Sickness Strikes, the Savage Stone Age, and Bringing in the Washing!

Nasty Bug
I had planned that this would be 'Science Week', with various experiments based around Materials - putting empty yoghurt pots into boiling water to see what happens, for instance, or talking about the properties of metal compared to clay - but I'm afraid sickness has struck and I'm not able to speak very much, my throat having swollen horribly with some nasty cold bug. And since experiments tend to require a fair amount of talking, Science Week has been postponed until I'm better.

Instead, some literacy worksheets on CVC words and Days of the Week have been trotted out, much to the boys' boredom, alongside some rather more inspired activities ...


Treasure Island
For instance, I found an audio cassette of TREASURE ISLAND, an abridged version for kids, and after listening to a few short chapters, accompanied by child-friendly pictures from the Ladybird book, pictured above, the boys drew their own Treasure Islands complete with spooky names and X to mark the spot! Later, when my head hurts less, I'll scan those pictures in for you to see.


Stone Age Food
We've also been talking about the Stone Age recently, having enjoyed the Ray Mears 'Wild Foods' series of programmes on BBC2 about how our hunter-gatherer ancestors somehow managed to scavenge for food and cook it without access to all the metal, clay - and plastic! - food preparation and cooking equipment we take so much for granted. The boys have been particularly fascinated by this, sitting in fixed silence for most of the programmes, then discussing their favourite bits afterwards.

The moment when Ray Mears shot a wild deer was a huge shock to them - and to me, actually! - but they quickly accepted that such things would have been part of daily life in the Stone Age ... and indeed that the chicken and beef they eat also comes from slaughtered animals. Living next door to fields of sheep and cows probably helps them to see the whole thing in more pragmatic terms, perhaps, than town children. Though it can be hard, watching those cute spring lambs leaping about outside in the weak sunshine and knowing that most of them will end up in a freezer before summer comes.

At the library, I found a few of those amusing children's Horrible Histories films - 'Rotten Romans', 'Vicious Vikings' etc - and brought them home on loan. Amongst the best ones is the 'Savage Stone Age', only about 23 minutes long but certainly entertaining and just right in terms of tone/content for such young children.



Not just saving my poor throat that morning, the Savage Stone Age DVD also provided a nice follow-up activity and discussion point for our following of the Ray Mears series, letting us talk about what a 'thousand' means and how long ago 9000 years is. We looked at rudimentary timelines to help us evaluate how long ago the Stone Age was, and watched some BBC Schools programmes on the subject - aimed at slightly older children but still useful when watched with close support - for more information about historical timelines.

We also talked about food in the wild, and much was made of potentially poisonous substances like berries and mushrooms. When Indi was just one year old, she toddled out into the garden and ate a mushroom from one of those sudden overnight mushroom rings that spring up when you're not looking, so we talked about that occasion and how it led to us hurriedly researching what sort of mushroom she had eaten and whether a trip to Casualty was required! Of course, it was not a poisonous mushroom on that occasion, but it was still a useful anecdote that allowed us to talk about being careful when in the garden or out on walks in the countryside ... especially after watching Ray Mears frying up vast forest mushrooms and squeezing wild berries to make a pretty disgusting-looking 'jelly' cake.

From Timelines to the Washing Line
Dad is off work at the moment and, since I've been languishing on the sofa for much of the day this week, has been put to work on various domestic duties. This has caused some jealousy, I think, since it's usually the boys' job to help me out while Dad's at work. At one point we even caught D. standing on a chair under the washing line, trying to take down the washing himself before it rained!

Snow, Number Lines, and Burnt Biscuits

Yes, like many parts of the UK this week, we woke up to a slight covering of snow one morning. I told the kids it would be cold outside and they would not want to stay out there for long, but of course nobody paid any attention to me! The boys ate their breakfast with extreme speed and, as soon as Indi had been taken to nursery for the morning, jumped into their wellies, coats and hats, and made off into the garden. But they were soon making snowballs with their sleeves, having realised that cold hands are no fun! I let them run wild out there for the better part of an hour, then they came in - with obvious relief! - and settled down to some more number work, this being our 'numeracy' week.

