w/e 21st April 2006

B has once again discovered the keyboard in his bedroom and has been tinkering on it. P showed him how to do a scale using the correct fingers and B has been practising quite a bit. By the end of the week he was able to confidently do a run of scales using his left hand only, keeping beat and recording his tunes. K had a go but still doesn't show any interest in actually learning the fingering! She does make some good sounds on it though.

We discovered a new website to produce little dolls (in fact there are lots of them out there) and this has sparked a new interest for K. You can either dress a doll by clicking a dragging clothes, hair and accessories onto a body, or you can save a body and use a graphics/photo package to draw on clothes and body bits (!) which is what K likes to do. She's done several and has given them names.

B has been playing a game called "Speedy Eggbert" which he found on a disk at his Grandma's house and was able to find a website with the same game (we've put it up as our website of the week). At first I thought it was just another PC game, but in fact it's quite educational as you have to build your own game first before playing it. He's really into this now, and has also started building an Eggbert game in his room using blocks and marble run pieces with red pipecleaners (bombs), silver foil (water) and orange paper (lava). We hardboiled an egg and stuck yellow pipecleaners to it + a face to become Eggbert, but he began to smell after a while, so we've made a new one out of craft materials.



K is finishing off her Easter project (horses from around the world) which is very neat and full of information. She continues to enjoy her lessons at the riding school and is gaining confidence when cantering and is doing mini jumps now as well.

We made some lovely pictures using shavings of wax crayons on greaseproof paper then used an iron to melt the shavings to produce vibrant coloured melted wax pictures. We've also discovered, thanks to an interesting Tudor HE session on Friday, that you can melt wax crayons to produce candles. K did this and the candle is lovely (and it burns too). They also made symmetrical Tudor gardens using something called "magic maize" and produced their own butter. This was the most interesting and popular activity of the morning! You pour a small amount of double cream into a container with a tight lid, and then shake until the cream turns to butter. It tasted lovely spread on fresh crusty bread.



Have a good week.