Settling in to a new term – with a little help from twinkl

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It’s taking us a while to get back into term-time mode this September. We spent the first week on holiday in Wales, and this week we have been staying at my mum’s house. The children have been gently getting back into a bit of a routine and doing a little more written work than they have over the summer. I have been starting to think and plan a bit about what we might do this term. I don’t do written plans, because it makes me too focussed on ticking things off when I should be going with the flow and following the children’s ideas. (That is basically my problem with the National Curriculum in a nutshell!) However, I do like to look ahead and come up with a few ideas for the term which I can fit round whatever else my very creative children come up with.

I have been browsing on the lovely twinkl website again, and getting excited about their excellent range of resources, so I thought I would share some of my favourites here.

We have been given a free twinkl premium subscription in order to review the resources, so I’ll let you know how we get on!

An afternoon at Chastleton

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We are coming to the end of our late and extended summer holiday now, and I’m staying at my mum’s house which gives me a little time to reflect on what we have been up to and begin to catch up on all the blog posts that are pending. After a relaxed and quiet summer with the children at home, our family holiday time together with daddy started on Saturday 24th August. We were staying at mum’s then as well, and we had a lovely afternoon at our favourite National Trust property, Chastleton House and Garden.

The short walk down from the car park to the house takes you through a field of sheep. Rabbit was particularly excited, and after a close encounter with one of the sheep, she came running to tell me “I heard it do a actual baa!”

We got a timed ticket to enter the house shortly after we arrived, picking up an explorer backpack for the kids on the way in. We have learnt from experience that it’s best to have one, not four, or we end up carrying them all! The children were happy to share the binoculars, torch and magnifying glass which added a bit of fun without being too much trouble.

I thought we might have to move fairly quickly round the house but in fact we spent quite a long time in there. I was impressed by the children’s ability to concentrate and they all found something of interest in every room.

Owl would have spent even longer there if he could, particularly in the reading room. Monkey was fascinated by the typewriter and it felt strange to have to explain what it was!

I really enjoyed looking at the wood carvings around the house, and I think it would be fun to go back with sketch books sometime and draw some of them.

About half way round, I remembered that I had told the children we could take photos of their cuddly toys in the house which added a new dimension and kept them interested for longer. Owl and Rabbit especially liked posing their toys next to a chamber pot under one of the beds, and they found out that it is one of the oldest items in the house.

As always we spent a lot of time in the long gallery at the top of the house, testing out the toys.

The teddies posed for a few more photos too.

After a quick look in the kitchen, we came out to the courtyard for a snack and a bit of browsing in the second hand bookshop. Then we headed out to the garden to enjoy the late afternoon sunshine. All the children – and the toys – rolled down the slope which just about covered one of our #50things though it wasn’t exactly a big hill.

The toys – and the children – enjoyed the topiary.

They were happily occupied for a long time hiding in the bushes, jumping out and making the toys do the same.

Then – I’m not quite sure how this started – the toys did a bit of sky diving. Owl, Monkey and Rabbit (with some help from daddy) threw their toys up as high as possible over and over again until they were satisfied that I had taken some good enough photos.

Tiddler had a go too, but his teddy didn’t get quite so high up. There was just time for another roll down the slope and then we had to leave.

A little stroll back to the car park, with a chance to say goodbye to the sheep on the way, rounded off a lovely afternoon perfectly.

Rastamouse and Da Micespace Mystery

By Michael De Souza and Genevieve Webster

Published 12th September 2013, Macmillan, £6.99

My first impressions of Rastamouse and Da Micespace Mystery were that it was bright and colourful and I loved the illustrations. The little ones certainly found it appealing too, and they enjoyed seeing the familiar characters from the excellent Rastamouse programmes on Cbeebies.

I read the story to all four children together and we all enjoyed it, though I have to admit that my rendering of the Jamaican patois probably left a little bit to be desired. It’s a funny story though, and cleverly written. Rastamouse and the Easy Crew receive a call from the President because his bank account has been hacked and the Mouseland millions have been stolen. Luckily Rastamouse has a plan to track down the geek-a-mouse who’s responsible – the gadget-loving Mister Flash. I liked the reference to “MiTube” as well as “Micespace”, and it made Owl laugh out loud. In fact, on first reading I think he liked it the most, as he was quickest to understand the story. With the others, I had a lot of explaining to do, with the help of the glossary and list of abbreviations at the back of the book – I needed it for “Criss” and “G2G”!

After reading the story, the three older children drew pictures inspired by the excellent illustrations, and Monkey made a Rastamouse finger puppet!

It’s a fun book, and even more so when daddy reads it out loud – his patois, though decidedly dodgy, is definitely better than mine!

This book was sent to us for review by Macmillan Children’s Books.

