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.
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