of the tray.  We then pushed a piece of card through the water to make waves.

French, we lis­tened to the cds and the colours. They did their workbooks.

Then I made them some cards so they could play pairs.

We’ve spent time every day read­ing Good­night Mr Tom, the book which forms the com­pre­hen­sion basis of Jack’s Eng­lish this month.

Sam started some of the Ancient Greece pocket of his Ancient Civ­i­liza­tion project.

Same also made a fos­sil cast of his hand.  We had been plan­ning to do it in mud in the back­gar­den but the heav­ens opened just after I’d started mix­ing the plas­ter of paris, so had to have an emer­gency rethink.

We filled a bowl with play sand and wet it.  Then Sam pressed in his hand.

We filled it with plas­ter of paris (I had hoped to do just the hand but there was a lot of over­flow).Waited for it to dry and ta da.

Jack started his sea­side project

We found some sand art pic­tures when I was tidy­ing my Rain­bow cup­board so they made them for inclu­sion in project.


There has also been time for bak­ing.  Jack made a choco­late fudge cake all on his own, and very nice it was too.

And we all made short­bread (plain, choc chip and my favourite gin­ger and dark chocolate).

Play­dough

Mak­ing explo­sions by set­ting fire to paper caps

Plus Cubs, see­ing friends and join­ing in with tiedye­ing at Rain­bows (I was too busy dye­ing myself and the church wall to take photos).

 

No Comments »

Sandown 2011

Lovely fort­night

There was …

…lots of time on the beach…

picture of Jack in the seaimage of Jack and Sam in the seaimage of My boys at the beachimage of building a fortimage of Sand fort being destroyed

 

…not all of it in the sunshine…

…time on the pier…

…a trip to Ryde to visit our favourite sec­ond hand book­shop and a quick nosey in the Dr Who shop…

…time to indulge Sam’s ancient his­tory obses­sion with a trip to Brad­ing Roman Villa…

…a trip to Robin Hill Adven­ture Park for lots of climbing…

…chillin’ in the caravan…

…a very poor round of golf…

…and last but not least, dinosaurs!

1 Comment »