Our week

Our week started with a social Monday, having friends at our home from 10.30 until 9.30! All got on fabulously, as usual, and with good weather, the children spent alot of time outside on the trampoline, doing horse jump courses or pretend lightsaber fighting. At one point I vexed my muscles to do wheelbarrow rides around the garden - won't do that again in a hurry, not used to the excerise!

Tried to get back to normals from Tuesday onwards but have decided to try a new tactic (which means I need to get away from the fear that they aren't learning unless "doing work"). I've decided that we should do our normal routine unless the children have started their own learning by pursuing their own interests before our "school" morning has begun. In the past I've usually broken up their own spontaneous "play" in the mornings in order to keep to some routine, letting them continue with it in the afternoons. Invariably this doesn't happen, the time has past and so has the enthusiasm. So on Friday, when Ben discovered his paper plane calendar (365 paper planes) and started making them like a man possessed, I left him to it. Katie was busy making horse tack and painting model horses so I left her to that too, and eventually she joined in the paper plane making. We looked up the history of origami and later we also tried some tangrams - so all pretty educational.

Tuesday seemed to be full on with our learning. Having finished these maths sheets, we have moved on to getting to grips with our times tables following this maths website . It seems quite good so far (only up to the 5s which Katie knows already but Ben still has to use his fingers to remember them). Next is the 9s, which neither of them know. After this, we started our new topic, "Our World", using the Horrible Geography book and The Usborne Geography Encyclopedia - both from the library and both shown on my side bar, and various websites like this one which we also used for our myths and legends and found to be very good. We made a cross-section of the Earth using various crafty materials and wrote some info about each section - crust, mantle, outer and inner core. We also made an edible cross-section of the Earth, which didn't look anything like what it was supposed to look like but it tasted fab!

Trust me, this is the Earth!

Wednesday was spent doing our St. George play/film which is in the post below and Thursday Katie had a very comprehensive assessment at a local(ish) riding school that's been recommended to us. We all love the riding school she currently goes to in Peterborough, but our HE group schedule has changed this term and we shall in P'boro on a different day to normal which will be difficult for her riding. Also, this new place, not only being much cheaper, also runs a 2 1/2 hour stable club on a Saturday morning with training and exams, something she's longing to do. A couple of children from the village go too so she'll also get to know them better.

Weather this weekend was mostly brilliant. Lots of outdoor stuff! More trampolining (would love to post up a rather unflattering pic of P, but I'm just too nice), the swing ball has been dusted down and Billy the rabbit has spent longer than a couple of hours outdoors enjoying the warmth. Even managed an hour of reading in the deckchair this morning. Have now planted up the last of the onions, Katie's two butter bean plants and have dug over the rest of the plot ready for corn on the cob and runners. Garlic's looking great - won't be long now! After all this, I decided to start a mini-Spring clean of the house. Amazing what nice weather can do!

Ben did some wood sculpting.