South Africa!

We've had an amazing Easter holiday in South Africa visiting family, but it's also been a crazy fun learning experience.

dissecting fruits and seeds

It turns out that Little Lychee had no idea lions and elephants were real animals (she had imagined them to be like dragons and fairies) so that was a big surprise; and it was the first trip that both children can remember flying on an aeroplane.

Some of my favourite home ed experiences though have to the children collecting and dissecting seed pods, just to see what was inside, and then googling to find out what they were (admittedly because they wanted to know if they were edible). They loved trying out all the new fruits that we hadn't really seen in England - even though several of them were the same, they just look different because of the climate they grow in. A green grapefruit that's three times the size of any grapefruit you've seen before is essentially a new fruit to a four year old and a seven year old.


Another favourite was recreating a game park with sticks and leaves, and then building a house for little animals like geckos, complete with a braii and benches outside of it.

Gecko shelter

Mini game park with watering hole

Excitingly Cosmo took it on himself to write a travel diary, journalling what we did each day, so that he could share it with his cousins when he got home. This is a great achievement for someone who generally dislikes written work. 

It was also really interesting to watch the children at a bird park we went to in Montecasino. Obviously Little Lychee loved all the pretty birds and wanted to collect their feathers for her collection. Cosmo on the other hand, barely gave them a glance. He wanted to read the signs at each enclosure carefully, more than once, to learn the facts about each bird, then he was ready to go. Personally I feel that he could have got that information from a book, so it seems an odd thing to do at the park, but he was happy and thought it was a great trip. Just goes to show, you never can tell what your child is going to find interesting until you let them decide for themselves!

You can click on the video below to see more photos of our adventures.

Art Class

My children are so into art right now. Cosmo has been teaching Lychee about the art and crafts he does at boys brigade throughout the week. Last week it was blow painting fireworks (she liked that a lot).

This week we missed brigades :-( 

In lieu of her 'art class' from Cosmo, I decided to get out our sketch books (darn it, I lost mine) and follow some really cute lessons that I had found on pinterest (you can follow my homeschool art board here).

Today we started with exploring different types of lines.

I drew this:

Cosmo drew this:

And Lychee drew this:

Tomorrow's lesson: Shapes

Art and maths

Yesterday was sunny and my kids got excited about having an 'art' lesson outside.

The only problem is, I had planned to do maths. 

Problem was easily solved though, because it turns out, if you think about it carefully enough, art and maths overlap quite a lot. 

First lesson was pattern recognition. Cosmo loves patterns, but lychee has struggled with being able to repeat a pattern in the past. 

With a bit of help though, we coloured in a huge area of paving slabs using chalks in a repeated rainbow pattern and talked a bit about colour theory (primary colours blending through secondary colours... etc...)

Cosmo helpfully brought up colour temperature too, so we discussed that briefly, because this term our co op is focussing on light, so I figure wavelengths will be worth knowing a little about. 

Then we made a giant number line, by writing one number on each paving slab of our path. I used our 'mathematical reasoning' book and had the kids work out exercises by running along the line instead of drawing arcs on a page. 

It all went pretty well, and there was also some fun naughty and crosses, pictures of hearts and people's names scribbled around. 

Who knew you could fill an entire day, just playing with chalk? 

Drawing Lessons For Kids

I recently picked up a book called 'Drawing with Children: A Creative Teaching and Learning Method That Works for Adults Too' by Mona Brookes and it is fantastic! 

She gives examples of the differences in children's drawings with 20 minutes of tuition, an hour of tuition etc... and it's really hard to believe. In all honesty I thought the pictures might be a little exaggerated.

I was wrong. 

But let me take you back a little. Initially, despite my concerns that the pictures were probably 'enhanced' by adults, I really liked reading the first chapter on how to conduct a drawing lesson. Simple things like pointing out symptoms of visual fatigue helped me realise why cosmo can do twenty math sheets with 40 questions on, but struggles to complete one with 100 (the font is too small). 

This week I asked Lychee if she wanted to do her own lesson with mummy. We spent all of approximately three minutes with her completing a drawing exercise from the book. I was actually quite impressed with her ability to copy. I've never asked her to before, so she usually just scribbles. 

Here is what she produced (mine in black, hers in yellow).

Not bad for a two year old, right?

She then went on to do her first ever recognisable drawing. It's a picture of her cousin.

I'm not going to pretend I knew who it was, but it is definitely a face! 

