Winter has definitely arrived!

The snow has finally melted away but we are threatened with more this weekend so it's been a mad dash to the shops to finish the Christmas shopping and to try to get organised.

Academic school work has dwindled to nothing, but there is still lots of activities happening such as looking after animals in the cold weather, watching the icicles grow and then melt at certain temperatures, calculating how high up the hill to go to get a really good speed downwards on the sledge, cooking biscuits, mince pies etc, helping out at Christmas sales at church, going to carol services,visiting friends and relatives, wrapping presents and lots of work on the website.

We are eagerly awaiting the arrival of a book recently ordered from here. The author is another home educator and has done lots of material to use with the book for free so I'm looking forward to snuggling up with the book very soon :o)

SNOW!!

Birthday Cake and weekly round up

Wow! What a gorgeous looking cake made by my son and it tasted good too :o)
It was made to celebrate my eldest daughter's birthday.

Love pictures like the one below: my youngest snuggled up in her 'pudsey' blanket enjoying a good book :o)

We are having a few weeks off lapbooking science and have decided to read about Archimedes instead, even though strictly speaking he was a mathematician, I think. However it is a really good read and would make a delightful lapbook but I think we really need a break, sort of winding down towards Christmas :o)

Above is my daughter's homework for art group.

We've finished our Cultures around the World lapbook, just haven't taken any photos yet so we've started a lapbook on Maps this week, just a quickie, sort of a refresher one as we covered maps a few years ago and my youngest has started her research on Elizabethan clothes.

We are doing Algebra in Maths and continue to work through an English workbook. My son is continuing with learning Java, but is currently away in London with his dad, so it's been a really quiet end to the week :o)

Middle Ages Resources

As soon as the lapbook is completed I get a little lazy about putting up the resources we used and end up forgetting where I got most of them from but I'll try to do my best. My previous post has a few on it but I've posted a few more below:

Here are lots of lesson plans to go along with a few books that we read by Karen Cushman such as The Midwife's Apprentice, Catherine called Birdy and Matilda Bone.

Here is a Middle Ages site map which has absolutely loads of informations on it.

Here is a Paint the Cathedral Game.

Here is an interactive castle game.

Here is even more information on the Medieval time period.

My youngest didn't play this one but it sounds very good.

A collection of recipes can be found here.

As well as all of the above we read lots of books such as Castle Diary, which I bought from the library for 10p! The books already mentioned by Karen Cushman, The Kevin Crossley Holland Trilogy about King Arthur, The Once and Future King by TH White, also about Arthur; A proud taste of Scarlett and Minerver by Konisburg about Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine and her famous husbands and children, this one has been read and reread already and much enjoyed. Robin Hood by Roger Lanclyn Green is another favourite; Black Horses for the King by Anne Mcaffrey, Fire Bed and Bone by Henrietta Temple, The Bedouins Gazelle by Francis Temple (I haven't read this one so can't say what it is about other than my daughter enjoyed it); Otto of the silver hand by Howard Pyle and Crusades by Elizabeth Laird, a particular favourite author of my daughter's.

We also used SOTW Middle Ages as our spine book along with Our Island Story.

We watched a few programmes from the BBC Medieval Season, but our favourite by far was Christina - Story of a Medieval Girl.

Last but not least is a quiz to see how much we learned.

Middle Ages Lapbook

I got this lapbook from HOAC and I'm really pleased with it. It is choc-a-block with information and you can tell that alot of thought has gone into the graphics.
My daughter loved doing it too as it is such an interesting time period to study with lots of craft activites to go along with it.

The front cover is done by writing calligraphy as the monks did, but not having any velum lying around we had to make do with tea dyed paper, although it took nearly as long as the velum to dry out ;o)

Below is all about the knight, from his armour to a scroll about his codes of chivalry.

The first full flap below is sort of an introduction to the Middle Ages with high and late Middle Ages flaps and dates for the Medieval time period on the visor of the helmet.

The right hand side below is about the knights tournaments and parts of a castle.

Below is the late Middle Ages flap but the phot has got out of sequence ;o)

Below is the back of the first full flap and contains information on the Black Death, declining population and reasons for low population; the latter was an extra added in because there was just so many reasons as you can see from the photo below!

The next two photos of the top flap is about Medieval foods, Common Life, The Feudal system and a Society Pyramid.

Below is the back of the top flap and contains information on Charlemagne, Duties of the Parish Priest and The Rights of the Magna Carta.

The base of the lapbook contains more information on the knight's life such as Weaponary, Becoming a knight and their responsibilities and the Crusades. My daughter laid it out so that when the bottom and top flaps were open, the entire base of the lapbook would be about knights

leaving the flaps for information about the peasants and general life during the Middle Ages.

Below is a photo of our Motte and Bailey Castle, the blue bit in the corner is a pond that my daughter added. The instructions for this can be found here.

Below are the practice sheets of calligraphy my daughter used before writing the front cover and menu.

Belkow is the menu, complete with some recipes from the lapbook and rather surprisingly they tasted really good. We did extras though just incase but we didn't need them (again on tea dyed paper).

Below are photos of the shields we made, all of which come from my husband's family name (Scottish names are so much easier to research than English ones).

A list of programmes and films watched and additional books read to follow in next post as I think this one has been long enough :o)

Edwardian Farm and Downton Abbey

We've been looking at the Edwardian time period recently, quite by accident really. We started watching this and then this and you can read the blog about the Edwardian Farm here. We also saw a programme on a few nights ago about setting up a high street during the Edwardian time period called Turn Back Time, there's a type of blog about it here.

