Spider Webs and Pumpkins

Halloween today and we have been looking at spiders and their webs, they have had a go at weaving a spiders web using a paper plate. Lovely video of a spider spinning a web.

We haven't carved any pumpkins but do have a lot that we harvested from the allotment, which I need to do some cooking with! As they enjoyed the chalk pastels so much last week, I thought we would have them out again today, children range from 3yrs to 13 yrs.

The picture below is the pumpkin's flowers and seeds.

Science Sunday

I love doing science experiments with the children, whatever their age, they enjoy watching and taking part. So was really excited when I came across Mel Chemistry and decided we would try their first pack and see what it was like. Well we weren't disappointed, the first pack comes with all the basic equipment that you need, including a burner, safety glasses and 2 experiments that you can repeat more than once. So today we used the sugar snake one, using sugar and bicarbonate of soda, Mel Chemistry have a you tube video of their sugar snake.

It takes a little while to get growing and the your sugar snake slowly starts to appear.

Also discovered this lovely you tuber with lots of home science experiments to try, including the sugar snake.

Ferdie

I thought I would surprise my little ones the other week and create a small word scene for them so we could retell the story using props. It went down very well, they loved pretending to be the wind and trying to blow the leaves of the tree,

 getting the hedgehog to scurry around collecting all the leaves up to make somewhere warm to hibernate.

 The tray was used so many times through out the week, sometimes retelling the story and other times, adding in new characters and events.

Horses came to explore the tray and the trees disappeared to create a meadow that they could run around.

Painting of Ferdie and his tree.

Ferdie with his family and friends.

Hedgehogs

We have enjoyed lots of walks to different woods and parks near us, the children love to watch the squirrels scampering about, they loved the story of the The Very Helpful hedgehog and we have added some hedgehogs to out display. These foam hedgehogs came from Baker Ross and were a nice simple craft for the children to enjoy.

They were really fascinated and had lots of questions about hedgehogs and I thought it would be nice to make a lapbook with them, with all the info in that they have found out. The printables for the lapbook are from Home school Share, I think we might add some bits from The Tale of Mrs Tiggy Winkle but we see what they say next week. I know lapbooks are in many ways very adult intensive activity at this age but they have loved the process and looking at how L has wanted to share her book with everyone, it was worth it.

We've looked at how hedgehogs are nocturnal, that they hibernate, roll into a ball when scared, compared their footprints to other animals and what they eat.

Our Autumn display so far.

Autumn

So last Monday saw us reading lots of stories including Ferdie and The Falling Leaves, which led on to a discussion about why leaves change colour and fall of the tree. We talked about how plants and trees can make their own food in their leaves by using the water that the roots suck up like a straw and the sunlight, the children were very impressed with this and thought trees were very clever to make their own food. Didn't actually get round to the initial question of why leaves fall of the trees as the making it's own food really interested them but sure we will get round to answering it at some point over the next couple of weeks. Did managed to find a nice diagram in one of my books for them to look at. After that we had some crafts out, I had printed out some of these autumn tree printable for them to use with tissue paper and various stickers I had. We talked about the different colours they might see at this time of year and they chose the colours to match.

 

They enjoyed themselves and asked me to print of some more sheets for them, which I did and a colouring in sheet, which they added stickers too

 Lots of time spent in the garden playing with the baby dolls and food, followed by some pattern making. We used lollipop sticks and to start with they had to try and copy the pattern from the book, which wasn't as easy as they thought, then of to make their own patterns and pictures.

Tuesday we spent the morning building lots of towers, reading stories and doing some puzzles, we spent the afternoon in the park, meeting up with friends, finding some conkers on the way home. Wednesday we put together an Autumn display, which they have enjoyed playing with and then a walk through park land, looking at how tall some of the trees were, the different shapes, had some running races to different trees. Found some trees that had branches cut of them this year and compared them to those that had been cut of years ago and talked about how the tree continues growing over the cut of part. Then spotted moss and lichen growing too, then they saw some holes in one tree and started telling stories about who lived there.

 M and I set about making some window stars in autumn colours and I made another transparency to go with them, they have made our patio door look rather lovely. Really want to try and find the time to make some more, M is making more stars to go around our Autumn wall display. I put together a tutorial for these window stars last year, if you want to try and make them yourself.

