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...

Sort of getting back into the swing of things again...

The new time-table has been amended and reduced.

Handwriting has been moved to the end of the day, and while it still hasn't gone down without a bit of complaining it does seem to be less stressful for all concerned this way around.

Yay!

Lamb has now started using a work book rather than wide ruled, custom made printouts.

This transition was always going to present him with a bit of a challenge, and I'm happy to say that he's doing rather well at writing smaller than his normal bold print.

The pond is starting to take shape. Incidentally, who would have thought a pond would be quite so troublesome to make?

Granted, it doesn't yet look very pond-y, but we will get there!

Yum...

'Decorating' (slightly burnt) blueberry muffins.

We sneaked in a little bit of numeracy here and took turns estimating how many blueberries were in a packet.

...And then the boys swept up all the spilt flour :)

Uncle Kenny came to visit at the weekend bearing gifts (Thankyou Uncle Kenny!) and we've been spending LOTS of time reading 'Hairy McLairy' and 'Little Red Train' books.

We've even squeezed in quite a few of the Alphablocks books that Santa bought for Christmas and Moo is doing a brilliant job of learning the alphabet sounds.

In other news, there's been plenty of bouncing and catching and wiggling and jiggling...

Malteser maths, amongst other things

I have been a very slack blogger of late, but promise to do better!

We only started back with the whole 'school' thing this week, and we've started off with a new, structured timetable. Going with the flow was working nicely for Moo (and myself!) but Lamb was not faring so well and it was evidenced in his behaviour. So we have a new timetable - to stick to! - and I'm hoping these very clear boundaries will help Lamb get himself back on track.

To lure the boys back into numeracy they've been practising adding, subtracting and, probably most important to their eyes, sharing/dividing the maltesers... and happily consuming the maltesers too.

Since Lamb is now rather adverse to having his photograph taken it seems he's going to be an infrequent face on the blog, but Moo is more than happy to be snapped. During his 'choosing time' (also structured into the day) he wanted to do some cutting with the scissors (normally this equals massive amounts of mess, but he also tidied up behind himself rather efficiently this time!).

In other news, Lamb has now re-started his regular handwriting practise. Goodness is this going to be a chore!! He does not enjoy handwriting practise, though he's improved beyond any hopes I had for him this year. Moo on the other hand loves joining in with handwriting practise and will happily trace over his name over and over again. His particular relish at the moment are the pencil control worksheets. So, make hay while the sun shines!

Aside from digging a pond (photo's to follow soon), by far the most enjoyable thing we have done this week has been to explore eons 'energy  Energy Town on the computer, and we've started talking about electrical circuits. They are both really looking forward to making some real circuits of their own with daddy this weekend :) The Eon site has been really good, looking at power sources, saving energy, circuits etc. Most definitely worth a gander if your kids are interested.