More interesting, is that since then, with no prompting, she has started colouring inside the lines. So when we made Daddy this card for Father's day, she would usually just scribble over my writing and picture. She took great pains this time to keep inside the heart.

Not only that, but she was able to draw X marks for kisses under her name. 

Both my kids, after a few minutes of 'teaching' went on to spend hours and hours the next day drawing hundreds of pictures using the symbols from the exercises we had done the day before. Their enthusiasm for drawing this week has been incredible. 

If anyone is wondering whether or not to buy this book, I highly recommend it. 

Boys Brigade and Awards

This weekend was Cosmo's first ever Boys Brigade awards night and it was brilliant! 

The boys had some fun drama sketches for us, involving dressing up as super heroes and he was proud to be the only 'black lightning' amongst so many batman's and mr Incredibles.

The awards section was hard for him as the bugle and the clapping was very loud, I haven't decided whether next year it would be less distracting to have him in ear defenders or whether that would be worse than having him cover his ears each time. 

He enjoyed receiving his one year service badge, but much to his (and my) surprise he also won the arts and crafts trophy! 

You may recall that we had some trouble getting him to engage in arts and crafts, particularly anything involving paints or glue because he didn't like getting sticky. Well, in the last year or so that has all changed, so much so that he has now decided he wants to be an artist when he grows up. 

He had actually announced that to me when we were working in Grandy's birthday card that morning, so it was really affirming for him to receive that arts award that evening. 

I love how boys brigade challenges him and affirms him in such meaningful ways. Belonging to a club has been a real confidence boost to him. I think he thrives in an all male environment too, and once a week I don't mind indulging that. 

Illustrating a Book

I have a hard time getting Cosmo to enjoy art work, but this project grabbed his attention immediately.

We had picked up an exercise book that has blank space at the top of the page and lines for writing underneath. I'd hoped he might like to write a story book or something, but he had an even better idea. 

'Let's make a book to teach my cousins about Shavuot and we can give it to them!'

Awesome. 

He wasn't keen on the idea of doing the writing himself, he didn't think they'd be able to read it, so I agreed to do that part if he helped me remember how the story went. We ended up using a video to remind us from YouTube - how did people homeschool before google? 

His illustrations are brilliant and I'm so pleased he had the confidence to do it. 

We are going to take the book around to his cousins this afternoon so they can enjoy it this evening. 

Happy holidays! 

Learning by Colouring

I write a lot about what I'm doing with Cosmo, and sometimes is can seem like Lychee is just along for the ride. That's only about 50% true. Half the time she really is just watching what her older brother is doing, but I'm okay with that - in fact she learns really well by watching him!

Other days I am intentional about what I'm doing with her, but the reality is I've already done it and blogged it once before with her brother, so it doesn't often make a post.

Today I decided to write about her though. Yesterday her brother was entertaining himself nicely with Reader Rabbit, and she asked me if we could do some colouring together.

Yes, together.

I didn't watch her and tell her she was doing a good job, I joined in and we coloured each page together, because she likes it better when we do a project together like that. 

I wanted to work on reading and following instructions, so we chose a book that tells you what to do. She's not free reading yet, but she is capable of having a guess at a word if she's given some clues, for example seeing the "L" at the beginning of the word threw her because she wanted it to say "truck" and she'd never heard "lorry". 

I read the instructions to her, deliberately pausing and asking her key words, for example "colour my body... What colour does this say?" running my fingers under the words. She only knows one colour that begins with "R" so she answers "red".

This method is great because you are setting her up to win and reinforcing the sight words. Where just showing a flash card with the word "red" on could have been any word, limiting her options to 'it must be a colour' encourages critical thinking, as well as reading.

Lysh is also into numbers right now, in a big way, so we counted things on the pages and practised writing their numbers next to them.

It was fun, and she loved showing them to Cosmo and telling him how hard we had worked on it. I love her team spirit. My son just wants to do everything by himself with, no help, so that he can say "i did it!" when he achieves something. My daughter really wants to work together on everything, and the doing is so much more important to her than the outcome. Every child really does have a totally different nature in built! 

Cosmo general update

Since we've been doing the GAPS diet we've seen massive improvements in Cosmo's behavior, temperament and ability to express emotion. It's sometimes a little heartbreaking, 'I will feel very lonely and sad if I play by myself', but not manipulative - he is just getting genuinely better at expressing what he is feeling, labelling emotions and telling us about them before they explode into rage. 

