Tuesday, September 30, 2008

"Autumn mists and mellow fruitfulness"

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Aren't these just lovely? P photographed them in the front garden just the other morning. It's turned pretty chilly here, although the sun still peaks through during the day.
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We finely got around to cleaning the cars on Sunday. Ashamed to say it took us about 3 or 4 hours to get the dirt off and hoover the innerds etc. It was certainly worth it, they looked brilliant afterwards. Not sure if it's just us, but the cars always feel much nicer to drive when they're clean! Weird! Anyway, two days after I see they're well on the way to looking pretty grubby again; it doesn't help that one car is white of course. So, what I was going to say, leading on from the lovely cobwebs, was that my car had a cobweb attached to one of the wing mirrors. I didn't realise just how strong they actually are. Even on it's highest pressure, the hose didn't break a single piece of the web.
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On the work front Ben has finished his "Brownie" Craft Badge. He made a dream-catcher and decorated a white t-shirt for two of his projects, and designed his dream bedroom for the third. Katie has done her Pony Rider and Craft badges. She did some brilliant information sheets for her rider badge and wove a small paper basket, made a coaster from materials and this cute sock horse puppet!
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I thought the art work they both completed for this week's Sketch Tuesday was particularly good so I'm posting it up. They both used the shading techniques learnt at the recent art session.
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Having browsed through the KS3 maths book that I'd picked up from a car boot fair last week, I've decided that Ben can easily cope with it too. It seems to me that this key stage just recaps on the last, with a small few extras slotted in. I've given them new files and we started today on "big numbers" - pretty easy stuff (or so I thought, have a read of this), we got through it in less than 1/2 hour!

Latin's coming along although remembering the pronouncation of certain words is slowing me (not them) down. P did Latin at school, but he isn't much help - he doesn't seem to remember much at all! We've been writing a party invitation today which has been interesting. They needed to look up their Roman birth month and also refresh their memories on Roman numerals.


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Saturday, September 27, 2008

Cleaning, entertaining and outings

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I've started putting up a rough timetable of the week for us all to try and follow work wise. Into our second week of this now and it seems to be working - it often gets added to during the week and looks a total mess by Friday when I can wipe it clean and start afresh for Monday!

All seems to be ticking along nicely: Maths, handwriting practise, Latin, sign language, science, project work and Sketch Tuesday (art seems to be the most popular subject at the moment). Katie did some lovely art on Thursday with the group, drawing seed pods and Autumn leaves practising blending using coloured pencils. Science has been linked to our project work on the Poles - found some fun and easy experiments here. We tried making a mini iceberg to see if 11% (or thereabouts) did actually protrude above water, but ours seemed to average a lot more than that to start with! Maths has taken on a new spurt with re-discovering a now working (for us anyway) Timez Attack. Free downloadable software to help children (and adults I guess) learn their times tables the fun way! We recommend it. This game, together with the physics one I mentioned in my last post, have been played alot this last week. Katie and Ben were even asking to play Timez Attack at 8.30 on Friday morning so it must be good fun. There's a link on my side panel.

My parents visited over the weekend (they were staying for a holiday close to us) and so I spent most of the previous week cleaning the house from top to bottom (major clean, I even did the windows and trimmed all the hedges out front), luckily the weather was on my side. We had a super Sunday roast and lovely walk up to the marshes with them and then met up at Sandringham for a tour of the house and wander around the fabulous gardens during the week. A very popular place Sandringham, although not as busy as at the weekend when we went apple picking there. Came away with two full bags of apples - one of Bramleys the other of Laxton's Fortune. Most people were going for the Cox's but we found them all tiny and very hard. The Laxton's Fortune were spot on!
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My house - no, only kidding!
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Gardens were lovely. Ben, as always, was drawn to the water. Very peaceful.
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You can imagine the smell of apples, it was wonderful.
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Weather was just so beautiful it seemed a sin to go home so early in the afternoon, so we stopped off at Snettisham beach for a couple of hours lapping up the warmth of the sun and gentle breezes while the children played in the mud and made trenches and castles in the little stretch of sand. We'd remembered our binoculars for once, so could see right across to the marshes of where we live plus the wind farms there and out at sea near Skegness. The tide was out and people were digging for lugworms. Lots of beach houses with wafts of evening BBQs in the air. We picked up fish and chips on the way home - bliss.
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Monday, September 15, 2008

Back on track - a good day

I put up a simple timetable for the week which is good for Ben (he likes to know exactly what's going on all the time), although we didn't actually start Latin today as planned, but did get everything done!

Started with maths - no angry words or sour looks. I prepared three worksheets for both of them and they chose one to do. Ben's looking at polygons, including symmetry, so I rediscovered the Show Me website and found the Victorian tile design game and kaleidoscope games for Katie and Ben to have a go at. This one was preferred though.

After a quick snack (it's a habit now, get maths done to enjoy a snack!) we started learning A-D of the deafblind manual alphabet. I was given a sheet with this alphabet on when I was working at the pre-school 3 years ago and knew it would come in handy. Katie and Ben were enthusiastic about it today and quickly picked up the first four letters.

I wanted to continue with some kind of music appreciation this term. The "Music Monday" idea - taken from the Petits Haricots blog kind of died a death, mainly due to the fact that although we listened to classical (or thereabouts) music weekly, I was rubbish at blogging about it. Anyway, have scheduled to listen to decent music at least once a week and read abit about the composer. Found this musical website with lots of classical music to listen to and also information on the orchestra etc. I remember when I was very young owning a Ladybird book about the orchestra which was absolutely brilliant. Had details on all the key instruments etc. Must look out for it. I came across a stack of Ladybird books in two second-hand shops recently - I shall return for a hunt! Today, having read about the orchestra and listened to the different sections playing their piece to the opening of "Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra" by Benjamin Britten, we realised just how clever the composer is to make compile such a fabulous piece of music when it's all played together. We listened to the full verion on You Tube while the children played around on the above website making their own music etc. Katie dug out the simple piano tune she composed about this time last year. Perhaps she, or Ben, will get back into playing the piano.

Part I and Part II.

To finish off the morning I introduced Katie and Ben to a bit of physics, thanks to the "by other means" blog. Ben was completely hooked! Katie said she wasn't hooked but couldn't seem to be dragged away from it! I think she was quietly chuffed to have completed level 4 way before Ben!

Finally, both children had a browse through the Brownie badges to see which one(s) they'd like to start with. Naturally Katie's chose the horse riding badge as well the friend to animals. Ben's starting with the designer badge and has started designing his ideal bedroom using the free 3D room designer software I recently blogged about.

After lunch Katie and Ben helped me with some gardening. I've got a basket full of veggies - five small cabbages (un-munched by caterpillars), loads of chillies, the remainder of the dwarf beans and a green pepper. Have stacks of dwarf beans ready for seeds next year! We also discoverd our "butter bean" plants had produced some amazining beans which look like mangetout. Now, not sure if butter beans come from big mangetout looking pods, of if these actually are mangetout. Any ideas?

A full day - I'm happy. P's away tonight, hence the reason I'm blogging at nearly midnight!

Have also had a chance to find some new graphics; here's one of them:
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Sunday, September 14, 2008

Heritage Open Day

As part of the Heritage Open Days in Lincolnshire we went along for a tour of Sutton Bridge as it can so often hold us up on route to wherever! It is a swing bridge across the River Nene just before it reaches estuary of The Wash and is used for tall mast ships and large tankers which often moor at the docks. The tour, which was really informative, although a little mind boggling with all the ins and outs of it's workings, was interesting and we got to go right up into the main room to witness the fews over the Fens towards Hunstanton, Kings Lynn and Wisbech. The bridge is now powered by oil but used to be powered by water so we were invited to visit the old water pumping station, part of which has now been turned into a domestic house! Being Grade II* listed, the old pumping station has been really well looked after. A lovely afternoon out, and what with the warmth of the sun finally beating down on us, a cardigan and raincoat free afternoon too!

