Category: English

Tutor Group – Home Education Is Not Always At Home

Once a week on Fridays,  I go to a tutor group with other home educated children where we do formal Science, English, Maths and History/Geography.   We get given homework most weeks but we don’t get homework from Science or Maths on the week before half term.  School holidays still apply to tutor group.

At the moment we are learning about the internal organs of the human body in Science.
In English we are learning about A Midsummer Nights Dream and the language that Shakespeare uses in the play.
In Maths we are learning about coordinates and how to plot them various ways.
Last but certainly not least in History/Geography we are learning about Japan.

All of the subjects are interesting.

The lessons are an hour long and we have Science and English before lunch and Maths and History afterwards.

KS2 and KS3 are in a class together so the works is pitched somewhere between the two.  Some work is a bit harder for the younger ones in the group.  Those doing GCSE levels are put in a separate class.

Another really good thing is we (the students) have an input into what we would like to learn about.  So this term we as a group, chose Japan which we thought would be an interesting topic.

It’s a good time to see my friends and if you send your children or you come to the one I go to.  I will introduce you to my friends then you can sit with us.  (you may even already know someone there).

I would fully recommend it to everyone.

Do we need school to learn?

At the beginning of every September, I ask the girls if they have anything they would like to achieve by the end of July.  Anna (who was 5) said she’d like to learn to read.

I helped with this by teaching her blending sounds and split digraphs which we worked on until Christmas last year.  This was to give her the basics.  She already knew that letters have a sound and a name (ay or a, bee or b, etc).

After this, we started reading simple books. moving on to reading programs such as Oxford Reading Tree which we bought, but also got different ones from the library (one of our favourite places to go).   By July she was on Level 5 books.

I have no idea the ‘comparison’ with schooled children, but this child has pretty much taught herself to read fluently.  As of now (August) she is reading Liz Pichon (Tom Gates) and Andy Griffith (13 Storey Treehouse Stories).

To continue with her gaining confidence in reading alone, we now all read for half an hour a day (or more if you want to).  So far I have found that instead of picking up a gadget or putting on the television, they have been picking up books to read.

My conclusion after this year, is that if a child wants to learn something they can do it anywhere, given the right encouragement and facility to do so. 🙂

Have I Given Up?

As Elsa gets older I worry about the fact she’s not doing 30 hours a weeks school and 5 hours a week homework.  I mean we do stuff, but it was getting the point that she was becoming difficult about doing English with me (her least favourite subject).

After several weeks of this behaviour, I suggested maybe having someone else teach her this subject.  She wasn’t happy about it but agreed to give it a go.

I found a tutor who came and tested where she was at so she knew where to start teaching her and my goodness, she was classed as being where she should be age wise for comprehension and maths and ahead for reading. This was a bit of a surprise as we had only been doing a small amount each day.

She continues to have the tutor once a week for 2 hours and is given homework to do.  This will hopefully keep her on track for the future.

So while I may have felt at the time I had given up. I didn’t.  I just passed some things over to someone who could help me. I now focus on other subjects, which at present include Geography, Ancient Egypt, French, Art, Cooking, Sewing, etc.

We still have a varied education and now our tutor is part of this.

Human Body – Teeth

Our new topic is the human body which we will be starting after the Easter holidays, but as we had been to the dentist this week, I thought it might be a good idea to learn about teeth while the visit was still fresh in the girls minds.

We talked about the number of teeth we had and the girls counted each others teeth while using a torch to look at the different types of teeth.

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We talked about which foods were good for your teeth and which ones weren’t, then I printed off some pages of foods and drew some teeth for the girls to decide which foods should go where. Anna drew a happy tooth and a sad face on her teeth. 🙂

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Elsa designed her foods into sad and happy faces on her teeth. 🙂

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I asked Elsa to create a leaflet to help people to look after their teeth.  She decided to explain what were good and bad things to eat and then described how to brush your teeth properly.  She was really pleased with how it came out (and so was I), clever little thing. 🙂

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We chatted about the various adult teeth and the jobs they did.  Then I asked the girls to colour in the different teeth different colours.  Elsa had to write her own text about the teeth and we discussed the use (or not) of wisdom teeth.