Last week we were on holiday up in Cumbria, and some friends had some lego that they got out for him to play with. Lego a few months back was a massive source of frustration for him. He just could not get the parts to click together and very quickly ended up in tears. 

However, thanks to improvements in his fine motor skill he was happily making all kinds of models, including police cars carrying flags - for the Olympic parade apparently (he went with his daddy to watch a few events and loved it. In fact we ended up hosting our own re-enactment of the medals ceremony several times back home).

I was super impressed with the development in his fine motor, but I hadn't realised the extent of it until we got home. My husband decided to work on an Octonauts magazine with him, and although he was mostly using stickers, he coloured in a picture of a 'crafty cuttlefish' so neatly that I nearly accused his daddy of doing it for him! Six months ago he couldn't hold a pen properly, now he writes, colours in the lines and colour specific details (like each leg a different colour - because he knows that cuttelfish can change colours to camouflage).

This may not sound like much to those of you with children who have been scribbling on everything since before they could talk, but for us it's a huge breakthrough; I'm just so excited for him. 

Free Resources

We have been plodding along with various things this term, and whilst I enjoy following whatever subject Cosmo is interested in at the time, I feel like we could probably start introducing a small amount more structure next term.

Although he thrives on being able to follow his own ideas of what he wants to study, poor Lychee rarely gets a say in what we are doing and I feel like until she is verbal enough to ask questions or make it clear what she wants, it would be nice to follow something that progresses - rather than changing topic on a whim.

I found this amazing FREE resource today called Lesson Pathways and I think it is going to be so useful to us.

Okay, so the video is a little annoying, but I genuinely love the resources they've put together. It's great to be able to jump in when you have some free time with the children and not be worrying about what to do next - just click on the next lesson and you are good to go. 

I especially like the language arts section for Cosmo. Although he is very good at reading fluently, his comprehension could use some work, and I'm not sure he understands grammar. Having the groundwork done for me makes a huge difference. 

Speaking of having the groundwork done for  you, I've also been using Homeschoolshare.com a lot recently. It turns out Cosmo LOVES lapbooking, especially as you can choose just about any topic and there is a unit study for it. Volcanoes and Tsunami's are his topic of choice right now, and whilst the resources are in an easy to use format and even a four year old can understand them, his vocabulary and knowledge in that subject area now rivals his daddy's GCSE classes.  

The best part about lapbooking for me is that there is a LOT of cutting and gluing, and laying out on the page, involved. Although I do the vast majority of the cutting, he does practice with his plastic scissors, he uses the hole punch, and (although he often finds it frustrating) he is getting better at using the pritt stick. Art is something I've struggled to get him excited about, but combining some of these skills with topics he's interested in (rather than just art for arts sake) has led to much more successful mastery of these skills.  

The enchanted sculpture trail

We love stanwick lakes, it's one of our favourite places to go, and I'm so glad we were introduced to it early on when we moved here.

As members, they send us emails when they are doing something fun, and this weekend they were making a new installation for the enchanted sculpture walk called 'mosaic trees'.

It involved cutting and gluing little tiles all over the thinner parts of the tree, which were going to be grouted later.

It also had some sections where you took a hammer and chisel

Cut out a small square

Glued

And pressed in a tile

To make a cute little window-type thing

Cosmo was nervous at first, and just watched for a long time, but then he was keen to get on and have a go whilst I finished off tiling a bit further up.

And we couldn't have a trip to stanwick lakes without a quick loop of the adventure trail

Will loves climbing to the top of this rock and then leaping off into his daddy's arms.

That's faith!

A Space Party!

Cosmo loves to prepare for guests, much more than he enjoys having them. Take thanksgiving for example - if you spoke to him anytime from august to November you would have assumed it was his favourite time of year. He was desperate to help make a pumpkin pie and decorate the house, but when our guests arrived he spent most of the dinner in his room by himself asking to be left alone.



So when he wanted a birthday party, you can understand me having concerns. Having spent the weeks running up to his dinosaur party excited and preparing, he spent the hours before in tears because he was scared. It was all fun in the end though.



So this year he wanted a 'Space Party'. Despite spending much of the morning balancing between tears and giggling manically he managed to stay downstairs for the entire party. There were some tears and I was sad that he refused to be part of a group photo at the end, but overall I'm glad we did it.



As with the dinosaur party, Cosmo was involved in all of the preparation, from making the pinata's and wall decorations, to baking his own birthday cake. We learnt loads during the process and spent hours on youtube watching astronauts in zero gravity training and space shuttle launches. He even made a playlist that he wanted to have on in the background of the party.