Silent Sunday 8th September 2013

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Saturday Snippets 7th September 2013

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Holiday highlights
{exploring} Pembroke Castle
{playing} on the beach
{swimming} late at night
{playing} golf, croquet, bowls, tennis, table tennis and pool

Today
{packing} at the last minute
{eating} lunch at Little Chef
{visiting} friends
{leaving} Wales
{driving} to Granny’s house

{snapshots}
It’s all about swimming this week. After eight sessions in the pool, Owl has mastered breast stroke, and also swam ten lengths alternating front crawl and backstroke. Monkey and Rabbit have both learnt to swim without armbands, and Tiddler can now swim confidently and independently (with armbands.)

Silent Sunday 1st September 2013

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Saturday Snippets 31st August 2013

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{playing} rounders

{laughing} at the chicken book

{enjoying} our local environmental fair

{swimming}

{exploring} Claremont Landscape Garden

{picking} carrots, beetroot, onions, cabbage, sweetcorn, blackberries and strawberries at Garson’s Farm

{eating} daddy’s homemade strawberry jam

{packing}

{driving} to Wales

{feeling} tired

{snapshots} Owl and Monkey have been talking non-stop to each other, and anyone who will listen, about Star Wars, and I have been trying to keep up but failing miserably. Rabbit and Tiddler impressed me with their patience when picking the strawberries – they really stuck at it and helped us to get enough for the jam-making.

Not Back to School: Why we love Home Ed

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I have been meaning to write a post about why we home educate for a long time, so I was really pleased when I heard Jax was planning a Not Back to School Home Education carnival. And even more so when she kindly provided some questions and prompts to get me started.

Why do you home educate?

As a teacher, I was already disillusioned with the school system before I had children, so when Owl was born I knew I would prefer to home educate. However, I didn’t know anyone else who was doing it at the time and it seemed hard to imagine taking the plunge. So we tried school when he was a little over four years old. It was a bad experience, he wasn’t happy and I wish it hadn’t taken us four terms to decide to take him out – such a lot of wasted time. But ever since he left school he has been much happier, and we have had a lot of fun together, so we have just continued in the same way with the other children who have never been to school.

There are so many benefits of home education for us that it would be impossible to list them all here. In no particular order here are some of them: freedom to follow the children’s interests, much more time to play, more efficient and in-depth learning, friendships with other home educating families, more family time together, less stressful mornings and evenings, visiting attractions when they are quieter and going on holiday in term-time.

How do you home educate?

We make it up as we go along! Our approach would probably be described as semi-structured. We have some text books and work books, we also do topic work which is often suggested by the children and we read, read and read some more. We do lots of art, craft and cooking. We spend as much time outdoors as we can and join with our home educating friends for lots of outings and activities. And we play a lot.

Is there anything you’d do differently if you did it all again?

Home educate from the beginning.

What’s your favourite resource/book/website?

My two favourite home education blogs are Live Otherwise (and I’m not just saying that because this post is for Jax!) and Patch of Puddles (which I still count as a home education blog even though the Puddle chicks are currently at school.)

The book that helped me decide to home educate was Free Range Education edited by Terri Dowty. I also like Learning without School by Ross Mountney.

What’s the daftest question you have ever been asked about home education?

There are so many competing for this one it’s hard to choose, but it would probably have to be “What about socialisation?” My children have so many friends and such a busy social life that the challenge is managing to have a quiet day at home together occasionally.

Advice for those who say…

“…I’d love to home educate but I don’t have the courage.” Try it and the chances are you will love it and wonder why you didn’t do it sooner. If not, the schools will still be there.

“…I wouldn’t know where to start.” Start with whatever your child is interested in and go from there. It really doesn’t have to be complicated. Find some local home educators and see how they do it.

“…We can’t afford it.” This is the hardest one. It is an issue for almost every home educator, but we manage, and there are some inspirational home educating single parents putting the rest of us to shame with their financial juggling skills. If your child is seriously unhappy in school you will be motivated to find a way, but why let it go that far?

“…I could never do Maths.” You almost certainly could, but if you really don’t want to you could hire a tutor (if you can afford it), use learning websites (there are plenty of good ones) and/or rope in a friend/ family member/ another home educator to help you with the subjects you are less confident about teaching.

Typical day photos…

We don’t really have a typical day and certainly not in the summer, but this might be a good place for some random summer highlights.

What would your perfect home ed life look like?

I am so tempted to say we would live in a yurt in the middle of nowhere but I suspect that’s not really true. On a farm would be good, though I’d probably make a terrible farmer. Or maybe the opposite extreme – I’d quite like to live in Cairo again. But we are so lucky with what we have and where we live that I should probably stick with the here and now and be grateful. So my perfect home ed life would look pretty much like the one I am living… but maybe a bit less busy!