Of mice & men..

It's best laid plans time.

I'm aiming to make everything simple this year, with plenty of flexibility, but a predictable 'shape'.

Eli has decided that now is a good time to start showing an interest in letters, numbers & writing, so need to incorporate more of that in for him too...

So this is what I'm instituting for Lexi-

Mon-Thurs
* Basic Business - Do these in any order - Math Mammoth (2 pages), Start Right English yr4 (one activity), Spelling City (10min or so)
* Snack
* Reading with mum (or to mum, or listening to an audiobook, depending on my energy levels  )
* Play (while I do housework, woot)
* Lunch
* Quiet time (resting/reading/puzzles/audiobooks/colouring/writing etc)
* One Thing More**
* Outside time

Friday
*Do Something Different - Choose some of these - Life of Fred, word worksheets (these are vocab/spelling/word property sheets), Intrepica, Khan Academy, D'Nealian Handwriting, Mavis Beacon Typing

then the rest of the day proceeds as per the others, from the snack onwards.


**"One Thing More" might include - swimming, art, cooking, topic studies, discovery box (a box full of science experiment stuff), Mr Q's Science, any of the 'Do Something Different' list, science kits, outings, videos, music, sports, Start Right Science, or something totally unexpected!" (this is so I can squeeze all the other stuff in, but the actually content is entirely dependent on my energy levels & how busy we are... trying to keep things as flexible as possible, but still with structure)

For Eli I am starting a letter of the week thing, a sight word program, some basic maths activities, and have a box of various learning games & stuff for him, and for him & Maia I have collected a basket of quiet activities that only come out while Lexi is trying to focus.

I've drawn inspiration in particular this year from the TJed 7 Keys, FIMBY's "Usually, not always" (my fav HE blog! I love that she doesn't try to do everything & is very conscious about what she is willing to let go), and "One more thing after lunch" from Hodgepodge.

Should be interesting!! I'd like to think I could maintain something like this, but time will tell... we're getting off to an auspicious start with our first 'proper' morning being taken over by a routine hospital appointment, but life is full of interruptions after all!

Little guys

My little guys sometimes seem to get a bit overlooked here, but they are just as busy! These are a few random pics I found..

Playing the free Kids Match 'Em memory game app, a big hit here -

Making a marble run -

working collaboratively on a Meccano aeroplane -

Doing big brother's spiderman jigsaw -

(Eli is the best in the house at that, it has three spidermen, a very limited palate, and its holographic. It's hard!) 

Playing with duplo -

Making peg patterns -

and twisting maths activities to his own desires -

 (the idea is that you match the right number of objects, in this case lego - obvious mistake - with the number on the card. Matching by colour & making stairs was clearly more interesting.)

and a photo by Eli of one of his peg compositions -

Shake!

At the end of last term we participated in the inaugural New Zealand ShakeOut national earthquake drill!

To start with we watched the Turtle Safe video (available at the bottom of the link), which the kids really enjoyed, they kept singing it for days afterwards -

then it was time to Drop, Cover, Hold!

 (grubby faces are what you get when you have earthquakes right after breakfast!)

Then the kids decided to be turtles, using their rugs -

 someone didn't quite get the concept...

Much to my surprise (though possibly no-one else's, nerd alert) our local library had quite a large selection of quake related books still available, so I chose these ones -

"Quaky Cat" and "The Butterfly and the Earthquake" are both New Zealand books, written about the recent Christchurch earthquakes. I recommend the Max Axiom earthquake book too, it has quite a lot of technical information about plate tectonics and fault lines etc, but presented in dynamic graphic novel format. Oh and a nice 'teachable moment' with two silly adults who stay sitting on their office chairs, panicking, instead of getting under their desks.

I also printed out some colouring pages for the kids -

 on of which has the Turtle Safe song for extra reinforcement -

I think it was a great exercise,  good reminder (for those of us not living in Christchurch or the Bay of Plenty!) to work on these things with our kids, and get them passionate about civil defense and being prepared. My lot have initiated numerous quake drills since, and I took the opportunity to print some planning & inventory paperwork for our whole household too.

Our un-holidays, a.k.a. every day life

A few people I know just embarked on a blogging project for the last two weeks, photographing what they got up to during the school holidays. We did pretty much nothing, so naturally I didn't join in. But now that school is back in, and we are easing back into some sort of normalcy, I thought I would try capturing parts of our days for a fortnight! I've got a stubborn cold at the moment, so we really are focusing on the ease part!

This morning started with swinging, the little two still in their pyjamas!!

The kids love our ladybug swing, it takes them crashing through the bush that borders our property, and over the back fence into the reserve behind. There is a little creek just a couple of metres past the fence, so of course it holds the imagined risk of going plunging into the water should they let go!