It's a time period that we haven't looked at before so we've learnt alot already just by watching the programmes without getting any books out but I suspect we'll get them out fairly soon and then look at World War One as my youngest is keen to do some of the worksheets here.
We also have a Hands of a Child lapbook about World War 1 but I'm not sure whether we'll go into it in that much depth yet, maybe next year, because the Middle Ages study is taking longer than I anticipated as the period is such a large one to do about. (Will post more about Middle Ages when finished).

Below are some Edwardian links I intend to use over the coming weeks:
Here is a link for colouring pages.
Here is a website with lots of info on The Edwardians.
Here is a timeline.
Here is a worksheet on education during the time period
Here are tales from a London Tenement house.
There is lots of info on this site.
I think we'll round up with an Edwardian afternoon tea and scones, yes that sounds good... off to paint shields and prepare decorations for our Medieval Feast.

Reproduction Lapbook

My youngest has finished her first lapbook of the new school year, phew! I say phew! because I really didn't think we'd get started this year never mind actually finish one, so I'm really pleased.
It's one (from HOAC) I've had for quite a while now but I've been waiting for just the right moment to use it and that time has arrived :o)

We've followed a friends progress through her pregnancy and regularly see the development of her daughter. During all this my youngest's interest was aroused so we watched this, a fabulous informative documentary and we watched another one which I can't remember the name of but it had men dressed up in white suits running around pretending to be sperm, hmmm!


The above cover was done by my daughter using photoshop, something that I think she's getting very good at, but then I'm biased :o)

Above is a booklet on Chromosones and Genes.

Above are booklets about changes in boys and girls, below that is a three tiered booklet about puberty and hormone levels.

My daughter used different coloured card/paper to back the booklets in this lapbook which I think make it look alot better than just sticking them in but unfortunately the photos just don't do it justice at all :o(

This photo isn't too clear but the blue flaps at the top are about the male reproductive system and the ones below are about the female reproductive system.
The photo below is about the menstrual cycle and the parts of sperm.

The flaps below are all about fertilisation.

Below is about the fetus and the placenta.

My daughter even did the vocabulary and timeline, something that she usually runs out of steam with :o) The lapbook was rounded off with a whole page about genetics and twins.

Halloween Fun

I wanted to be an organised mother with lots of photographs of my children making their pumpkins but it wasn't to be, I only made it in time to take photos of the finished products.






Below are my youngest and friends ready to go halloweening, I think they look really good.

These are the delicious toffee apples my daughter made; only photos of the finished product again I'm afraid, but I was lucky to get this as they tasted far better than last years attempt and therefore didn't hang around long!

Half Term Holiday

The week started sooo well. I'd arranged for Granny and Granpa to deliver my youngest to art class whilst I stayed home and got on with the house work and packing for our short break. It would be so much fun taking a leisurely drive to my mam's and then staying over in our caravan for a few nights. Ironing done, packing almost done, tea cooked, everything still going well :o)

The family had got together and set off to collect the caravan. Once hooked up and ready for the off my hubby noticed something wrong with the car. The accelerator pedal had snapped! We couldn't move forward at any great speed at all but we had to get the caravan back in the compound and in it's usual position, now that was fun!

We rang the RAC man and arranged to meet him back at our home, so we slowly made our way home. The RAC man couldn't fix it so had to tow the car into the garage - at this point I rang my mam and explained that we wouldn't be going to see her afterall :o(

Hubby arranged a replacement car for the next day so undeterred we put our plans back into action and set off. We decided we would stay the night at mam's house and then return home the following day.

In the end we saw the funny side of it and had a lovely time and just thanked God that it hadn't happened when we were flying down the motorway, not that you can fly down the motorway with a caravan on the back but you know what I mean ;o)

Hard at work!

During our sort out we came across this model of the solar system belonging to my son. My youngest then repainted it after finding out about each of the planets online, which then led to her re-doing a Solar System Digilapbook using this (just click on the boxes to reveal the information about each planet.

Below Molly is taking an interest in the planets, I suppose they do look alot like the balls she plays with :o)

We've also been trying our hand at calligraphy, Medieval style, to coincide with our history middle ages lapbook (which is coming along nicely :o)). My youngest has so much patience for it, it's unbelievable, she really puts me to shame. Although her line goes a little wobbly on this sheet, she has all her letters correct and all the swirly squigly bits in the right place too. I haven't bothered to take a photo of mine because I only managed a couple of letters and even then I don't think I did them that well.

Here is the art group homework that my youngest has done ready for her class this week. It is wet on wet water colours. She had to choose a painting and copy it. I love the effect of water that she's done. She goes to art every other week with about 6 home ed teens and she's loving it.

My son is currently learning Java, which is a programming language for the web and computer programs and of course he is onhand to help out with our computer queries :o)
My eldest is currently enjoying half term, refuelling her batteries ready for the next onslaught of college work :o)

Polymers and Glow in the Dark Slime

We had an impromtu science lesson today thanks to Aurora. My daughter really liked this as it was messy, my son liked it because it looked so good under his black light at the end... I knew we'd find a use for that thing one day :o)

First you had to open up a high-lighter pen and run cold water on it catching the liquid in a cup.

Then mix the liquid with the glue and borax and give it a good stir.

We used white glue here because I'm a cheap skate and wouldn't use any new clear glue until we'd used up the old stuff :o)

The white PVA glue didn't work very well,(sort of ended up with a bouncy ball) so we did another batch and used the clear glue which worked really well and we ended up with flourescent slime.

This is it under the black light, quite impressive.Below are pics of cornstarch and water mixed together to show how polymers act (as a solid when pushed together and as a liquid when left to run down your hand).

This had my son engrossed for quite a while.

The best bit about the class was that everything was explained as you went along so there were no tricky questions that I couldn't answer, phew!