Space project!

And its FINISHED!!!!!!! Our first ever lap book project on space (which is a heck of a broad subject btw) has despite all the odds finally reached completion! It was started in earnest back in September with us emptying the library of any book remotely concerning space, we had loads!! Books on stars, constellations, planets, the sun and space-travel filled every available surface! I decided that instead of buying books on space, this time we would utilise the local library and home ed on a tighter budget…….. great idea in theory and totally do-able but I learnt that you need to be both highly organised and very selective or you just end up with a barrage of information to wade through that’s not necessarily aimed at your child’s age group. In hind site I would have bought the Usborne discovery book on space which is internet linked and a couple more age appropriate books as the information and pictures are more engaging but nevertheless we managed. So after a few experiments, dropping rubber balls onto baking trays full of flour to create craters, making volcanoes out of vinegar and bicarb, laying out the solar system (made up of tomatoes, apples, balls of blue tack) across the garden and having poor Pluto end up in the allotments only to have to turn around mid discussion and retrieve Saturn from the dog, Neptune and Uranus from the chickens and Jupiter from the shortest child and playing with cornflour and water for no other reason than it looked like fun; we decided to opt for something a little more structured. Thus I searched for Space project and came across http://www.liveandlearnpress.com/ and that’s where we got into the wonderful world of lap booking.
I have to admit that as an ex-teacher a project with stuff laid out to do really appealed to me as it has a certain element of structure to it and when I have my wibbly moments I can look at what we’ve achieved and think “Phew! Everything is fine!!” Also T has really taken to the idea and towards the end of the project was doing 3 mini books a day in an attempt to complete a spread so they could be glued in and he could look back over what he had done. (Obviously he gets that little bit of work freak from me!!!) The art work is still on the go and so far we are up to Jupiter on our planets as well as T producing an amazing painting of the solar system in poster paints which he spent ages on and, to my mind, is just stunning! That and the cover illustration and he is turning into a little Van Gogh!!!
November and December saw me throwing up for Britain and structured home ed going out the window which is why I think this project lasted so long but its really been a good way to work for our family. T seems very motivated by the style and presentation of the work, has learned loads and is immensely proud of his first complete project. We’ve been finding out the info, then he puts it into his own words, I write it out and he copies it into the book……….and funnily enough this has really helped his reading as well as his hand writing. I was discussing this with a friend and she was saying it was a Steiner method; instead of just using sight to read they use muscle memory, aural, oral AND sight to read and write out the word!!!! He up for doing 6 pages of his books straight off, less guessing more actual reading of new words and damn me if he can’t read the Sky menu when that flicks up!!!!
We also made a start on times tables with the promise of a pound per table on being able to recite it and pass a test on it. He is nearly at the end of yr 2 maths and Literacy on Ed City and is rocketing along with exercises that 6 months ago would have confused the hell out of him. What’s even more encouraging is L’s reaction to all this learnin. He is now asking to do “home ed bits” So whilst T does a mini book L expects to do colouring in on the same subject as well as counting and letters. T has taken to going through sums and letters with L when he asks a question which I LOVE!!!! So when misguided LA’s and misinformed people make comments like “Oh its alright educating one but what about when you have all three on the go at different ages?” Erm………. Well if a subject is interesting then its interesting no matter what level you are at!!!! Show me another 2 yr old that can confidently name planets because its funny and they have funny names!!!

With the apparent appearance of spring we’ve been out on the allotment a lot more recently. T now not only has his plot to do but has commandeered the boarder the other side of the fence that runs along side the car path into the plots. We didn’t want to grow veg there coz of the passing cars BUT flowers will make a great soaking up barrier! So as well as our growing army of sweetpeas (which are now in the brassica frame hardening off) we sat last night planning the boarder………never…ever ….ever say to a child “Oh you can have what ever shaped boarder you fancy” coz really? They take you literally!!! So after a little guidance on logistics and garden design we had established a theme – Space and after a bit more experimenting, drawing out, rubbing out and moving of the 5 pots which will contain the all important sweetpeas, we settled on the shape of the beds – shooting stars at either end, 2 hearts then a waxing and waning moon in the centre……………….. so not complicated at all???!!!!! Then it was colour schemes and plants. So Sunday is raid the plan the beds and raid the garden centre day for lobelia, allysum, begonias and marigolds!!! He’s got a brilliant eye for colour so I’m sure it will look fab and if it keeps the weeds down as well then I am very up for it but boy is it going to be a big plan!!

Its really fecking COLD!!!!

