Hansel and Gretel

For our Christmas notebook this week we're looking at the fairtale of Hansel & Gretel. Found a lovely version to read to Katie and Ben on this website featuring Grimm's tales, but then found this Rik Mayall vid here - he read it 200% better than me, so much so that Ben wanted to watch it again!

We found some useful worksheets and pictures here; Ben chose to print out the ginger bread house with all it's fiddly bits and bobs so he could decorate it. I've asked the children to produce character boards for Hansel, Gretel, the witch and the house by the end of the week. Katie's made a start on Hansel and Gretel and so far they look very imaginative. We did this a year or so ago about fairies, and I was really pleased with the thought and effort put in to it.

Today we started making a gingerbread house using a recipe from the Daily Mail magazine that had huge amounts of ingredients - 1kg of flour, 450g honey, 350g sugar! Quite amazed to see there's no actual ginger in the recipe, just 8 teaspoons of mixed spice as well as almonds and hazelnuts. Sounds yum though. We've ended up with enough dough to make two houses. It's now sitting in the fridge waiting to be rolled and cut into shape tomorrow.

Making crystals and all about snow crystals

So, we're progressing with our Christmas notebook looking this week at snow crystals using this fabulous website. Ben cut snowflakes out of paper and both have used the virtual snowflake maker to produce some very pretty and original designs.

We also made a couple of crystal stars which look beautiful, very sparkly, using a solution of Borax (by far the best substance, in my opinion, for producing excellent crystals every time).

Quick and fun science

Katie and Ben have worked really hard to finish their "our world" lapbooks, and they look brilliant - full of info. Have decided to take a couple of weeks break before December starts, then we'll do our Christmas Notebook plus all the other exciting things relating to the run up to 25th.

I'm going to paint our bedroom during the break (as well as find all the stuff needed for the Notebook) and so far the children have found things to busy themselves. Katie's been making some whittling and woodwork as well as making lots of new headcollars and tack for her model horses (she's just sold a bridle through one of her horse forums). Ben started a magazine called "The Monthly Spark", something he began with his cousin when we were watching fireworks. He's now started a "Monthly Spark" blog which is looking good. He's also been doing lots of lego as well as helping me work out various everyday maths problems associated with painting a room!

We've re-signed up to the Krampf Experiments weekly email - did this when we first started HEing, but it seemed to die out after a while. Anyway, this week was about triboluminescence - sparks caused by electrons jumping from a negative area to a positive area when, in this case, sticky tape it pulled very quickly from the tape roll. We also managed fabulous triboluminescence by sharply breaking sugar cubes in two using plyers - lovely blue/green mini flashes happen each time. The tape experiment was OK, but produced a dull yellow blob of light! Good fun - especially being shut in the understairs cupboard with two other bodies in complete darkness! Spooky!

Art, Latin and other bits and bobs

Children are busy somewhere (Ben's doing Lego and Katie's making a house for her horse riding dolls). We seem to be ticking along nicely at the moment with few arguments (over work anyway) and therefore lots of interesting things have been studied autonomously as well as planned.

We are still all working from the KS3 maths book as well as doing mental arthimetic each week. Still seems easy (probably too easy, as Katie and Ben keep asking more questions than they need to just to triple check they've got it!). Also got a KS3 English book out of the library, again for Ben and Katie to tackle and again amazed how it's just recapping on everything they've (or KS1/2) have learnt. Perhaps we should move on to harder things (gulp).

We designed and wrote, in Latin, either a birthday card or invitation, decorating the work with Roman style mosiacs etc. Then we moved on to reading about the Roman army. Ben printed out and made up this Roman soldier and Katie made the peg doll Centurion before writing about their clothing and weapons. I'm getting more and more impressed with Ben's writing (or typing in this case); very descriptive and informative. How he's come along since he's reached 9.



We emailed our drawings of apples to Sketch Tuesday, although I wasn't able to finish mine. I initially thought that apple drawing would be a doddle, but it took me a long time (between interruptions) to get it finished, all those different colours just on a red apple - it really makes you observe things more closely. For this week we are supposed to sketch our State bird. As England doesn't even have a national bird, we decided to draw birds that we have seen locally (although I don't recall seeing a Kingfisher!). With encouragement, Ben really observed the photo of the Kingfisher he was drawing, and I thought his, and Katie's lovely pheasant, were really very good (pretty pleased with my half finished Barn Owl too actually).


Thought I'd just throw in these up-to-date sketches of horses by Katie. She's drawing lots at the moment and her art is coming along beautifully.

While we drew we listened to some classical music. Using Classics for Kids we chose Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, Vivaldi's Four Seasons and Handel's Water Music.

Not sure how and why it started, but Ben has been going on about the Isle of Man for some time so we finally got around to looking it up (pitifully I didn't know where it was, mainly because it wasn't on our map!). Through Wikipedia we learnt lots about the culture, currency, language and the triskelion and meaning behind the motto "It will stand wherever you throw it". Went on to read about the darling Manx cats and then on to the Bee Gees (who live there) and naturally that lead to You Tube and various Bee Gee greats!

Finally, pic of mini Pepper sandwiched between "big Al" and "medium sized cat" (as we feel Pepper calls them) aka Allie and visiting cat Kan. They are his playmates and are very tolerant of his pouncing on them whenever they come indoors.


and a close up.


He's venturing outside more and more now, darting back indoors whenever next door's dog begins to bark! His pastimes are chasing the chickens (they've stopped laying now, probably because of this), catching flies, bugs, moths and the occasional hardy butterfly, running after thrown sticks and cones, eating leftover food put out for the chickens and pouncing on people as they walk past (usually from behind a big towel that hangs on the radiator if indoors, or from behind the car or logs etc., if outside!).

Some interesting links

Thought I'd pass these on:

Resources 4 home-education is jammed packed with links and ideas.

HE-Resources is another site with lots of interesting stuff.

Bowland Maths KS3 DVD-Rom came across this link in a recent TES and initally thought I wouldn't have much luck obtaining the free DVD-Rom of KS3 maths games as we aren't a school (in England only, sorry not Wales, N. Ireland or Scotland). Reading the FAQs I thought I'd try my luck (as non LEA schools were able to apply too). The link is for the order form and you can access more information from this page too. I put "0" in all sections asking about LA and then added that I was a home educator teaching a KS3 child etc,. etc., in the "special delivery instructions" section. Got our DVD-Rom this morning and Ben has been testing it out.

Potato Council register to get two varieties of seed potato early next year ready for planting to experience home grown spuds.

National Schools Film Week for free film viewings is next week. You probably have heard about this already. We're hoping to get tickets for the recent Narnia feel at our "local" cinema.

City Creator anything along these lines always goes down well with my two. Designing your own city etc. Good fun.

"Autumn mists and mellow fruitfulness"

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.

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.


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!

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.

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.

Cleaning, entertaining and outings

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!

My house - no, only kidding!

Gardens were lovely. Ben, as always, was drawn to the water. Very peaceful.

You can imagine the smell of apples, it was wonderful.

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.

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: