Rainforest Centre

Today we went to the rain forest centre in Newbury. It was amazing and we had a great tour from a lady about all the edible things. From coffee and vanilla to insects, rodents, birds and even turtles!

The fish were incredible, so big!

My favourite part was the Sloth.

We learned about the symbiotic relationship between agouti and the brazil nut tree (google it, it's cool) and how over hunting is causing problems. 

We learned a little about climate and the four different layers of the rainforest, as well as animal adaptations that allow them to live there. 

It's a great centre, with a wide range of work sheets to keep little ones interested. Well worth a visit if you are in the area. 

The children's favourite bird was a curacao called 'Luigi'

In your image...

This week we've started our mystery of history curriculum again. Lychee is now old enough to join in and get something from it, which makes it a whole lot easier than it was last time around!

To be honest, we stopped because we moved house and taking our timeline off the wall meant we would have to reconstruct everything we'd done and I couldn't face doing it at the time. Starting again means rebuilding slowly, which is a lot more manageable. 

Today the children are using play doh to create men in their own image... Which quickly descended into creating their own "beasts of the field" and "birds of the air".  Cosmo is enjoying it so much more having a sibling to encourage creativity. First time around he wanted to make everything look perfect, exactly like a real person. 

Second time around, with a little encouragement from his sister, he's created a six legged, long necked, mammal that swims and has a number on its back which changes each year to tell you how old it is. 

I love how they inspire each other and learn from each other in ways that I couldn't teach. 

Family learning is the best! 

Butterfly World

Today we went on a trip with our co-op to Butterfly world.

The kids had a great workshop where they got to hold different insects and even giant snails (both my kids refused to touch anything "Mummy! That's absolutely disgusting!") but really enjoyed the leaf cutter ant exhibit. 

  

They also loved being in the butterfly house with all the butterflies floating around. Lychee and her cousin Bon had a lot of fun seeing who could get closest without touching one.

 

The musical garden was a great play area too and inspired me to get some larger items for ours.



Everyone was exhausted on the way home, especially having spent the weekend at Alton Towers already, but we had a really fun time.

Making Candy

We made our own 'pulled taffy' the other week using pure honey and just adding a few essential oils for flavour and it was so fun! I'll be honest, my kids did not particularly like how it felt on their hands, but I had a lot of fun and they were so proud of their finished products.

If you want to have a go it is super easy. Just boil some honey with a candy thermometer until it reaches 140c for at least five minutes. Then tip it out on a non-stick sheet and use spatulas to move it around until it's cool enough to touch.

At this stage you need to grease your hands with butter and then you just pull and fold, incorporating as much air as you can. When it's only barely warm add a few drops of your favourite essential oils (we used, peppermint in one batch, lemon in another, orange in a third and left one plain). Essential oils are volatile, so it's best to add them as cool as you can get away with if you want the flavour to last.

When you've twisted and pulled as much as you can and the candy is pretty hard, you can cut it into shapes, wrap it in waxed paper and store in the fridge.

Even though they didn't like getting messy (there were tears over butter on hands) the kids enjoyed watching the process and learning how candy was made.

The second time we made some honeycomb. I adapted this recipe I found, but boiling the honey again, but I added a mix of 50:50 bicarbonate of soda and ascorbic acid (vitamin C powder). The acid in the vitamin C ensured we got a good reaction from the baking soda and we had a slightly chewier than I'd have liked honeycomb. I think next time I need to boil the honey a little longer.

Still, the kids really liked this one. 

Easter Holidays and Pet Eggs

The Easter holidays were so much fun. We had beautiful weather and it was great to spend lots of time playing outdoors, digging in the garden and general enjoying the sun.

The children played their first ever game of cricket, watching the new baby tadpoles in our pond, and even took part in some of the planting out.

We started our 'Kitchen Chemistry' online course and they loved experimenting with molecule density using the toaster from the boy's kitchen and a bin bag, and experiment that was repeated with a hair dryer and a mini hot air balloon on a camping trip over the Easter weekend.

