Catch up in photographs

Here's Lamb's interpretation of Dali ;)

...and Moo's.

We've been doing LOTS of baking...

We've started a Gruffalo literacy unit. There's some great stuff on the TES website (you have to join to access it but it is free to sign up) and I had to share this funky drawing of the Gruffalo. If you know Lamb personally you'll know why this is such an awesome drawing for him! We've been doing story sequencing and focusing on describing the gruffalo.

We've also start another topic at the same time, on Planes. This is Lamb's drawing of a plane. Cockpit, wings, tail, and everything.

...and I really must get better at this whole blogging thing...

A day in the life of

The camera memory card and the computer are not friends and will NOT talk to each other.
Annoying.
So, no pictures.
Yesterday we had a nice time wiggling and jiggling. It's like a dance session for really small people, except their poor mothers are also expected to join in. Note to self in future: Do NOT where trousers that are too big and rectify the situation with a safety pin. Because I was enthusiastically (sort of) dancing around to the Funky Monkey when the safety pin pops open. Very embarrassing!!
Yesterday was also cooking day! Mmm, cheese straws...Which threw Lamb - he was getting familiar with the words found in a cake recipe. It was a major sucess, Lamb actually put his hands into the ingredients and felt them without any screaming.
We've finished up on Monet for now, and given a choice of artists both boys agreed that they'd like to look at Salvador Dali next. I think it was the crazy photo of him with the curly 'tash that did it! We started off with 'the beiruuier'. Trees...heads...trees...heads? After talking about Dali enjoying playing tricks on the eyes with his paintings Lamb decided that the picture was surely of trees, just like he thought in the first place LOL! If the camera and the computer ever make friends again, I'll post the pics.
Yesterday was also a big occassion for Moo. For the first time Moo was allowed to use a knife and help prepare vegetables for tea. He was so proud of himself! It's odd but I find myself willing to allow Moo to try things a lot younger than Lamb.

Mini Museum

Last week we went off to the museum for the mini-museum club.

The kids adore the little explorer buckets they get given to cart around.

This month we were on the trail, following various animal footprints around the museum.

Check out the cute magnifying glasses :-)

The staff that run the club are always fantastic with the boys. Once a month just isn't enough!

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!

Electricity!

We're still learning about electricity. We've been doing it now a lot longer than expected, but December was a terrible month as far as concentration and focus goes, and much of the planned electricity topic didn't even get looked at.

Grandad B. got Lamb the funky Hot Wires electricity set for Christmas and exploring it with Daddy has by far been the most enjoyable part of the electricity topic for both of them. The Hot Wires set is really good. Everything is clearly labelled with the electrical symbols, everything has it's own little compartment to make everything really easy to find, it's easy to clip together, and comes with an accessable instructions booklet with an absolute load of different circuits to build that do all sorts of great stuff.

Just look at that attention!

A busy Thursday

Snakes and ladders... this is numeracy right? ;)

Number Snap!... Definitely numeracy, yes?

This is what a winning face looks like.

... And this is what a losing face looks like!

I recorded this on the TV on a whim for the boys. Yoga for kids :)

... Yes, Moo. Sort of.

Lamb absolutely loved it and has kept asking to have it back on ever since. I'm thinking I should pick him up a yoga book from one of the charity shops that he can have a look through.

Thursday afternoon we spent outside digging, and trying to do our nature study.

Lamb was really hoping to find some earthworms, until both boys got distracted by the slug we found when we tidied up the remaining pond lining. They both decided that they'd actually quite like to find out about slugs instead.

They both drew pictures of the slug, but I don't think they quite got the idea of the nature study... Both of them coloured the slug in bright blue for some reason!

A slow day, shuffled around other appointments etc...

Some cutting and sticking maths activities that went down rather well.

Oh, and erm... we watched Toy Story as well.

Does that count as educational?

We've been continuing to look at Claude Monet's paintings.

These are the boys' versions of Monet's famous bridge painting.

Above is Lamb's picture, and below is Moo's.

Inbetween the educational stuff the boys generally battered each other and chased each other around the house giggling.

It's still taking us a little while to get back into the swing of things, and I'm still trying to work out what is working and what is not... Hmmm...