Weather Graphs, Missing Vowels and Petals on the Wind

I am amazed at how quickly the boys have been able to pick up on the concept of a block graph; I can't imagine being able to comprehend something like that at their age. But what I anticipated being quite a difficult mathematics task has turned out to be one of the easiest so far.

This is how it worked. Last week, we kept a daily record of the weather, and this week, the boys helped me analyse the results and make up their very first graph to display those results at a glance.

To gather the information, we kept a record of each day's weather by ticking a box to indicate Rain, Sun, Wind or Cloud. Today, exactly one week later, we added up how many ticks each type of weather had received, and turned the results into this simple block graph, pictured below.



After the graph, we continued with last week's work on vowels, mainly playing 'spot the missing vowel' in a variety of simple Consonant-Vowel-Consonant words. This is a board-based activity they seem to be enjoying immensely -- which is just as well, as I've drawn up some 'Missing Vowel' worksheets for them to complete later this week!

They then spent some time playing with the dressing-up box, which led to requests for me to find the 'How to be a Ballet Dancer' DVD. This is them trying to be little petals on the wind ...

Autumn on the way ...

We'll be doing far more on autumn next month, but I decided to touch on it the other day, having found some fallen acorns whilst walking in Rugby. We don't have any oak trees near us, though we do have some vast horse-chestnut trees, so it seemed a good time to talk about different trees and their individual leaf shapes and seed types. We touched on human DNA too, talking about inherited characteristics like eye and hair colour, height, nose and ear shapes etc. (Particularly relevant to the boys as poor D. has inherited his father's over-sized ears!) My drawings of different leaf shapes on the white board are not exactly marvellous, but luckily, I don't think the kids noticed ...

We found some horse-chestnut leaves and conkers still in their shells, as well as lying fallen and shiny in the grass - such wonderful things, conkers! Discussions included branch size and why acorns are attached by such slender stems, while the heavier conkers need a thick stem.

Soon we'll be able to gather more leaves, as their colours change and they start to fall in earnest, so we can then do leaf-rubbings with wax crayons and maybe some associated 'sorting' games according to size, colour, shape, type of tree, etc.




But harvest time is here, certainly, even if the weather's still too warm some days to be entirely autumnal. We have a local church harvest festival this weekend, with an auction of fresh produce after the service. Meanwhile, at home, our own apples are begging to be picked, and although there are far more than we can possibly manage to eat alone, we went out the other day to gather a few bowlfuls from the three apple trees in our back garden.

We also discussed general harvesting techniques again, after covering it last week - we've actually been able to watch the farmers bringing in the various harvests from our back garden, as we're surrounded by farming land here - and then used the apples we'd picked in a counting activity later that day.

This is one of the older apple trees, bent and gnarled, but extremely fertile. Perfect fruit for pies and crumbles ...

Two Times Snakey and other activities

It's been a busy second week of 'home school' here. The boys are settling in nicely to the routine and are growing to appreciate the release of Saturdays and Sundays, which I have decided will be non-school days for the moment. That may change in the future but just now it provides a useful break for everyone.

I am very pleased with their progress overall, and the fact that they have embraced the concept of home school so willingly and with good application. Some days I have even been able to get some work of my own done - I'm a writer - while the kids were engaged in time-consuming tasks like giant puzzle-making, painting and drawing, and the odd counting worksheet complete with pots of buttons/marbles/coins etc.


2 x Snakey
Now that the boys are fairly comfortable with numbers 1 - 20, I've upped the stakes. Using a Times Table suggestions book for 5-7 year olds, I've adapted an idea for the 2x Table and made this simple 'game' for the boys.

We call it the ... drum-roll, please ... "2 x SNAKEY" Game.




It's not really a game, as the boys are not yet au fait with how to use a set of dice. Instead, each player picks a button at random out of the yoghurt pot and reads the sticker on it, which has either 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 x 2 on it. They then have to match the sum to the answer on the snake board, i.e. 2, 4, 6, 8 or 10. There's no winner, but if they match the button correctly, they get a 'star' on our 'star system' which adds up over the week from play activities like this.

As they get better at doing the first 5 sums, I'll then start including the buttons for the second 5, to take us through to number 20 on the snake.

It was simple and quick to make, using a vast hoard of old buttons generously donated by our local sewing store, and a couple of pieces of yellow card sellotaped together on the back, with a snake roughly drawn and coloured in to provide the answers to the 2x Table.

