Magazines and Mystery Boxes

Recently I saved up a bit of money and decided to order some trial monthly subscriptions that I had had my eye on for a while.  The boys love it when they get post, which isn't often, so I thought I would order a few 'educational' surprises.  For Eldest I ordered the 'Aquila' magazine (£20 for 4 issues), which I had been hemming and hawing about for ages.  For Middle, the National Geographic Kids magazine (£28 for 12 months), and for Youngest, 'Octonauts' (£24 for 6 months).  I almost ordered 'Horrible Histories' for Eldest as he enjoys it a lot, but wanted to satisfy my curiosity about Aquila first.

Well, Eldest and Youngest had theirs turn up first, and Middle had to wait over a month before his arrived - so I did tell him there was one on the way, but he didn't know what it would be.  Currently, Eldest has received three issues of a monthly magazine (they seemed to send him the previous month's issue when we subscribed), Middle one issue, and Youngest two.

So anyway, here is what we think of the respective contents:

From my point of view, Eldest seemed a bit uninterested in Aquila at first - the magazine is more packed with stuff than normal comics, and it took him a while to familiarise himself with the format (more articles, less cartoon strips).  Also, his first one being largely sport-focused probably didn't help (not his thing).  However, he got increasingly more interested with each successive arrival.  I don't know how much he gets out of them, but he says he enjoys getting them. Eldest on Aquila: "I especially like the ones that have animals in it; I like the stories and the creating things".  I like the cross-section of subjects that the magazine covers, and it is always interesting - but I have to say the text is a bit small and might be offputting for someone with low confidence/ motivation when it comes to reading.

National Geographic Kids was a big success for Middle.  The only problem is that his brothers are desperate to read it too, so I have to make sure he gets time to read it all first before one of the others grabs it.  He's only had one edition so far, because of the delay in starting, but he especially loves the posters, and I think the articles etc are perfectly pitched for him.  There are a lot of adverts and promotional competitions though, which is a bit irritating from an adult point of view.  Middle doesn't seem to care.  He says "I like the back cos it has Yoohoo and friends" (a full-page advert for a toy he wants - great...) and I like all the lots of funny pictures"

Octonauts for Youngest was a no-brainer.  He's a big fan of the CBeebies TV programme!  I find anything produced by the BBC is usually good quality, and their preschool magazines can mostly be relied on for sound educational content. He likes the stories (we read them together).  I won't quote him because what he said took some deciphering and went into quite a lot of detail on the intricacies of a particular storyline - but suffice it to say that he gets fully engrossed in every part of the magazine - the arty 'makes', the stories, the puzzles... it really is perfect for him.

Other than the magazines, the other subscription that we took out was to the fabulous "My Little Atelier" boxes from Woodland Children Natural Toys and Games.  It's a monthly price of £15, for which you are sent a 'mystery box' once a month, containing a mini art studio - everything you need to  create an art project based on the work of a famous artist.  Well our first box arrived today - slightly late for June, but I think there was a new courier service involved, so apparently July's box will arrive a bit sooner.  It worked well for us anyway, having been away last week, so we wouldn't have got it had it been posted earlier.  Anyway,  the box was lovely: sturdy & thoughtful packaging, with information sheets about My Little Atelier and this month's artist (Georgia O'Keefe) and an outline of the project.  Also included were 4 good-sized jars of paint granules with instructions of how to mix it (easy), 2 paintbrushes, a palette to mix colours on, a colour wheel to help with blending colours, several sheets of good quality paper (looked like watercolour paper), and photos of flowers, taken close-up.  It was really good value.

