Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Woooooooooooooo!

Halloween Glitter Graphics From GlitterYourWay.com

Apart from maths first things, the day has been dedicated to All Hallow's Eve. I was impressed by how much of the history of Halloween and the two celebratory days that follow we could all remember. This site helped us along. We've decorated the dining room with all the bits and bobs we've made over the last two years and have placed our ghosts outside (we made them last year - and they survived the house move pretty well).

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Katie's ghoul.

Here's what else we got up to:

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We made a cake and decorated it with the fondant icing handpainted using food colouring.
Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket Katie made this cute fondant cat.
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Ben carved the face on the pumpkin we'd grown in the garden. Katie carved a horse head on the side. Unfortunately, unlike in previous years, we've had problems finding pumpkins in the shops, even the large Tesco in town didn't have any left. Instead we carved a couple of peppers which look quite good.

Katie and Ben also wrote spooky poems for our Autumn poster:

A small black cat,
Running off the warm mat,
Because it's Halloween night,
Going out to give other cats a fright.
Jumping on a broomstick, flicking his tail,
He gives a happy wail,
Because it's Halloween night,
Going out to give other cats a fright. Katie

***
This night is no other night,
A little ghost gave me a fright,
I won't go out, but I might,
I can't go out tonight.

I'm all dressed up for Halloween,
I'm not seriously scared,
I have to be brave,
So I'm going out tonight. Ben


Hoping we'll find time to make these too.

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Saturday, October 27, 2007

Chair fun

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Our floors are brilliant for this ... discovered it a couple of days ago ... being pulled along on one of the PC chairs (which has wheels) - fab! Took some film of Katie and Ben, but I won't bore you.

Ticking along here. The Titanic lapbooks are finished (photos to follow) and we're having a think for our next project(s). Katie still wants to look more closely at Italy so I'll have a dig around for some info that'll be interesting and some hands on things (the only thing I can thing of immediately is pasta making). We're still (slowly) listening and crafting/postering about Holst's Planet Suite. Should really do some more science - it seems family members are concerned as to how I'm going to teach physics, chemistry and biology as well as the secondary schools do - ho hum! On another topic, did read about this through the EO forums which I think looks quite interesting and up our street, especially as I could team it up with this and this that I found in the summer.

Clock's go back tonight/tomorrow morning - don't forget! Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Thursday, October 25, 2007

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"little lost cloud"

Took this picture at 5.30 p.m. last Friday and the cloud was still in the same position (although a little more stretched) at 8 a.m. the next morning.
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Friday, October 19, 2007

Beauty in the garden

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We have loads of these circling the dead Rowan tree in the garden. I browsed a view related websites but have given up trying to identify these - they don't appear in any of our countryside books either - any ideas?
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These beauties are dotted around one section of the garden. They are "shaggy ink cap mushrooms" and are shown here in their various stages of growth starting as fat ovals of "fluffy" white until they grow their stalks, then the tops become a lovely "roof" like this ...

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... but within 24 hours it begins to die and shrivel.
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Monday, October 15, 2007

High ropes and Tesco tour

Katie and a small number of children from the group went here on Friday to have a couple of hours fun and tuition on these very high ropes! Some have done wall climbing before but somehow the supports, wires and ladders seemed much higher out in the open. Fabulous views from the top no doubt. Having had such temperamental weather these last few weeks, we were all relieved that it didn't rain (although the clouds did come over during the session). I don't think I'd like to climb up wet and slippery ladders and wires, but apparently the activity would have gone ahead rain or shine!

