Sketch Tuesday (dinner plate) and roundup

It's Sketch Tuesday again! That seems to have come quickly around.
The assignment this week was to either draw your dinner plate, with or without food on.

Tom wasn't happy with his, ( I thought it was fine) so respecting his wishes I didn't send his off, but Annie was happy with hers and I have to say I thought she did well for her age.


Here is her picture, sorry it's a bit dark



If you want to see the other sketches or join in, then go here
Next weeks assignment is to draw something with legs!

The last few days have been hit and miss, as OH is on holiday at home, so that always interferes with schooling, plus we are trying to renovate the house at the same time.

So mainly core subjects, Maths with Tom has been multiplication and a bit of division, this will continue for the next few days.

I want to get Maths 4b finished by the end of April, watch this space to see if it gets done!

I must concentrate more on Annie's maths, more about the understanding of it, it's become recently a little too much workbook, so I've got some ideas off Boyceview, that may help.

Tom is using My Spelling Workbook 'C' from Prime-ed Publishing book cover looks like this




although a little younger than his age group I wanted to start him off on something that would be achievable, we have got into a good pattern with it, and now do it weekly, rather than just being hit and miss. I like this spelling book, as it gives the spellings to learn, but then reemphasises them through pcrossword,s puzzles etc. There are sample pages to look at on prim-ed's site.
I have Spelling Workbook A for Annie, but we have yet to start it, hopefully it ill be soon.

Last summer Annie, wasn't bothered about reading, then she got interested, she started on Peter and Jane 1A, and is now on 4b,though she insists it's 5A, but I like to cover them properly, these are our base books, meaning that we use them as our main reading scheme, but not solely as it would be very boring. So we have a mixture of other early readers avaible for her to choose, but she must do whatever Peter and Jane book she is on first. It works well for us.

Since making the Roman Theatre Masks, Annie has been making her own out of paper, I must takes some photos of them. Finally Tom related the whole stroy of Boudicaa to MIL, she was mightyily impressed.:-)

Jam Tarts - a lesson in rolling pastry

Although we have baked many cakes, I realised I had never made jam tarts with the kids. So when my dad came visiting, I got him to help the kids make them.

Now first off I have to admit to having bought ready made pastry (it was buy one get one free - I couldn't resist)but the main lesson was about rolling pastry, so I wasn't too worried. My dad made sure they did it well, telling them not to handle it too much, as it doesn't want to get too warm.

Rolling out, to just the right thickness


I couldn't find my pastry cutters so we improvised using plastic cups


Putting the filling in



Before the oven


All cooked - you will see there is less than in the tray, once on the plate, they were being gobbled up. Soon there was an empty plate.



It was a big hit, although they must make their own pastry, we shall do that hopefully soon.
The only downside was that I'm watching what I eat, and these were rather irresistible, so perhaps not too many pastry sessions ;-)

The last couple of days, have been doing the usual Basics subjects, maths for Tom, we are using at the moment as our base, CGP's 4B we also use other books and resources, but I like to follow one main book so I know where we are and if any particular area needs working on, plus hopefully I wont miss much out.
Today he has just started a book called Using Maths - solve a crime
(click on pictures)


The book says for ages 8 - 12
The principle is to use use Maths in 'real life' settings. So far so good, Tom has seen a direct link for how useful Maths can be.
Tom and Annie have both done read alouds, some spelling, writing, and science. They have socialised and played with friends over here too.

Almost forgot, lots of Education City too.
You will have noticed, that I'm using names rather than initials, as I had showed my dad my blog, he thought they needed names (not real) so here they are Ruth is the youngest. I'm not sure if I'll keep up with names as initials are so much quicker ...lol!

Sketch Tuesday

This is the first time the kids will have participated in this. It's a great idea by Barb from the Heart of Harmony

Basically, Barb sets each week an assignment of what to sketch,then you email your finished drawing and Barb will then add it to the Sketch Tuesday Gallery I've always enjoyed seeing what others have drawn, so I asked T and A if they would like to join in, I had an enthusiastic YES!

This weeks assignment was to draw a piece of fruit, so I had different fruits and asked them t pick one, neither could just pick one so the drew what they wanted.

This A's drawing


and this is T's drawing


Why don't you go think about joining in

Roman Theatre Masks

I have a new goal to start the day off with some exercise, nothing too strenuous, just 5 mins of jogging, marching, waving hands wildly into the air. I felt great A, and R joined in enthusiastically, whereas T just grumbled and showed little effort. I will get T jumping and running around first thing in the morning, poor child, is so not an early morning person.

T sat down to a Maths test which was at the end of the Maths book he was doing. It was a Scofield and Sims 'adding and subtraction' He just got a couple of mistakes and on his workings out I could see it was just carelessness. I was pleased though as he hates subtraction and has grasped it well now.

A sat and did some writing practise, from this here(click on picture)

Then we did a couple of pages from the Key Stage 1 science book from CGP learning about seeds and what plants need. This will come in useful when we start planting seeds soon.

Then we discussed about Roman Masks that were used in Roman Theatre, how women were not allowed to perform ,and that men played both parts, wearing masks. If it was a brown mask, that indicated it was a man, and if it was a white mask ,then it was a women.

T and A went on to make a Roman Mask each. First the designed on paper what they wanted.


Then they started to paint the designs on their masks, which we had bought from Asda for a couple of pounds



Their masks next to their designs


Wearing the finished masks


I was really pleased with how they turned out. We got the idea from History on the Net we bought the download and use this as our basis for our Romans project, interspersed with other material.

We have visited a fort, where the children, 10 altogether, learn how a Roman soldier lived and on another occasion visited our local museum, same number of children where they learnt about Roman life, food, and were able to dress up as Romans.

After finishing the masks, we went and picked up R who had been at a friends, then on to the Library, then back home to write up about what they had learnt regarding Roman Theatre Masks.

Transpiration

As part of our Geography, we are working through this book

(click on pictures)


We are using it as a starting point and then adding to it as needed. This week in the discussion of transpiration, the books experiment was to make a bottle garden, but we wanted to do something a little easier, so used an experiment from another book called Amazing Planet Earth - isbn 1843092026 (sorry Amazon doesn't seem to stock it - I bought it from Borders for £4.99)Apparently it's an Australian book view it *here*

This involved getting a couple of plants



Wrapping them in clear plastic bags, (I used the plastic sheets you put A4 paper into binders with)and sealing the bottom with cellotape.




Then we put the plants on a sunny window sill for about 3 hours - you will notice that the plastic is clear.



After about 3 hours, you can see that the leaves of the plants are transpiring, where they give off water into the atmosphere - look carefully and you can see that the plastic has steamed up.


If left long enough in a sunny spot, the water turns to droplets, falling back down on the plants.


This is part of our water cycle project, the children drew the process, and will label photos to go into their Geography folders.