And why does this not seem to bother kids????? I'm standing there freezing my bits off, supervising the planting of the sweet peas we bought yesterday.....and we bought a LOT of sweet peas, 1 x multi pack which had 100 seed in + 3 packs containing 25 seeds each...... and 20 planting tubes!!! So 4 seeds went in each tube, then I battled with the shed which Dan has packed to bursting and trying to fit my Bump around the strimmer to locate more pots!!! Which T was thankfully happy to fill ...I wasn't about to - too flippin cold, then we watered them, and stuck them in the greenhouse and I'm hoping the soil won;t freeze!!! L was very happy to play in the ice and near freezing puddles in the bottom of buckets with no gloves on???? But they are all in and I just hope they grow!
T did some reading for me this morning after a bit of cajoling and a fair few threats. He tends to guess alot of the words which I'm assuming is normal, he would also rather read what he thinks is there as opposed to whats actually on the page but when he actually looks at it he does really well!! We're up to 6 pages at a time which means he actually knows what's going on in the story. We also did a mini book for our lap book on Space - its a did you know about the moon. Quit impressed with the things he's remembered. I ordered the Sam Neill "Space" series on DVD as they only last half an hour and really seem to push the right buttons. All in all, despite the fact that I am shattered and doing a very attractive waddle we seem to be getting stuff done!
Writing endless lists for T's party on Fri! A request has been put in for Doritos, apparently the normal organic crisps are getting boring!

Surreh PIA council!

The past two months have involved some serious letter writing of the "Disgusted of Surrey" kind! Despite the new guidelines issued by the DCSF ( which are actually alright - they appear to have taken on most of what the home ed community wanted) Surrey seems firmly stuck in the dark ages and hell bent on trying to push visits and monitor the quality of education being provided as opposed to just checking that an education is taking place. So in Jan a number of things happened; I got a letter yet again either requesting a visit or a report.....coz the fact they recieved one in Aug seems to have been forgotton!!! R found a job vacancy on the Surrey CC website which was so misleading and misinformed it was painful and then she got hold of Pam Berryman's response to the guideline consultation by the DfES.....exceedingly interesting reading!!! so enough is enough they need to dramatically change thier approach and now the guidelines are advocating thatwe've decided to push so the first wave of letters went off 2 weeks ago to the education bods at SCC as well as the head of the council, education select committee councillers and Jeremy Hunt our MP. We had a generic "we're looking into it" response within 4 days, which was impressive considering I am STILL waiting on acknowlegement for a letter I sent to the EbPP team in Sept 2006!!!! It even took them a month to acknowledge my emialed in Ed phil! But its seems if you go a bit further up the food chain you get more of a response. So we'll see...... Its sure to have ruffled a few feathers at least and whilst it would be lovely to think we're going to make a difference I'll not be holding my breath!

Random breakfast questions!

What I love about home ed is the spontenaity (sp) of the learning.....This morning I had my to do list all worked out, the boys chores, my chores and the home ed bits that all needed to be fitted in before home ed group along with the shopping delivery and mealtimes. So we are sitting eating breakfast and T has tha face on that generally means he's percolating a question then suddenly out it pops - "How is soil made?" Totally relevant seeing as we've spent the weekend and past week on the allotment with D rotavating, muck spreading, plot rotation etc. He's been party to conversations about weed mulching, soil acidity and what grows best in previously used areas. So although I have a vague recollection of a test tube with soil and water in it, and the words humus (not to be confused with houmous) sediment and stones I google soil and come across this fab website

www.soil-net.com Genius a cartoon badger explaining many things about soil with interactive games and good graphics! So the list gets postponed, whilst T does some learnin and Mummy gets wistful ideas about chocolate spread jars, soil samples and a magnifying glass!!

So then the playroom gets done and now we are onto times tables.....with cups and buttons and the intrigue of setting it up early has done wonders to engage interest!!! tee hee

New year New Start?

