We are off to the woods!

Dotty has really enjoyed the walks in the rain and has especially enjoyed our local park being flooded!
I gave her a bath the other day to help get her ready to meet my Mother for the first time.
Dotty barked for a few moments then decided my Mother wasn't too much of a threat and decided to sidle up between us on the sofa and eventually rested her head on My mum's lap!
The spaniel eyes won her over straight away!
The hens are still laying well but we have had to restrcit their acces to some areas of the garden as there is absolutely no lawn left!!!
We are supplementing thier pellets and corn with some fresh greens like cabbage.
Today we secured our allotment for another year so we have been very busy making big plans!

For the last few weeks we have been very busy with home education projects .
Maths and english continue in both structured and child led activities.
DD has really enjoyed exploring multiplication tables using a floor game I made for her!
DS has been mastering HCF and LCF and factor tree on conquest maths!
DD has also been using mathletics education city and singapore maths along with a little Kumon maths too!
We are very busy with our egyptians project as we continue our journey through world history courtesy of story of the world, the children are doing a computer thing together producing a slide show to accompany a song they like right now.
The children have also done alot of cooking!
DD has made some excellent banana bread loaf, and DS made flapjacks!
They are also learning alot about nutrition after we purchased excellent nutrition charts from
a nurtion company on line one is a very colourful chart explaining essential vitamins and minerals and which food supply them best. It was so wonderful to see our children choosing meals becuase of two health charts!
We also had lots of home education group events the first was a pancake race and pancake banquet with our small,friendly home education group which especially includes all familie who hav children who might be classified in schools as having special educational needs.
Tis group asctually has many so called typical families but the attraction is the small informal and very friendly group atmosphere.
We have also started a music movement and singing group last Monday.
This involved simple music theory precussion work,music appreciation,interpretation, and some simple singing we used a song back available free from sing up a national charity trying to promote singing to promote singing to enhance eductaion and community too!
This was such fun on a rainy morning we danced around the room sining ALice the camle as a warm up !
Later we made Marracas (from www.enchantedlearning.com) using papaer plates tissue paper ribbons seqiun glitter glue and paint!
We also made a trebble clef using glitter and glue!
We read lots and started to make plans for our holidays as we are due to go to centre parcs in Longleat tommorow!
The children love the forest,meeting the owls etc and they adore swimming too!
We are really lloking forward to a very short break made shorter by the fact that our oldest child has a gcse exam on Friday so we need to return one day early and leave on Monday afternoon.
I will try to get as many photos as possible and psot when we return.
Dotty is staying at home with DH as he hates holidays and hates swimming and loves being at home,and centre parcs are so restrictive about where dogs can go and what they can do that we felt she would enjoy home more!

Getting our bearings!

Today I got up extra early to give Dotty an extra long walk!
She was so surprised to meet up with her friend ,who is a large, English Boxer called Tilly. They ran through the park together .The two puppy pals rolled through puddles,tried to dig holes all over the park, then, finally, they found small stick, and shared it.There they were, inseperable! It was such a comical scene as they were merrily trotting along together with this old twig in their mouths!
I am so proud of Dotty who is now just turning nine months!She is doing so well with recall even when she is interested in chasing birds or playing with dogs she keenly returns if I call and signal to her! Her ears fly out behind her as she sppeds back to me!
Her little tail looks like a propeller when she is running along!!!!
This evenig our walk was made more thrilling by the presence of a family walking their dog int he park with a torch on permanently .Dotty is obsessed with shiny lights and adores chasing the shadows that shiny lights produce we needed to seriously distract her so that she didn't harass the innocent people trying to have a quiet eveing stroll with their dog!

Well back to our daily learning adventures!
DS was very perplexed by a maths lesson involving bearings.
He actually had to use a protractor ,ruler, and set square on paper with absolute acuracy
This is very difficult for a child who struggles with cordination and sensory integration, but with lots of patience and encouragement he completed his assignment with 96% as a mark.It only took him about an hour and a half with lots of moral support and calming shoulder rubs to help him overcome his abject fear of having to coordinate so many things at once.

DD also didn't understand the point of leanring how to multiply at all so I simply spent time showing her how labourious it is to add up 12 twos or 11 4s and how long it takes to write out the sums! Eureka she has decided that its really helpful to use multiplication!

We spent time reading together about ancient Egyptians today and both children spent time creating stencil designs of some Egyptian symbols!

We read together and we shared a delicious lunch full of fresh veggies and cheesy wholemeal toast. This feast was in honour of our play date with another home educating family when DD spent time making clay pots,drawing and painting.
Later she spent time building a fairy tale castle out of lego!
Then after tea she continued some work on her Egyptian Symbols and asked to do some more work on multiplaication!
This afternoon after taking part in all of his learning adventures at home,
DS went to play with another friend who is home educated, and has Aspergers syndrome.
He was so excited all day waiting to go.

This week has been hectic so far with Home ed group at our house on Monday,Tuesday with a visit from our malysian friends who also home educate,Wednesday joining forces with another home edding family to do history projects,
Today playdates afte a busy day of leanring activities I am ready to rebbot the wasshing machine wipe down every surface above the florr sweep hoover and clean all of the washable floors and hoover every carpet before bed!

Right housework frenzy, pack swimming things into a bag then collapse into a lovely bath followed by bed , beeed , beeed , it feels like years since I last spent ime in my lovely cozy bed!