A month of Home Education and gratitude! | August 2019
Can you believe we are already in the start of September?! August has been and gone and summer is starting to feel like miles away. Our routine wont start back properly for a few weeks yet, but we've got so much planned ahead that it's an exciting countdown!
August was lovely, it was a busy month for our home ed and due to no groups and people being away, we managed to get a lot of work done. We enjoyed the nice weather and had a few picnics/park meets but mostly we stayed inside, avoiding the heat and working on finishing off our last few topics for the year.
I've planned out 19/20 academic year, with lots of fun topics, trips, activities and using Pawprint Badges too. Okay, I'll stop with the speil now, here is Augusts home ed.
A month of Home Education and gratitude! | August 2019
We started off August with a trip home, okay it was actually 31st July for this day, but we didn't include it in last months round up. We met up with auntie Nic and headed for a day out in town to celebrate her birthday. After a quick lunch we walked up the seafront and visited the beach, as you can see the weather really wasn't the best, it even started to rain at one point and we had to rush to get coats and shoes on!
Still, we had a really lovely time and as the weather got brighter we stopped further up the seafront for ice-creams. It was really nice to be able to show the girls the town and of course let them play on the amusements too.
The following day we visited family. We got to see my mum and my sister and their families. The girls enjoyed spending time playing with their cousins, especially at the park.
At the end of the day nanny and grandad took us out to see the birds. The girls love birds, so it was a really nice experience for them, they got up close and fed the rabbits and ducks too.
And just like that, our few days away were over. So with many delays, we hopped on the train home.
After the weekend, it was Coco's 9th Birthday! The girls really wanted to do something nice for him, so they got up early and headed to town. They talked about the budget they had, what kind of things he liked and what they wanted to get. We walked all over the town for them to find things and they then came home to wrap it and set it all up.
Once Coco had opened his gifts, I introduced the girls to Pawprint Badges. I explained that each badge was a theme and you had to do certain activities to get them. We talked about how it would be a great tie in to our home education and they decided to start working on a summer badge.
The first task was den building, we talked about dens, structures and animals that use dens. Then the girls set out to make their own, they created flags for the top and kept trying out new designs to work on a safe and sturdy den.
Of course they had to eat their lunch inside!
Now we were back to reality, we sat down with reading books, maths games and worksheets. We had started a new RE topic on friendship and as part of the lesson the girls had to do statue scenes that I had to guess. 'Things you enjoy doing with your friends' Can you guess what they are doing?!
[caption id="attachment_4409" align="aligncenter" width="663"]
Hint: Kairi is on a roller coaster and Naminé has ears on...[/caption]
Yes, they're at Disneyland!
Over the next few days we got stuck into French, counting in 2's, 5's and 10's and our using the internet topic. We went to the Cathedral drop in where Kairi practiced her map reading skills too.
The theme for the drop in was nature. The girls created bee masks, bug hotels, bird feeders and dragonflies. The sparked a huge conversation on bees and they came home to make a bee lunch and learn all about bees.
Next up we set our new working wall up. The 'Up' house and balloons we had just wasn't serving us any more, so we wanted to try something fresh and new that could incorporate all the topics we are doing.
Around the end of the first week, I got my sewing machine fixed, so me and Kairi got to work on some new projects. First I made hair scrunchies for the three of us and then a skirt for barbie. Kairi then got the glue gun out and we worked together on barbie accessories. Kairi designed bags and shoes, we also made a Christmas Tree for her home too.
As we've had some really lovely weather, we decided to head out for a few nature walks this month. We walked along the river quite a few times looking for animals and berries too.
We managed to pick quite a few blackberries on our walk and the girls decided to take them home to create a black berry crumble. They were so excited when they got to eat it.
Cooking has been a big learning point for us all this month, we've really been focusing on homemade foods and apart from Fish and Chicken, we've not been buying packaged frozen foods. It's been really great to see the girls interested in making foods and helping out with dinners, they've tried many new things and now enjoy onions and mushrooms.
The new food interest sparked another idea too. The girls wanted to try porridge for a new breakfast, which led into some work on goldilocks and the three bears. I have to say, having Twinkl to hand at moments like this is amazing.
From the porridge (which I cooked pretty well considering it was my first time!) We explored other breakfasts too like berries and yogurt, egg and soldiers and fruit bread.
We had some really exciting brand projects to do this month too. We worked with Scruff-a-luvs on their #saveascruff campaign. The girls are obsessed with Scruff-a-luvs so it was a dream campaign for them, they were so happy in every photo in our Scruff-a-luvs post.
Towards the end of the month, we had family visit. Both mine and Ryans came down all over one weekend! It was busy but lovely to see everyone. The girls really enjoyed getting to play with their cousins and see their nannies, grandad and aunties too.
We also saw a lot of birds this month! There were many baby ducklings by the river as well as signets and a stork too! It's so exciting to have ducklings back on the river and watch them grow again.
As the month came to an end, we changed the wall up slightly again. As we had been in lots, we finished out friendship and using the internet topic. The girls learnt how to write a blog post, take images, upload them and insert them into a post and comment/answer comments. The new topics we added onto the wall were 'programming toys' for coding and dips and dippers.
The girls have loved working on our programming toys topic so far. First we learnt about algorithms, then we went on to writing algorithms. They had to give each other instructions to create a Mr Potato head to match the image they were giving. They then became robots themselves and had to give each other an algorithm to do simple tasks like putting their shoes on.
They have also really enjoyed their dips and dippers topic so far. We've tried and tested different dips, worked out where they came from and what they are usually eaten with. The we tried dippers, working out which dipper was the best to let you taste the dip but also soak it up or give a good crunch. We crated and described everything we tried and next week we will be going on to the nutrition side and working out what dip we can create thats nutritious.
Dips and Dippers went on to talk all about nutrition in food.[/caption]
Lastly we've been keeping up with our 100 reading lessons, writing and spelling sheets and then fast maths, counting, 3D shapes and addition/subtraction too. The girls are really enjoying using Education.com still too, it's been amazing how much it's helped them learn this month.
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