Sunshine after the rain!

So, my new tactic for getting the kids to knuckle down is the promise of something nice after a couple of hours graft doing the things that, as far as they are concerned, are just unnecessary in life! Things such as math and English.  Yeah, those really non essential skills that we never use on a day to day basis.  Fortunately for me this bit of sunshine can include: science, art, crafts, nature walks, baking etc; basically, anything except Math and English.

Bearing this in mind this morning kicked off with some word games that Sprite made a while back.  The 'clue cards' have descriptions of words that the children can either shout, spell or act out once they know what it is. The alphabet cards are used for spelling and the pink cards are from the Jolly Phonics books and are basically spelling/matching games.

We then moved on to making sentences using the DK Silly Sentences game; after making their sentences - which were very, very silly - they had to write them in their books and draw a picture to match.  Sprite didn't quite understand the list of several instructions that I gave [it's a dyslexic thing] so made some mistakes.  I really must remember to give him one or two instructions at a time. They then went on to do their maths on Maths Whizz.

Then after lunch came the sunshine stuff which began with blow painting.  Daisy also wanted to do blow painting in her art journal. And then everyone wanted to do their art journal.  Of course they would!

So here are the aforementioned art journals:

This is Crush's journal page that is based around the pictures they took for the
library's Homeschool Group

This is Daisy's journal page.  She is so creative and has firm ideas about what
she wants to do.  I just love the photo of the doorway.

This is Sprites journal about Spring; obviously!  He does his pages all by himself
with no input from me.  He has used several techniques on the background page
and the flowers are made from old jam tart trays.

We then painted some nice large stones that we found whilst digging up the
garden.

Lego has picked up his Word War 2 project again and completed another two parts to the project.

And last but not least; I found this science kit in the charity shop for £1.50 and thought that it might be nice for the little ones to have a go at.  The box was taped up so when I got home and opened it up I was surprised to see that the kit was completely intact with all the contents still sealed.  So, as it would be neglectful to let such a blessing go by unused, we will start working through the booklet of experiments at some point this week God willing.

Phew, it's now midnight and I am hoping that I can keep the up the pace...goodnight xXx

What an exciting week we have had with the children starting with their tutors and mashaAllah, I must say that they had a great time and the tutors have wonderful intentions to help the community. Each of the children were assessed and they all have homework to do, which they did, without being told, as soon as they got home!  The sister also said that if I couldn't afford for them to go more than once a week [I am hoping to send them at least twice a week inshaAllah] that she would give them extra homework.  Alhamdulillah, this has been such a blessing for me; I didn't realise that I was so stressed about it all!

The children also decorated these candles after being inspired by a video we watched on YouTube

They were great fun to make and I think I may be additcted!  Lego also made this papier mache mountain diarama for his Airfix models.

Sprite made himself this Airfix tank!

Daisy made this art journal page.  She used a piece of sponge to dab colour all over the page and then used stick on paper letters and sticky back foam letters to make the words.  She then went on to paint her next to pages all in black....can't wait to see what she's going to do with those lol!

This is Sprites African inspired giraff mask and Daisy's Zebra mask, both of which were inspired by our session at the library's home school group meeting last week.  We also started making some African masks out of paper mache but they made soooo much mess I could hardly bare to look at it let alone immoratlise it in a photograph!

We also made some ghee and learned about it's health benefits and related ahadith.

The kids also made chocolate cake and orange custard, orange in colour not in flavour.  I don't know why they wanted orange custard but it was nice anyway!

Daisy has been doing some more sewing...

I have also spent some time going over the lessons that the children did at the tutoring group to make sure they understand the concepts and am doing more hands on activities to ram the concepts home.  Lego has been doing forces with related formula and long division, the others are brushing up on their times tables and handwriting before they go back to 'school' on Monday inshaAllah.

Well, we are off for a few days off with my family in London. Yay!

Inconsistent until the end...

OK so that was a bit melodramatic but the week did start of exceptionally well and then went rapidly down hill.  We started well on Monday with a brand new schedule and everything went really well....everyone got their work done and it was fab...I should have known it would never last.  Tuesday I woke up and had a relapse with my back...bah humbug!  This was followed by another call from the hospital calling Lego back in and yet another to say that Sprite had to go in to start his physio this week...so another two days taken out of the week!

And with the English lessons starting back for Sprite tomorrow he decides that he wants to change the way he presents his 'nature diary' for his homework!  So the old one was dumped and he made this...

