We are currently in Week 6 of our new academic year! This week is less focused on academics as we are working pretty hard on consistent discipline - things are not as they should be, and haven't been for EVER, and now I am getting some great mentoring from my dear friend
Shannon and things are starting to improve at last! It does take FULL focus though, so I am trying to let go of the huge clutchy throat thingy that happens when I ease off on school work for a moment! ;) I just want to get school rolling well and KEEP it rolling. The keep part is my weakness, and so far we are doing better than we have before. I am not crazy about easing off this week but correcting the boys' behaviour, training them up in God's ways, and discipling MYSELF to manage my household with more peace and efficiency is a higher priority. I am making sure that, if nothing else, we get Bible done every morning. That's the most important part of school, so if that is done, all is well! :) We are doing workbox activities and things as well to keep them busy.
I have been wanting to update as we go along with school, but I haven't had chance. Just grabbing the quick opportunity now to start a post and upload some photos, even if I have to finish it later. I should be making lunch, but I figured the camera might as well be dumping photos onto the computer while I do it, and if I start the uploading process I can make the lunch while it happens! ;)
School is going well with the big boys who are doing the academic stuff, except that Matthew is less than thrilled with pretty much ALL schoolwork, and I'm starting to wonder about what to do with him from this point onwards. That's probably for another post, because I wanted to update mainly about the littler boys with photos. Matthew DID enjoy working on our solar system project though! :) We are doing Astronomy (Apologia Creation Science) for the year and Arthur is ecstatic about both history and science so far. Matthew could take it or leave it, but he is enjoying some of the projects. I didn't really like any of the suggested activities for the first chapter of the textbook, so I searched the web and found a solar system craft project that I thought they would enjoy much more (also I wanted a FLAT display project rather than a 3D one, which would be fun to do but we'd need to find space somewhere to display it, and we are already working on a 3D diorama for history that will use up some space to display).
Here's the link to the
original idea I found online and pinned.
Here's our work! We used aluminium foil like the idea I found, to cover cardboard circles, but instead of using Sharpies (my kids HATE the smell), we used acrylic paints. I think it has less of a lovely shiny effect, but it still worked nicely! The planets are rounded up to the nearest centimetre, relative size in comparison to each other - I found a website somewhere or other and calculated the sizes if we made a model. They are not accurate relative distances apart, of course, because that would mean we need like a FIELD to display them on, lol! But the size thing made it fun. The sun is just a wall of yellow and orange tissue paper because it would have been humongous compared with the planets, so I just made it a "wall" section on the edge of the line of planets. The boys painted the planets based on the photos from the Hubble Space Telescope that we found online, and photos in our huge astronomy encyclopedia. Arthur has already learned a bunch of stuff about moons and other asteroid belts and so on, and kept wanting me to include them, but I thought it would be better to stick to the basic solar system for now! ;)
Our favourite planet to make was Saturn, because I cut an extra piece of cardboard for the rings, which we covered with foil and then thickly coated it in white glue, and totally covered that with multicoloured glitter. It sparkled sooooo beautifully when it was dry! The photos don't show it well enough. Anyway, when it was all dry, we mounted the planets on the black paper with double-sided foam tape, I added labels for the planet names and their categories, and the boys added a load of shiny star stickers. We had so much fun making this, and it looks great on the wall!
The photo is really not that great because it's so distant, but it's a BIG display (Jupiter is 22cm in diameter) so in order to fit it all in the picture I had to take it from further away. The second photo is to give a better view of Saturn's rings, but I'm not sure if the picture will click big enough to show it too well. Never mind!
The little ones are enjoying their school activities. Nathan and Benjamin watch a DVD (educational for the most part) while I do maths, handwriting and reading with the bigger boys in the kitchen, and that keeps them busy and quiet for a while when they otherwise wouldn't be. Samuel is always napping at this time. After that they get to do workbox activities. Some days we run out of time, but not often. We do them in the afternoons more often now, because the morning is just FULL of academic stuff with the older two.
