Week ending 20th October 2006

Started the week recapping the Battle of Hastings, which we'd talked about last Friday. We decided to finish off the collage that had been started by the group at Friday's session and we added more boats, knights, horse backed riders, King William's throne and Harold with the arrow in his eye (although actually, according to all the "blurb" the tapestry shows Harold falling with an axe close to him, not an arrow!). K wrote names above the key people and the Latin above poor Harold which read "hic Harold Rex interfectus est" which means "here King Harold has been killed".

K and B have also started looking at Egypt for our "around the world" lapbook and, after reading a little about the pyramids, they drew one for their little Egypt envelopes. Later in the week we looked at the wonderfully colourful hieroglyphics and used the Snaith school site to write out names, decode names of Pharaohs and use an Egyptian hieroglyphic alphabet to write a simple sentence. They both produced some lovely work, very carefully drawn pictures and beautifully displayed end results. During lunch times we've been listening to the Horrible History freebie CD which came with last Sunday's Telegraph - all about Eygpt. It's brilliant with weird sounds and short stories to keep the listener interested. B keeps asking to hear it all again and has quoted from it at times so obviously this style of learning works for him.

On Tuesday evening, like many others, I added our day to the history matters 17th October blog. Typically I'd decided to make this day a free-for-all as the children had both asked to do things at breakfast time that I hadn't planned and I thought I'd let them work on their own for once! It was only after reading a couple of blogs on the ring that I realised it was the "great blogging day", but it turned out we'd done quite a bit once I started writing. B decided to finish off his birthday present solar mobile. He painted all the remaining planets, added the glow in the dark paint, and helped measure it all out correctly for hanging. He took a lot of care with the painting and the finished result was lovely. K was excited because she'd finally received information on the forthcoming Utterly Horses Live Show (it's next week). She'd been waiting and waiting for the details and finally they'd been posted on the internet so she set to with sorting and labelling and all the stuff she needed to do with her models! Surprisingly the kids spent most of the day on their chosen activities with little breaks in their work filled with other things like listening to more of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" while they drew the next section of the storyboards and playing with Lego, Duplo and Hama beads, etc., etc. It was a lovely calm day all round (perhaps I should introduce more days like this).

B's finished solar mobile that glows in the dark!

Lots of drawing has been going on as usual in the home. K with her horses, she's drawing stories too now, like comics I guess, and B with a new style grafetti drawing which is quite striking. He's done a Light Saber one in this new style for his project.

Went swimming on Thursday afternoon - we haven't been since the summer holidays and it took K and B a short while to regain their water confidence. Soon K was swimming widths unaided and she eventually swam a length of the baby pool - a great moment for her and me! She's also getting more confident at swimming very short amounts underwater. B is ducking under water all the time now and is trying hard to swim without arm bands. He does well with aids swimming on his front and back. We've decided, as they love swimming so much, and it really wears them out (B was too tired to eat in the evening and asked to go to bed), that we'd make the effort to go each week.

Today was our last group session at the first of our new venues. We've signed contracts for the other venue to start after half term. Today we did harvest and national fruit day with soup and bread making, fruit salad, topical colouring and 3D craft fruits, vegetable printing and paper basket weaving. We'd been preparing for this last one during the week, covering a cereal packet with sparkly wrapping paper and cutting it into 8 lengths of 2 cm x 30cm and 4 lengths of 2cm x 40cm. It really helped B with his cutting (as he's left handed) and he kept asking to do more and more. Today one of the ladies showed us how to do simple weaving with our strips to produce these lovely small baskets. K worked on hers by herself and I helped B a little with the weaving in and out (it takes some concentration!). K wants to make more - they'd certainly make lovely little gifts.

K and B's paper woven baskets

B had a spurt of question asking this evening at tea time. He was firing them off left, right and centre! Spurred on when eating the left over fruit salad from the morning's session, he asked what fruit was made of, how seeds know when and how to burst open under the ground, why humans and seeds need sun, how are seeds formed. I think I helped solve all his queries, but wow - all this at once (at the end of the day too!).