I Did It – I’m Not Behind My Peers

If I were at school, I’d be in Year 8 (high school) and as such we wanted to start making sure I’d be ready for GCSE’s should I want to take them in the future. We found an online college, which I’ve blogged about previously, which do all sorts of subject but I chose Maths to start with as it’s my favourite one.

We weren’t sure which year to start at at so they sent me a test to see which year I should begin.  AND I got 18 out of 22 which meant I would be able to start the Year 8 course.  Therefore, I am doing the same work as I would be doing at school.

I have almost finished my second module after passing the first one at 94%.

I am so happy I am doing the work I am meant to be doing for my age.

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.

Online Colleges – Are They Worth It?

I have recently started an online Course with Wolsey Hall Oxford that I fully recommend to all Home Edders out there.

You can choose from lots of different subjects including Maths, English, French and many others.

I have started Maths and more than likely will start computing as well fairly soon.

You have the course sent to you, but you have an online tutor who you can contact if you can’t do something and they will send you a video telling/showing you how to do it..  You work through modules (for instance Temperature) and when you have finished all the required modules you can do a quiz, which if you get more than fifty percent you will unlock the assignment for that module.  You print that off complete it and then send it back to your tutor who will mark it.  Once completed you will move on to the next module.

It’s challenging, but I’m enjoying the one I’m doing.

Minecraft Plushies

One day while looking through our local library we found this book and the girls decided they would like to make a plush cube. (yay measuring and sewing) 🙂

I asked them which one they would like to make.  Elsa decided on the Minecraft parrot and Anna decided on the pig.  I asked them to design them on some squared paper and then work out what and how many materials they would need.  We popped to our local Hobbycraft (brilliant shop btw) and purchased what we needed.

Firstly we measured 6 8x8in squares out of the felt which would be the base colour of the things we’d decided to make.  Pink for Anna and red for Elsa.

 

We then cut them out and starting to sew them together.  We left the sides which required more detail separate to make it easier to sew.

  

We then cut out 1x1in squares for the details then pinned them on the base squares. Elsa had face, wings, tail and Anna had face and tail.

   

They gradually sewed the pieces on and then finally sewing all the base pieces together we left a little gap so we could stuff them.

 

Then they finished off by sewing up the hole.

 

The girls did these mostly on their own. It took a little while to complete them as there was a lot to sew, but they completed them.

I think they look great. 🙂

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,

build and launch a rocket

but she has also qualified as an Agent of UNSA

Agent of UNSA

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

 

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.

fitforspace

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

keepgoing

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.

spaceweather

 

Space Cadet – Spaceship Earth

Remember a week or so ago I mentioned we had registered for the Unlimited Space Agency challenge?  Well it’s now started and each Monday, Elsa will be set a mission and this continues until Tim Peake’s rocket launches to the International Space Station (ISS) in December.

Each mission is split into 3 sections (Maths, English and Science).

Firstly, for Mission 1, we watched the intro video by Jon.

Watching the Mission 1 video Watching the intro video

English

Research and explain various information about the ISS and Tim Peake.

Elsa decided she wanted to do poster for both of these elements as she finds it easier to collate information that way.

International Space Station

For the ISS, she decided to write her information on pictures of planets which I thought was inspired so we found a lovely set to print out.

We looked at a video showing you around the ISS, which was fascinating, although Elsa was quite shocked at the toilet and where that goes once it gets full. 🙂

Mooching around the ISS Mooching around the space station Mooching around the space station

We looked up various information including:

  • who is there at the moment,
  • what they have to do while they are there,
  • we also looked at how fast they travel, and
  • where they are right now (which when we checked they were flying over New Zealand)

We found out that, at present, there are 6 people aboard, 2 of whom are staying up there for 1 year as an experiment to see how the body reacts to being there twice as long as usual.

We also found out that the ISS has had a crew constantly aboard since the 2nd November 2000 (so 15 years last week).

Creating ISS poster Finished ISS poster

Tim Peake

This year is an exciting one for Great Britain as it is the first time a British astronaut will have gone to the ISS.  Therefore, finding information out about him was very interesting (I’m jealous as he’s achieved so much in his life already and he’s younger than me 😉 )

Creating Tim Peakes information leaflet IMG_6184 IMG_6222

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Mission 1 Part 1 Complete

Science

For this mission we used ideas from Natural Born Homeschooler‘s space unit which I had previously downloaded and Homeschool Share‘s Planets and Stars, Sun and Moon units.

Where is the ISS and Earth in our solar system?  Research the different planets including size, what it is made of and distance from the sun. 

Firstly, we discussed the different planets, their sizes, what they were made of, how they got their names etc. and then Elsa completed some worksheets we found from 3 Dinosaurs (in PDF 1, although I have used a lot of sheets from the other PDFs  for Anna, to include her in this space challenge).  She also filled in mini books on their distance from the sun and whether or not they are solid or gas.

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We also learned that the planets have very different temperatures, from being far too hot to being extremely cold.

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We then made a Heliocentric model of the solar system.

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Elsa also created each planet out of air drying clay and put them in the order they are from the sun.

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Mission 1 Part 2 Complete

Maths

How far away from the Earth is the ISS?  How long it will take to get there?  How long it takes to orbit the Earth?  How many sunsets will be seen in days, weeks and months?

After looking up the information on the internet, we had to work out the answers to some questions.  Elsa couldn’t do these mentally yet, however, knew how to work them out so wrote how to do them in the workings part of the sheet I’d prepared.  She then used a calculator to get the answers.

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During our research of the planets we found out how to work out how much you would weigh if you were to stand on each planet.  I asked Elsa if she knew how to do this using a calculator, she said she could.  So I left her to it. 🙂

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The results were she is over 2 1/2 x heavier on Jupiter than on earth and under 1/2 as heavy on Mercury.  This resulted in a conversation about gravity. 🙂

Mission 1 Part 3 Complete

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

Spaceship Earth

 

Infinity Tiles

On a HE website group I saw a link to this maths game from Babble Dabble Do.  No matter how you rotate each square they always fit together. How clever!  I thought Elsa and Anna would like to have a go at making one, I downloaded the template and let them colour them in following the pattern guide.

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OK, well Anna needed help as she doesn’t really enjoy colouring in (what a nuisance that is).

The girls then laminated them and cut them into the squares. They have had fun making them in a variety of ways.  Elsa has actually coloured another one to add an extra 9 squares to her game.

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