Update - Chops

Apologies I have been very (very, very!) lax at updating this blog over the summer.

The husband has been off uni and mainly doing things with the boys while I've been working, trying to build up the business so that less work is required when he's at his busiest this academic year.

As an update: Chops is now confidently reading! Sounds out new words but on the whole recognised the majority of the 'tricky' ones. He's still very happy to play number games, can add and subtract simple sums in his head, count in 2s, 5s and 10s, knows a few fractions and can explain odds and evens. He's very interested at the moment in music, guitar music in particular, and in classifying animals - what makes a mammal, reptile etc.
We've done quite a big project over the summer about the Olympics which included going to St James' Park for the Olympic football and to the Olympic Park to see Paralympic football, wheelchair tennis, wheelchair basketball and goalball. He has been fascinated by the different sports, athletes and their countries/flags.
We've had a trip to Spain and looked a bit at their culture/language and most importantly to Chops - the food! He found a recipe for paella which he's made a couple of times with daddy.
On the whole our first days of 'official' home ed have been good ones and included a weekend away with other home educating families in the Lake District. Lots of fun on bikes, scooters and shooting each other with water guns!
Chops recently started football training with a proper club and loves it.
On the whole, he's still our happy, laid back, enthusiastic boy and I'm loving seeing him thrive as he nears his 5th birthday.

3D shapes

Made some homemade with the boys this week and then set the Chops a challenge to save some aliens from a meteorite by making cubes and cuboids to build a wall, pyramids as sharp objects to break the meteorite and spheres as bullets. That'll be 3d shapes introduced then!

We all had a great time playing with the dough. Roly spent a long time sticking his fingers in it and squashing it.

Gears! Gears! Gears!

I'd had my eye on the starter set of this for ages so when I saw it reduced to half price last week I couldn't resist. We've all enjoyed trying it out in different shapes and towers. It's very satisfying seeing how these things work when they all fit together

Shapes

My boys are growing up so quick. The Roly one now recognises square, star, circle and triangle and can do his shape puzzle no problem.

Marble Maths

We made a cereal box 'target' and each rolled 3 marbles until they went in and added up the scores.
Mummy then challenged Daddy to a game while Chops kept score
Bet you can't guess who won..!

Days like today...

remind me why it is so so utterly brilliant to be a parent of two small boys.

They began by both lying in until after 8am which is unheard of!

We went to the National Glass Centre this morning and had a look around their new exhibition on glass and ceramics, a look in their kids' investigation room where there are lots of hands on things to do with lights and mirrors and a walk on the glass roof.

From there we went to the park and it was just perfect weather for it. Freezing cold but bright sunshine and blue sky - cobwebs suitably blown away! There was no-one else there so they ran wild for a bit!

Then went on to a cafe for a bit of lunch and home to get the Roly one to nap.

While he was asleep the Chops and I did our Christmas activity which today was making a wooden spoon Rudolph. It takes a lot to inspire Chops to craft but he was suitably impressed by this idea and enjoyed himself so much that he carried on painting/sticking a nativity scene too.

We had yet another game of cauldron maths game. He can't get enough of it! And pancakes. All good days involve pancakes.

I noticed while we were out today that Chops is making a big effort to read words in the environment. He sounded out a couple at the Glass Centre today and more later. I love watching him progressing and gaining confidence with reading. He encountered 'shoot' on his football so now knows that S and H say shhh.

Then this afternoon we took him along to gymnastics club. It's run by the same people who do our toddler gym session so I knew she was good. He really enjoyed it and wants to go again. They do a Saturday morning session so think that'll fit into our schedule better.

Rounded the day off with vegan sausage, lentil and bean casserole with herby dumplings. What could be better!

Adding tens

Chops decided to pick a random page of his maths book yesterday and ended up adding 10s to numbers 1-9. He caught on really quickly that you ended up with a 1 in front of the initial number. We made it more interesting by running up and down the number of times of the answer! I've noticed him doing a lot of jumping and running when he's got his brain working at the moment - a learning style which definitely wouldn't be suited to a classroom!

In other maths news, he's still loving the orchard toys cauldron game and confidently does both the addition and subtraction sums in his head. Even the ones with two parts (eg 4 + 2 + 3)

We also did the 'A' page in our own letter book yesterday. Found as many things as we could beginning with A and took a photo to stick in.

More Friday fun

We went to play school this morning as usual for the boys to play with their friends.

I wasn't going to do any phonics today but on the way back Chops sounded out the word 'wait' on the pelican crossing and wanted to know why it was 'w-ay-t' and not 'w-ah-it' so when we got home we did the jolly phonics 'ai' sound.

This afternoon we played a dice game that I'd printed off from oxfordowl.co.uk. It was meant to be an activity for the child to do alone but I reckoned the only way Chops was going to sit and add 12 sums from rolling the dice was if we made it competitive. He won as usual. A lot of the sums he did in his head but sometimes he counted the dots on the dice or used his number square. He obviously understands how to get to the answer which is the main thing!

We made vegan brownies this afternoon. He amazes me how he knows the recipes of the things we make most often and also how quickly he can work out how much more/less of something we need to add. Mental arithmetic at its finest!

Ended the day with his swimming lesson which he enjoyed much more than he has for the past couple of weeks.

Measuring

Chops spent some time carrying his ruler around today and measuring random things. He told me that lightening mcqueen and francesco are 7cm long and chick hicks is only 5cm so they are 2cm bigger

The beginning...

Chops is 4 years old and Roly is 15 months so we're just starting out on our home education adventure. I'm starting this blog to keep a record of our activities and the boys' interests.
We are fairly relaxed in our learning but both Chops and I like doing some 'educational' activities (phonics or maths or reading a non- fiction book) while Roly naps.
Chops is currently loving Star Wars and superheroes. Plus dinosaurs and cars which have been his favourites for a longgggg time now. He knows the names of more dinos than I knew existed. He is progressing really quickly with maths and understands the theory behind addition and subtraction. He is starting to show a bigger interest in phonics/reading/ writing at the moment. He recognises most of the letters and can blend them to read simple words. We're starting with letters 'that hold hands' at the moment - oo and ee!
Writing is taking longer to grasp but he is starting to want to write/draw when I do. No pressure but it's lovely to see!
Roly is babbling a lot, I don't think it will be long before he starts with some words. He loves singing action songs, dancing, music and painting.