Heated molecules are less dense

The children also went to the energy show at the science museum in London with their dad and had a fantastic time as well as Cosmo going camping in the peak district with daddy to climb a 'mountain'.

We had a lovely time celebrating passover with my sister's family and some friends, and the children took great joy in the charoset (I used mango, pear and cinnamon with walnut) as well as joining in with some really fun songs.

 But the part the children have been most excited about this Easter is getting their 'pet eggs'.

We currently have ten eggs incubating in the school room and the children cannot wait to see them hatch. They've been very diligent in checking the temperature regularly and topping up the water and the eggs are due to hatch Thursday or Friday.

I'm sure I'll manage to film it, and will post it here after. The baby chicks will then live in our house 6-9 weeks (weather dependant) and then move out into the chicken coop and run that we have built for them in the orchard.

Exciting times!

Reading Practice

I made a playlist of flash card videos that we use with Lychee for reading practice - so I figured I'd post it here in case anyone else wants to do some practice with little ones.

It's for children learning sight words or 'whole word' reading methods, NOT phonics.

Enjoy :-)

DIY.org

Maybe this isn't news to some of you, but I have only recently discovered the awesomeness that is DIY.org.

From what I've gathered so far, it's kind of like the online answer to why I went to brownies - to earn badges. Only these badges are way cooler. They're chunky, hexagonal, embroidered patches, and you earn them for completing three tasks in a skill area. 

You simply upload a video or photo of yourself completing a task, someone reviews it and validates your reward. 

Badges are awarded for all kinds of stuff, my kids are keen for the backyard farmer, Lego master and minecrafter badges; but the range is as diverse as architect, bee keeper and dancer to mycologists, geneticist and sys admin!! 

Here's a video my kids made for one of their 'backyard farmer' skills.

The only downside to this whole thing is that it's based in the USA. Although their postage charges are very reasonable ($2 to ship to England) it obviously takes a while to get over here. Long enough that Cosmo is questioning me about whether there is a real badge or if it's just on the website (which incidentally, would still be fun to so if you didn't want to invest in the patches...) 

Each kid gets their own "stream" of activity which other people can follow, and they can follow others, either to keep up with what a friend is doing, or for inspiration. 

The best part is that as a parent, you get a log in too. The site emails me to approve everything my kids upload, so there is little to no chance of anything stupid being naievely posted online - unless you naievely thought it would be okay too, which you can't really blame your kid for... 

We think this is awesome, and it's a great boredom buster when you are scratching for ideas to do with the kids. A lot of the skills don't require much equipment and are pitched at several levels, so whilst my backyard farmers are planting celeriac, someone else might be caring for livestock. 

Definitely worth a poke around in your free time, and if you do sign up, message me your user name; the kids and I would like to follow you :0)

In unrelated news, lychee has enjoyed drawing cats this week. 

Lego electro city

Today the kids had the opportunity to attend a Lego workshop where they built a city with other children.

All the children were told they could build anything they wanted to be a part of the city and my children both independently chose to build farms! 

They had a great time, but I've injured my right hand which was incredibly frustrating to them. They wanted my help, but my left hand is like the Incredible Hulk, smashing through their carefully planned buildings. 

They quickly learned it was easier just to get on by themselves.

This horse was found by a friend, who recognised Lychee was building a farm and offered it to her. 

She spent half the morning singing a little song about him 'this is my horse that Wesley bought me for a present...'

This is her completed farm, which Cosmo quickly amalgamated into his own... 

But lychee was content to build a park opposite, with a lake to walk her puppies around and a waterfall. 

The next stage was building circuits to light up the cities. 

Here it is all lit up. 

It was a fun morning and really excitingly lychee even put her hand up to answer a question - an incredibly bold move for her!

Unfortunately, she didn't answer when called on, but it's a start...

Brain Quest

Cosmo was lucky enough to be bought a gift from one of the boys we live with, all the way from the United States!

The gift is a set of flash cards called 'Brain Quest' which I had never heard of, but they are brilliant. Each little pack is a notebook full of strips with different categories of questions on and answers on the card behind.