Well November and December passed me by in a whirl of nausea, vommiting and utter disbelief that I could really be that bad at early pregnancy!!!! One minute there we are getting all excited, booking our lovely midwife and laughing about where the birth pool will go since I reorganised the playroom then suddenly the only in depth conversations I seem to be having are with the toilet bowl!!! My lovely Mum had to come down to look after the kids (and me) as I limped my way towards the end of 2007 thinking what and apt ending that was to a pretty pants year! Thank goddess we worked through the summer is all I can say as Nov and Dec was sporadic at best education wise. Telly was watched, walks were had and I believe meals were eaten but its all a bit of a blur really. So imagine my surprise when I sit down with T in early Jan when I'm beginning to feel human again, despite a stinking cold, and I get out his maths workbook and he ploughs through a couple of pages in a matter of minutes???!!!! Apparently the questions were very easy! I was also amazed to see that his reading had improved as well! He sat and read me 6 pages of his new reading book straight off where as it used to be a battle for me to get him to read me two! I was explaining this strange phenomenon to a friend G at home ed group and she directed me to "Free range education" and a chapter called "Lessons from the leg break fairy" in which another Mum describes this continuation of learning despite her being bed bound due to a badly broken leg. Apparently the break just allowed T to consolidate organise the things we had been learning so when he re-encountered them after the break they seemed easier as they had stuck in his brain!!!! I have to say relief was the first emotion followed by immense proudness!

So, sofar we've been cracking away into Jan. Today we sat down with his Live and Learn Space lap book and covered the mini book of the layers of the sun. He also helped D relocate the chooks to a plush new pad in the shed. This involved screwing the rungs on a ladder for them and hammering fance posts into the ground. At this point I had to go inside as 5 yr old + mallet to me signifes a trip to A&E so away I walked and all was well! He even managed to pick up the cockrell without being savaged!

He's storming through Education city now being half way through yr 2 Maths, 3/4 of the way through yr 2 Literacy and having very nearly completed Yr 3 science. Flying through his addition and subtraction books and although its his least favourite thing to do his writing is looking very good.

We sat at the table today with L painting, T writing and me cutting up, and gluing mini books ready for the next page of the lapbook and for a brief moment peace reigned! We're back into Ballet and Gym and enjoying them, he's on about rugby and learning the guitar as well as tennis and swimming and whilst we would love him to be able to do them all and hate to start geting him to choose, the financial pot is not bottomless and with L coming up to the age where he'll start wanting to do stuff soon I think we might have to adopt a suck it and see then choose your 2 or 3 faves approach, especially with baby Mk 3 on the way!

Despite T's happiness with the current situation I still regularly get the wibbles and relish seeing the other parents at our weekly meets to share these collywobbles with. Apparently the doubts stop when the kids are in their 20's with decent jobs!!!!! so only....20ish yrs to go then!!!!!!

And its October

The Ancient Egypt project gradually drew to a close at the end of the summer although the books still piled up in the kitchen would say otherwise! Its quite a good topic to have a go at as there is so much to find out that I'm sure he will get even more from it when we do it again. Minni hatched 3 of her eggs. I was a terrible midwife and kept lifting her up to have a look! She hatched 3 tiny little black chicks and was by all accounts a fantastic first time Mum. The boys adored having them in the lounge as did we until Min did her first poo in 3 days then her presence was felt just a little bit too strongly and she and the chicks were relocated to the section under the hen house!

The summer holiday was a camping trip to the Isle of Wight. First time camping and I won't deny that I was a little nervous but we had a ball. The boys loved it. IOW is fantastic for rock pooling and the first afternoon there was spent dibbing in rock pools with the set that terribly organised home edding Mummy had bought from Sainos. It was a really good buy actually, it contained a net (which I will be very surprised if we can find next year but hey!) A Viewing tank with magnifying bits, sandpaper (we're not sure what for) and other bits and bobs for the general poking and prodding of rock pools! The viewing tank was fab and we ended up with a small collection of children oggling it. All was well until a crab started to eat one of the shrimps in the tank.....nature at its most gross and we emptied the tank back into a pool! T, L and I all had a swim in the sea and the regular swimming meant the T came on really quickly. The camping experience suited us down to the ground! We had a three day cross over with my Dad and his lot so T followed L round which drove her crazy but I'm sure she secretly loved!!!

When we got home we had a day to chill then H arrived with 3 out of the 5 kids she has so they could stay with us for 5 days whilst she had a break with her DH. Thankfully it wasn't the carnage I sort of anticipated and we had a laugh. Both T and L had another child thier age to bug/play with. Dan took the older ones off to fish for crayfish which we made into a risotto. We also went off collecting Elderberries to make cordial. The aim was to get loads this time and not give it away so it lasts us throughout the cold season. We have buckets of the stuff. Even though the summer was shit we still managed to have a fairly good crop on the allotment and the blackberries and elderberries seemed to like the crap summer so there were loads to be had.

