The rest of our week

B and K finished off their mini country studies, based on the countries England played against in the World Cup. They are both fascinated by flags, especially B, and enjoyed hunting down each country flag as well as the correct capital city and also the time difference. K took some time to browse through our Children's Visual World Atlas, which is full of lovely pictures and interesting facts. She chose a snippet of information for each of the countries. K also took it upon herself to find Rothersthorpe (near Northampton) on the road atlas and work out the easiest journey from our home to get there (this is for a forthcoming model horse show, she's very excited). B then showed an interest in the different coloured road lines on the map, so we discussed those and also looked for places we knew and the road numbers that would be needed to reach them.

Continuing with our Tudor theme, and after "celebrating" Henry VIII's birthday on the 28th June with the children drawing clocks showing how he may have spent his day (with lots of jousting, hunting, eating, dancing, etc., and going to mass of course), we decided to do a day of the poorer Tudor person. This proved far more boring for them with lots of hard work, church and a quick drop of ale before bed! We've also moved on from Katharine of Aragon to Anne Boleyn reading about her, comparing her to the first queen, Katharine, and drawing her picture for the Tudor mobile they are making.

Today we celebrated the Japanese festival of Tanabata (Star Festival), read all about it here. We all made up short poems with our wishes and stuck them on a bamboo stick and placed it in the front garden for passers by to read if they wished.

K and B have been learning more fraction skills by playing this fun "make a pizza" game. It's very good as sometimes the pizza order uses easy fractions and other times you have to think before finishing the order. There's an ice cream one too which uses different fraction skills.

Although we had plenty of showers this afternoon, we met up with three other families for a play and chin-wag in the local park. Then K had her riding lesson and B and I mucked around and recapped on some maths in the car while we waited.