Cosmo was bought a grade 3 pack, bearing in mind that he is pre-K age, I was a little skeptical, but actually he really likes them. The math and science sections are still easy, but language arts, social studies and miscellany are all brand new to him.

Actually, it turns out brain quest have a huge website with downloadable resources and apps for the iphone/ipad too. It's only £2.99 so I've bought it and we'll be playing it later on today.

These sets are a great way to build encyclopedic knowledge, which is perfect for the developmental stage we are currently at.

***Update***

The app is AMAZING! It allows up to three users, so the kids can work at their own level each time they come back and not miss any stages/have to start again.

It's easy, multiple choice style means that even Lychee can play as I read the questions and she has to choose an answer. It's great for reading practice as I ask 'Which describes a girl? He or She?' and she has to look at the two answers to work out which one says 'she'.

Obviously Cosmo has zoomed through to level 24 in just half an hour, but he's enjoying it and building knowledge, so I'm really pleased. I also have no idea how many levels there are, but it hasn't shown any signs of being completed any time soon.

£2.99 well spent :0)

Yes He Is (Death is Not Natural)

Okay, so this isn't technically a homeschooling resource, but I recently discovered this website that is full of media to make sharing your faith on things like facebook and twitter easier. The thing is, it has such simple, clear summaries of the gospel, that it is actually perfect for little ones to get a grip of the metanarrative of the gospel.

The website is called Yes He is and you can see a sample video, called 'Death is not Natural' here:

Lovely animations, which would make a great change to devotional time, and with a few basic questions you could easily make it a comprehension task, whilst all the while reinforcing the truth of the gospel. 

Go to Yesheis.com and you can view hundreds more videos and images that portray biblical truth in a simple and eye-pleasing way :0)

Maths, Maths, Maths!!

We have a current maths obsession in our house. Cosmo has always loved numbers, even as a small baby, but recently I discovered a website called Dadsworksheets.com, which has the most ridiculous amount of practice papers for maths as free printables. 

Cosmo has fallen in love with the 1 minute Math Facts section and completed over twenty of these in one sitting. Still unsure of the concept of a test though, he handed me a paper to mark declaring proudly 'there are two mistakes on this one'. 

'Well if you know that already, why don't you correct them before I mark it?'

'No Mummy! You have to try and guess which ones they are!'

Hmmmm.........

Still, once I pointed out that getting 100% would earn him a gold star sticker, we had perfect score sheets every time. 

I also found a little app for Lychee's maths skills, which I think I may be too late with, but I'm going to try anyway. It works on the same principles that I teach reading with, that by flashing the cards quickly to a child under two years they learn to associate the image (word) with the sound and it's unconsciously learned. 

photo credit

This app claims that babies don't count. They just know how many are there (to a certain degree), but haven't learned to associate that number with a name or symbol. The app flashes up randomly placed red dots on a white background and tells you how many there are. The lessons start with numbers 1-5. They then build up in difficulty. In one minute a day, the developer tells us, you train your baby to recognise numbers without counting. This makes them faster processors of information over all as adults (because really, if the only benefit was not having to count stuff, it's probably not worth bothering with - just count).

I'm not sure it will work, but for one minute a day I'm willing to give it a go. 

Orchard Toys

We were lucky enough to receive some lovely Orchard Toys for Christmas from a relative, and it really has been one of the best presents they received.

Having games that are simple enough for the whole family, or even just the two children, to play together has been so much fun. We have put together a games cupboard over the years, and whilst its always been in reach, we've told the children that they cannot play games without adult supervision because of small parts that might get lost.

Not so with orchard toys. In fact the game pieces are chunky and vibrant enough for a two year old to tidy up by herself and be confident that she has got every piece.

The easiest game, that the children play happily together without adult intervention, is 'Farmer's Lotto'. Everyone takes a card, then you take turns to turn over a card and see if it matches your card. The first person to fill their card wins. The catch is that you have to say the name of the animal and make the sound it makes if you want to keep the card.

Farmer's Lotto

Simple enough for a small child to play, but really helpful for our littlest in building confidence to speak (she has a mild speech delay).