This game was greatly faciliated by the purchase of a £3 Times Table tape from, you've guessed it, Sainsbury's. It features cheery music which the kids love and are already engaging with, and even I. joins in, though I'm sure she has little idea what 1 x 2 actually means!

DICTIONARY WORK
We also did some written work this week. D.'s ability to write words is expanding at an enormous rate. He was reading a Richard Scarry dictionary book a few days ago and suddenly asked for a pencil and paper. He then started to copy out words at randomn from the dictionary, sometimes asking me for help in how to pronounce them or to explain the accompanying pictures.




M. followed suit in a rather less confident fashion - he's not keen on reading and writing, but does LOVE having stories read to him. Something to build on there.

Art Attack!
The usual art activities happened this week too. They had paint available at the Friday afternoon session, which was not entirely successful, as they need close supervision to make painting really work for their skill level, and I desperately needed some time to work so had to leave them alone with it for about twenty minutes! They didn't make that much mess, amazingly, but I did feel afterwards that no great progress had been made towards controlling paint and using it for specific purposes rather than just mixing it randomly together and splodging the resultant greeny-brown mush about on paper. Still, I expect they learnt something there about what happens when you mix four different paint colours together; you get the same greeny-brown mush every time.




I'll be covering primary and secondary colours with them next month. Slowly. With aprons and floor coverings in place.

Making Labels

In the run-up to the traditional time when we think about autumn and the harvest, we talked about food and food labelling this week. We started by looking at tins of sweetcorn - purely because I happened to have bought a multipack of sweetcorn, which meant the three children could each have a tin of their own to look at while we discussed what was on the label.

We talked about food preparation words and symbols: storage, microwave or hob, cooking time, best before dates, even nutritional information. Then I peeled off one of the labels so they could see it was actually a rectangle in shape, but when curled round the tin it became cylindrical. That got them interested!

Their pens, paper, glue etc. were all close at hand, so we got some things out of the cupboard and started to make our own labels. D.'s prototype label was peas, but he wanted to do a better one, so we stuck that on a tin of pilchards. He then chose the safe option of sweetcorn, M. wanted 'chocolate peas' in his tin, and their younger sister stoutly insisted that hers was just 'red food'.



Using the old label I'd peeled off as a template, I cut out some 'labels' for each child on coloured paper and reminded them about the food preparation, storage and nutritional information that could appear on their labels. (I thought coloured paper was better than plain white, as it conceals the huge amount of space often left unused when younger children are drawing!)

When the labels were finished, I helped with the lettering on M.'s label, and his sister's, and then we stuck them onto the tins with glue. D. did a very good job, I felt, writing all the words himself and drawing a very creditable image of sweetcorn in between 'sweet' and 'corn'.



TIP: Apart from the one I had already removed, I left the other labels underneath the home-made labels, so it wouldn't be too much of a magical mystery meal whenever someone decided to open them in the future!

Birmingham ArtsFest Trip

It was the Birmingham ArtsFest this last weekend, so we took the boys into Birmingham for the day - about an hour's drive. It was a culture shock for them, being rather more used to sheep and wide open fields than skyscrapers and large numbers of people, especially in Centenary Square where most of the ArtsFest stalls were and where a huge open-air stage had been erected for the weekend, but they coped with it well. Both boys loved the big bull statue at the head of the Bullring, and the amazing architecture on display all around them. They also loved the doughnut stand beneath the Birmingham Eye wheel!

We spent half an hour in this absolutely vast branch of Borders bookshop in the Bullring, then ate a picnic lunch near St. Martin's Church, which was fairly quiet - in contrast to the busier end of town that day.




We could have spent much longer in the bookshop, the boys were enjoying it so much, wanting to explore everything, but alas, one of my older children needed to get to a Royal Shakespeare Company stage fighting workshop. Since it was a family event, we went along as a group, and the boys thoroughly enjoyed that too. They watched the RSC cast demonstrate everything from pretending to punch someone to 'mock' fighting with staffs, and were particularly amused when their big sister volunteered to 'kick' one of the actors in the head.

Naturally, we talked to them afterwards about it being all pretend, and dangerous to try at home, but I fear M. may have picked up some sneaky pointers for his frequent tussles with D.





Having bought some books at Borders, we talked about money and coins when we got home. The boys were introduced to the 1p, 2p, 5p and 10p coins. They made rubbings in their maths books and labelled each coin rubbing.





