Learning To Write

I know I have written about L wanting to read and trying very hard, even though I would happily have left it till she was older and how she enjoys trying to write but we have discovered she has a tendency to reverse her letters. Not a problem as such and lots of children do it but she notices as soon as she has done it is wrong but the harder she tries the worse the reversing gets and she gets annoyed with herself. This is something that we noticed in speech therapy too, the harder she tries the worse it can get, it is better to let her have a couple of attempts and then leave her for a few days and come back to it, rather than doing daily practise. So I have been working on fun activities to help her, like writing in sand, drawing them on peoples backs using her finger, we are working our way through the alphabet, so work on the new letter and review the letters we have already done. I read SLOAH's post on using rice instead of sand for the writing trays, I thought I would give I a try, nothing like a new medium to spark interest and it has been well received.

We made bread rolls in the shapes of letters and some we decorated with seeds to write out the letters and a happy smiley face.

Monday we enjoyed making letters using play dough, have beads that we could add to write out the letters in the play dough like we did in the bread dough.

L even tried to write out some words she has learnt and then went and wrote some of them down on a piece of paper. Followed by "Mummy I can't believe I can actually write real words" one very happy L.

L has been talking lots about the changing seasons, so she drew what happened each seasons. So in summer there are lots of flowers and she can have the paddling pool out, Autumn all the trees loose their leaves, winter Father Christmas and Rudolf and Spring we water our new flowers that are growing.

A good friend sent me this link to make cats out of cardboard rolls, L loved the look of them and we so far have 3 stuck together, waiting for the paint to dry, to start the next stage.

Tuesday morning we spent at the allotment and harvested another bucketful of carrots, the last of the beans and some peas. Have very happy rabbits, they love the carrot tops to say the least, nearly as much as they love the vine leaves of my grape vines! The afternoon spent at the park with lots of other home educators, lovely to catch up with everyone.

This afternoon, some fun watching dancing raisins, you need raisins and carbonated water, or some sort of fizzy clear drink. An object that is denser than water and has a rough surface,  like a raisin, allows for the bubbles of gas (carbon dioxide) to stick to the raisins and makes it buoyant and the raisin rises up, the bubbles then pop and the raisin sinks again.

Realised I haven't shared our menu planning for a few weeks, so here is this weeks meal plan.

Sunday - Roast dinner

Monday -  cold meat, pasta and vegetable sauce

Tuesday -  shepherds pie or vegetarian shepherdess pi

Wednesday - left over shepherds pie

Thursday -  ratatouille

Friday - macaroni cheese with spinach

Saturday - beef burgers or aubergine and kidney bean burgers, home made wedges and veg

Shepherdess Pie

1 courgette chopped

1 leek chopped (or use an onion)

2 carrots diced

125g mushrooms, chopped

2 cloves garlic chopped

60g red lentils

60g green lentils

225g can chopped tomatoes
450ml water

1 bay leaf

5ml mixed herbs

 25ml brown sauce

200g can baked beans

900g potatoes peeled and chopped

25g grated cheese

1. Put the potatoes on to boil, once cooked mash and add the cheese.
2. While potatoes are cooking, heat oil in a large saucepan, add courgette, leek, carrots, mushrooms, garlic fry for 10 minutes.
3. Add mixed herbs, bay leaf, lentils, tinned tomatoes and 450ml water, bring to the boil and simmer for 30 minutes.
4.  Add the brown sauce and baked beans and cook for 5 minutes
5. Remove bay leaf and spoon into a dish, cover with mash potato bake in the oven for about 30 minutes, until the potato is crispy

On a crafting front have crocheted some more leaves to go on our autumn nature display, have plans for knitted acorns, toadstools etc.

Toadstool in the making, shouldn't take too long!

Embroidery is coming along slowly but least you can see the kitten appearing, even if it does look a little bit skeletal at the moment. Reading Unplug Your Kids making interesting reading but will wait till I have read more before I write a lot about it.

