What a week!

Dotty has been very busy this week she has been for some wonderful walks and seen some of her favourite friends there was Oscar a wonderful working cocker spaniel who has a lovely golden coat!
Black Jack who is an ace at catching a ball we think he could be a flyball champ Herby is a wonderful Basset Hound!

This week the children had a lifeskills week which incorpaorates health and social education.
We did some experiment to find the most efficient ways to wash our hands,investigated some of the germs we need to remove from our hands,researched various amazing sites in the web and later in the week the children have prepared posters for every sink in our home to remind people of the correct technique.
The children explored the who,why,where ,when, of washing there hands.
The children also learnt about how to make simple healthy lunches this week, including open sandwiches, nan bread veggies and humous, beand son toast, and freshly home made chicken noodle soup.

We have decided to continue this as the children are really enjoying leanrimng about how to makethe food they are eating and are adding their own secret ingredients to enhance the health content of their food.
They are learning how to include appropriate quantitiess of vegetables complex carbohydrates and protein.
Both children are now takinga n active role in choosing a minimum of five a day including small portions of raw veg and fresh fruit with each meal or snack.
The children had a play date with our home educating friends who have been in Malaysia for several months so now dd is the proud owner of a chineese dress !
We spent time developing our drawing skills practicing drawing pictures of rabbits !

We learnt a sad lesson on Thursday when ds ran in to say that he had found queenie our rescued ex battery hen dead in the coup this mourning.
There were many tears but there was such thankfulness for every happy moment we shared with Queenie who loved cuddles and had such a placid nature!
We had amazing conversations about whether animals have souls it was such a life lesson day.

DD has speant lots of time practicing French and is really enjoying exploring a new language she is using a great book ,flash cards web sites etc and is now exploring the verbs as well as conversation work and vocabulary ! So much motivation!

DS is enjoying exploring alot of ww2 and is also busy working on several electronics kits .
DD has been designing her own Arabian princess dressing up out fit she is desigining it herself and sewing it with a little support from me!

This week has been eventful but worth while.
DD loved her modern dance class tonight tommorow will be a very special day as DH is taking over caring over our children while I go to a day for me and some friends!Go Daddy day!
I am so thankful for the way our family is supporting one another!

Papyrus,hierolyphics,and sumer dicatorship!

Today Dotty our nine month old puppy played with a rootweiler and a staffy in the park ,chased shadows,frolicked through the woods and really tried to remember not to let the delicous new scents she encountered for long enough to try to stay to heal when we put her lead on and took her for a walk on the local pavements after her run in the park!
We had visitors and Dotty really struggle with recieveing anyone she doesn't know very well.At best she barks at worst she gets so stressed she wets herself.
I put her sweet little pink lead on today and let her know that barking at our friends was not the best plan and praised her when she was calmer and quiet.
She did much better after a while and no tiddles either!
We are so proud of her and hope she will grow in confidence with visitors!

Oldest daughter had great reviews from her teachers today .Words like amazing ,superb ,wonderful ,trustworthy just flowed and we are so thankful for her wonderful attitude towrds school,family,church and her community in general she is so special in so many ways!
Home educations loss is schools gain is all I can say!
Youngest daughter completed a Singapore maths lesson by herself today,then used her on line courses to polish up on her mental maths skills.
We played spelling and grammar games too!
We read Story of the World and learnt about the people of Sumer and compared cuneiform to hierogyphics!
We placed a picture of a
Sumer King into our book of time (a kind of time line in a book which we use as a simple scrap book of time)!
We will finish our pretend papyrus hieroglyphics next week.
This afternoon Youngest daughter played dressing up and various games with some home educated friends and was then invited out for a play date until tea time.
DS came on an amazing Dog walk, did some excellent work on his on line maths, made a picture of an ancient king of Sumer,spent time play on wii with our friends,
researched examples of modern military dicatators and helped me cook a pineapple upside down cake !
Today was such a productive and balanced day!
Tommorow is when we attend a home school group where YD will have a frecnch class,DS and DD will have basket ball practice and after eating luch with the home educated friends the group will join in a bible club this is a time where the children play group games,share jokes and talents,do craft, and spend time reflecting on their faith and how to cope with real every day situation its all about bringing thier vision to reality ...it just so happens to be a great deal of multi media socaible fun as a bonus!
This is such a wonderful group of families and we love spending time with them I just hate the journey through a very busy rush hour to get there on time!

These boots are made for walking!

Today I recieved some lovely,grey ,waterproof, walking boots through the post!
Finally while we are out on our many adventures walking through fields and woods I will have dry comfortable feet !

We took Dotty our 9 month old puppy out to our local park in the sleet and she made a new friend called Toby he is also 9 months old and is a cross between a lurcher and a Jack Russel ,the sizes were a good match and the temperaments worked well too!
We enjoyed observing the squirrels activities as we felt ad that there are only three patches of snow left!

On the home education front: For maths we explored the 24 hour clock today using Conquer Maths for DS and education city and mathletics for DD!
DD used some Singapore books to practice some basic operation skills for maths too!
We did some work on pragraphs a literature study on a book about a white stallion, and then shared a fun poem about the frustrations of leanring to whistle!!!!

Next we continued with our attempt to make our names in hierolglyphics as part of our exploration of egyptian history!This project was inspired as we have been reading through Story of the workd by Susan Wise Bauer.

We did some art work using very high quality colouring pencils and even found time to spring clean away some of Dotty's paw prints from downstairs!
Our next project this afternoon is to make a Laura Ashley fruit Cake . DD is working on the 3d marzipan decorations now!
We are studying some fun books for science including a brilliant one that teaches you symbols to help you remeber the elemnts!On a practical front for physical science we are also using some amazing electronics sets the chidren recieved for Christmas to construct boats,a tank,a robot and various clever circuit things I will post pictures as they are finished off!

Our darling hens layed three eggs today!They are so beautiful and so individual , and for anyone who hasn't had the privilage of eating and egg from such well loved free range oragnic hens ,the texture and flavour is a whole new world!

I will blog again as soon as I can fit it in!