The boys loved the idea of a mystery box.  There was much excitement all round when we opened it.  Once it was opened, they were't 100% keen on the idea of painting flowers, especially Eldest, but I told them it was like a secret challenge, and they soon came round once we started looking at the details of the photos.  The only thing that I felt might be lacking from the box were some pictures of O'Keefe's work to show the boys, which we had to look up for ourselves on the internet - but that wasn't a big problem.  So then I talked to the boys about how the artist and her flower pictures, and then looked at the given photos, and some other photos from our own collection, and some flowers from a vase in the front room - and then we got to work.  I mixed the paint, and they enjoyed shaking the jars.  They drew pencil outlines of the petals, as I felt that would help Middle and Youngest in particular to control where the paint went.  We talked a lot about the flower details and the variations on shade of colour etc - and I think they all concentrated well on spotting the differences.  Once Eldest got into it, his objections to the subject were forgotten, and he produced a lovely piece of art.  Middle struggled a little with painting what was actually in front of him - he had an idea in his head that he wanted to do, but I encouraged him to look closely at the flower head and different colours etc, and he was fine. I thought he might do his own version afterwards, but he seemed happy with his finished painting, and ran off playing.  Youngest did really well, considering patience in art isn't his forte.  He looked closely at the photo and pointed out the different colours and shades to me - and then focused well on his picture.  I had a go too (choosing a different flower so as not to put them off with comparing their work to mine) & it was hard!  I hadn't used that paint before and found it a bit grainy, but once we got used to it, it was fine.  I'm not an Artist-with-a-capital-A, as you know - so it was a good learning experience for me too.  All-in-all, it was a lovely experience, and we're already looking forward to July's box - they are so well thought out, and really good quality.

For now though, here they are - our 'Little Atelier' pieces of art...

 Youngest

Middle 

Eldest

Mummy

Going with the (slow) Flow

It's been a slow day today - for no reason that I can see particularly, except that we've just had a fairly busy weekend.  It doesn't really matter though - we just go with the flow - and seeing as we all felt fairly sluggish today, a slow day it was.

We started off with MathsWhizz.  This time it was Eldest's turn to have problems logging on.  For some reason it wasn't working on his little notebook laptop, so I had to log on through mine - it worked fine on mine, but that had slowed us down.  Middle was logged on to the main PC in the study but somehow managed to turn the computer off three times, in the midde of an exercise!.  So he came and logged on to mine to finish his afte Eldest had finished.  Youngest has lost the privilege of going in the study at the moment, due to the chaos created (and things broken) when he has been in there recently - so he had to wait his turn on my laptop as well.  Consequently, by the time they had all finished MathsWhizz, about 2 hours had passed, instead of the usual forty minutes that it takes them on average when doing it simultaneously.

Youngest and I had some fun with words while waiting for his brothers to finish - we got out our magnetic boards and letters (I got them from Amazon years ago for a teaching resource - but I bet they still do them)... I made the alphabet and we sang the song together; Youngest made up his own "alphabet" of random letters that he read out to me; we had a 'quiz' where I said a word and Youngest tried to spell it; finally he was inspired by something he spotted out of the window, and had a go at spelling that too (I helped with the tricky bits)...

Once they had all finished their Maths (and letter fun), we had a game of Alpha Animals.  Youngest and Middle play with us, but they use the simpler version of the game while Eldest and I play the full version - and Middle was thrilled to win.  They were even more happy that Mummy lost (due in part to some impressive bluffing on the part of Eldest who steered me towards a certain answer on the card... I thought he was helping me; it turned out he was playing me!)  Youngest also showed significant prowess in the con stakes... on being asked for an animal (or bird, fish etc) that began with the letter H, he announced "hamonite".  When given a quizzial look from Mummy and protestations from his brothers, he totally brazened it out, saying "Yes!  It fights things with its hands, and lives in the Savannah!"  It was so funny, we couldn't help but laugh - he loved it.  Every now and then afterwards someone would mutter 'hamonite', and go off into fits of the giggles again.