Such a shame the centre had to spoil it a little by announcing, the afternoon before, that the invoice will include VAT (on the £100 fee) as we are not a charity. I was absolutely livid as none of the paperwork we'd received had stated this (and no "*" with tiny print) and I'd checked the cost each time I'd managed (and boy it took many attempts) to reach them on the phone. Having explained to the guy that we weren't a school who could pass the invoice to the council to pay, each family had to find the cost for their child(ren) to climb and there was no way I was going to ask them for an extra £2 per child (making it just over £9 per child to climb) with less than 24 hours notice. I told him we'd have to cancel which, of course, he didn't want to hear. Basically I think I sent him packing with a flea in his ear! He promised to come back to me, which he didn't, and again each time I call him I just receive the answer machine. They've paid out a lot of money to have this equipment put in, surely they want to entice customers to use it. OK, rant over ...

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Today we went for a tour of the Tesco superstore. Didn't take any photos, but it was a really interesting tour which left us all extremely hungry as we wafted through the in-store bakery and watched fresh dough being squished into finger rolls and rows of warm cookies, danish and muffins within reach of our eager paws! No handouts though! Katie, Ben and I enjoyed this part the best, but we also found it interesting to see exactly what happens when we do our Tesco shop on the internet. The lady, busy packing up groceries for six internet customers, kindly talked us through how she gets each of her orders correct by following codes on her screen and on the shelves (we'd never even noticed them before). There's some kind of in-store computer mapping which ensures the groceries are in their correct spot on the shelves and isles - all pretty impressive, technology wise. The amount of food behind the scenes stored in boxes ready for putting out onto the shelves and also being freshly baked made me realise just how much grub we consume! Perhaps I should have asked how many bread rolls are binned (or otherwise) at the end of each day.

Katie went off to a friend's house for lunch and an afternoon of horsey play and model painting while Ben and I did some chores and ended up in the park enjoying some time together. Love the autumn colours at the mo, they seem more intense this year I'm sure.

P is extremely quiet finishing off the puzzle Ben had started a couple of weeks ago (he stayed up until 1 a.m. the other night). Ben's still adding his bit here and there but P's really taken to it in a compulsive way. Apparently he's always loved puzzles, never knew this, even though we've been together for 20 years at the end of this month (gulp).

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Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Autumn walk

This walk is near our home and apparently ends up at a small lake and nature reserve. It's quite a trek so we haven't yet reached the destination, but we've enjoyed beautiful trees, autumn colours and a bank of fabulous Christmas trees (minus the festive smell unfortunately). The first picture shows how tall and broad some of the trees are in comparison to P and Katie.

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Tuesday, October 09, 2007

Just an update on what's been going on here.

The Titanic lapbooks are filling up fast with pockets, crafts and bits and bobs. I'll post some photos when it's completely finished. We're reading, discussing and working on the final hours of the liner. Katie and Ben had fun learing more about morse code and producing lots of weird and wonderful messages to the sounds of beep and extended beep!

On the maths front, both have finished their current work books and we've decided to use the Heinman book that I got from the library recently to continue learning and recapping on all the basics. Although it's an older style course book, it is easy to follow with nice pictures and simple step by step instructions (making it much easier for me). Today we hit a page that was alittle out of Ben's league, so he recapped on what he'd already learnt, but it's brilliant for Katie and we all seem to be doing fine with it. We've started with multiplication and division using decimals as well as the times/divide by 10, 100, 1000 rule (it's taking an age to drum this into them, I even made up an annoying song earlier in the year to help it sink in, they remember the song, they just don't put the words into practise!). Today we moved on to multiplication for two digits, 11 - 19 and for Katie, multiples of 10 (for which she worked out her own, extremely simple, method to correctly complete the sums - most impressed).

