Tuesday 25th February

As part of our 'Exploration' theme at Home Ed, today was all about mountains. 

There was a variety of activities to take part in.

Here they children had to locate the mountain in the country where it lives. If they got it right the lightbulb came on.

  Evie listened to a story about Elmer the Elephant climbing a mountain and then built one with playdough.  I love it. Apart from the little man, it's all her own doing.

  This activity was about how we map and measure mountains. After making a mountain, they then cut layers and drew round the shape in ever decreasing circles.

Here the boys are learning about how 'fold mountains' are formed, the towels represent the earth plates.

 The crackers are the plates of earth that move.

The jelly is magma and showing how volcanoes cause new mountains to form. 

Monday 24th February

Today we are beginning a new topic - Farming.
We had a discussion about all the different kinds of farming and made a word map. Then we had a go at making our own butter.  

  Step 1  - Pour whipping cream into a jar and shake, shake, shake.....

 Step 2 - Gave up with the shaking and switched to the Kenwood.  Mix until the cream looks like scrambled egg and seperates.

 Step 3 - Drain away the 'milk' and keep mixing the remaining cream.

 Add salt.

Ta Dah... We have butter.

Half Term Week

James and Gracie had a 30 minute swimming lesson every day and made super progress.  James tried his hand a some life saving skills and Gracie worked hard on all her strokes.  Evie was wonderful as a cheerleader. 

The rest of our week was spent catching up with school friends. Gracie did some Decopatch at Poppies. We went for a scoot along the sea front at Bognor and saw the affects of the storms.  James had a tennis lesson. 

 This is a fitness post along the sea front. There should be concrete underneath, it's for adults! And yet James could stand on the stones and reach!

 Hilliers Walk

Lego world made by Gracie

Friday 14th February

Finishing off day.
James completed Level 1 Spelling already. They are both doing great with the new scheme and are enjoying their daily lessons.

James is doing money in maths and Gracie is practicing addition, regrouping into 10's.....

Today we began working on 'Young Peacemakers' material. Learning about conflict and the slippery slope of negative ways we handle conflict. 

We looked at Acrostic Poems and wrote some poetry to finish off our topic.

We then read about Elijah and the prophets of Baal and how God brought down the fire on wet wood, wed meat and consumed everything, including the water and the dirt.  They thought this was great since we had tried burning wet grass and wet wood last week and it didn't work. 

Finishing the day with painting. And I'm ready for the weekend! :)

Wednesday 12th Feb

We focused on literacy tasks related to our fire topic today. We were looking at the history of the fire service, finding out when fire engines were invented.  We looked up online whey Dalamtians were used as fire dogs.  It was interesting to discover that they were excellent at calming the horses that pulled the engines and then kept guard while the men were fighting the fire. They were also great at alerting to fires with their barking.  
James and Gracie came up with lots of adjectives to describe fire, fire fighters and dalmatians.  James completed his diary of The Great Fire of London. James and Gracie completed the online Fire of London quizz and activites. 

At the end of the day, Gracie achieved her Level 4 trampolining cert, and James came first in his tennis tournament. 

Tuesday 11th February

At Home Ed group today we continued learning about space.  The children watched some clips of astronauts in space demonstrating experiments and then the children had a go to compare the results of the same experiment on earth.  It got them thinking about the role of gravity and the effect that has on everything.

 The first experiment was to wet a wash cloth and then ring it out and notice where the water went.  Compared to in space  - firstly it was a challenge simply to wet the cloth, then when the astronaut rang it out the water didn't run out. It became like jelly on his hands. The cloth didn't unwind from the twist.

They looked at food that the astronauts would eat.  And how they excercised. 

 They had to blow up their rocket balloons and race them to see which went the furthest. 

 Gracie had a go at making planets using marbling ink, taking care to copy the colours of the planets.

Evie's spaceship.

Monday 10th Feb

A link between fire and space - Volcanoes. We have had fun reading about volcanoes and watching a science programme on how they erupt at sea to create a new Island and even more exciting that the biggest volcano is on Mars. 
We had fun trying to make our own today.

 

Saturday 8th February

Today we dusted off Grandma's old sewing machine and had a go at creating.
Evie made a cushion cover in some cow fabric (her favourite animal).
James made a pillow case and Gracie made a little mouse bean bag. 

Perfect activity for a rainy day.

Tuesday 4th February

Today we visited http://www.winchestersciencecentre.org/page/default.asp?title=Home&pid=1

The children loved exploring the 100 hands on science activities. They also got to watch a show about space in the planetarium. Which I am told was fabulous even though I couldn't go in with Evie. 

 This activity was to measure how fast different weights travelled.  The heavier the faster. 

 

They had to go through the supermarket and select various items and then see how much waste they had created and if the items they chose could be recycled.  

 

 Experiencing basketball
 from a wheelchair.

 Solving puzzles.

 Working out how a crane works.