Hooray for snow days! And hooray for Home Ed, which means we get to enjoy snow days instead of being stuck inside cold classrooms, trying to get our frozen hands and brains to work, but not able to just go outside and play in the pretty white stuff...
One benefit of snow is the speed at which the boys got dressed this morning! They were up, breakfasted and outside playing before 9am - building snowmen, snowforts & snowballs, and sledging. You could say it's a multi-curricular activity: Art (3D sculpture); PE (throwing, running and racing); Maths (shape, size, trajectories, speed); D&T (designing and working with transient materials); Science (freezing/ melting, and the human body in extreme temperatures - oh, and weather, obviously!) etc etc... or you could say we played in the snow, and not feel the need to justify it academically! Learning is everywhere: living is learning, and the more experiences we are exposed to, the more we just learn. Simple as that.
Eventually, after all the snow play (& learning), we all came indoors for an obligatory hot chocolate, and watched "The Snowman" and "Father Christmas" on DVD, before heading out to an HE playdate with friends, taking some Christmas 'stained glass window biscuits' that we had made for the occasion, from this book.
After lunch at home we watched today's episode of "Wild Tales", which contained a very sad scene - exposing the boys to the less pretty side of wildlife, as well as giving us the chance to chat about how programmers use music to make you feel more sad/ happy etc (all through the rest of the programme the boys were all more alert to the background music that was being played, and how it made them feel, as well as giving them clues to what was coming next). One of this week's stars is a polar bear cub, and after the programme ended we had a go at making our own polar bear pictures on glitter paper (though the glitter is very subtle & doesn't show up well in the photos). Eldest chose to do a variation on the North Pole theme - and then couldn't resist doing an underwater Arctic scene too...
Mummy's Polar Bears
Middle's Polar Bears
Youngest's Polar Bear and Walrus
Eldest's "Seal Hill"
(he couldn't have seals and polar bears in the same scene because the bears would eat the seals!)
Eldest's "Arctic Ocean"
Oh, and in other news, the hedgehogs Midge and Squidge, are both now over 700g each (Midge is almost 800g, the porker!), and will soon be moving to the garage to acclimatise to cooler temperatures before being moved to the shed, hopefully to hibernate for the winter, so I have educated myself on further essential things I need to know about hibernating (such as how to tell the difference between a sleeping hedgehog, a hibernating hedgehog, and a dead one!)
So all in all, that was a lovely day. Now though, I'm off to clear up puddles left by wellies, sledges etc. If anyone has any genius ideas for non-messy fun, let me know!
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