This "terms" project is space, so after meptying the library of all the books on space they had we laid out the solare system in the back garden using a selection of fruit, marbles, blu-tac balls and a space hopper for the sun (no expense spared then in pursuit of authenticity!!) After various attempts at lay out we ended up with the sun at the back door step and the planets stretching out into the allotment. Pluto was in a good couple of metres into the allotment and when asked how what is must be like being that far away from the sun T replied "bloomin freezing!" which actually isn't a bad description! I was stuggling to find a through line with the project and did want to go a bit more structured, if only so D would have something to do with T when I was at work. After asking for ideas on an EO list I was pointed in the direction of Live and Learn press - http://www.liveandlearnpress.com/ where I bought a fab lapbook from. For those who don't know (and I didn't) a lapbook is like a scrapbooked folder with lots of mini books or fact files within it. I bought the one aimed at older kids Grades 3-5 which is a little advanced in places but we're modifying bits and T seems to be thoroughly enjoying it - along side the lap book we are creating a wall display with using different art techniques to create the planets accompanied by a mini fact file on each on. So far we have done a balled up tissue paper collage of the sun also using shredded sainsbury's bags, foil and glitter - cue many repetitions of the Mickey Smith quote from Dr Who "sit at the back with the safety scissors and gli'oh!!". Mercury has been created with sand mixed with grey paint and pva glue and Venus has given us cause to crack open the marbling inks (which smell but make for very pretty pictures) Earth is goingt o be another collage and then we are also looking at doing planets using chalk, papier mache, water colour over wax and many ways we haven;t thought of yet! We also did some scratch art . Covering a piece of paper in wax crayon then painting over it with back poster paint and using a cocktail stick to scratch out a pic. came out very well and even L enjoyed it!

Summer and things are very fertile in our household - how about you?

So July is .....wet so far but today we have had one of the first hot days in ages so T started the day by pulling some tatoes from his plot which are currently roasting in the oven to go with our - well their - Sunday roast. He got 19 Anya potatos from his plot along with one bean! an green'un. I picked aload from the rest of the plot and they are going in the pot along with some of the broc frozen a few weeks ago and some of the summer cabbage not eaten by the slugs. The slug soup currently steeping in a bucket stinks to high heaven and is collecting quite a nice posse of flies so I'm going to have to nag D to chuck it before it makes me vomit!Mmmmm dried salted slugs yum!!! I've been doing slug patrol every night at about 9ish much to the amusement of fellow allotment holders as I am usually kitted out in green wellies and little miss chatterbox pj bottoms. I'm sorry I have no shame!!! We gave Minni some eggs to sit on from G, our next allotment neighbour. They are bantam eggs and really weeny! I also stuck in some duck eggs from sainsburys to see if they do anything as there has been some talk on home ed boards of kids hatching free range duck eggs from waitrose...sadly I think they are duds - obviously they're not posh enough!!!! We had a try at egg candling but we didn't do it right - rubbish torch and sunny day - So we're having a go again tonight to see what we can see - two of the bantam eggs were definitely opaque so fingers crossed!!!

Loads of the second wave of seedlings are ready to go in - finally and the allotment really seems to be in full swing. T is very proud of his plot, seems to think that he will probably win the sunflower comp AND takes everyone that visits to look at his plot!

T's reading has been coming along really well over the past few months and last week he started playing on Study Dog again. He got half way though level two about 6 months ago but lost interest as his reading wasn't Strong enough to play some of the games but he went back to it and really went for it this time. On Tues he stayed up playing on it till 8.30 when I had to kick him off it and send him to bed (can;t complain really - if it was playstation or another "game" i would limit the time but it was vowel combinations and spelling) He is now about half way though level three and really steaming though asking if there is a Study Dog 4 so I'll have to find something else for him to play on! I tested his reading, very informal and probably not that accurate, but I wanted to put a level in my statement of Educational Provision to give to the LEA as they like levels and numbers ;-) According to this test his reading age is 6 yrs and 2 months - not 1 month or 3 months mind 2 months!!!! tee hee. He has now finished the Oxford reading Tree Songbirds Stage 4 and is now bugging me to buy stage 5! I'm going to take him to the library again next week as all this book buying is getting a little expensive! L will be able to use them too but things are a little tight at the mo so we have to be careful.

Most local libraries and the Bear Factory are running a reading program where by the child gets rewards for reading 6 books, can;t see that being a problem as he tends to do one every couple of days but we're going to join coz we like the free stuff!!!!!

Oh printed off some fab diagrams to colour in from www.enchantedlearning.com I'd forgotten all the fab print outs they do!

Oh and cornflour play.........really really flippin messy - educational but really, not planning on doing it for a good few years again!!!!

Ah well that will probably be the update for July as I seem to be very pants at keeping up with this blogging malarkey! We've probably done loads more but can;t remember!