OK Days are Good

We had a real job to get going this morning.  We had arranged to go and visit friends, so no chance of a pyjama day today - not that the boys minded in the slightest, for once.  However, our usual routine seemed a bit stale today, so rather than nag them to do their 'work', when they finished their Reading Eggs(press) we had a day off lapbooking, and did some creating instead.  I asked Youngest if there was an art project on my Pinterest board that he would like to try, and he chose a lion painting, originally posted by John Post - so we all happily sat down and mixed paints, chose brushes (it's SUCH a big deal to get the right brush!?) and got started.  Youngest hadn't gone very far at all when he decided he'd rather do his own thing.  "Are you experimenting?" I asked.  His eyes lit up: "YES!", and he promptly splashed paint about, squished it between pages of paper etc, all the time checking that I could see how well his "experiment" was going... very cute.  Eldest, Middle and I dutifully finished the project originally chosen by Youngest!

 Eldest's Lion

  Middle's 'Vampire Lion' (hence the red teeth)

 Mummy's Lion

 Youngest's 'Experiments' (above and below)

Middle decided that part of belonging to his club (based in the fort, now happily situated in their bedroom) was to involve a "taste test", where everyone tries four different items of food and rates them 1-5. He wanted to make all four items at once, but as they were all dessert items (that's my boy!), I persuaded him to spread it over four days.  Today the boys wanted to make lemon and lime cheesecake from CBeebies 'I can cook', but as we had no limes, we did lemon and orange cheesecake instead.  Unsurprisingly enough, I was the only one who really liked it (it was very citrus-y), but at least they tried it!

Over lunch we watched a DVD on explorers from our Now You Know-About DVD set.  They were engrossed in the tales of Captain Cook (though Youngest wasn't impressed at his being killed by the natives) and Columbus.  I've said it before and I'll say it again: we find TV can be sooo helpful when it comes to sparking new interests.  Obviously we love books and I do strew them often - but I also love having the odd DVD up my sleeve for times when the boys feel the need to just veg out.

So today was OK!  Of course, if you just go on what I've written above (the "edited higlights" so common to blogs), you could think "wow, they do so much, I wish we could do that well" - and I'm tempted to think that myself when re-reading.  However, things have been a bit stressy here with various issues going on, and my patience level has definitely dropped.  Today hasn't been all bluebirds tweeting and harmonious laughter... there was also a fair amount of runny noses, arguing in the car, freezing temperatures and loads of mess to clear up after the 'creating'!  Anyway, just sayin': Our 'higlights' can look pretty impressive (and they do encourage me: after all, that's mainly why I blog, because it helps me to see written down what we're getting up to), but on balance, yes, today was OK.. and that's a good thing.

PS If you visit John Post's blog (follow link above), check out his "teaching philosophy" pdf - I found it quite inspiring.

Proud Mummy Day

We had a very successful Reading Eggs(press) morning today. Eldest just storms through his allocated time - he tends to go through a couple of books at a time, plus further games/ exercises; Middle had no problems today - yesterday I printed out a little chart with the definitions and examples of the parts of speech that he seemed most likely to come up against to start with (noun, verb, adjective, pronoun).  Given that he has never learned about the parts of speech, he seemed to grasp the concept really quickly - very proud Mummy moment.  Once he'd worked his way through his online book, he couldn't wait to get onto the Quote Quest and other games.  And Youngest - well, he finished another world today!  He is now on world five, and doing brilliantly.  I've already mentioned how much he benefitted from a few months off to assimilate everything he had learned before he got stuck... and today he experienced that again in a smaller way.  He had done a few exercises and reached the test at the end of the 'world' or level.  I was in another room with one of his brothers, and he had a go by himself but gave up, saying it was too hard.  Once I was available about an hour later, I asked him if he would show me the tricky test.  We sat down together and again - having just had an hour away from the computer he was able to focus, and just whizzed through it, getting them all right with ease.  Definite Reading Eggs(press) fans here!

After that, Eldest and Middle both did some more work on their lapbooks.  Again Middle ended up doing some really quite advanced work, writing about and illustrating the different types of muscles.  Bless him, I hadn't realised that some of the downloaded flap templates were harder than others until we started on this one, but as he had started it I just waited to see if he would give up - and he didn't.  The little star!  Eldest has almost finished his too - he had a couple of days off when he ran out of steam, but is almost finished now - he wants it finished by the weekend, so hopefuly we'll have photos to share on Friday.

All of this while Youngest and I baked some Smartie cookies for lunch...

This afternoon  was very lazy.  Hubby has started a new job this week which is further away than the previous one, so he needs to get up earlier in the morning, and so far the boys have been waking up with him, and consequently getting tired earlier.  So this afternoon after all their hard work they just wanted to flop on the sofa, watching TV for a while before disappearing upstairs to build battlefields out of lego and recreate the island of Madagascar in duplo.  It was a bit odd watching about the hottest place on earth (Death Valley) with snow still on the ground outside our window, courtesy of CBBC's Fierce Planet. We had a lovely moment when Eldest and I were excited to spot a songthrush that briefly visited our garden... I love that we're so often at home during the day and can call each other if we see something out of the ordinary, to have a little shared moment together.