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What an interesting start our Human Body topic. 🙂

 

World Book Day 2016

I was thinking that it would be quite difficult to celebrate world book day.  Elsa tends not to really enjoy reading unless it’s Tom Gates :).  Roll on May when the next one is out. 🙂

Anyway, being a member of the fabulous Twinkl website, they had emailed me some world book day ideas.  I asked the girls what they would like to do and they said the scavenger hunt, so they got dressed up as a character from a book, we grabbed some books off their bookcases and got started.

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The idea was to find the page in a book on which a certain item off the list was on.  I printed off the same sheet for both girls but suggested they used different age appropriate books.

For instance one of the items to find was a bus.  Elsa found it written somewhere in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkerban.  Anna found a picture of one in a Zoe and Beans book.

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This was one of the things we did on World Book Day, it was a fun little exercise and both girls enjoyed it.

 

 

Space Agent – Build a Rocket

The final mission and Elsa has been looking forward to this one the most 🙂

For the final time, we watched Jon’s introduction video. Apparently Little Jon is doing a secret mission.

Science

How does gravity work on earth?

We watched some videos about Isaac Newton, forces and gravity.  Then did an experiment using a jar and ball to see if we could cause enough pull to keep the ball in the jar.  Elsa wrote what was happening and why and spoke about it as we were doing it and we did a video of it to upload to makewaves.

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Mission 6 Part 1 complete

DT & Maths

This task needed us to design and launch our own rocket.  After looking at various different ways to do it, Elsa decided to use a bottle and make a cone to create hers.

Firstly she made a cone out of card and taped it up using parcel tape, she then taped it to the bottom of her bottle and decorated the whole thing.

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She then put a bit of playdough around the open end as a weight and taped it on.

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Tah Dah, all finished.

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To launch it she was going to use force from the pump and water.

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We used between 100ml and 400ml of water for the launches to see which one would work best.  Our results were the less water used, the higher and further the rocket went.  We uploaded a video to makewaves.

Mission 6 Part 2 complete

English

Write a letter of support to Tim?

Last task of the challenge was to write a letter in letter format, using full stops, commas and a variety of vocabulary to Tim and post it to him for his return.

Elsa wrote a bit about what she had learned and that she had watched the launch and docking of the Soyus rocket on the 15th December and that she thought the docking would be frightening for them all.  She wished him a good mission. 🙂

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Mission 6 Part 3 complete

She uploaded all of her work and was issued with not only the launch rocket badge,

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but she has also qualified as an Agent of UNSA

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This has been a brilliant, interesting project.

Space Cadet – Living in Space

Mission 5 and it’s the penultimate Mission.  This time it was split into Science, Maths and English again.

As always, we watched Jon’s video, this weeks was a little bit sadder as Mini Jon Space Cadet had gone missing.  🙁

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Science

How do we measure a day?

We watched several interesting videos which explained about how the sun affected days and nights on earth.

Elsa and I discussed this and then she drew a picture which showed how this happens and described about the earth revolving on it’s axis affected where it was night and day.

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Mission 5 Part 1 Complete

Maths

How does your day on Earth compare to an astronauts on the ISS?

Elsa know that on the ISS they see a sunrise and sunset every 45 minutes and that they need to sleep to regular time as opposed to following them.

We were given information about what the astronauts do in a 24 hour period and Elsa had to work out her own day, then compare the two. She chose to do a bar chart as it was easier to see the differences.  She then wrote about them on the makewaves website.

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Mission 5 Part 2 Complete

English

How can you support Tim?

To complete this task we were asked to do this is a blog so Elsa created a blog post on this website.

Tim’s Blog

I then tweeted the link to Tim and he ‘liked’ it 🙂

Mission 5 Part 3 Complete

Elsa uploaded all her work to the Makewaves website and has been awarded her badge.

Living in Space

 

A Message to Tim

Tim,

Tim Peake

I know that you will be feeling a bit nervous and excited.  It is an adventure that not many people get to do.

You have done lots of training to get ready for Mission Prinicpia so you are ready for it.

