Back at home Tristan concentrated on the letter 'I'. He completed a page in his workbook by tracing the letter and we talked about words beginning with the letter. He went on to finish a few more activities in his book.
Theo sat and continued writing his story about being shipwrecked on an island. I initially thought that I would give him an hour on the task before moving onto something else but he was enjoying writing so much that he spent just under two hours on it.
Theo spent much of the afternoon making a poster to publicise an event being organised by another local home educating mum and I. We asked him to come up with something which would promote the event. He took his job seriously. The Cardboard Challenge is a global event inspired by ' Caine's Arcade' and aims to encourage children to be creative.
At dinner time Theo asked 'how bad is a nuclear bomb?' Once he had finished eating I asked him to look for information about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in 1945. He found a website which gave details. I chose to read it for him and censored out a couple of very disturbing witness accounts which gave graphic details about the effect of the bomb on victims. He was horrified that children had been killed as well. The conversation turned to what an atomic bomb actually is. He ended up searching for uranium on the periodic table and questioning which other elements were radioactive. He wrote a brief piece about Hiroshima and drew a mushroom cloud. He added this to our timeline. I look forward to helping him discover more about this subject.
Tristan spent the time after dinner playing on his saxophone. He always replies that he wants to play saxophone when he is asked which instrument he will chose when he is older.
We went to the park for a while even though it was raining. A few of their friends also braved the weather but we all left when the weather got worse. They were tucked up into bed back at home and had mugs of hot milk to drink.
We headed out for some fresh air and exercise. We ended up in the library where Theo photocopied the poster he had made yesterday. He asked the librarian to teach him how to reduce things on the copier and proudly returned to me brandishing lots of A5 photocopies. He found a maths puzzle book and became engrossed immediately. Tristan played with a little girl who was the same age before sitting and reading a book with me. We ended up staying in the library for much longer than I had anticipated.
Theo continued to read the maths book at home. The book requires that you do lots of calculations in order to move through the adventure. We will have to investigate if there are more titles in the series. This one was called 'Maths Quest - The Cavern of Clues' by David Glover. I recommend this.
At lunch time we ate whilst we played a game of 'Fiddlesticks'. This is a musical instrument recognition card game which the boys enjoy.
Theo worked through an exercise about inverses in his Maths book.
I read through the animal book with Tristan. He decided that the elephant was his favourite animal and so we set about making an elephant. I quickly cut an elephant shape out for him and also the letters in the word elephant. He enjoyed working out the order for the letters and sticking them onto his elephant picture. We watched a clip on YouTube about elephants and what they like to eat.
Theo decided to write a blog entry about the Cardboard Challenge event. He added details about the chosen charity and explained what the children need to do. He then added his blog address to the A5 flyers and asked if he could post them to his friends. He also asked me if he could contact the local newspaper to publicise the event which really impressed me. He is really very self motivated.
We all went out and Theo posted six flyers to his friends through their letter boxes. We then went for a walk.
I wanted the boys to see the change in the woodland as the Autumn starts. They collected a variety of seeds and pointed out changes to the leaves on their favourite oak tree.
Back at home they turned out their pockets and used a seed spotter sheet to identify the seeds. I printed the sheet from the 'Nature Detectives' website which is a fabulous resource.
We found a sheet from June which we a used to look at leaves and talked about how the trees had changed since then. Theo is very aware of seasonal changes but it was a good visual tool to help Tristan think about change. We also discussed hibernation.
Theo completed an exercise in his Science book about food chains.
Theo practiced his piano and his violin for a while. Tristan brought down all his instruments and clanged around putting his brother off. Eventually they 'jammed' together for ten minutes which was noisy but fun.
I sat the boys together and let them play on a BBC schools science site. They looked at habitats and food chains.
The activities are fantastic because Theo can click to hear the questions which means that Tristan can engage in the task as well. The task they worked through was listed as year six work but they had no trouble with it.
I went off to make dinner. When I returned I found that they were learning about gases. I was heart warmed to discover that they had chosen an educational activity. Tristan was asking his brother all sorts of questions about gas mainly related to steam.
After dinner I gave them each a picture of a conker to colour in. They enjoyed this immensely.
We have a friend coming to stay with us tomorrow night and we are all very excited about seeing him.
Prudence Clarke
12.09.2013
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