The second game is called 'slug in a jug' and is slightly more difficult, but is doing wonders for her sight word recognition and for her brothers ability to create sentences.

It's basically pairs, but instead of matching, you have to find a rhyme! Each card has a picture on it, but also the word printed in bold so that whilst the child gets a big hint from the picture, they are still seeing the word.

Phonemes are colour coded so that children can easily see that "ea" in "pea" rhymes with "ey" in "key" or that "bowl", "mole" and "goal" all rhyme, despite their different spellings.

Slug in a Jug

For our youngest, she simply has to say the words and recognise whether they rhyme. For our son, and any adults playing, you have to say a sentence including the two words - hence the name "slug in a jug".

They're great games, and honestly slug I'm a jug would be easily replicated with homemade flash cards.

The official Orchard Toys cards are really nicely made though, and I highly recommend them.

Bike Riding and Building

Lychee got to have her first go on her new (to us) bike yesterday!

She has actually had it since Christmas, but it's taken us a while to get around to adjusting the seat. Cosmo helped with his birthday tool kit and was very proud of himself. The montessori tools have been a great investment and he has really enjoyed helping daddy to do odd jobs around the house, including doing all the measuring and a lot of the screwing together for the new bench in our entry way.

But without further ado, I bring you Lychee's first moments on her bike!

(I think the dramatic music is encouraging. She loves to watch herself back on film)

Every Single Thing is a Learning Opportunity

I've heard that phrase so many times in the Home educating community, how there is a lesson in everything, and simply having your children 'do life' with you, and answering their many 'why' questions is all the education they need.

This week we all got a horrible bug. Think vomiting, temperature, and snot so bad that I had to change the little ones bed linen because she wok up with it everywhere. If I'd known it was going to be like this I would have bought shares in kleenex ultrabalm.

However, as I said, there is a learning opportunity in here somewhere. As I was burning some tissues, my son asked me why I was making fire when we were already feeling hot (I was actually feeling quite shivery, but his assumption was that if he felt hot I must be too). I explained that we didn't want the viruses in the tissues to be sat around the house.

'Viruses like streptococcus?' (his current favourite strain of bacteria - do schooled children have those?)
'Well streptococcus is a bacteria.' I explained. 'A virus is a little bit different. Remember?' We did a lap book on this quite recently.
'Oh, well what's this virus called?'

I said I wasn't sure, but that I suspected it to be influenza. I don't feel like that was too misleading. After all, it's not like we have a lab I could check our snot in and actually find out, and flu symptoms fit. Obviously, you can't just say something like that to a four year old without more questions arising though.

I pulled google up on the iPad (gosh  I love it!) and we searched for images of influenza. First we looked at actual photos, then we looked at some diagrams.

Diagram of the Flu Virus

Actually, he had some really intelligent questions, and I started explaining what each part of the virus was for (thankfully I had google open on my iphone too), what a 'lipid' is and why hemagglutinin is like the spikes on the stickle bricks.

So even a 'sick day' turns into an educational day at home, which makes it pretty hard to fill out our registers for our homeschool co-op. When would you ever use an 'Absent' or 'Illness' code?

=========================

On a completely unrelated note, Cosmo swam five metres on his back in his swimming lesson today! exciting times!

IPad Education

I'm in awe of people who managed to homeschool before the internet. How on earth anyone got through lesson planning without Pinterest is completely beyond me.


I've said before how disenchanted I am with our public library. It's really big, and I know we are much more fortunate than many who live in small villages. The story time group is fantastic, but the books available to children, particularly early readers, is devastatingly lacking. Anything that would even vaguely challenge his reading ability seems to be about vampires, or witches, or completely inappropriate relationships (he recently brought home a book about a kid with a crush on his teacher. We didn't get past the first chapter).

With this in mind I'm so excited to be ordering some books from Lamplighter publishing to add to our home collection, (in no small part thanks to their current offer of buying a $100 certificate and getting a second one free!) but the reality is although my children love books, right now the iPad is where it's at.

I've only had it for a month, so maybe it's a novelty thing, but I feel like my homeschool life just got a whole lot easier.

