Life Lately

Autumn has been very mild so far this year; we have enjoyed had some beautiful walks in the country. At home, we have come to the end of our weather and seasons project. The children have learned, through hands on activities, about day and night and shadows

 

and have drawn what they have found out in their books.

 

 

They have written some sentences on sun and rain

 

 

and have discovered some of the different cloud formations.

 

 

We did two mini unit studies on the books A New Coat for Anna (seasons link) and the Little Red Hen (windmill link).

 

The children did some paper weaving

 

and inspired by a visit to the Stockport Hat Works, they designed A New Hat for Anna.

 



 

 Little Red Hen activities included bread baking, making windmills and acting out the play with masks.

 

The Vikings came to Stockport Market last weekend, so we went to visit them!

 



 

Nathanael had the opportunity to fire a cross bow at a Knight.
 

We also had a lovely morning out in Manchester this week to see the Halle Orchestra's interactive children's performance of the book Giraffes Can't Dance.

 

 

We celebrated Reformation Sunday at church, with the children performing a short drama and song.

 

 

In History, the children have been finding out about the Reformation, John Wycliffe, Martin Luther, Anne Askew and Thomas Cranmer.  

 

We are moving on to a two week study on ancient and modern China and finding out about Hudson Taylor and Gladys Aylward, missionaries to China.



Our Week

Our second week of term has flown by. On Monday we discovered that white light is made up of lots of different colours.

 

Experiment using candle light and a CD to show the different colours of the rainbow.

The girls are enjoying their projects on pets and have been carrying out simple writing activities and puzzles.

 

 

Nathanael has been working on his lego project and has made a flow chart documenting how lego is made, researched lego through the years and has been completing lego challenges.

 

 

His lego challenge was "What can you make out of 50 lego bricks?"

 

A Monster of course!

On Wednesday Daddy took the Geography lesson, while I had a morning out. The children spent time finding out about Haiti, where a missionary family live that we support. 

 

 

Daddy also helped the children harvest some potatoes and rhubarb from the garden.

 

 

In Little Keepers Club, Tabitha and Abigail made fridge magnets to send as gifts to their Great Granny and Auntie Margaret.

 

 

On Thursday in music, the children worked upon their production of Oliver! Using iMovies they made a trailer for it. They hope you enjoy it! 

 

 

In the afternoon the children made collages of the book of Genesis using the Picture Smart Bible curriculum.

 

 

We had a morning out on Friday at Staircase House in Stockport, a restored townhouse with a rare Jacobean cage-newel staircase. They enjoyed writing with quill pens

 

 

and exploring the rooms that were decorated as different story books.

 

Goldilocks and the five bears!

We have built marble runs

 

 

and tried to make our own stringed instruments using boxes and elastic bands in our technology lesson.

 

Our Week

 After a three week summer break in which I did a lot of planning and organising, we started back to homeschool this week. Our days have been filled with reading lessons,

 

 

piano practise,

 

 

and workboxes

 

 

which include maths, literacy, spelling and phonics activities.

 

 

On Monday we started our Science in the Beginning textbook with a lesson based upon light, taken from Genesis 1:3 "Let there be light."

 

 

The children carried out some light investigations

 

 

and had fun finding out in the dark cellar that light travels in a straight line and discovering

 how to reflect light using a torch and mirror.

 

 

Each day after lunch the children have had project time.

 

 

Nathanael is working on his chosen topic of Lego.

 

 

and the girls are learning about pets.

 

 

On Wednesday the children designed a new park for our local area.

 

 

On Thursday they practised some songs from the musical Oliver! and worked on organising props for a play they are producing. We also started our Picture Smart Bible Curriculum, which the children thoroughly enjoyed.

 

 

On Friday we made percussion instruments out of plastic cups, pasta, rice and lentils. Next week we are going to try to make some stringed instruments out of cardboard boxes and elastic bands.

 

 

Having an organised schedule has made this first week back a success.  We still had lots of time for fun at the park

 

 

and keeping fit!

 

 

Free play time is scheduled in half hour sessions throughout the day.

 

 

They are even learning to enjoy helping with household chores (most of the time!)

 

It has been a good first week back.

Our Week

 After our workboxes on Monday morning, we headed out into the woods to climb some trees.

 

 

Miriam had collected a large pile of twigs to make her own imaginary campfire, so Granny suggested we brought them home to build our own fire in the garden.

 

 

We were not experienced (or brave) enough in these things to build a proper campfire on the grass, so we built it on a metal tray on the patio!

 

 

We cooked our beans for lunch on it

 

 

and toasted marshmallows for pudding. Such fun!

 

 

Throughout the week I have been having a sort out of the piles of work and drawings that have been produced this year, recycling a lot, but choosing the best pieces to file away into their individual box files for storage.

 

 

It was lovely to look back at the different things they have produced.

 

 

 

On Wednesday we had a really interesting and enjoyable family day at Eyam in Derbyshire. It was here in 1665 that the plague struck, carried by a flea infested bundle of cotton that was sent from London to a tailor in the village.

 

The cottage where the plague started.

 

 We looked around Eyam Hall, a National Trust property, that was built in the Jacobean style after the plague had ended.

 

 

On Thursday we had our normal morning routine of workboxes and Nathanael wrote his own Psalm, based upon Psalm 100 which we have been studying.

 

 

Tabitha showing her English literature book. Her current theme is Homes.

 The children looked at the work of Vincent Van Gough and Georgia O'Keefe and had a go at creating their own still life drawings using charcoal.

 

 

 

 

Whilst in Stockport Market on Friday we saw BBC Radio Manchester being recorded live. We stopped for a while to watch, and we were taken by surprise as Nathanael and I ended up getting interviewed by Mike Sweeney!

 

 

 

 Nathanael attended his Maker Fun workshop on Saturday morning and he had the opportunity to learn how to make animation with a real life animator, Paul Claessens using a Raspberry Pi. He had been looking forward to this for weeks.

 

Can you see how excited he was?!

Nathanael chose to make an animated Robin Hood from one of his drawings.

 

 

 

I hope to be able to share with you the video he made when it has been edited.

If you are from Manchester, MakerFun will be at the MOSI Maker Faire next weekend and we would highly recommend that you go and try making your own animation with them.