Autumn Planning

The children really do love Autumn and all the changes the new season brings, the older minded children and L are already noticing the changes in the world around them and are commenting. They are linking these changes to Autumn, spotting the changes in leaves, the first conkers, the pumpkins that are nearly ripening well. So I am using one of our favourite Autumn stories, Ferdie and the Falling Leaves to base our Autumn planning on. I have noticed the book has been re-released as Fletcher and the Falling Leaves rather than Ferdie, just in case you go hunting for  new copy of the book

Some of our Autumn stories ready for tomorrow.

More Dinos and Home Education

I think we have nearly come to the end of our dinosaur theme, the children are noticing the change in the weather, leaves changing colour and spotting the first conkers, so think time to do some Autumn planning as over the last week they have hardly mentioned dinosaurs. Anyway back to the last bits that we have done for the dinosaurs, I think we have read every dinosaur book we own several times over, watched more than one episode of Andy's Dinosaur Adventures. I found some dinosaur skeletons, that the children cut out and then had to work out were or how they fitted together. We then named the different bones we could see, I showed them on their bodies the same bones.

 L was really interested in this, so I found out a poster we had of the human skeleton and a hare, they spent time asking what the different bones were called and trying to find the bones on their bodies, with some giggling involved. I might have to get down from the loft our skeleton for them. Wish I had thought before hand that they might be really curious about their own skeleton as I could of got it down and put together before hand but at least we had the poster.

They also painted some wooden bendy snake to go with the story of Harry and the Swamp, the only problem was they wanted to make a primordial swamp with the jelly baff for the snake. I explained that I didn't think the paint would last very long in the swamp, did they want to risk it? They didn't want to loose the paint but really wanted to do the swamp, so I am on the hunt for some plastic bendy snakes, the sort that I as a child used to get in party bags, don't want any too life like snake toys!

We are also busy learning the days of the week as the older ones are always trying to work out what day it is and who is coming today, what's happening tomorrow etc, so every morning we are putting the date on our calendar saying what day it is and then just going through the days of the weeks.

Looking at shapes and patterns, I gave L and older minded children a handful of shapes and asked them to make a pattern, which they enjoyed doing. Some just enjoyed seeing how they could fit them together others enjoyed making them into different things and telling a story with them.

A Butterfly

A flower for the butterfly to enjoy.

 A person to look after the flower for the butterfly.

One of my mindies Mum's has passed on a plastic kitchen, that also has a small washing machine, it has gone down very well, to say the least! They spent the morning it arrived washing all the dolls clothes and have repeated this activity several times since. They wanted a clothes line to peg them out on, so found out a couple of skipping ropes and hooked them around the drawers for them to use.

 Also realised that if we had been doing the normal school thing L would of started reception this month, instead I am starting the journey of home eding my 3rd child and very much looking forward to it. How did we come about home education, there was a variety of reasons, before I had children it always interested me, had read several books and watched some documentaries. The thought that a child could learn at their own pace, not feel like they are behind if they are struggling but equally if they really enjoy a subject you can follow their interests and go as into the subject as the child wants to at a pace they enjoy. You can adapt your day around the children's needs, if they need a sensory/movement break they can easily be factored in, love cooking, then we can do more cooking. When J was little though I liked the idea of home education, I didn't know anyone locally and we didn't have a computer/internet then. So he did a day a week at playgroup moving up to 2 days and then went to local nursery. Playgroup was fantastic and he enjoyed it, they always double checked and made sure food was ok with him, he had a nut and egg allergy but nursery was different and within a term we decided to remove him. Now this was partly due to discovering that a neighbour of mine was removing her 4 teenagers from school to HE and J also saying that we did more at home and he learnt more at home. I think at this stage DH thought we would just do the nursery years and then start school at 5, well J flourished at home and we didn't even think about school until secondary age. We did year 7 at home but by the end of the year most of his friends had either moved out of the area or had gone to school so he decided to try school and that worked out fine for him to, teachers were surprised that he adapted to the school day etc like he had always been in school. So M we didn't even consider school and L will be home educated too.