Tomorrow they will be playing shop, using the same coins in exchange for pretend goods and putting our recent discussions about 'adding and subtracting' to practical use.

Chalky & Co.

Outside Artwork

It was fine weather so the boys spent several hours outside this afternoon. Chalks in various colours were handed out for freestyle artwork. This is D's chalk drawing of the Iron Man (after the Ted Hughes' story of the same name) who 'might come alive at night' according to D.


By contrast, M. wanted to play dead. He fell off the roof, apparently. Hence the chalk outline, drawn by D. -- M. kept wriggling so it's a bit wobbly in places. They have a macabre sense of humour.

Garden Sports

M & D have only recently mastered the tricky art of hopping with both feet together. Their little sister does an odd sort of trot instead, but tries to keep up with her brothers. To encourage them all to practise two-foot hopping, they did some hopping in and out of hoops on the grass first, then took part in a sack race.

M. won. He always does!



A Home School Mum and her Money are Soon Parted?
Tesco's Sports Day Kit for 4 children, bought on sale last month for £1.97, reduced by about six pounds: sacks, beanbags, egg & spoon, starter's flag, ankle ties, ground stakes. Excellent value.

Mighty oaks from tiny acorns grow

This is not quite a tiny acorn, nor will it result in a giant oak, but about six weeks ago, when I made the decision to home school my four year old twin sons, I made a point of reading up on the National Curriculum and then reproducing various detailed plans which would allow me to follow a similar route through what is known as the 'reception' year.

Now, I know perfectly well that I don't need to follow the National Curriculum. I can teach 'em to play a paper-comb and the spoons if I like, and leave reading and writing until they're ten. But my motto is 'If it ain't broken, don't try to fix it' and if some poor soul - or rather, group of poor souls - has spent many months putting together a carefully crafted curriculum for four to five year olds which will cover the basics in the minimum of time, then why on earth should I try to devise my own curriculum?

I would very much like my sons to learn things off the beaten track, things which they could never possibly hope to learn in a state infant school, especially given D.'s voracious and inquiring mind, but I think being able to read and write to at least a rudimentary level is an essential step towards that ideal. So I've cherry-picked the most important parts of the National Curriculum and put together some basic schemes of work.

Following this are the patterns of learning I've put together, weaving together the best elements on the way toward an overall scheme for the next three months, taking us to Christmas:


SEPTEMBER 2006: Preliminary ideas
Create booklet of ‘feelings’
Look at own baby photos
Contact other Home Ed families
Learn ‘alphabet’ song
Parts of the Body (Draw round child & label drawing - chalk outside if dry)
Health/Harvest
Introduce food groups
Past/Present
Create notice board for This Week,Last Week, Next Week
Colours(Primary & Secondary colours)

The above plan follows ideas I've seen elsewhere for the first few weeks of school under the National Curriculum for Reception. The one below seems a logical response to the boys' basic need for literacy & numeracy as fast as possible.


September 2006: Literacy & Numeracy

Numeracy:
Counting to 10
Writing numerals 1 - 10
Addition & Subtraction: simple sums under 10

Literacy:
Learn to write own first name
Introducing the Alphabet:
focus on one section per week (recognition)


This early planning has fallen by the wayside in most places, as I've spent the summer teaching the boys (most of) the alphabet and counting to 10; they have also started writing numerals, reaching 5 so far. D. is able to write M.'s name extremely well, oddly enough, but not his own. I wonder if that's a common phenomenon with twins. Although he clearly dislikes using pencils and is easily distracted, M. can write a shortened version of his name, with encouragement.

As for general literacy, both boys have shot ahead of my modest initial scheme with amazing alacrity.

D. is now able to read basic texts and is partway through the fifth book in the Ladybird 'Read With Me' scheme - not as trendy as the Oxford Reading Tree but a solid introduction to reading (plus a friend happened to give us a number of the Ladybird Readers for free!) - and I have also started looking at stand-alone library books in the early reader category with him.

M. has just finished the first book in the Ladybird scheme, and although he relies heavily on context and the pictures, he is still making good progress. Far better progress, in fact, than I could have imagined at the start of the summer!

Which brings me to the more detailed Weekly Plans, of which the following is an example based on our current work.

NB. The 'shop game' refers to a nice little shopping basket of pretend food items I bought on offer recently from Sainsbury's and a plastic till with accessories from Tesco's: £8 approx. for the two. I normally buy home school materials from charity shops wherever possible - especially puzzles, books and old board games - but couldn't resist the price reduction on these two items.