Here are Benjamin and Nathan enjoying the chicks and eggs colour-matching activity that I posted about recently:
They love them, and Matthew can't seem to stay away from them either. He is WAY more drawn to pre-school activities than school ones - it's so interesting to teach him these last 6 weeks. I am learning a lot about his developmental stage and his learning methods, and I need to review some things... I will try to post about that another time though.
Samuel is awake and active if we're doing workboxes in the afternoon, and gets HIGHLY excited seeing the boxes come down off the shelf and the boys take off with their first activities. He has started to cry if he's left out with no activity to do! He's 14 months old so I hadn't presumed to start him on any sort of workbox type activities until he was 18 months old at least. But he is starting to want a turn with the other boys' stuff when they've finished, and it's hard to keep him off their things, so I am beginning to put some things together for him! Exciting! :) My little manny is getting so big so fast!
He likes the twist and sort pegs, which I didn't think he would be at ALL ready to do yet, but there we go! He can twist and lift off the circles from the 3-pronged peg, as that's the easiest one, and he can put them all back on again. He gets frustrated and skwawky about the other ones, but he does try so hard! He's twisting circles off the 3-pronged peg in the first photo below, and putting it back on in the second one. He also likes the little wooden puzzle in the photos below, the square one with 9 pegs (okay, a couple missing which need gluing back on, but hey ho!). He can fit the pieces on and take them off, but obviously the actual challenge of the puzzle is way beyond him for now. He loves the fine motor skill practise of the pieces on the pegs though, and gravitates to this one often.
I saw ideas through Pinterest mainly, that led to me making a REALLY simple and cheap activity for Samuel. I actually thought Benjamin would go for it, though it would be easy, as a fine motor skill activity. But when I made it this week, Samuel was SO very excited to see it that I gave it to him first.
It's a 4-pint plastic milk bottle with a hole cut in the side of it (washed thoroughly first, naturally!) and the lid off. I bought some bright coloured rainbow pom poms for £3 online, just because they are attractive to play with. They're 25mm pom poms, but I realised that I could have bought 38mm ones as they squash down quite small (they're soft and fluffy and gorgeous!). Anyway, the idea is that they post the pom poms through the top of the milk bottle and retrieve them through the hole in the side. Samuel got the hang of it straight away, which surprised me for some reason. Not that it's rocket science or anything, but I keep thinking he's a little baby who sits around mouthing toys still, lol! I guess he's growing and changing faster than I'm keeping up with! He is loving the toddler activities, and you can really see his accuracy at some of them improving day by day.
Here are some photos of him doing the pom poms/milk bottle activity this morning after his nap. He concentrates hard on the process, and the milk bottle is lightweight so tips over fairly easily. He just says, "Uh-ohhh..." and picks it back up again! :) He is one for completing the whole job before retrieving the pom poms, which is interesting for me to observe! Benjamin likes to put a couple in and then get them out, but Samuel was having none of that. He likes them ALL in first, and he claps to applaud himself after successfully posting EVERY SINGLE ONE in, hehe! Sweetie pie! :) After they're all in, he peers sweetly in the hole in the top, and then picks it up to get them out of the side:
Then he loses interest and prefers to try to get his hands on my camera :)
Benjamin likes the pom poms and milk bottle too, and gets very focused on putting them in, but at 2 years and nearly 8 months old, he doesn't do this activity for very long. He prefers chucking them about after a bit! ;) He does love the activity (no photos of this one though) that I put out for him where he has an empty ice-cube tray and some pom poms, and a pair of jumbo tweezers to transfer them with, and is getting good at manipulating those now. Here he is this morning, joining in with Samuel at the end (the delapidated cardboard box thingy behind them is the remains of last weeks "house" made out of two BIG boxes that arrived containing a bigger car seat for Samuel! HOURS of fun with that since last week, seriously!):
Must make that lunch! Here are two more of Samuel that I took this morning, just because he is as cute as a button and I love him soooooooooo! :) Sweet little beep!
