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? 

Gulliver's Land!!

Well the time finally came (actually it came a lot quicker than I imagined it would!) and Cosmo had saved up enough money to take, not only his own family, but also his cousins to Gulliver's land theme park.

He was so incredibly pleased with himself, although he got a little embarrassed with all the 'thank yous', it was obvious he enjoyed them, but just didn't know how to respond.

Here's the video of our fantastic day out:

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)

Managing Money: A learning opportunity almost missed!

Pocket money has been something that has come and gone several times in the Gracie household. We always tie it to some form of responsibility, and initially it goes well, but Cosmo gets bored. Currently pocket money is tied to him independently completing a set number of worksheets each day from our Timberdoodle curriculum, without complaining. 

We have always had 'spend', 'save' and 'give' jars, and he must put a little of his money into each jar, although the ratio is determined by him. He has historically been very generous with giving, kept  enough to spend on 99p toys from poundland, but not really been motivated to save beyond putting a small random coin in... until he had something to save for. 

Saving with a goal in mind has inspired him. He recently told me that he wanted to save up enough money to take the whole family to Gulliver's land (family ticket = £90). I had laughed it off and explained that it was a lot of money and would take far too long to save up his pocket money. He worked out that it would take just under two years, and that he felt he could wait that long.

A little later I read this blog about a four year old who saved up to buy herself, and her baby brother, iPads. I realised that we had a fantastic teaching opportunity, which I was missing by assuming he was incapable. 

So we had a chat about how to raise extra money for his goal. He has donated some toys to a local charity shop which pays him £2 a bag. He has also discovered ebay and listed his duplo set there (three days to go if you want to bid!) and is planning on selling his 'Swim fin' too. Grandma has been paying him 'a penny a pine cone' to collect kindling for her fire and a small amount for watering her plants. Even little Lychee got in on the action, attempting to sweep the Grandma's kitchen after a BBQ so she could earn some 'Gulliver money' to give to Cosmo.  

What I love most is his little determined character isn't undermining his giving attitude. He still puts money in his give jar. He still took the best bits of duplo (in his opinion) to save for his cousin Jonathon, and most notably, as well as saving £90 for our family ticket, he now also wants to save £180 so that he can take his cousins with him. 

We've created a spreadsheet for him so he can add to it when he earns money and watch his goal drop down. He's so excited and I nearly missed all this because I assumed he couldn't do it. 

Let your kids dream big.

*Update is available here*

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. 

Literacy and nutrition

I'm passionate about early childhood literacy, and also about nutrition.

Head on over to my main blog today to see why these two things are linked:

http://katiejogracie.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/save-children.html

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.