Chocolate Wholemeal Biccies

Part of our number work included doing a spot of baking, so we could use some scales and talk about weights, measuring out, grams and kilograms etc. I had originally intended to make wholemeal bread with the boys, but taste buds prevailed when they looked into the store cupboard and we ended up making a batch of these rather burnt-looking chocolate wholemeal biscuits. (M. insisted on branding them all with a fork prior to baking, which meant the flattened-out edges burnt, but they actually tasted a lot better than they look here!)

We've since bought some self-raising flour, plus walnuts and currants, with the intention of making wholemeal walnut bread and currant cakes next week.

Teddy Bear Number Line

My great artistic talent was brought to 'bear' - such a dreadful pun, sorry! - for this counting activity, which involved my drawing a bear and photocopying it twelve times. The children then drew the numbers 1 - 12 on the bears' tummies, sorted them out into the correct order, and we then pegged them up as you can see on this length of string which is now festooned across our living-room.

It was a good activity, simple in concept but rewarding if you think outside the box. First off, the boys went through their Two Times Table, counting along the row, then they had to spot 'odd' and 'even' numbers. Even little Indi surprised us by being able to count all the way through the numbers (though she does tend to get six and seven mixed up if she counts too slowly). We ended the activity by having them look away, then removing three numbers at random and giving them a time limit to spot which numbers were missing. Once they'd guessed correctly, I handed them over and the kids had to replace them in the line.

The teddy bear line is still in place - making it rather difficult to get to the post in the mornings! - so more counting games ahead next week.

First the Romans, then Literacy Week!

The Romans: An Introduction

I started off the new year as intended by studying the Romans. Ambitious stuff, I agree, for such young children, but they seemed fascinated from the start and not at all out of their depth, even when discussing the 2000 year gap between the Romans' invasion of Britain and the present day. And that discussion came in pretty handy last week when we sat down together to watch the Ray Mears programme about Stone Age people in Britain and how they survived by eating roots and shellfish etc, 9000 years ago!

I covered topics on the board and also using home-made Roman worksheets with b&w graphics of Roman soldiers and villas etc. We talked variously about Roman baths, the Roman army, where Rome is, what Britain was like before the Romans came and what they achieved here, and Roman clothing.


We also looked at a book I have, called FASHION THROUGH THE AGES, an extremely useful resource for home schooling, which shows costume from Romans to the mid-20th century, with accessory sidebars, fold-out sections and lift-the-flap style outfits so the kids can see what went on under each item of clothing ... without compromising common decency, of course! Its ISBN is 1 85707 325 8, and it's written by Margaret Knight (Tango Books, UK, 1998). It can be used by adults as well as children - probably best for early teens onwards though if read without support.


After discussing the pictures and filling out the worksheets, we made our own simple togas out of sheets and towels, the kids discovering how tricky they can be to keep on when walking about!


As you might expect, the boys loved the Roman soldier topic and spent some hours marching about the garden in straight lines, adorned with plastic helmets and carrying 'twig' spears and swords. They also enjoyed exploring the concept of underfloor heating - i.e. for the Roman baths.

Talking about the plans for the baths at Aquae Sulis led to discussions of plans for modern public buildings and private houses, which then led us to attempt a blueprint of our own house.

I found a large piece of paper - this rather crumpled sheet had instructions on the back for putting together a flat-pack heater and had been thrown away before I rescued it for this activity - and helped the boys draw up a plan of our house. Even Indi, now three years old, joined in with this task.

Each child took a room and tried very hard to draw its shape and contents faithfully - and to the correct proportions - with varying degrees of success!



Next month, we will be visiting the Verulamium museum at St Alban's - which I can highly recommend after an earlier visit on my own. Click below for their website.

