I love watching little hands at work...

Today the boys have been making some valentines presents.

I saw this while reading blogs and having my wake-up cuppa. How simple and lovely!

(Though I can't remember now where I saw this - sorry for not giving credit where it is due).

Mummy stitched the heart shape, and little boys were asked to stitch a pretty pattern on the inside.

Ta-da!

I also saw this little activity over on Mindfull Momma's blog.

Again such a simple activity.

We talked lots about the different people we love and talked at some length about the ways we can show people we love them.

The boys then told me lots of ways to oshow people we love them.

I particularly like Moo's suggestion:

We can show people we love them by washing-up for them!

Heeheehee...

And Moo also decided that he was going to make himself a hat.

Very nice :)

Seed Pictures

Once again I've had a bit of a blogging lapse. I wanted to get some photo's of the finished product before I wrote this post but I just kept forgetting. So here it is anyway!

This kept the boys attention for an astonishingly long time, all things considers.

I gave them lots of different seeds (note to anybody wanting to give this a go: some seeds all look exactly the same. E.g radish, brocolli, cabbage - anything in the brassica family) glue and the outline of the word 'spring' to work with.

Great as an early literacy activity, sensory activity or just the oppurtunity to have a chat about what is going to happen to all those little seeds in the spring.

This is one area that Lamb is ready to go further with. He is generally behind where the 'normal' child should be, but his knowledge of plant processes is one of his strong points. That's my boy!

Moo is now ready to start learning the basics, but we'll approach that when the weather gets a bit warmer and things are actually growing.

(And yes, those are PJ's you can spy there).

Last week we also started focusing on money.

Which meant a lot of playing shop.

This is the face of someone who has had to let their brother take a turn at being cashier! :-)

Now when I figure how to get photos from my phone to the computer I'll be able to catch up with some of the other stuff we've been getting up to as well.

We've just started Lamb's requested topic on planes - should be a ball!

Catching up

It's been a busy old week... but I'm not sure what we've done with it!

There's been a dentist visit and the last soft play session of the year, and there has been these delicious scones!

The boys have made family members some chocolates (for the intended recipients of said chocolates who are reading, fear not! I made sure that tiny fingers were very clean!) A good opportunity to talk about early science concepts of liquid and solid etc. We used the free net printables from SEN Teacher to make pretty boxes for the chocolates to go into...

For our numeracy this week we looked at 2D and 3D while making these sparkly little Christmas trees. 2D shapes... snip-snip... ta-da! 3D objects! I'm not sure how much of this went in though as they were both so desperate to get their hands on the tinsel :)

... and we made some crackers, just because.

We also did a little bit of work on Claude Monet, but that will have to wait for another post as we're out of time to set off for our play date with Lamb's Best Bud 1.

Solstice stables

It was quite gratifying over the weekend, to have Moo beg to do more sounds and letters practise!

The alphablocks books, while very basic, seem to be doing an excellent job.

Lamb's favourite thing of the moment is playing with these blocks. I've been using it as a sneaky way to slip in a bit of numeracy. We've been looking at estimating and more or less. Here Lamb discovered that he is 79 blocks tall (thanks daddy for the picture!)

Now although we are supposed to have started our unit on electricity and power sources, Lamb's concentration and focus are all over the place, so we've done very little topic work at all. Even the Christmas crafts we have been doing have proved difficult to hold his attention.

This is Moo's 'solstice stable'... Lamb's doesn't have a roof because it was so difficult to keep him on-task. This was a nice craft activity to test Moo's knowledge of shapes. It led on from the 'festivals of light' banner we made last week. After reminding the boys about the different festivals of light at this time of year we spoke a little more about what is actually going on with the sun at the winter solstice. I find information sticks so much better if we incorporate lots of actions and clapping! After reading some stories about the Nativity we made these solstice stables ~ and yes, it is supposed to be the sun rather than a star hanging inside the stable! We used silver birch twigs to make the stable. Not only are they in plentiful supply they are also nice and pliable. If you fancy making these with young children you'll probably find that you need to secure the joins yourself after the kids have finished :)

Poppy seed pictures and hairy models

Yesterday poppies were the subject of our crafts once again. It is clear to me (and thankfully also to the new paediatrician who actually listens) that Lamb has quite a few sensory integration issues. Unfortunately the Occupational Therapists are so overstretched that they are taken on only the most extreme cases with most children not getting any help. This is the situation we, and many other families in the area, find ourselves in. Sensory integration is a broad subject and I know only a little, but I've been trying to provide controlled circumstances for Lamb to work on some of his sensory issues.

This is one such activity and it went surprisingly well.

The boys used glue to create a picture of a poppy. The glue had a tiny splodge of red paint in to help them see where they were putting the glue. They then had a whale of a time shaking and sprinkling poppy seeds all over their pictures and Lamb didn't mind touching the poppy seeds one bit. Result!

Later, when the pictures were dry, the boys used the textured pictures to make prints with lots of bright red paint.

Other fun for the day included the making of a hair model (from Easy Make and Do Projects: Human Body). This activity was more aimed at working on scissor and paper folding skills than learning about hair.

Moo is getting much better at controlling the scissors, and Lamb is improving his control when trying to fold to a specific line on the paper. Lamb enjoyed giving his hair a cut more than anything :)

We also made some posters about digestion for our body topic and spent some more time with Nina and her neurons learning about digestion. Both kids grasp the basic concept of why we eat and where our food goes, if not all of the finer details, which for their ages and stages is plenty enough!

Sewing poppies

Now I'm not great at taking photo's but I'm sure you get the idea!

Yesterday we used some Binkamat sheets (which are fantastic by the way!) to sew some simple lines onto our poppies and talked about why we buy poppies in November. The poppy you can see in the picture is Moo's - not bad for 3 years old I think :) He was really getting the hang of it, but decided to call it a day half way round the second line I had drawn on to the poppy for him.

We also watched some programs about our skin and the boys drew pictures of what they had learnt. In Lamb's own words: Skin helps me. Keeps out water and germs. Holds in belly, food and heart.

Heehee, I just love that last sentance!

And here are the stained-glass autumn leaves we made the other day.

Making ears, patterns and tea-light holders!

We kicked the day off making some autumn leaves stained glass style (pictures tomorrow once the enormous quantities of glue have dried!) and rounded off the morning making these tea light holders with washed out Nutella jars and sparkly confetti. The photo's don't really do the finished product justice ~ they really are rather pretty!

Daddy B. had the afternoon at home and Lamb insisted that he do their 'ears' activity with them. So it was that Daddy B found himself cutting and sticking together model ears with the boys (found in Easy Make and Do Projects: Human body). I think he rather enjoyed being part of the home-ed process :)

... and here is a little bit of maths for the day! We decided to have a little look at patterns with the bricks. This was a spontaneous activity dreamed up by Lamb who did very well with it.