Bugger All

Yeah, that about sums it up. I am really battling the Winter Blues this year. It's all I can do to stay awake and not kill people.

We swapped our seasonal books over to Winter (which is what I call organised or what!) and spent a long time reading and re-reading those. Jazzed the nature nature table up to wintery colours and that's IT.

Good blog of a Montessori teacher : The Learning Ark in which she shares her knowledge and insight and resources too. Bargain.

Meh.

You know one of those days when...

... you never want it to end? Well, I had a similar experience today when I experienced the day I never wanted to start.

Before even opening my eyes I was sensing grey, wet, bleurgh weather and immediately went into a waking-state coma.

I stalled as long as I could, but the inevitable had to be met head-on. So Midget and I snuggled under a quilt on the chair and pretended we were outside in a blowing gale and snuggled up keeping warm together, hiding behind a cushion. Whispering secrets. Giggling. Eldest told us all about erm.... oh it turns out I wasn't listening... HOVERCRAFTS ... I *was* listening. Hovercrafts. Then we monged, and I had caffeine, then they played Lego online games (my bad), then real lego and then post people started arriving left, right and centre and some Gears arrived.

They played gears, honest, and I have photos to prove it but I just cannot be arsed uploading them from my camera (beside me), by putting the plug in (beside me) into the USB port (in front of me). It's THAT kind of day.

Then I gave in and we watched Walking With Beasts and Postman Pat.

A white flag kind of day...

Show & Tell

Just like old times this, eh?

OK, so a little round up of what went on today.

Started the midget off with sorting - gave him two colours of buttons to sort and when he had done that we wanted to count them, so he did.

After he had counted them I gave him a sheet with numbers on and he had to put the right number of buttons under each number. He liked doing this (notice the grin)

Eldest had already begun with tangrams this morning, so he continued with that til his brain oozed out of his earholes.

Midget made a teddy out of plasticine

Then I introduced them to a new puzzle - a board of Europe and we discussed various things, blah blah blah. It is self correcting so they pootled along with that without any help from me for a while. Came to put the puzzle away and a piece was missing and resulted in me screaming WHERE'S GERMANY?? WHERE IS IT?? WHERE?? to which DH found it terribly helpful to announce from the kitchen that it is still neighbouring France where it has always been. Hmm he think he's funny, y'see.

Did I tell you (no I didn't because I haven't been here) that Eldest is now trying to read anything in his path. He's had the tools to do it for a while, we've covered all phonics, but he hasn't really felt the need to read before now without prompting. Well, now he IS and just be careful what you write down because he will read it ALOUD. He read almost all the European Nation names (grinning from ear to ear) masha'allah and then grabbed books off the shelf to read anything that took his fancy.

They helped with food prep and played while I cooked.

Read some more masha'allah then played a Ladybug game til one of them threw the dice so irratically that it has now vanished into another dimension. Lesson here : arsing about stops gaming.

Growing Food Link

A project that helps teach primary aged children about potatoes. Linked to the national curriculum children will learn how potatoes grow and how they fit in to a healthy balanced diet. All you have to do is register your school to receive a FREE potato growing kit, use the supporting lesson plans and worksheets and for a chance to win fabulous prizes for your school, enter the competition once you have harvested your crops. 12,500 schools already benefit from this classroom experience so don't miss out - register today.

Potato Council

Did you even know we HAD a Potato Council??

Me either. The jokes are endless...

The LINKS page has some good links too.

Allotment Gardening Land Self Sufficiency Link Thing

Landshare

Montessori Links

Montessori Materials

MontHome

Jenny Yen's Materials

Montessori Teacher's Collective

Montessori World

Montessori Mom

Montessori nation

Posts from my other blog...

I thought as a gentle ease into this new home-unschool blog incarnation I'd start with something *out there* which I'd like to share: AquaFlo Pens. Or some such name; they come under different brand names.

But long story short: They are simply water fillable brushes which are convenient enough to take on nature hikes/ outside adventures to allow you to paint and nature journal on the go! Without the need of bottled water (which gets spilled anyway) these ingenious pen-brushes are such an amazing little tool that once you use it you'll wonder why you never thought of it before.

I encourage the children to draw the detail of their piece in permanent pen and use water colours to add the tints, rather than try to paint the whole picture in paints.

So far they have been big hits. We sourced ours on eBay but they should be sold in any decent art and craft store.

AquaFlo pens - remember the name!

For hatching chambers and bugs and even eggs! you can buy online Insectlore UK

Bug hotel has re-opened for one week only to set up the ant farm - we're watching tunnel building, team work, division of labour and intelligence. I'm hoping it might rub off...but not the tunnel-building thing, obviously...

New link:

Islamic Children's Study

Enjoy!

Starting Again

OK. There's been a long gap in this blog. I haven't really commited to it - I don't know whether I even want to blog about educational things, but in the past it has helped focus me. I also didn't know whether I should move blogs to Islamic Unschool. Sometimes a fresh start can be so invigorating, but it feels a little disjointed to have our stuff broken into various blogs.

I have also realised that the youngest needs a totally different way to learning than his brother.

Eldest always responded well to Waldorf methods at the age of 4. He wouldn't draw though; he wasn't at the stage where he could hold a pen, and getting him to do anything structured was torture for him.

I continued this way of doing things with youngest, and have noticed his way is different, but it wasn't til he turned 4 that I realised a different way of learning was called for. He is very much hands on - loves organising, counting, re-arranging, making lines of different length and comparing them etc. Very much going for a Montessori way with him insha'allah.

Getting these two peoples' needs met is tough, like being pulled in opposite directions by wild mustangs.

I hope writing this down will make me realise how much we DO and not how much we DON'T.

A summary of today:

Eldest did tangrams til his head hurt and the midget was given magnetix (whatever they're called) and asked to make a square, a triangle and a pentagon. This he did with glee.

After brains were sufficiently tied in knots, they legoed and drew and watched Attenborough's Life on iPlayer. They did something else, but I've forgotten. Can't have been very educational.

ANYWAY, they are now holding a 'who can hold their breath the longest' competition in the sitting room and it's the quietest I've ever known it. I like this game. Maybe we could extend it into a Grand Prix competition? That would be interesting (and quiet)...

Moctezuma: Aztec Ruler @ the British Museum

Bigbrainz.com - timestable help/game

Free video lectures

Literacy sites - links

Charlotte Mason
CM Organiser
Saxon Maths
Apologia