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.

Flow Rider Fun

It's been a super busy weekend! Wiggles was in a boys brigade bowling competition down in Dunstable this weekend, and placed really well, and then on Sunday he was lucky enough to get the opportunity to have a go at climbing and learning to surf at Flow Rider this weekend.

Here's the video:

Lychee and I went to the park and made friends with another little girl and chatted to her mum about Home ed. Turns out she was interested in doing it, but didn't know there was anyone locally, so I was able to give her contact details for our co-op and Lychee looks forward to her new friend joining our sports class soon :-)

We also had some fun with Perler beads and she made a lovely horse which she has uploaded for a new DIY badge. 

Parkour

Cosmo has recently discovered his new favourite sport - Free running.

There's a club near us in Milton Keynes and a friend has set up a day time class for home educated kids and it is so much fun.

Two hours every Tuesday of this:

During which time Lychee and I get to go shopping together, which is nice. It's always fun to get some time 'just the girls' too.

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!

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? 

Lychee's growing up...

Today Lysh went to her first swimming lesson alone.

Without Cosmo, and without her two cousins.

She was so good, and although a little nervous, she tried really hard and did everything asked of her.

My baby's growing up!!

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)

Nearly five...

Having turned two lychee is really enjoying being in Cosmo's swimming lesson and works really hard at keeping up and doing everything the teacher asks of her. I'm so proud of her!!

This term Cosmo will be turning five, which means that he is now eligible to join the sports classes that are run by the co-operative we're in. He had his first session yesterday and was so nervous and excited.

He did brilliantly and the coach was really great at giving him specific instructions that allowed him to join in with minimal stress.

Winning two games of 'rob the nest' and learning to dribble with his hockey stick were highlights of the day, and I was surprised by his dexterity.

We also made 'iced tea' yesterday, which was the perfect opportunity to talk about particles and diffusion. I'm pretty sure that he had no idea what I was talking about, but you never know... He had great fun crushing all the herbs we'd dried anyway, and brewing the tea required plenty of stirring which is always enjoyable.

In fact, having spent so much time in the kitchen, he asked if he could make dinner. Unfortunately I had already made dinner and it was going to come straight from the slow cooker. He wasted no time in reminding me that one day he was going to be a daddy and that if I didn't let him take responsibility and help out with chores how would he ever look after his own children? He is nearly five after all...

It's incredible hearing your child repeat back things that you have taught them and attitudes and expectations that you have for them. I was so pleased to hear him genuinely concerned about learning how to take on responsibility around the household. 

He had one more opportunity yesterday to show me how much he'd been learning too. Lychee was being a little impatient and pushing to get past him. He disappeared off, found our Plants Grown Up book (from DoorPosts), looked up a scripture on patience and copied it out onto a card for her to keep as a memory verse!! Not only had he chosen a gentle way to reprimand her, but he took the time to write the verse out in his best writing too. 

Times like that remind me why we take the time to be intentional with our discipline, and it's worth every effort!

Pirate Day!

 

Today was Pirate day for our Homeschool Group which involved everyone meeting up at the Priory Marina for a day packed full of activities.

The first challenge was a team work challenge, that involved moving treasure chests. The puzzle goes something like this:

There are five 'treasure chests' labelled 1 - 5 and three 'boats'. You have to get all of the chests from one boat to either of the others, but you can only move one at a time and cannot put a chest with a larger number on top of one with a smaller number.

Ironically, Cosmo actually knows how to do this puzzle, having completed it before at our church 'olympics challenge' day (although the puzzle was worded differently, because pirate themed olympics would be weird), however once the other children started having idea he ended up in tears and having to be taken to one side to calm down. He was overwhelmed with the number of people talking and the other children not giving him clear enough instructions (eg. 'put that there' with a pointed finger doesn't work. He needs you to say 'put box one in the yellow hoop').

The other children completed the challenge in a fairly good time though, and he was happy to watch from a distance.

The second challenge was like a giant team game of snakes and ladders. The children had to roll the dice, then choose who was the most appropriate person to move, with the end goal of getting everyone to finish. Along the way there were sharks (move back 3 spaces), the black pearl (go back to the start) and Jack Sparrow (your whole team goes back to the start); as well as ropes (climb up a level) and a desert island (the whole team can move to the finish). It took the children quite a long time to understand that this was a team game and that just because they rolled the dice didn't necessarily make them the best person to move forward. 