Roman Museum of Verulamium: St. Alban's.

Later this spring, we will also visit our local Roman attraction, the Lunt Fort at Coventry, currently closed for the winter. Information for visitors is available on the Herbert Gallery website.

More worksheets to follow in the coming weeks - including a revision sheet, plus a new one on gladiators and another on the Roman villa in Britain (involving mosaics, always a popular Maths-Art combination activity!) - should keep their interest up before those visits.

Literacy Week

I followed the Romans with an intense Literacy week, as I felt we had been coasting along much of the time before Christmas as far as reading was concerned and that not enough literacy progress had been made.

So we covered a range of literacy topics at breakneck speed, all of which will be returned to in the coming weeks: days of the week, the names of the vowels (only the sounds of the vowels had been taught before that), the order of the alphabet, word shapes (i.e. tall letters, letters that go under the line etc), and blended consonants. Each topic had its own worksheet, the main gist of which I would cover on the drywipe board first, to make sure they got the point before tackling any solo work themselves. Most sheets involved filling in missing letters or words, or copying out words to practise writing them.

Alongside those topics, the boys also read to me twice every day, for about 5 -8 minutes per session. I like to keep their reading sessions very short, covering about 2 - 3 pages of text, depending on how many words are on each page. After beginning the scheme back in September at a slow but steady pace, M. is now about to finish Book 6, I think it is, of the Ladybird READ WITH ME reading scheme and D. has just started Book 9.



There are 16 books in total in the READ WITH ME series, plus another 8 books in the Ladybird PHONICS scheme which accompanies it. A friend gave me the first eight books last year, but I was amazingly lucky and picked up all the other books of both schemes at a charity shop last month, less than 30p per book.





We also looked at several non-Ladybird books. One was an Oxford Reading Tree book at Level Three, which they both enjoyed and found challenging - because of different vocabulary, I guess - but not overly difficult.




Another was this rather complex story called Through the Magic Mirror by Anthony Browne, probably for slightly older children, which provided many talking points and multi-syllable words such as 'invisible' - they loved this book though, as the story was highly unpredictable and surreal.




What I noticed by Friday was how much more fluent M. had become as a reader. His natural bent is towards wasting as little time as possible, so he tends to jump at words without bothering to sound out their letters, which has not been a terribly successful ploy in the past but is starting to work for him now that he has mastered some common sounds within words, like the repeated vowels 'oo' and 'ee', for instance.

Even D. - a swifter reader than M. in the past but currently going through a sort of resistance-towards-learning phase - became quicker at sounding out new words and, by the end of the week, was actually daring to launch into a few high frequency words without sounding them out at all!

Other activities during the week included Snap games with word cards and a few games of Scrabble.

The simplest junior version of Scrabble is now just about suitable for their level of literacy, but with modified rules: each player puts down only one counter in turn, and the 'winning' element is removed, except that praise in the form of group clapping is given when a particular letter completes a word!



Following the obvious success of Literacy week, I intend to specialise in this way for the next month and see whether that reaps benefits for the other subjects too, focusing in turn on Numeracy, Science, and then Literacy again. With some more History thrown in as well, of course, plus an introduction to some basic French. Their grandfather lives in France half the year, so it seems like a good idea to start them off early ...

Next week is Numeracy Week. What joy!

Fresh Vegetable Regime

New Year, New Food. On the health front, here are the kids today enjoying some delicious vegetable lasagne with fresh vegetables, sunflower seed rolls and home-made fruit salad with blueberries, blackberries and grapes in an orange and mango smoothie sauce. Yum! To my amazement, they ate every scrap of this meal, perhaps due to their lengthy and exuberant play session in the back garden before sitting down to lunch. Unless they're getting used to the fresh vegetable regime at last.



Unfortunately, I somehow forgot to photograph the pink sticky buns they had later in the afternoon ...