WEEKLY PLAN: Week commencing 5th September

Tuesday
Create a personal timeline, using ‘old’ and ‘new’ items
& photos. Discuss ‘growing up’.
Learn to write the number 5
Playing at shop - introduce money/food exchange
Yoga for kids (a library DVD rented this week only) - 20 mins

Wednesday
Introduce Parts of the Body (draw round body outside
using chalk if dry enough)
Do self-portrait page in red booklet (a personal record)
Sorting food items from ‘shop’ game into groups:
tins/bottles/boxes & solids/liquids etc.
Do preliminary ‘seasons’ work in science books
Yoga for kids - 20 mins

Thursday
Learn to write the number 6
Fill out another page in red booklet (personal record)
Make 4 page booklet of ‘feelings:
happy/sad/angry/afraid using pencilled faces
Music time: ‘5 Currant Buns’ song
Yoga for kids - 20 mins

Friday
Talk about This Week/Next Week:
create a timeline to show past/future activities
Consolidate earlier alphabet work:
the goal is to write letters a - g by tracing dotted letters
Yoga for kids - 20 mins


Daily Activities
Running in tandem with this weekly plan are daily activities which echo the idea of a daily literacy & numeracy session, starting off with 10 - 15 mins one-on-one reading time for each child and a joint mental arithmetic session of about 10 mins.

As far as physical development is concerned, we have a large garden here and running about in it freely for an hour or more is also a key part of each day, with indoor alternatives available for bad weather - hoop/beanbag/yoga/sofa-abseiling & other similar physical activities. All of which their younger sister is happy to join in with, and being quite a strapping girl for two and half years old, is at more or less the same level as D. at least in terms of physical development.

So, we're all set here for the start of 'term' - no doubt the pace will begin to slacken somewhat within a few weeks, but just at the moment, even the boys are quite excited at the thought of 'home schooling with Mum' ...

Welcome to our Home School blog!

I am a mother of five, educating twin sons at home who should have started school this September, 2006. I am neither new to home schooling nor to blogging, but this is my first home education blog. This blog has been created as an aide-memoire more than anything else, and also for posting up photos of our home school activities and details of what we plan to study. It's not aimed at anyone in particular but if other home schoolers or people curious about home education stumble across it in the course of browsing the net, I hope it amuses and provides a few ideas.

My decision to remove my two boys from their intended school came after visiting the school on several occasions and finding several members of staff hostile and patronising. This, I feel, was in response to my natural concern that one of my sons, who has special needs, would not fall easily into step at this very tightly-run school, whose emphasis was firmly on academic results rather than creative development. Several unfortunate incidents during his visits to the school alarmed me, and finding the head teacher almost as uncooperative as the teaching staff made me take the rather drastic decision to home school both of them.

It is true that I could have found an alternative school at the last minute, but I was suspicious that this problem would simply have recurred at another school, given the current school climate which is so biased towards academic results above all else. Also, I have home educated my children before, at various stages of their lives - I have two grown-up daughters as well as three children under five - so I saw nothing to be afraid of in keeping my sons at home, at least for a year or two, possibly longer.

Ironically, I do actually believe in academic progress and results, but achieved in a less militarised atmosphere! So the activity plans and posts on this blog may come quite close to those of a typical Reception class curriculum at times, but the way they are carried out will be in a laid-back home schooling style. Which means that if my son with special needs can't keep up with the daily activities, it will be fine to cover old ground with him and consolidate his learning while his twin brother steams ahead with new work. This has always been the pattern in their learning so far and I see no reason to change now.

My home education plans are always kept flexible. So while months, weeks and even days are planned in advance, usually linking in with the seasons and annual festivals, there is nothing to stop us switching activities from one week to another, or dropping an activity which proves boring or fruitless. Some weeks we may not work at all on academic subjects, but follow a special project instead.

This lack of rigid structure is quite normal in home schooling, if you have never come across such a regime before. After all, as all home schoolers will tell you, one solid hour of learning at home can equal three or even more hours of learning at school. This is mainly because crowd control and other en masse activities - dozens or hundreds of kids queuing for lunch, queuing for assembly, waiting their turn to read - do not exist at home. I can also give one-to-one attention where necessary without having to move on to the next child before the lesson has been thoroughly understood, unlike busy teachers in a large Reception class.

I hope you enjoy this blog. Do leave comments below posts if you wish, and I will reply where possible.