Sunday, May 17, 2009

Typical Day 7

Our day yesterday was getting ready for visitors, French class here ( singing! Fun! And choosing recipes in French as our next class will be a French cooking class).

Catholic Homeschoolers here, a talk by a friar, a writing or colouring activity about Our Lady and lots of lunch and games and running around and shooting dart guns and playing the Wii and computer..

Then clean up, St Anthony Mass and Novena, dad came home as he’s been away for work and we went to see the new Star Trek movie...Fairly typical activity for us! ~ Leonie

Typical Days 6

Thought I would share what we did today.
DS, 9, decided he didn't want to go to homeschool group again, so we decided to use our free entry for homeschoolers pass to get into Raglan Castle.

The weather was lovely, and we enjoyed clambering over walls,up spiral stairs and down dark holes.DD noticed swallows nesting in the stone work. We knew they were swallows because they had the same song as a toy swallow we had.

Lovely picnic. We talked about how we could make flapjacks-"Yours are not like these, these are lovely and moist!"

A school party was there at the same time. I was struck by the rigidity-they had to go where the teacher wanted to go, they had "educational" worksheets they had to fill in.

My children were delighted to get £1 each to spend in the gift shop-they spent many minutes deciding what they could get for that.

DD12 decided on the chocolate castle, dd6 and ds 9 both bought a pen and eraser.

All of the children took lots of photos. They loved the koi in the pond. We noticed these particular small birds landing on just leaves floating on the pond.

On the way home we popped into a garden centre to buy some trailing plants to go in our "new" watering can, which we rescued from the recycling centre yesterday.Ate ice cream as the weather was nice. ~ Catrin

Typical Days 5

Not necessarily in chronoligical order...

Oldest son wrote a letter to Suzanne Collins. (author of Gregor the Overlander books). I helped him find her address, and he addressed the envelope. He played with Legos. He helped me serve lunch to the other kids outside. He helped his Dad put a new net on the trampoline. He finished one Gregor book and started the next one. He unpacked and put away his backpack from the Cub Scout campout.

Second son did a few pages in his Kumon math book. (Dad has promised a new Wii game when his book is finished) He researched how to defeat a character in one of his video games. He read a wikipedia article of how to escape from quicksand. He helped with the trampoline net.

Both boys read the parks and recreation brochure to identify which gymnastics class they want to take next.

5 year old daughter practiced writing some numbers. (She just picked up the book and started doing it!!) She asked me to take the training wheels off of her bike. She tried to teach herself to ride the bike. Oldest brother gave her some really useful tips. I lowered her seat and she tried some more. Dad told her to stop trying, that she needed an adult to help her and wouldn't be able to do it herself. (!!!! He obviously is not well read on the whole child-led learning, unschooling, John Holt, etc, concepts) She helped me cut out some fabric for aprons I'm going to sew. She helped me take care of the baby.

2 year old did some coloring and played outside with the neighbors dog. She also made pee pee in her underwear twice, and spread the coloring books all over the living room floor.
The baby mostly just smiled, laughed, slept and nursed. ~ Anja