Finally it was time for tea: lentil bolognese, cooked almost entirely by Eldest...

Happy sigh - this really has been a proud Mummy Day.  I don't like giving the impression that all of our days are glowing and perfect (they really aren't), but a little bragging comes with the maternal territory, doesn't it?  And hopefully my boys' progress as recorded today might be encouraging to those needing reassurance that HE really can and does work!

All Learning Together

A friend of mine and I were talking the other day about how we both learned to bake when we were children, and how that love of baking progressed naturally into cooking.  So I was really pleased when my boys decided that they wanted to make their own pizza for tea!  In fact we made it for lunch today because I thought if I'd left it until 4 o'clock to start cooking, they'd be tired & a bit less happy to share, take turns etc.  The recipe - from the Usborne Cookbook for Boys  was for one large pizza, but it was much easier for the boys to make their own smaller individual ones and each add their own topping.  I doubled the amount of dough, as it looked like they were going to be too small, but then happily, each pizza turned out so big that there was enough left over for teatime later - yum :)

two of our pizzas...

In fact, most of the day's learning was done together today, not just the baking...  Most days I'm a bit like a pinball, bouncing happily from one child to another, one activity to another, with the odd activity done together, but I really enjoyed all the playing & learning together today!  This morning we made a game of Body Bingo, downloaded from one of my favourite websites for HE resources, Ellen McHenry's Basement Workshop.  First we coloured in the pictures of the various body parts - helping Youngest where needed - then we cut them up and stuck them onto our individual bingo-boards, which we also coloured in so that they were all different.  (one of those sentences you never think you will hear yourself say: "have you all thrown away the body parts that you don't need any more?").  Then the sheets were laminated - having put all that effort into making them, we really didn't want them to get ruined straight away!  We didn't have enough counters to play there and then, but as the boys were really keen I decided that we could play with chocolate buttons instead (the boys were very happy with that plan!).  The clue questions provided came in three levels, level one being easier and level three being harder, but we stuck mostly to level one as that was a good balance between Eldest and Middle's ability.  We let Youngest guess first (gave him clues), then Middle, then Eldest - but regardless of who got the right answer, everyone got a chocolate button if they had the appropriate body part on their card.  It was just a lovely activity, and we all learned plenty while playing it.  Our favourite bit was when I asked them the name of the tube that goes from our mouth to our stomach, and an over-excited Eldest shouted out "ooh, ooh, I know... asparagus! (instead of oesophagus)", and I totally had a fit of the giggles.  The boys were delighted to see Mummy so tickled, and we all ended up laughing for ages - happy times :)

Our other main activities for the day were building funny people out of a new playdough set that Youngest was given for his birthday (see below) - practicing their sharing and negotiation skills.  And later we planted some spring bulbs in the garden - there was a bare bit of border next to a fence that always looks a bit miserable, and I fancied seeing some colour there in the spring, so we planted a mixture of snowdrops, tulips and narcissi.  Eldest was mildly interested, but preferred to play on Reading Eggspress, where he's found a quest game that he really likes (the only part of the day where the boys ended up doing different things).  Youngest started digging very enthusiastically, but did get tired, then he found the watering can and spent the remaining time hopping about exictedly waiting for me to say he could water the planted bulbs.  Middle turned out to be very keen, and enjoyed talking to me about the bulbs, which ones would grow first, how deep to plant them etc - he may well have inherited the green-fingered gene from my side of the family (which seems to have skipped a generation when it came to myself).  Anyway, just knowing that the bulbs are under the ground there has made that bare stip of soil already seem brighter and more cheerful to Middle and me - we're looking forward to seeing the first shoots emerge next year!  Oh, and the bulbs were most thoroughly watered by Youngest when I finally gave him the go-ahead :)

Finally we had a spot of collaborative story-telling - the boys usually love taking it in turns to make up stories anyway, and they were keen to use our tape recorder to record themselves telling it, particularly enjoying hearing their voices replayed afterwards and laughing hard at their own contributions.  Story transcribed below, but beware, it is very clearly a boyish story ;)

Once upon a time there was a sheep called Mary who lived in a sheep-house.  It ran into a giant bullfrog, and the giant bullfrog ate him and got covered in mucus, and started to feel rather sick, so he went home to tell his Mummy that he had tummy-ache, and his Mummy said "what have you been eating?", and the giant bullfrog said "I ate a sheep".  Mummy said "you will have to go to hospital and eat some cookies to make you better.  Then the bullfrog ate one thousand, eight hundred and ninety-nine sheep.  Because he forgot to eat the cookies he puked all the sheep back up again and then the sheep died.  Then the bullfrog ate the Eiffel tower, and because the Eiffel tower was so big, the bullfrog changed shape and got shaped into the Eiffel tower, so he had a very pointy head and four legs that stuck out at the bottom.  Then he just died, but then he came back alive again and found one thousand eight hundred and ninety-nine humongous bullfrogs, and one of them ate him, then another then another then another - and so on.  Then the biggest one exploded from eating too many frogs and the world was covered in frog guts.  The End.

I love the way the story ends up being about something completely different to the opening sentence - and I wonder if they ate too much pizza at lunchtime?  Hmmmm...