In space you will see a sunset and sunrise 16 times every day.  That’s one every 45 minutes.  Your jobs that you do are very important so make sure you are relaxed in space.  You need to try and get a good nights sleep which mean going to bed quite late and waking up at 6 o’clock in the morning.  You shouldn’t use the sunrises and sunsets to set your routine even if they are very pretty.

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You will probably miss your family, especially as you will be on the International Space Station over Christmas and your birthday but remember you can talk to them by using Skype, tablets and computers during your free time.

Make sure you exercise as you can’t walk at all while you are in space so you need to keep fit while you are there.

Hopefully the chef has made some of your favourite food and drink to take with you to keep you a bit happier while you are there.

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We are looking forward to following your mission on the ISS, we know you will be great.

From Elsa

 

Space Cadet – Fit For Space

Week 3 of the UNSA missions and this week is about food and exercise on the ISS.

Firstly, as usual, it was watching the introduction video with Jon. We always find these funny in our house.

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Science

What would Tim need to eat before doing a spacewalk (EVA – Extra Vehicular Activity)

We looked at the table of food we needed to download and finally (again after a grumble to HE friends about not being able to make a 4000 kcal meal) worked out that you only needed to do an extra meal on top of 2500 kcal day for Tim if he was to do an EVA).

Elsa watched a video of Tim talking about his favourite foods and also a video of Samantha talking about snacks on board too. After watching these she chose a meal that she hoped Tim would like. (Loads of chocolate and tea) :).  She labelled it with the number of calories per item of food.

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Mission 3 Part 1 Complete

Maths

Using the table of food provided, work out how much Tim’s meal would cost:

  • per meal
  • once a week for 6 weeks
  • once a week for 6 months (24 weeks)

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Mission 3 Part 2 Complete

English

Persuade UNSA’s Head Chef to choose your meal.

Elsa had to decide why her meal was better than anyone else’s and to try and persuade the head chef to choose it.  She wrote her own text then did a talk to us about it.

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Elsa work has uploaded her work and she has been awarded with her badge.

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What was nice about after completing this mission, Elsa received an extra badge which was a surprise when she next logged into Makewaves. 🙂

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Space Cadet – Space Weather

Onto mission 2 of the space challenge which is about space weather.

Firstly, we watched Mission 2 introduction video from Jon.  Both girls are enjoying these videos 🙂

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Science

What is space weather?

We decided to do this as a document this time to make a change and to use the PC.  We used the suggested NASA space weather page for the information on this question. We found images to paste into the document and Elsa wrote in her own words about it.

Among other things, we found out:

  • what the sun is made of;
  • what causes the northern lights;
  • what a solar flare is;
  • how the space weather affects the earth and equipment here.

We watched a couple of interesting videos, one to do with the telescopes taking images of the weather in space and a brilliant National Geographic one on Aurora Borealis (northern lights).

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Mission 2 Part 1 Complete

Maths

Sunspots

We talked about what sunspots were and looked at some images online of what they look like. Then we looked at and chatted about the data for the mission.  I discussed with Elsa what she needed to do with it.

  • find the errors in the data.
  • choose 3 facts about the data (highest, lowest, total number over the 10 years she chose).
  • choose 10 years to study and create into a chart.
  • write 2 questions about her data for someone else to answer. 🙂

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Mission 2 Part 2 Complete

English

Present information about space weather and sunspots to your peers (dad).

Elsa decided that the best way to do this, (after a discussion with other HE children doing this challenge), was by creating a PowerPoint presentation.  I asked her to think about what she felt was important to tell him then suggested pictures and bullet points to remind her what to say.  I said that he may have questions to ask her during and after the talk, so she should be sure she had covered as much as she could initially, but I did say I would give her key words to remind her of the information if he asked her something she couldn’t answer.

She created 4 slides and searched for relevant pictures and remembered information from the previous 2 tasks.  When Daddy got back from work she asked him to sit down and started to talk about:

  • what space weather is.
  • how it affects those on earth and on the ISS.
  • what protection is available.
  • how we can predict it.
  • what sunspots are.

Dad asked her a few questions which she was able to answer without my help. 🙂

She did really well.

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Mission 2 Part 3 Complete

Elsa’s work has been uploaded and she has been awarded with her badge.

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