This afternoon the boys watched "My Genius Idea" (CBBC), a programme encouraging creativity and inventiveness, and then I asked Eldest and Middle if they'd like to do some more on their lapbooks.  Eldest finished another page, and then decided that was enough - he just wanted to flop about.  Middle had a go at a 'Volcano' acrostic, coming up with some lovely ideas (such as the line "Lava pukes on the ground") - but got stuck on the 'O's, and was getting discouraged, so he put it away for another day.  The younger boys wanted to get crafty next - more specifically, doing their own crafty thing, as opposed to Mummy's suggestions - so I got the craft box out (the big one with stuff in that they can help themselves to without my nagging them not to waste things... well, that's the plan anyway, since the lesson learned last year in Craftboxes and Cocktails), and they had fun just experimenting with the contents.  I love the fact that they are still small enough to be excited by glitter and shiny things.  Eldest seems to have grown out of that now - but he was feeling too flobberly to get up to much by this point in the day anyway.  I sat with the younger two and had a play as well - Middle very generously told me I should put mine in an "art museum" (gallery)! 

by Youngest...

by Middle...

by Mummy...

So it may have been a slow day - but it was slow and peaceful (mostly!) - and any day with glitter in can't be a bad day.  Over all, that's a nice way to flow.

The art of 'Leaving Them To It'

... and it really is an art form!  At least, it is for someone like me who swings from hyper-vigilant tendencies, wanting to check on every little thing that goes on, to feeling as if someone has velcroed me into the armchair & I couldn't move if I wanted to (until I hear suspicious 'noises off', that is, when I hoist myself into action).  Happily, almost a year of home educating has taught me many things, one of them being the ability to just step back and let the boys get on with the business of learning.  They're not entirely left to their own devices, as you know - but when it comes to the pressures that seem to accompany "normal parenting" (like all those developmental and academic targets that most children attain significantly earlier or later that the norm, causing stress for their parents who feel the sting if the targets aren't reached 'in time'), I feel like we've really escaped the rat race.  We have no age-specific targets.  In fact you could say our only real target is that of confidence - at any age...

Anyway, today we had a lovely little illustration: Youngest (our little independent one) has long since wanted to do things "all by myself" - that may even have been one of his first sentences!  However some things are just too tricky even for his determined little personage... such as doing up buttons.  Now, as their dress code since leaving school seems to consist of joggers, T-shirts and jumpers, this hasn't presented too many issues.  But today he and Middle decided they wanted to wear their "fancy" clothes (ie shirts with buttons), even though today had become designated a pyjama day after our socialising plans fell through.  Well I managed to stall them for a while (shirts = ironing), but determination usually wins, and after lunch they disappeared upstairs where I heard them chattering beautfully so I left them to it.  I admit, I do still have to tell myself to do this, especially during school hours: my default position is still set to thinking "they should be working", but I know this is a fallacy, not least because the word 'should' generally means I need to ignore whatever follows (see Attack of the Killer Shoulds) - and also, working does not equal learning.  In fact I would go so far as to say if they are having to work at it, they're not learning - because learning comes much faster when they're so interested that it doesn't feel like work, even if  they are having to really apply themselves to grasp something new (and that's another thing I've learned more clearly after a year of Home Ed).

Well, having left them to it upstairs, Middle came down asking me to go and do Youngest's buttons up.  I'd like to say I deliberately left it a while, knowing that Youngest's determination would win out, but the truth is, I was having an armchair-velcro moment (and chatting to Eldest about his lapbook, so I couldn't just go, now could I?)  Ten minutes later, and down came Middle beaming in a proud big-brotherly way and ushering in Youngest who was declaring " Mummy, I worked out how to do the buttons on my fancy 'suit', all by myself!!!"

So there we go: if I had followed my old school-minded autopilot I could have "made" (or tried to make) Youngest do some "work" - and we would have missed the absolute joy of him learning to do something "all by himself"- something that he has been trying on and off to do for at least a couple of years, and that he mastered in a few minutes - just because we're not tied anxiously to commonly-held developmental timetables: he was left to it.  Just think if we could all have that confidence in our children when it comes to reading and writing!

See, one of my pet hates is the insistence in state school to get children reading by the age of five (or sooner - new government guidelines want to set even earlier deadlines for nurseries to get children learning to read at age three)! Actually it is perfectly within normal developmental limits for a child to not get the hang of reading until they are seven - and yet in most schools now they would be having "remedial" help (and feeling like failures) by that age.  All because we can't just leave them to it.  Well OK, so teachers are paid to teach - it wouldn't really work if they just left all their class to their own devices all the time... but you get my point.  And the joy is that as home educators we are free from those constraints.  We have the luxury of being able to trust our children's natural curiosity and determination to learn what they want to learn.