Isn't it lovely?  It was made out of a corrugated cardboard box cut to fit our stock of 6"x6" papers.  On the front the larger flowers he cut from a die I have and heat embossed using different color powders and he  stamped on top of them whilst they were hot [you should be aware that these are MY craft supplies and he had me cringing in the corner all the while he was using them, lol].

The first entry was the frog booklet that you may remember from his first attempt at the diary.  The second page was mostly researched information and photo's from the internet but the third entry he found an outline picture and he painted the image using watercolor pencils.  I like watercolors, you can get away with a multitude of sins [art wise] and always have a good result.  Apart from the art lesson these two entries also included a lesson on internet research and IT (cutting, pasting, changing fonts etc).

Lego hasn't done much this week and is milking the 'poor me' thang far too much....his WW2 model was also broken into tiny pieces when it was accidently knocked off a cupboard by dad [I was just grateful it wasn't me or one of the other children!].  He wasn't very happy.  Nooo, not happy at all; and he seemed to be uninterested in the fact that he was the one who had left it in the precarious position in the first place.  Any ho, it has been unceremoniously dumped in the bin and he proclaimed that he would never build a model again.  However, this pledge didn't last long and he is in the middle of building a WW2 scene out of Lego!

Crash and Daisy have left me all Peter and Jane'd out and I am currently in the process of making flash cards of all the keywords to assist in the word recognition process.  All maths has been done on Maths Whizz this week but I need to get them putting some stuff down on paper too to so that can apply all that they learn.

Well, that's it for this week! Have a great weekend everyone.

Still making mini-books

We have been doing lots of maths online and still trying to cement the times tables with the boys, I must admit I am finding this a bit tiresome but hey... other work is continuing using the 100 Maths Lessons.

We have had lots of badges earned at cubs and scouts and I HATE sewing them on....must buy some fabric glue....only now am I beginning to appreciate my mums efforts with me and little sis at Brownies, I was so proud of my armful of badges but never gave poor mums punctured fingers a second thought...thanks mum, love you lots! DS1 has been caving (will post about this separately) and DS2 camping and they are both off to another camp in June....I think I am looking forward to it more than them, lol!

DS1 is still with his tutor for English and they are having a whale of a time....lots of new work being introduced and the book the lessons are based around (Goodbye Mr Tom) is really grabbing their attention. DS2 is making steady progress with his reading and is reading to me aloud most days from the 'Read it Yourself' series from Ladybird. The two little ones are still progressing through the Jolly Phonics books.

Here is DS2's effort at making a mini study book....it's going to be about lizards (just in case you missed the huge orange writing ;0)). He's stamped it and decorated the pages and we are just in the process of deciding what should be included in the study.

DS1 took this photo of the two younger boys climbing in their new white thawbs (they had to be white and new didn't they!) he thought it was funny that they got greasy black marks on them but I, on the other hand, was rather distressed and am still trying to wash the stains out...humph!

Well we are still on the mini-book trail with DS1 making the following albums from toilet roll holders

Twists and turns of HE

Our home education has taken a slight, very exciting, turn away from lapbooks and has moved on to scrapbooking...... scrapbooks/mini albums are usually used for keepsakes etc but I decided that we could adapt them for our home education ...and that is exactly what I did. It's a great opportunity for the kids to use art in their work and use their creative talents.
DS1 was studying frogs after finding some spawn in a pond so I decided I would make him a journal/scrapbook for him to use during his study. I was hoping it would inspire him to use this approach for himself and it seems to be working (more on that later inshaAllah)... here are some pics of the journal for you to visualise what we are doing.....

This picture on the front of the mini album is painted in watercolours...the background and the title are stamped

Here are the first two pages, 'about the scientist' and 'about this study'...both pages have been distressed (no, not by me shouting at them lol) and decorated with various frog noises or pictures.


Three of the pages have pockets where you can add 'tags' that can hold additional information (I just LOVE, tags...just ask my friends lol)...this one has a frogspawn pull and info & pic about a frog on one side....as the other tags, there is space to journal/write on the other side.


Here are two pages to write down facts..

Back of another tag..really like this one!

Page for 'life cycle' and writing space

Space to draw or put clipart of frog skeleton

Back page

If I had thought about it more I could have made the book more meaningful, added more prescriptive pages that would make the child do more research etc....are you with me? When I gave this to my son, he was over the moon - I almost cried as he was so happy! He was inspired to make his own mini album which I will post later inshaAllah.

I am loving this new approach and so are the kids....I have another few requests to do now lools!