Trees and things!

Yesterday we had a very productive morning . I was woken early by Robbie and upon him returning to sleep after nursing i baked bead and shortbread , tidied, sorted  the animals and had a bath. I also read one of Charlie's library book to him.Most surprisingly all the children were huddled round the table busy with pens and paper before nine thirty. That made a change from the Christmas relaxed phase that appears to have lingered on.

So what were they doing?

Inspired by this weeks activities on evergreens in the January little acorns enrichment  guide i had suggested some hand writing practice using one of the poems.

Then they moved on to diagrams of the inside of a trunk .

Charlie also did more of his maths block on time. Writing a verse about March and illustrating it. ( i ll share all of these pages once hes finished)

Jasmine also did more of her one direction project, writing a list of all their songs.

Charlie glued together the wooden parts he and Paul had cut and sanded a couple of weeks ago. Hes made a pirate ship which we have started to paint.

I intended to take the kids out in the afternoon to study some evergreen trees , identify them, make leaf and bark rubbing and look at the rings of a tree trunk .However the weather kept us from achieving that. Perhaps we will get to do that today.

Yesterday evening i printed of the Bert reading test and was very happily surprised to find that both Gypsie and summer have reading ages of above fourteen. This is so astounding and pleasing we have never really pushed reading upon them. In the initial home ed days i was very worried about gypsies difficulties with reading and writing ...just goes to show that trusting in your children to learn at their own pace really pays off.

I was advised by my local home ed coordinator to take a structured approach when Gypsie was struggling , i tried, she tried, it often ended with tears and frustration so we stopped. I relaxed and now my twelve year.old has reading age of fourteen pluss  as does my ten year old !