I do know that not every child is as determined or self-motivated as Youngest... indeed Middle appears so laid-back there have been times when I wondered if I would still be dressing him as an adult.  And yet I have been able to learn to "leave him to it" too.  That doesn't mean neglecting him or not caring about what he's learning - I am still very attentive to his needs - but I can verify that although it took him about ten months to regain his confidence as a learner after leaving school, he is now absolutely flying!  It's just flying in a more under-stated way that Eldest or Youngest who like everyone to notice what they are doing: Middle likes to be left to it to conquer things quietly on his own so he can build his confidence without anyone noticing - and then do a grand reveal with a modest, "it was nothing" feeling of accomplishment. 

So although I haven't done much of a diary entry: I haven't mentioned our lovely morning yesterday at craft club, or marvelled with you at our successful shopping trip (shoe shop plus queue-laden post office and prescription chemist - plus newsagent to buy comics to thank boys for behaving so well in aforementioned shops); I haven't told you about making a wordsearch with fridge magnets, or how I keep wandering into rooms to find Eldest or Middle with their noses in books; I haven't boasted about Youngest being able to recognise not only all the letter sounds but also most of the letter names in the alphabet - upper and lower case (thank you, Reading Eggs)... I may not have filled you in on the whole day (although the above sentences may have helped you catch up quickly), but sometimes it's nice to just stop and celebrate the little things - because sometimes they turn out to be about the really big things!

And just in case you miss something pretty to look at, I'll leave you with the boys' creations from craft club yesterday - Youngest and Middle made some lovely collages, and Eldest wanted to make a board game (because he was sad to miss the group making them last week).  Happy Wednesday!

Youngest's "Owl"

 Middle's "Hedgehog"

Eldest's board game

Backlogged but Blossoming

I've got the most horredous blogging backlog!  Last week was so busy and I was so tired, I kept meaning to write in my blog, but then something would come up (usually my pillow calling my name!)... so apologies to my lovely faithful readers who I have neglected shamefully.  I hope you've all been having a good time!  Anyway,  for today I'm going to have to just give you the highlights of the past week, and then try harder to get back into a blogging rhythm

So we've still been carrying on in the same way: mostly child-led but with a few parent-led aspects.  Middle has spent a lot of time recording videos and playing with effects on his kidizoom camera.  He's also been just finding books and picking them up to read... more evidence of his increased confidence in his own ability  These aren't the picture-books that he previously beleved he was restricted to, but older books like The Story of the Olympics that is well within his grasp, and even Bulging Brains that he would have completely ignored up until a few weeks ago!  I still remember that in September he said he wanted to read "big books" like the ones Eldest and I read, and I was slightly baffled about the perceived block in his mind... I'm so happy for him that as per everything else in his life, it just took time with no pressure - and he has done it, by himself! He really is blossoming into the beautiful person he was created to be.  Happy boy, happy Mummy!

Youngest has also been blossoming - he is starting to make more sense of the world around him, particularly regarding how the skills he has been learning (mostly on Reading Eggs) apply to everyday life.  He has started to blend the letter sounds on labels of things in the kitchen cupboard, and titles on books and boxes around the house.  In one sense, reading is such an abstract skill to learn, but it is one that it is very difficult to live without - and it's just lovely to see him applying that concept to life in general.  He's also been learning everyday life skills... there's been a lot of wrestling with scissors and sellotape, buttons, zips and other things that I would usually ask if he wanted help with.  To be fair, he usually says no anyway, he's such an independent little thing - but lately I have consciously held back from asking as I don't want him to get the message that I don't believe he can do it - and it does seem to have increased his confidence (if such a thing were possible)... or maybe it's just increased my awareness of what he can manage by himself!

