The King of Tiny Things... and other stuff.

Some days are better than others. The last few days have been 'others'. Friday has arrived with a sigh of relief from mummy.

In the haze that has been this week, we've taken walks in the rain and splashed in puddles... enjoyed completely by Moo was Lamb was unsure whether this constituted 'fun' or not.

This week our literacy study has been 'The King of Tiny Things' by Jeanne Willis.

This is a really lovely story about two little girls learning to appreciate creepy crawlies when the King of Tiny Things befriends them.

Moo is making his own version of the story here. We normally do the routine story-sequencing, which was getting a bit boring. It was nice to do it a bit differently for a change.

The King of Tiny Things wears a neat little leafy crown.

And here is Lamb's leafy crown.

This was actually a sneaky math activity. Before the boys could get messy with the glue they first had to sort their leaves into seperate piles and use an identification sheet to find out what kind of leaves they had.

(er, I'm SURE I rotated it this time...)

Once they'd sorted the leaves into piles, next they had to record how many of each kind of leaf they had on a grid and then draw their results onto a bar graph. This one is Lamb's.

We've been doing bar graphs for a while now and Lamb seems to be fairly confident on drawing them up.

Aside from that we've been digging another pond, which was stupidly hard work; planting seeds (Chard and various courgettes) and reading LOTS of story books.

Thank goodness it's the weekend - the house looks like a tip and I'm more than ready for a day off from 'work'!

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

We just started a literacy unit on the Very Hungry Caterpillar. Moo is loving this story, and it is simple enough that he sits down with the book and reads it to himself. It's very cute to listen to! He got to this page and exclaimed: "OH mummy! I don't know what his house is called!"

We've been working on this great little maths booklet available from http://www.comunication4all.co.uk/ that uses the Hungry Caterpillar as its inspiration. The level was a little too hard for Moo because he can count fairly confidently to 10 but hasn't started linking that to written numbers yet, but he didn't want to be left out. It's perfect for kids that are working on 1 -10.

Interestingly Lamb confidently managed visual patterns where he has difficulties with the oral patterns that Moo excels at.

We'll be doing more Hungry Caterpillar stuff soon, so I'll add links as and when :)

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!

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...

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.

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 :)

Maths out of doors

Well, Tuesday wasn't a great day, so yesterday it seemed prudent to think creatively. With a lot of help the boys made various shaped dice from nets. Oh the tears from Moo when he realised he had cut the tabs off one of his dice! From the 4 shapes that they attempted (alone and with help) 2 made it into 3D.

We talk the dice and the chalks out to a quiet spot and made a rather odd version of hopscotch.

They both loved this SO much (although it seems Lamb has forgotten the number 5 exists) and we had to keep going back to it throughout the day.

Moo decided to put the chalks to good use when we finally came inside :-)

NemNem suggested we put on a Christmas play. I figured she was being funny but it led to these rather handsome 3 Kings being made yesterday to learn the song 'We 3 Kings'. We've given the chorus some simple actions and the boys are starting to remember the words.