Some days...

... are not for schooling of any variety. Yesterday the boys had been up around 15 minutes before it was clear that it simply was not going to be a day for any kind of focused activity. There were lots of tears yesterday, lots of the boys shouting at each other, and generally just lots of stress. It seemed prudent to cancel any notions I had of a day of numbers. Instead we spent time in the garden. The garden is always our saviour at moments like this. There is something quite satisfying about getting wrapped up warm to go play outside during the cold months.
  The boys entertained themselves making patterns in the freshly dug soil, and devised a role play game revolving around their imaginary train station... and of course they did lots of digging, this time they were apparently building ponds. We plan to make a pond for the spring so this is lodged in their heads at the moment!
  One very good thing to come out of yesterday is that I did get to to speak to the paediatrician and all of his chromosomal analysis' have come back clear and I have arranged an appointment for Lamb to go in and have a check up. The biggest concern recently was that Lamb's medication doesn't seem to be having any impact any longer. For the weight he has put on it would seem that his dosage should be doubled, so it's not really surprising that the medication isn't helping Lamb all that much. Once Lamb has his check up in a few weeks, he'll be trialling the new dosage and it will be good to see if it helps him.
  At the time I was training to be a nursery-nurse the whole question over the appropriateness of medicating children was a major issue. It seems to me that these days it is slightly less frowned upon to give a child medication, but it still has a certain stigma attached to it. In the same way that ADHD itself was a contentious subject, it does seem that it is less so these day, but there is still that body of people that believe bad parenting is the cause or even (Still!!) that it doesn't really exist at all; and still that belief lingers out there that medication is the devils work. As a parent this has caused me all sorts of self doubt, but when it comes down to the wire I think Lamb prefers it when he can think straight and interact with people. Who wouldn't, I guess?
  When the medication is working the difference in Lamb is really quite amazing. Our first experience of it made me cry - it was like we were finally able to get to know him, after all those years. The popular assumption of drugs zombifying kids certainly hasn't been our experience. The drugs help Lamb focus enough that he can vocalise his experience of the world, and ask questions about it instead of being 'away with the fairies'. It certainly doesn't dampen down his energy or enthusiasm!
  Little rant over, and I feel much better!

White blood cells go 'rah, rah, rah!'

The boys have been learning about blood today. Here is Lamb's blood collage. As you can see, enormous quantities of glue were used - so much so that the glue has seeped all over the pictures.

Moo in particular enjoyed learning about blood and keeps doing impressions of a white blood cell chasing after germs!

Bodies and broken bones

Hmm, does the heart go here?

Ah, no, that looks a bit better!

The boys have also been learning about broken bones...

So they've been having fun with an assortment of bandages. And if the bandages double up as skipping ropes, well that's creative play right? ;-)

At the end of summer

Lamb having a go at an archaeological dig, discovering some roman coins ;-)

We watched a flint knapper at work...

...and had a look at some of the things he had made (though Lamb was actually more interested in photographing the plants behind him at the time).

Circus skills day at the park. Lamb didn't quite get the hang of juggling!

Moo tried very hard to master this with a little more sucess though!

Lastly, here is Lamb at the drumming workshop.

Noise, we love noise!

Georgia O'Keeffe's poppies

On Friday we kept the 2 minutes silence, and Lamb was very sincere about the whole thing. As the last of our poppy related arts 'n' crafts we took a look at Georgia O'Keeffe's beautiful 'Oriental Poppies' painting, and the boys had a go at recreating the picture.

Here is the tracing I made of the picture for the boys to work with as a guide.

Here is Lamb's interpretation with water colour pencils....

... and here is Moo's version of the same :)

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!

Skeleton experiment

We got out the salt dough yesterday to find out why we have skeletons :)

First we all made little people with no bones, but guess what?

They kept toppling over!

So then we tried again and this time we used cocktail sticks as pretend bones inside our little people.

And hurrah! They stand up (they weren't much good at flexing though)!

So why do we have skeletons? What would happen if we had no bones??

Lamb answers in mime: tumbling to the floor in a heap,

and Moo says 'FALL OVER!'.