Eldest has been enjoying a bit (OK a lot) of a nature documentary-fest on TV.  Every now and then I catch mysef thinking he's "not doing anything", but that's ridiculous.  It's well known within the family that if you want to know anything about undersea creatures (and an increasing number of other wildlife), we ask Eldest: he knows way more than any of the rest of us, and how does he know so much?  simply because it's his favourite subject, so he absorbs like a sponge the information presented in books and on his beloved documentaries.  It really is easy learning!  Fortunately as we've gone on in our HE journey I'm getting better at recognising my illogical twitches  (such as 'learning is supposed to involve hard study'), and am getting faster at silencing them before I try to make the boys conform to my old mental programming - yay!  Oh and Eldest also found an electric circuit-maker that produces animal sounds - it was given to him a while ago, and he just found it and decided he wanted to have a go.  I was glad he found it as it was amongst the things that were buried in piles in the study where we've been sorting out ready for our new shelf unit to arrive and be installed in the front room (much more accessible for spontaneous inspiration).

Of course, I was over-the-moon at a beautiful new storage unit (I feel like I've turned into Anne from Enid Blyton's 'Famous Five'), and the boys were even more happy when I told them they could have the four 6ft boxes that the unit was delivered in. First they got some paper and blue felt-pen to draw up some blue-prints (I didn't even know they knew what blue prints are.. gotta love HE) and then they commenced construction.  I even managed NOT to tell them "don't waste the parcel tape" - see, Mummy's learning too!  The only problem is, we now have a cardboard structure that almost entirely fills the front room, so I'm not going to get to enjoy the longed-for sense of order in my lounge for a while yet until the fort has been removed (I want to try and get it upstairs, but that's going to be a 2-person job at least!) 

Other than that, the boys have also been continuing with Reading Eggspress (which they all really enjoy and more often that not, spend more time on it than their required thirty minutes) - and MathsWhizz (not quite so loved, but they have still been known to be on it for hours)... and the lapbooks are a continuing succes story.  Middle is getting onto a roll, he's been thinking of loads of subjects that he wants to do, and seems to be really gathering momentum.  It's just so lovely to see, given what he was like (depressed, anxious and zero-confidence) this time last year when we were about to start home educating.  So today I'm going to leave you with Middle's completed "My Body" lapbook.  He calls it the "biggest, most flappiest lapbook ever".  Most of the flap templates inside came from Jodi Small's Human Body unit, on the HomeSchool Share website, and a few from the My Body unit by Friedrich, Franks and Sako.  I actually prefer the bits that Middle does entirely by himself, they're so cute - but the HSS templates are awesome for when he runs out of ideas!

Happy Monday everyone!  Have a lovely week - and I'll try to be back here sooner than I was last week!

front cover

inside front cover

middle

inside right flap

 right flap

And some of the fold-outs/ flaps...

Middle's depiction of the body's various systems (top left to right: digestive, skeletal, nervous, muscular, circulatory, urinary, respiratory) - he did these entirely off his own back, after watching our Human Body DVD

 This was Middle's favourite bit: he loved having me measure him

 cue much sniggering...

Not-so-boring Routine

We're fully into our "normal" routine now (if there is such a thing as normal).  That said, we didn't make it to to craft club yesterday:  I just couldn't get the boys all ready in time. Well... I probably could have, if I'd reverted to the Sergeant Major alter-ego of our school days, hustling them and barking orders to get them all up, dressed, fed & ready in time.  But the truth is, I really don't like the shouty version of me - I'm trying to lay her to rest!  And anyhow the boys are usually up and ready in time, so I guess there must have been a reason for their lethargy yesterday morning - most likely how cold it was outside (I found it hard to leave my duvet too!)  Once we were all up, there was the usual MathsWhizz for the older two while I played a Maths game with Youngest.  This time we played Bus Stop, helping him to master counting skills, spotting the patterns of dots on a dice, counting on spaces as he moved around the board, recognising the plus and minus symbols etc - and he got Mummy to himself, which always goes down well!