After that it was finally time to get into some sailing, and the kids had a great time learning how to turn the boat and using just the wind to get all the way around the lake, including zig-zagging back to get to shore when the wind is against you.

 

After lunch it was time for some orienteering around the park and then into the katakanu's for a paddle around the lake.



The final activity of the day was to tie a couple of katakanu's together and let the children have a tug of war. Exhausting, but so much fun!

Exercise for Brain Power

Check it out! My baby can ride a bike!!

One of the great things about home education is being able to spend plenty of time doing stuff away from a desk. The kids get way more exercise because we spend a large portion of the day walking to and from shops, the library, the park - not to mention swimming and active play at those places.

I believe at this age school is very active too, with lots of playing and discovering in the classroom, and not too much sitting at desks, but I really value the fact that as my children get older, their activity levels don't have to drop. They won't lose afternoon recess, or be confined to 1.5 hours of sports timetabled in a week (that's what we had when I was at school).

Before you think I'm sports mad (I'm not - ask anyone. I managed to escape PE since 4th form by volunteering for  extra music lessons) there is a good reason I encourage my children to get plenty of exercise - it increases brain power and productivity.

This week I was sent this great infographic by a woman named Alison from Online Courses, which puts it so much more succinctly than I ever could.

http://www.onlinecollegecourses.com/

If you want to see more from Online Courses you can click on the link below the picture. They are a great resource for further education and even have links to lots of free programs, such as the open courses at Yale, which are high quality educational materials made available through download. 

Swimming Break Through!

This is not Cosmo swimming
It's a generic picture I stole off google because we're not allowed to take pictures at the swimming pool. :0(

Anyway, we had a major swimming breakthrough today. My initial frustration at him not staying through a whole lesson subsided when I spoke to some other parents of ASD children and realised that I had under appreciated how far he'd come.

I didn't have to remove him from the pool because he was having a melt down, he calmly told his teacher he'd had enough and got out of the pool. Those were some great communication skills that he hasn't always been so great at using.

Anyway, this week was the real breakthrough, because he stayed in the pool for the entire lesson. Not only that, he swam across the pool four times without holding on to his teacher.

The pool is a really challenging place for Will, sensory perception issues mean he finds the echoey sounds stressful. He is fairly confident in the water, but the class environment is stressing him to the point that he clings to his teacher the entire time he's in the pool, until today.

One of the things that really helped was that his teacher took the time to send all the other children across the pool (at least half way) until she set him off. Seeing this made me think that some of the other parents had been right; ASD children learn to swim much more easily in a 1:1 tutor session.

But isn't that true of most children? And most subjects?
And how important is it, really, that he learns to swim quickly?

He will learn eventually, and right now in really happy to see him interacting with the other children and getting more comfortable in a class environment.

Another little boy gave him a hand on the last metre or so when he started paddling backwards by mistake, and he was so happy about it. I really love seeing him so excited and making connections with new kids.

It's totally fine if it takes years instead of months to learn to swim.

We're just going to enjoy the process.

Snow day

Church was cancelled, but honestly I don't believe there is a family in the world (or at least the UK) who doesn't cancel whatever they had planned for a frolick on the first day of snow.

We headed over to Stowe school and landscape gardens, where they have some perfectly landscaped gardens for sledging.

After vast amounts of experimentation, we found a tray from the dining hall to be the fastest sled.

A Spring in our steps...

Today Cosmo had his first ever session at gymnastics club! Some Home educating families near by invited us along to MK Springers with them where he was the youngest (by quite a long way!) but the coaches were brilliant at keeping his attention and keeping him involved.

Towards the end of the session he got a little tired (it's an hour long) but I was impressed. Not only was he exerting a lot of energy physically, but he was being mentally challenged and attempting to co-ordinate his body in ways that were completely new to him. He learnt forward rolls, backward rolls, balancing on a beam and several positions on the bars.

I'm sure he is going to benefit massively from this activity.

There is another gymnastics club which is on at a more appropriate time, and is aimed at children his age, which is located on the other side of town. It's slightly more expensive (50p a session) but I'm not sure yet if I'll make the switch. The other mums at MK Springers are really nice, but it really is a bit to close to nap time. I think we'll keep going for the four weeks that we have paid in advance for and see what happens. If it turns out he is exhausted every week then we will try the other group.

My concern there is that the other group is not specifically for HE'd kids, so when they hit school age he will be the only one left :-(