The chaps in charge demonstrated a scaled down working replica of the swing bridge, made completely from Meccano (it took 18 months to build) to give us a close up view of how the bridge operates. At the end of the tour, the traffic was stopped in order for us to view the actually bridge opening, watching the various hydraulic jacks move into postion to support the bridge in opened and then closed positions, and see the cogs and wheels move the bridge round.

This evening, Ben made his own swinging Sutton Bridge from Lego, and later a large floating barge to complete the scene.
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Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Burghley, batik, combines and climbing kitten!

The highlight of Katie's year - visit to Burghley Horse Trials, Stamford. We are very lucky, for the past few years P has been a steward (usually on Saturday) and so we've had the privilege of free entry to any of the four days (Thurs - Sun). When we lived much closer we'd usually take great advantage of this, much to Ben's annoyance - he certainly used to get his fill of horses! Our usual luck with lovely weather was not so this year. At least it wasn't as wet as forecast, but the mud was unbelievable, especially around the trade tents, it came way past your ankles in places! Kids and P loved it, as did most of the other children there, and most adults didn't seem to mind (I guess perhaps they are used to it, being, maybe from farming/horse backgrounds?!). Katie wore my wellies (hers had a large gash on the foot), and I wore my trusty walking boots which were caked, as were my jeans (as I fell over, to Katie and Ben's delight) in the squelchy stuff. They've polished up well, as they always do; I love those boots. So, very slippy, wet, muddy cross-country course, which naturally got worse as the day went on, so quite a few tumbles from horse and rider (no major ones, thankfully), and we did get to see Zara Phillips, William Fox-Pitt, plus other names that I'm sure Katie could real off.
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Trust me, they were muddy!

Have been experimenting with batik, but not with batik wax - that's next on the list! Got a book out from the library (see side panel) and read up all about it. Actually batik doesn't have to be with wax, there are many ways to make the resist - rice starch, clay, flour paste etc. and different countries seem to favour different ways. We used drips of wax from a candle on white cotton (from an old blind) and then dyed it all in a diluted natural dye of turmeric.
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We also made a simple flour and water paste to paint a small picture/pattern onto thin card and then, when it was dry, paint over the card. When the paint was completely dry we used a scraper (from a Copperfoil art pack) to scratch off the resist to reveal the picture/pattern. Looked lovely, and the scratching was quite therapeutic. We finished off with some crayon patterns/paint; although probably not really batik, they did look nice.

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Oops, just noticed that Ben's fish (at the bottom) are upside down.

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Have been watching the big machines collecting the wheat in the field next to the house. The dust!
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Pepper is doing fine. Very bold all of a sudden ... in fact my Mum warned me about this ...
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he was trying to catch a moth inside the rice paper lantern, and yes, he slid down and tore it.
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A reminder for me - what we hope to do this term!!!

Finish "Our World" lapbook - nearly there, just need to look at continents now.

Music appreciation
Sketch Tuesday + other art
Maths
Handwriting
Latin (including the Romans) ... all on a weekly basis

Cooking ... hopefully weekly!

Work towards "Brownie" badges. There are so many badges out there for the children to develop an interest in so many subjects plus to encourage them to learn a bit more about themselves, their environment, behaviour and understanding of others.

Finally conquer the RSPB Action Awards. Katie and Ben could easily work towards the Bronze and Silver badges, but we've been a bit lazy (first piece of work was dated 2006) so I think we need to start again and really concentrate on it this time!

Katie's art classes - fortnightly

We'll throw in some social too with the HE group sessions!

Stop at the end of November(ish) and really enjoy the run up to Christmas. We have some fun ideas for pressies so will need the month to do all that.

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Monday, September 01, 2008

Welcome Pepper puss

Isn't he just adorable?
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Pepper the day we got him, just 9 weeks and 1 day old.