After that it was time to pop to the local shops for a few bits, so we got wellied-up, hats & ski-gloves on etc, and off we went.  There's something about snow that just transforms a normal 'boring' walk; they loved it (again).  Once home again, it was Youngest's turn to do some baking: gorgeous choc chip cookies...

 

 ...and then we got the paints out to do some snowy paintings inspired by our wintry walk.  We started with these Easy winter landscape instructions, that I had bookmarked a few days ago, and added a few extra bits of our own, using strips of cardboard to make the trunks & branches, and lastly adding falling snow by dipping paintbrushes in watered-down paint, and tapping the paintbrushes - another tip found on the Deep Space Sparkle website.

Mummy's snowy landscape

Eldest's snowy landscape (using a brush to paint the trees, not cardboard strips)

 

Middle's snowy landscape

 Youngest's snowy landscape

(he wasn't inspired by the snowmen, so he painted a red snail with a scarf instead.)

After that Eldest was still in full arty mode, so took himself off to do some sketching...

"Winter at Night"

"Robert the Owl"

Today we had a bit of reading with Youngest while Eldest and Middle were on Reading Eggs. Eldest was pleased to find a book to read on there today about three hedgehogs.  He's also very happy that he's collected 58 out of  214 printable animal collecting cards on the program.  Middle's favourite at the moment is the 'Quote Quest' part... well, anything that looks like a game is a winner for him!  After that we had another wintry walk, this time round our local park, to feed the ducks and geese (with peas out of the freezer - bread is really not good food for them when it's this cold).

 

      

 

Then we came home for the obligatory mugs of hot chocolate, while watching recorded episodes of "Got to Dance" (Sky) - because the boys love it, and it shows a great cross-section of different dance styles - followed by "Winterwatch" (currently showing on BBC2 each evening this week) which I had recorded last night.  There was a sad bit where a baby seal died (or was about to), but the boys coped OK - they're getting more used to the harsher side of wildlife documentaries, I think.  They loved the shot where the humpback whale breached behind the guys on the boat, who were all looking the wrong way.

At home we have our own mini-version of Winterwatch too... we were hoping for some visitors to find our new nesting box, and this morning we had our first one (as far as we know).  He had a good look round, and we even got some video footage, although unfortunately it picked up my calling one of the boys (by name) to have a look, so I can't post it here.  I can show you a couple of stills though...  it's very exciting!  It is too soon for them to be making a nest and getting broody, but still, it's nice to know that they've found it!

   

So we may be back into our "routine", but it's anything but boring.  We're having lots of fun - long may it continue!

Mini-Structure and Pop Art

I love Facebook.  I was in a conversation on it the other day, and identifying with that familiar HE struggle between the heart's love of the unschooling philosophy, and the head's need for a degree of structure, for sanity's sake.  This term, although we're only a week in, I feel like we've struck a balance that works for us.  Every day that we're home, the boys (particularly the two older ones) do half an hour (or more if they like - they sometimes do) of Reading Eggspress and MathsWhizz, while I do some reading or maths games with Youngest.  He stalled on Reading Eggs last term, and is still consolidating the skills learned and building his confidence to be able to go back to where he left off.  Also, most days we do an activity of Mummy's suggestion (the boys have the power of veto) - from a list of ideas.  Eg yesterday we played Middle's brilliant new game (another Christmas present), Scabs and Guts.  It's a board game with lots of questions on the body, healthy living etc - it seemed that every other question involved poo, snot & other not-so-refined topics... the boys loved it, of course, and Middle was particularly delighted when one card asked him to do a demonstration of someone with food-poisoning... his acted-out vomiting was very convicing - yeuch!

So other than half an hour of online curriculum in Maths or English, and one activity from Mummy's "what shall we do today" suggestion box, the boys are free to explore, watch, play etc as their interests dictate.  If the TV goes on they watch something that we have recorded (from BBC2's Learning Zone, or CBBC and CBeebies).  Horrible Histories is a particular favourite of Eldest's, and the younger two are currently enjoying William Whiskerson (geography) and Curious Cat (design & technology), which we recorded last term. There are a few great programmes on the internet too (we really like Grid Club) but more often than not, they're just off creating or having fun - not so much evidence of screentime this term ('hooray' says Mummy!)  Sometimes they need/ want my involvement, often they are happy to just get on with whatever it is.  It certainly all seems to be working so far :)  People who are purely unschooling may well suggest that we're not doing it properly by having any structure, and those who are fully structured may be horrified at my doing "so little" with the boys - but it works for us.  At the moment, anyway.  When it stops working, we will find what works better, and adapt.

