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.

Holiday Projects

We've had a busy but productive week of work, have finally sorted out the loft, cleared what we don't need and carefully labelled up what is left. So shouldn't be an issue finding things, or should I put it another way, if I have to have more surgery on my hip in the future my husband should be able to find it fairly easily. 

Made a major start on clearing the bottom of the garden, this was the area that house the chickens. We have been debating getting more and in a perfect world we would but Mr Fox and family are still about a lot and I have seen them sitting on our playhouse roof in the early hours, so don't want to risk loosing more chickens to them. On closer inspection our hen house also need not only the vent, vent door and roost replacing after the fox got in but the main door, roof needed some work and the base of the tray needed replacing too. I have missed the lovely eggs and the gentle clucking of the chickens but don't miss the mess. So hen house has gone and have pruned back the jasmine, clematis and honeysuckle that was there, I know not the right time of year but it needs to be done especially as some of the trellis needs to be replaced etc. I am now left with an area at the bottom of the garden that is about 12 by 18 foot it is behind the vegetable patch and is rather secluded, I have my heart set on some sort of secret garden. This is the first part of the garden to get the spring sun and the last of the autumn sun, so would like some sort of seated area, I have been busy pinning ideas, when I asked the family for ideas they have so far come out with a swimming pool, meerkat enclosure, dog run and kennel (we don't have a dog) and when I then asked friends they threw in the idea of a hot tub. These were interesting and if money and space was no object very tempting but not what I have vision of.

So between sorting out the loft and garden have also managed some time to read and finish of some craft projects. I love to knit but for some reason tend to delay sewing up, so managed to finish of a jumper for one of my minded children and a new baby jumper. Fell in love with this Erika Knight  pattern only made pop the jumper, used the lovely cotton yarn too, it knitted beautifully and luckily finished the day before the baby arrived safely into the world. Hoping they will add to their baby collection of patterns.

Have been using up some more of my fabric stash, I do love the Little One Yard Wonders book keep meaning to make more from it but keep coming back to the Springtime top, it is so lovely to sew. I have made L 3 of these already over the last couple of years, now planning ahead for next year and made this top and some loose trousers to go with it in fabric that L chose.

Fabric cut out ready to make another Springtime top, I did say I really liked the pattern!

Woodland walk

Taking a break from all the holiday projects we're working our way through. We thought we would make the most of the sunshine and head to the woods for a walk but also show L were Reading Festival was as her brother was enjoying a weekend there. I would say it is so peaceful but actually at the moment you can clearly hear the music from the festival, so not your normal back to nature walk, once we got further into the woods you couldn't hear the music so much, that's not me complaining we rather enjoyed a different type sound track to our walk.

Part the way through the woods, it opens out into a large grassy area and from there you can see the festival ground very clearly and enjoy the music.

L wanted to know where her brother was, the response was somewhere down there but know idea where.

As we cross of the grassy area we come to what L describes as a cave and she starts to chatter about the bear hunt, going "stumble, trip, stumble trip" until we spot some blackberries, which we stopped to enjoy before carrying on with our walk.

There are some fantastic trees in these woods, some have been damaged the storms we have had over the years, others have obviously stood for a very long time.

Love the way theses woods, open out into large clear areas and then back again to narrow paths.

As we got to one end of the woods we discovered a plum tree with some lovely ripe plums, manged to pick a few which were absolutely gorgeous to say the least.

Skittle Fun

I have seen various posts on facebook using skittles to make pretty patterns on a plate with water. They looked great but wasn't sure we would get such a good result, I was very wrong, L and I ended up going and buying another packet to do it again, it worked so well and she thoroughly enjoyed making various patterns.

We started of by putting them in a circle and the colour very quickly appears,

L decided it needed a skittle in the middle.

She then enjoyed mixing the colours together, she loved the way they swirled and mixed, making a brown in the end.

We washed the plate of and she started again, this time making a face

 and then various other patterns, she spent time forming the skittles into various numbers. This is something she chose to do as she is very interested in numbers at the moment and very pleased with herself now that she can write some of them without help.

Then I had a go and L decided it looked a bit like a tree.

So a great fun activity, a time to explore patterns, colours, how colours mix and new colours form, numbers and counting.

Gingerbread Dinosaurs

L loved making dinosaur fossils and had asked if we good make some to eat, so we had a go using our gingerbread biscuit. They enjoyed making and eating them but the biscuit recipe is maybe a bit to puffy when cooked if you want a detailed fossil imprint. But this wasn't about creating perfect replicas it was following up on a child's idea and idea that the other children also liked the sound of, I think the gingerbread biscuit is the bit they really liked the idea of but I might be wrong!

So after making the biscuits we set about pressing different dinosaurs into the dough, yes they had been thoroughly washed before I let the dinosaurs near the cooking.

 They then had a go at trying to make their own fossil imprints.

Ready for cooking.

Ready for eating.

I have two children that love to colour so when I came across this idea for using a paper plate for a dinosaur and then adding legs etc,thought brilliant idea, showed the children and they liked the idea too. Here's the link for the printables, you will need to scroll down to find them. When they had coloured them all in and I ended up cutting them all out for them, they decided it was rather like a jigsaw puzzle trying to put all the pieces together correctly.

L decided that half a paper plate wasn't the right shape for a pterodactyl, so she found her book, showed me how the wings went and then set about reshaping the plate to look like a proper pterodactyl.