We knew we'd get a new cat at some point to replace darling Jasper and Katie had been pleading for a kitten since we moved here! Our neighbour's cat regularly has kittens and kindly he offered Katie one of them which we were very excited about. Unfortunately, the kittens didn't seem to materialise for one reason or another. By chance I had a look at the local paper's website and saw the RSPCA were over-run with kittens so we decided to give them a call. Again, disappointment as it turned out one of the kittens had died of some rare, contagious disease which didn't look good for the rest of the bunch. The RSPCA passed on details of a friend who had three 9 week old black beauties needing homes and that's when we came across Pepper.
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We could have taken all three! They were so lovely, each as cute as the next. One, the female, was very shy, the two males much more dominant. We chose the one that kept crawling under cupboards and chasing bits and pieces around the kitchen! He's settled in extremely easily and is loving all the attention from us and our visitors. He needs to learn some social skills though! Using his new found claws to climb up people's legs, hanging on my hips to watch me wash up, pouncing on Allie's back or swiping at Kan's (the visiting cat) tail and paws when he's catching a nap. Kan is very good actually and just looks at Pepper with distain. Allie takes a "gently" swipe to show Pepper who's boss!
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Mad eyed kitten (or is it just determination?) climbing up my leg!

Love him. Just don't want him to get any bigger!
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11 weeks and looking bigger already!

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Only pets missing in this pic, our Allie and visiting Kan. The animal population has grown quite a bit since our move to the country! Pepper is so tiny and light, even next to Billy the Netherland Dwarf rabbit.

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Where has August gone?

August has been mad. Every weekend full, lots going on etc., etc. and no "me" time to blog fully.

To tell you the truth I still haven't really got my blog hat on. We're all feeling a little down, having lost our good friends to Scotland at the end of last week. I feel particularly sorry for Katie who, due to our house move last year, she doesn't have as much contact with one friend, then another moved West, and now her final good friend (in her group of three) has moved North! Ben has lost two friends from the same families. Ho hum, we need to get out and track down new HE children (preferrable horse mad ones).

Said family moving to Scotland stayed with us for their final week in Lincolnshire! Parents and eldest in our tents and the other two children sleeping in with Katie and Ben. It was a fun, happy, busy time, people coming and going, lots of laughter, lots of playing and it seems very quiet this week without them. You shall be missed!

Anyway, sadness pushed aside. Other things we've been up to:

We've enjoyed summer BBQs, a christening get together and friends visiting.

Katie and Ben finished participating in the free Pets at Home sessions on small pets, fish and wildlife and received their certificates and a host of stickers plus learnt lots of new things, especially about fish (such as they enjoy frozen peas and de-seeded cucumber!).

A proud moment when Ben decided he take part, by himself, in a tennis activity morning run by the local council. He was very confident about the whole thing until the actual morning, but 1/2 hour of tears and tantrums upon waking and then he was fine, staying the whole morning and making friends very quickly. Katie went along with her friends to a rock climbing/lazer archery day run by the same people, and she came away with a certificate for the climbing. All three of us participated in a t-shirt/bag/hat decorating afternoon, again council run, which was enjoyable and we ended up with our photo in the local paper!

Katie completed three tests at the riding stables. One for points of the horse, for which she received a badge, and two ABRS (stages A & B) for which certificates are on their way.
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We met up with my sister and her family at IWM Duxford for a brilliant day out. Weather was just right so we were able to picnic for lunch and wander at our own pace between the various hangars. Been lots of times before and it's always a favourite venue for us, but each time it seems just as interesting. This time there were lots of new interactive exhibitions to learn all about flight which kept the children, and adults, amused for quite a while. Saw our favourite planes - Harrier, Vulcan, B52, Lancaster among others and watched a Hurricane do several fly pasts during the day.
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What makes a helicopter stay off the ground? Visit Duxford to find out!!
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Land Warfare hangar with some excellent real life displays.

My next post is all about our new arrival, another fab thing that happened in August!
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