Birthdays

Both girls have had their birthdays this week, M was 14 at the weekend, so grown up now, she decided that for her birthday she want to meet up with a friend in town, go shopping and have lunch out. I met her in town to take them home and was surprised they only had a bag each, M had written out a long list of things she would like and I mean long! But what I hadn't seen was she had marked the things she really needed/wanted and the rest were maybes, she ended up getting mainly the things she needed. I was really impressed with this, we have been talking a lot about whether we need something or just want it, is the want something that you will enjoy for a long time, or a one of want etc. That buying stuff can give you a lovely feeling but where are you going to put it when you get home, does it have a home or is it going to end up annoying you.

 L and I spent time painting some cardboard to create a scene for her horses.

I love a beautiful perennial flower, especially if they seem to be fairly slug/snail proof and drought proof, penstemon do well on both counts and phlox seem to be fairly slug proof. I had some purple phlox and our local hardware store has had a nice selection of colours this year, a friend really like my purple one and said she would love a white one, luckily  the store had both and I also picked up this pretty pink one.

L's birthday was celebrated at home, she announced the day before her birthday that she would like a mermaid cake. She had for the weeks running up to her birthday been adamant that she did not want a birthday cake as she doesn't like cake. So I had planned to make cup cakes for them all to decorate as she loves to do this. Anyway change of plan but we didn't actually have a mermaid toy to decorate the cake and I wasn't going to have a lot of time to make cake in a mermaid shape, thought something with shells on might have to do. We have witches, fairies, princesses, pirates, dragons, unicorns, Pegasus but no fairy and nor did anyone locally, had shells and sea creatures to decorate but no mermaid and our cake shop is normally closed on a Monday. Anyway she had also requested to have the cornflour and water out, so thought we would take a walk, get the rest of the birthday food etc, walked past the cake shop to realise they were open, apparently they open once a month on Monday so she can do the paperwork, they only had one mermaid, one happy L and one relieved Mum! Anyway cake went well, it has to be dairy and egg free, well free from a lot of other things but they are the main cake ingredients we are allergic too

While waiting for her guests to arrive, L and minded child made some seahorse stain glass windows.

I decided to add some spray bottles with food colouring added to the water, to make the cornflour play more interesting. Well that has to be one of my better decisions and the easiest party activities ever! They had hours of fun with it all.

On Thursday we had decided to join a local home ed meet for a climbing session, M has been before and loves it, L wasn't so sure but thought if her sister was with her it would all be ok, that or they would both freak out together. Well L loved it , I took a couple of photos of M at the top of the wall but ended up with loads of L as I expected her to stop and come back down but she made her way up to the top, they loved the session and can't wait to go again. They were very tired and asked if they could watch a video, so thought I would have an extra birthday treat and watch the new Beauty and the Beast, it's lovely to see them both cuddled up on the sofa together.

We seem to have a bumper crop of kale this year and was asking O's girlfriend if she would like some to take home, anyway I then asked if she had ever had kale crisps, no but would like to try some, so we went up the allotment picked some and made some, the result was strangely weird but grows on you! L wants me to make some more, so they can't be that bad. We ripped up the kale discarding the main stalk, washed it and dried it, drizzled with some olive oil and mixed in some salt, baked int he oven for about 8 to 10 minutes at Gas Mark 6.

Silver leaf is coming on, finally reached the pretty leaf pattern.

Giant Bubbles, Rivers and More

Today we had fun making giant bubbles, recipe is here, we used straws with wool threaded through them to make the bubble wand, we have all enjoyed seeing who could make the largest bubble.

Knowing that the heat was going to last, I decided to make some ice chalks, they need a hot day for them to work well and melt enough to draw with, think I should of made more than one tray though!

 They all had a great time exploring the feel of the ice cubes and looking at the colours before deciding to try and draw something.

Home ed wise, my plan today was to look at rivers with M, now I had planned to use the sandpit to create a mini river, tiny waterfall, plunge pool and estuary. Now the last time we did this it worked really well and we even managed to create a meander, didn't work so well this time think the sand needed to be wetter before we started! Anyway at least M can see how a river picks up debris and deposits it at the estuary etc and the younger ones have had a fantastic time playing with the very wet sand and water.

Toucan artwork from last week.

The rabbits enjoying the freedom to explore the garden and nibble various flowers, they have discovered how delicious the grape vine leaves are.