In action -

then some bouncing -

 (don't we all feel like running & jumping around at 9am on a monday morning?!)

They watched some of James May's Toy Stories, which we absolutely love, and invariably ends in hours spent building fantastic lego constructions or complex train tracks!

there was also biking riding, dressing up, and design your own lunches (not one, but two dry weetbix each was a little bit ambitious!)

and of course the day always ends with lots and lots of reading -

 (one very happy girl finished the Philosopher's Stone tonight!)

Even though we didn't 'do' much, the kids were busily occupied all day, and I'm happy with that!

Review: The Worst Witch

The Worst Witch by Jill Murphy

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



The Worst Witch is a kid witch. She's not very good at being a witch, she keeps getting things wrong. She has two friends. My favourite part was when she turned the evil witches into snails, because it was teaching them a lesson. I didn't like it when she thought that maybe if she put some green stuff into her laughing potion it would make her laugh, but it didn't, I didn't like it because she was the only one who couldn't. I think witches would like this book, and people who like halloween.



View all my reviews

Review: Magic Ponies: Seaside Summer

Magic Ponies: Seaside Summer by Sue Bentley

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



The book is about a pony called Comet. He was trying to find his twin sister Destiny. My favourite part was when he found Destiny, because she was in a lot of trouble. I didn't like when he had to leave the little girl who was helping him, because the little girl felt sad, and I felt sad too. I would recommend this book to kids who like ponies.

Alexis aged 6 years & 8 months



View all my reviews

Lexi's picks

Lexi spent the afternoon playing on the Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra site. It's a great website, if a little video heavy, and a nice introduction to the instrument families, how different instruments work, and their various quirks and traits. After a few non-starters previously, this afternoon she took to it immediately, and insisted on finishing the whole thing (with a major meltdown when I commandeered the computer & she thought I had lost all her progress!).

Lexi also tried this out today, it's a free fractions simulation made by the University of Colorado. I love it when people go to the trouble to do this sort of thing then make it freely available to all kids! You can use them online or download them too.

She liked the Matching Game and Build a Fraction. She's never done any fraction work before (apart from baking!) so it was interesting to see how quickly she caught onto the concept while playing with this.

Click to Run

Not a dandelion clock.

Lexi is learning about time at the moment, and I remembered this pin that I had pinned ages ago, and made my own version -

She already knew the hour & minute hands thing, so I didn't include that (and I was making it from memory, and forgot that bit), but I added the circle on the face, which is divided into quarters.

2012 Olympics

Here's some of Lexi's work on the 2012 London Olympics, most of the printables are free from Teachers Pay Teachers, which is an awesome site!

I popped a whole heap of pages into a clearfile, and let Lexi choose what she wanted to work on...

First we did a "Thinking Rings" (based on de Bono's six thinking hats, which are conveniently the same colours as the Olympic flag) to find out what Alexis already knew about the Olympics, how she felt about it, and what we wanted to find out about -

This one you get to invent your own event - 

 Lexi's new event is called "Ice Pot". A winter Olympic sport, it is played on an ice rink, with two teams of 19 players. The players pass a diamond shaped pot of ice (ouch!) around the rink to their team mates, intending to keep possession for as long as possible, with one point per minute of continual possession awarded. First team to 20 points wins. Players aren't allowed to tackle opposition players, but the ice pot can be intercepted during passes. Additional rules are no pushing, no talking, no being bad winners. Rule breaking results in being sent off the rink & your team deducted one point.

Spot the theme -

 "What is one interesting fact about that country? Two volcanoes erupted when the olympics where on onese [sic]" Yep, two of our north island volcanoes - Whakaari (White Island) and Tongariro erupted during the two weeks the Olympics were on! And Lexi did our flag from memory too... I think it has blended with the Australian one slightly ;)

Lexi really loved doing this one! She's asked to do it again several times -

I can't remember where I found this - I think it was a lapbooking site - but you have to match the event descriptions to the name & image -

Lexi was dubious about this, but really enjoyed it once she tried it out, it's the classic 'see how many words you can make from these letters' concept, using "gold medal" -

This was Lexi's first ever foray into using wikipedia -

Designing your own medal -

 and symbol/flag -

This is a poem she has been learning -

 umm.. yeah...

and her event pages - 

 You'll see a recurring theme of seating (those square things), and encouragement to try or watch the events, funny girl.

 "all the other horse moves"

there were a few other things that were half done, but I think that ship has sailed ;)

I've put the event pages template (which could be used for anything really), and another, more complex, event description page up for free download on TPT here!