If you want to see a video of the party it's here:

Shana Tova

We've been celebrating Rosh Hashanah, although we are Christian, we believe the Hebrew festivals are a shadow of Christ's life and of things to come.

Rosh Hashanah celebrates the anniversary of creation, and one of the things we have been doing is telling the creation story at breakfast and dinner each day by candlelight.


Cosmo is now very good at telling the facts of the story (the order things were made in, what Adam and eve did) but still struggles with questions like 'how did God feel when they disobeyed him?' or 'what do you think Adam and Eve felt like when they left the garden?'

I know it's in part because of the ASD, but it still always surprises me how well he can memorise facts, but how difficult he finds interpretation.

We've really enjoyed making a trumpet out of paper mâché and decorating it too. You can find directions on how to make the basic trumpet shape here. Cosmo especially likes waking daddy up with his trumpet in the mornings!

Israel enjoy fruits dipped in honey, a reminder of sweetness, as they wish each other a 'sweet and good new year'. We had fruits dipped in honey, and chocolate sauce, because nothing says 'sweet' to my children like chocolate!

Cosmo helped make the sauce, by melting chocolate in the microwave and stirring in double cream and milk. He's actually getting pretty good at using the microwave without help and can stir without spilling everywhere now. Hooray for fine motor improvement!

Most excitingly, he also wrote hi own name in a 'Shana Tova' card we made to send his cousins. Lychee painted the front and he wrote inside. It's the second time his managed to wrote his name, the first time being nearly two months ago, with no attempts in between.

It is frustrating to know that he can, but won't practise. He's still very unenthusiastic about writing or colouring, but lychee is the complete opposite. Colouring and painting are her two favourite activities.

Later today we shall go and perform our 'tashlikh' or 'casting off'. We are going to throw some stones in the river as we confess our shortcomings, to remind us that God will wash away our sins. This has been cosmos favourite part of the festival in the past, and I'm sure he will enjoy it this year too.

So, have a sweet and good new year, may your name be inscribed in the book of life!

Making a Pinata

So it's nearly time for Cosmo's birthday and I figure as he's going to be three, he is definitely old enough to enjoy smashing up a pinata. More importantly, it could be a fun craft project for us!

Stage one was designing a dinosaur. We used balloons, egg cartons, toilet rolls, cereal boxes and a tupperware. After chatting about different types of dinosaur Cosmo wanted it to have three horns like a triceratops and spikes like a stegosaurus. I did point out that this makes it look a lot like a baby dragon, but he wasn't caring so much about authenticity.



Next it was time to cover it in paper mache. We used newspaper and white PVA glue 1:1 with water. Cosmo helped me measure it out and mix it together. I know the usual recipe is 2:1, but I was being a little tight.

Problem was that meant the glue was VERY wet, so our tape didn't stick well and we lost a couple of legs...



No problem though, we only needed one leg to fill it from. When it was dry we burst the balloons, filled it with candy (and I mean really filled it!), sealed up the whole with paper mache, and added new legs.

Today we started painting it with left over emulsion paint from my mums kitchen. Apparently you need to do this layer first to i) hide the news print and ii) make your artistic design stay on the glue (sometimes it repels some paints).



So there you have it, the beginnings of a dinosaur pinata. We'll update you with photos of the finished product when it's done.

Cosmo's first picture!!!

I've been particularly interested in watching my nieces drawing recently. They colour away with abandon and tell me great stories about what they are going to draw for me and the wonderful letters they are writing me.

Cosmo on the other hand seems to be incredibly aware of his limitations regarding hand eye co-ordination. He can hold a crayon, and is willing to colour in something you have drawn, but if you ask him to draw something specific, he says 'no, I can only draw one and seven'. Which is partly true. Most of his drawings are lines, some of them with a kink, which can then be rotated until it becomes a seven.  He will usually at this point pass me the crayon and ask me to write a word or draw a picture for him.

I do think it's sad though that he is unwilling to try and draw anything else, so I was extremely excited when he came bounding into the kitchen to tell me that he had drawn a helicopter!! I'll be honest, my first thought was 'what have you drawn it on...?' but I was overjoyed to find it in chalk, on the chalk board. He just wanted me to come and write the word helicopter next to it so that we could show daddy what it was.

He was incredibly proud of himself, and I was pretty pleased to.

So here it is... Cosmo's Masterpiece!! (age 2 years 5 months)

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="604" caption="Cosmo's first recognisable drawing!!"][/caption]