For those that use workbooks for their learning, a friend from our HE group mentioned last week that St. Ivel Advance Fresh Milk with Omega 3 are giving away free Letts study books (to a total of 20,000) in exchange for a bar code number on the purchase of the milk (one per family).
***
For literacy we are still writing poems for Autumn. Last week they did lovely Haiku for the brief spell of warm, sunny weather. I'm also encouraging Ben to write more small stories as he finds this quite hard. He has lots of ideas and uses lovely language (and I don't mean swearing) when telling me stories, but he's not good at writing them down. The BBC RaW booklet that he recently finished suggested continuing with the story in several ways, so he wrote a lovely little story about two of the characters in the book where Baked Bean is given a new potion (of fire) from Bamrod. So, in Ben's words:

When the potion was finished, Bamrod gave it to Baked Bean in a weird shaped glass. The glass had a bumpy stand and bumpy sides and a spikey top. The potion tasted like hot water, so there was no chance of liking it! So, Baked Bean took a sip, then strang(e)ly anuf (enough) Baked Bean had smoke coming out (of) his ears! Then sud(d)enly, Boom!! Baked Bean blew up like a fire work!! Baked Bean asked, when smoke was spitting out his ears, "what's in this potion?" The potion had wood and lit matches and fire work chemicals in it. Baked Bean survived the blow (some how), he was just pitch black!
***
We have been collecting a few postcards to put up on our UK map to help us learn about the history of our own country (and the whereabouts of places!). When we get around to doing the map reading we'll look at their coordinates too. One of the places Katie was working on today was Tobermory on the Isle of Mull. I couldn't help break into the warbling the Wombles song and we ended up tracking it down on You Tube!
***
We have started to use the mobile library that comes to our village every fortnight. We've never used one before as a family and we were mighty impressed. Katie had reserved some books which were waiting for us on the van and she was thrilled to find lots of "her kind of books" (i.e. horse stories) on the fully stocked shelves. Ben was excited about finding a Star Wars comic style book, which he finished reading in lightening speed, and he was allowed to take one of the many 1000 piece puzzles home with him to try out. I've never seen him so engrossed - he worked on the puzzle most of that afternoon and now he and P are completing it together.
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***
Katie decided she wanted to set up an alarm to stop Ben getting into her room, so we dug out Ben's electronic set that he got for Christmas. It's from the Science Museum range and more advanced than the simple John Adams Junior Electronics set which we've all used and continue to enjoy using. We have managed to set up the initial board and are now ready to start wiring up to make a burglar alarm. All seems very clever but one gripe, it tells you to follow the pictures for wiring up, but doesn't really explain in simple terms (even though it's for 8 years +) why you're doing what you're doing. The John Adams set was very thorough in making sure you understood the reasoning behind each circuit you'd produced.
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***
Finally, we had a group session last Friday on Harvest and we all took in various yummies to share over lunch. During the session Katie made this lovely picture of a horse using dried beans and lentils and Ben did some colourful veggie printing. We've added them to our Autumn poster.
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Here's a new tag Katie's designed especially for me.Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Monday, October 01, 2007

Apple picking in the autumn sunshine

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Went along to Sandringham yesterday to go apple picking on the Queen's estate (now doesn't that sound posh). The weather was so lovely and warm, after all that freezing cold (let's miss autumn and move straight onto winter) weather we've been experiencing. We packed a picnic and headed to Norfolk.
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Ashamed to say, we'd never ventured to Sandringham before, even though it isn't too far from us now or even from our old address. A friend of ours constantly recommended the country park for it's beautiful woods and I can see why now. Anyway, after some grub we headed for the apple trees and filled a bag and a half with the most delicious cox apples. We were also lucky enough to find a discarded wooden crate with "Royal Fruit Farms, Sandringham, Norfolk" printed on it which will do nicely for storing all the apples, although with at least two mega apple eaters here, they won't last that long!

We moved on a little further (it's a big estate) to the country park and took in the freshness and Christmassy aroma of the tall Scott's Pines (our pines in the garden apparently come from here). We had a good time wandering through the woods, checking out the wood carvings near the play area, shopping at the visiting Farmer's Market (and buying some chilli stuffed olives which made Ben's face instantly turn bright red, poor love) and browsing the plants, trees and seeds to keep Katie happy.
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Certainly a return visit will be on the cards with perhaps a tour of the house too next time.
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