Friday, August 25, 2006

After all this wet and chilly weather, the clouds parted and the sun shone warmth today which was great as today was a farewell picnic for one of our HE families embarking on a new venture to Spain. We all bought food to share and enjoyed the company of friendships for a good 4 hours or so. It was lovely too because we hadn't all been together since our end of term event at the end of July, so we had lots to catch up on! The boys all enjoyed their usual "fighting" play, using sticks in their games, and the girls enjoyed their gentler play, all with the occasional joining up to play footie or similar sport.

Looking forward more and more to getting back to a routine. We had our group "planning" meeting the other evening and so now it feels a good time to settle back to some kind of "work". We have thought of a lot of new ideas for group sessions and outings, which will come up on my blog as and when they happen. We're also trying out two new venues too which will be fun. The first has lots of outdoor space with great play equipment for letting off steam, the second, which we'll try after October half term, is excellent for cold and miserable weather, with indoor soft play area and a huge barn for team sports.

As a follow up to a previous post about our caterpillar, he still seems to be doing well in his little chrysalis. We also have another one who came into the box nestled on a leaf (I didn't see him somehow). This time we definitely left nature to take its course and noticed he'd followed the same pattern as the first caterpillar. Eating leaves for a few days then wandering off to the lid of the box to form his chrysallis. Can't wait for the next stage ....

On the Tudors front we have been learning about the wonderful discoveries for the new world, the galleons and those who sailed on them, Drake and the Golden Hind. Used this site to help plot the Slave Trade triangle and Drakes route around the world. Although we're going to make galleons using old cardboard soup cartons, I couldn't resist using this rather detailed (but small) printable of a galleon which the kids have coloured in ready for assembling onto paper and to label, it was so detailed. Also found a young childrens' reader in the library named "Captain Drake's Orders" by Karen Wallace to help K and B understand what happened during the Spanish Armada.

Finished our vegetable diaries, they were beginning to drag and the children were losing a bit of interest. The tomatoes are gradually turning red and are a good size (although some are still rather marked on their skins) and taste wonderful. Beans are taking their time to grow, they are so tiny in length - I guess they are lacking (like us all) the sun at the moment. The new pumpkin is getting bigger each day and we are keeping a careful watch for naughty, munchy bugs. We don't want to lose this one!

B has decided to make a film with his PC character "Blupi" as the main character. He's very excited about it all and wants to jump right in. Trying to slow him alittle without squashing his interest, as I don't want the whole thing to flop. He's started thinking out his characters and a brief, short storyline and I've suggested we make the characters out of plastacine so they can be moved more easily between frames. Let you know how we get on. He's really enthusiastic about this and I know we'll have some fun.

B has also made this lovely snakes and ladders game. He designed it himself and I just helped colour in the snakes and some of the squares. He's added extra bits to this traditional board game like "move 2 spaces back" and "jump to square 34" etc., etc., to make it a bit more interesting. It was interesting how we incorporated a bit of maths in this as he put it all together, using a ruler and measuring, working out the total number of squares with multiplication (although I was a bit put out that he'd already forgotten his 11 times table after our short summer break!), counting with the dice and so on, without his really noticing.

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

K has been busy making more tack and riders for her hobby. She uses "milliput" to make the riders as it is much stronger then clay and doesn't seem to break. She's started a model horse club with her friends and is writing news updates on the PC in magazine form for everyone to see. K also did a wonderful cut and paste job on Paintshop this week by using a photo of herself taken when horseriding, using the PC to cut around it and then pasting her photo onto the back of a model horse. It is superb, she really looks like she's riding one of her models! Amazing what you can do on these photo software packages.

Have a good weekend. I hear the country is heading for heavy downpours next week with risk of flooding. Should be interesting ...

1 Comments:

At 3:26 pm, Blogger Thea said...

I like reading your blog too.
Tag, you're it! Please answer the following questions on your blog and then tag 5 others...thanks!
OTHENA

ONE BOOK THAT CHANGED YOUR LIFE:

ONE BOOK THAT YOU’VE READ MORE THAN ONCE:

TWO BOOKS YOU’D WANT ON A DESERT ISLAND:

ONE BOOK THAT MADE YOU LAUGH:

ONE BOOK THAT MADE YOU CRY:

ONE BOOK YOU WISH HAD BEEN WRITTEN:

ONE BOOK YOU WISH HAD NEVER BEEN WRITTEN:

ONE BOOK THAT YOU ARE CURRENTLY READING:

ONE BOOK YOU HAVE BEEN MEANING TO READ:

FIVE PEOPLE YOU TAG:

 

Post a Comment

<< Home