So this post is, for the most part, dedicated to how we use it - although some of these uses worked fine on my iPhone too, it's all so much easier on the pad ;0)

1. Record Keeping 
There are tonnes of free apps, but my personal favourite is Evernote. We used it long before we got the iPad, and there is a desktop download, web based page and phone app that you could use instead (as I did for the last two years).
The most useful thing about it is storing examples of work. I take two seconds to snap some photos for the worksheets the children have just completed, tag them (subject, child) and they are automatically stored by date. Very useful when it comes to looking back through for end of term reports!

There is also a recording facility, so I've recorded the children doing things like reciting a new memory verse (which will be totally cute to listen to in years to come).
I also use the note taking facility to jot down any developmental leaps (walking, reading, swam 5m etc...) and once again Evernote auto tags the date and, if you like, location. Fab.


2. BrainPop
Brainpop is brilliant, we are using the free version of brain pop jr without an account currently. It's brilliant and there is a new video every week. The videos are cute, subtitled and have two quizzes on the content at the end (easy and hard) as well a joke and a relevant comic strip. The best part (according to Cosmo) is that there's a little leaderboard so you can try and beat your score on the quizzes by taking them again, and/or compete against a sibling.




3. Montessori geography
We LOVE the Montessori geography apps. There are some free ones (the UK for example) but we have chosen to pay for the European one. Cosmo is happy able to work on this alone and is learning to identify all the countries in Europe, not only by name and location, but also by shape. I'm learning as he does!
Eventually we'll upgrade to the other continents, but right now this one has plenty of content to keep us busy.
The Montessori pre-language opposites app is also brilliant for lychee.

4. Starfall ABCs
It's no secret that we are massive fans of the starfall website and subscribe to more starfall too. The app isn't free, and it also doesn't have all the content of the full site, but it's perfect for little ones who can't use a mouse yet to explore limited content. Lychee happily spent 30 minutes playing on it whilst I had a church meeting last week. For £1.99 it's been totally worth it.

5. Little writer
Lychee needs some serious help with this app, but she loves it.
I would have thought it was beneath Cosmo, but he seems to really enjoy it too, and it's encouraging him to form letters and numbers correctly (instead of two circles for an eight, for example) so I'm not complaining.

6. FlashCardlet
A great little app that allows you to create sets of flash cards for memory work. Easy to set up and easy for the kids to use. Cosmo loves flipping through his memory verses from Plant's Grown Up.

So those are my current favourites, obviously I'm sure we'll discover more as we go, but that's it for now.

Do you have an iPad/iPhone other electronic device you use for homeschooling? What apps do you recommend?





This post is linked up at noordinarybloghop

Half term

So we've just had half-term, but with this being a homeschool the learning never stops!!

This holidays we signed Cosmo up for his first ever holiday-club with Wilstead evangelical church and he had a fantastic time. It was for two hours every morning and he came home having learned new songs and games, as well as a memory verse.

There were some competitions, including boat building, for homework and he worked so hard to create a boat that actually floated - experimenting with gluing coins and pebbles to counter weight his beautiful sail (those are ants that he drew on it), and covering the whole base in cling film to make sure no water would get in it.

There were also homework sheets, with word searches and crosswords and he won gold medals for completing those too.

At the end of the week there was a medal ceremony and he was presented with a certificate and a sticker book which he is very proud of.

He did miss two days of holiday club as we went to stay at my mothers to spend a little time with my sister who is about to emigrate half-way around the world :o(


We had a great time and celebrated a cousins birthday with a family trip to gulliver's land which was obviously a huge hit.

My aunt also stopped by on the second day with a box load of Math resources and games for us and we've been excitedly sorting through them, looking at which ones we'd like to play now and which ones to put in our 'soon' shelf in the school room.

And finally I've spent some time with Lychee on the new iPad (yes! I've finally got one!) and been working on the Montessori pre-language opposites app and starfall ABCs. Both are excellent and I highly recommend them, although it can make it hard to limit screen time as the children get really into the 'work' they are doing.

So that's been our half-term. Did you do anything exciting?