Mushrooms anyone?

15th October 201513th July 2018

As I’ve said previously, we are semi structured and therefore, we do some indoor learning and some outdoor learning. Recently we went on an organised foraging trip at some local woods.

This was really interesting (to me particularly as we live in a very rural place, so there are loads of mushrooms and berries around).

N, who took us, along with a few other HE families, showed us different fungi, some of which we could eat, some of which we couldn’t because they don’t taste nice and some of which we shouldn’t because ‘they can make you dead and that’s not very nice’. I quote. LOL.

It was a very wet and miserable day but actually in the woods it wasn’t so bad, both Elsa and Anna enjoyed the walk, poking around at the different mushrooms and even finding ones which you’d think would be impossible to see.

N collected different sorts of edible mushrooms on the walk around the woods and we were able to stop in a little opening in the wood, where she cooked them on this fabulous little cooker. She had also brought along some crab apple slices with cinnamon, some fruit jelly and oat crackers, and some berry fruit sticks, which she let the children (and adults) all try.

It was a very interesting and fun, if wet, day.

Sewing a doorstop

12th October 201513th July 2018

Elsa has always been one for being creative and crafty. She loves drawing, painting, sticking, colouring etc. I knew that homeschooling her would give us the option to help her try new creative ideas.

Therefore, after we had a problem keeping the door to the Harry Potter study open properly I asked if she’d like to make a doorstop (I also needed to make one for another door – we live in an old house so what can I say).

“Yes, yes, yes please mummy”

Well, there was our answer.

We had a quick look online to see if we could find an easyISH one to have a go at making and we found this chicken one.

I wrote down the instructions and off we went to get the things we needed.

Material
Felt
Stuffing (which is cheaper if you buy a cheap cushion and use the stuffing out of that as opposed to the ‘proper’ toy stuffing)
Rice/cous cous for the weight

We started by cutting the parts of the chicken we needed from felt and then pinned them to one side of the material. We sewed the two wings on using a zig zag stitch (green wings on Elsa’s chicken). We then sewed the two parts together making sure we trapped all of the edge parts of the felt in the seam. We left the back seam so we could change the angle (watch the video 🙂 ) so that the chicken sat properly then left a gap so we could stuff it.

We then turned it right way round and put in the weight (bagged), and the stuffing. Finally we hand sewed the gap and added some eyes at the top.

Tadah. How happy does she look?

The finished articles.

The instructions by Debbie were so clear on the video that this worked really well. Elsa did a lot of it without too much help.

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr Me Hearties

1st October 201513th July 2018

One of the topics Elsa showed an interest in learning about was Pirates. I’d always thought this was in interesting, if somewhat gruesome topic, however with great age related resources from the library we were able to learn all sorts of information about them including some of the gorier stuff. We decided again to create a lapbook for this topic. Lapbooks are a fun, colourful and easy way of collating and displaying lots of information. We downloaded the Pirate lapbook from Homeschool Share and used some parts of it and created our own information mini books as well using the templates which can also be found at Homeschool Share.

First of all, both Elsa and Anna designed bandanas so they could look like a pirate.

I downloaded a pirate game from Twinkl, which the girls both enjoyed playing A LOT.

We researched various topics including crew, found information about 3 real pirates, food and drink, learned pirate speak and we made our own pirate flasg.

We also made a map, which was fun and came out really well.

We ended this topic by watching the Aardman film The Pirates – In an Adventure with Scientists, which both girls thought was funny (and of course it was totally historically correct 😉 )

Crochet lesson with AM

30th September 201513th July 2018

Elsa’s Auntie asked me back in the summer whether Elsa would like to try a crochet lesson. She knew of this quaint little shop near where she lives who offer workshops.

Well it’s craft related so obviously ‘yes please AM’ 🙂

Off they went to have a lovely little lunch, an interesting crochet lesson and a cake and drink afterwards. Lucky Elsa. All I did that day was my cleaning. 🙂

Since she’s been home she’s continued to do this and has even tried to teach me (failed, but I blame it on being a lefty, but I’ll keep trying when she does it).

We are working towards making a little rose…. watch this space.

Ministry of Science

28th September 201513th July 2018

When you homeschool, you have the opportunity to do things, you would be unable to do if you went to school and one of those is go to the theatre during the day. When we decided to homeschool, I looked around for things of ‘educational interest’ for Elsa to do and coming to Norwich in September was Ministry of Science. Woo Hoo explosions 🙂

Elsa, Anna and myself went along with one of Elsa’s friends.

There was explosions, there was a human cannon, there was lightsabres, there was liquid nitrogen, there was history about inventors. It was brilliant and very noisy. Shame my camera was rubbish that day 🙁

So it begins…..

23rd September 201513th July 2018

We have officially started home-schooling. We are semi structured which means that we do some sit down schooling and the rest of the time we learn other ways. Elsa has a little desk area, which we lovingly named the Harry Potter Study (due to it being under our stairs). She sometimes sits in here but mostly we use our living room table.

I had a quick look at the Year 4 curriculum online (which is where Elsa would be should she still be in school) and decided that I would not really stick to it at all, however, most days Elsa does Maths, English, Science and Geography plus topic work (which we can do when Anna is at home as I collate age stuff appropriate for her to do).

We have an set of organisational trays which Elsa has labelled herself. I put the subjects I want her to do each day on the left hand side of the drawer and when she’s finished them, she moved the velcro subject indicators over to the right hand side of the drawers. She doesn’t have to do all of the subjects each day. She has also chosen subjects she would like to learn such as more in depth Senses, the Romans, Space, Diwali, Pirates (the list is endless and to be honest I’m not sure how we are going to fit it all in).

There are some subjects which are at certain times of year (such as Diwali being in November) so we will be doing those around then.

The first thing we decided we would do was learn a bit about Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth II as this month coincided with our Queen becoming the longest reigning monarch in history. Elsa decided what information she’d like to research and after a discussion we thought we’d try a lapbook. She got going using books and the Royal website along with images found online. We finished with writing a letter to the Queen congratulating her on this amazing achievement. We received a lovely letter back from a Lady-in-Waiting which has taken pride of place in her study.