So yesterday our learning (that I was aware of) looked something like this: Eldest and Middle were on Reading Eggspress while Youngest and I read a few small books from the Oxford Reading Tree - him sounding out & blending the simple words, me reading the ones that he couldn't/ didn't want to read - and of course, having fun chatting about the illustrations, to keep it fun (given the choice of 'sharing a story' or 'practicing reading', I know which seems more appealing!).  Middle baked some smartie cookies, but somehow they all got eaten before I remembered to take a photo - oops; Eldest read his new book, "Predators" (Steve Backshall); we all played the aforementioned delightfully disgusting board game, 'Scabs and Guts', and then Eldest (and Middle) played camera challenges where I had to give them a challenge of something to take a photo of  (eg something with a triangle in it, something with spots/ stripes, something shiny etc.   All in all, a lovely day!  Like I said though, that was just the learning that I noticed - so much of a person's learning just cannot be quantified.  They were off playing and creating for hours - who knows what they were absorbing while enjoying themselves!

And today? Well, we've had MathsWhizz; Horrible Histories and William Whiskerson on TV; Youngest has been further exploring the CBeebies website; Middle counted the bones in his foot (then we looked it up to check the "real" answer); and Mummy's contribution was to make some Pop Art.  I showed the boys Andy Warhol's 'Marilyn' prints in our book, "Famous Paintings."  Eldest remembered it from the from the Art programme they watched last term (recorded from the BBC's learning zone), and they were all keen to get the paints out and have a go at our own version.  I looked online to see if there were any instrictions to follow (I'm not totally confident when it comes to teaching art), but as I couldn't find any, we worked it out as we went along.  In case you fancy a go, this is what we did...

Pop-Art Self-Portraits

We wanted to do four colour variations - and four x A4 would have been too big I felt, so I folded an A4 page in half, to give us a smaller starting area each.  We each drew a basic head (and shoulders) self-portrait.  We are blessed with a photocopy function on our printer, so I made three further A5 copies of each self portrait.  If you don't have access to a photocopier, you could just trace the simple outlines.

   

Next we mixed six colours of paint (I only keep paint in the primary colours plus black and white at home - partly because of limited storage space, partly because it provides plenty of practice at mixing colours).  We decided the best look would be to limit ourselves to using five colours each.  We laid our four identical self-portraits out in front of each of us, and started painting.  It worked better for us to do a kind of production line: rather than completing one self-portrait at a time, we each did all four faces first (making sure each was a different colour), then each mouth etc...

   

That was as much as Youngest could handle really (ie just colouring his faces in with different colours on each page).  With Eldest and Youngest we looked at Warhol's colour variation and talked about how they weren't all uniform - in some of them the eyes and lips were the same colour; in others it was the lips and hair etc.  As we went along we tried to not only vary the features that were the same colour on each self-portrait, but also make sure there was a balance of colour across all four pieces. 

When we had finished filling our faces with colour we looked at how Warhol used colour to make bolder backgrounds than just leaving them white - so (with the exception of Youngest, who declared his to be finished), we assessed our faces so far and looked at which colours would work best as backgrounds to tie the four mini prints into one work of art (that sounds more pontificatory than it actually was).  Most importantly, it was fun, and we're all really happy with our completed "artwork"

 Mummy

 Eldest

 Middle

 Youngest

And then this afternoon we had a play date with the boys' old school friends at a soft play area - so now they're all nicely exhausted and happy from another lovely day.  And what's more, it's now the weekend, so we get Daddy at home too - hooray!  I'm off to enjoy the weekend - hope you have a good one too!