Spring is springing!

It's been lovely to see so many signs of spring when we've been out and about over the past few days! So much so that I thought it was time to start our Spring display door and take down the winter stuff.

The boys have both made some lovely sticky glittery mothers' day cards for me.

We've spotted lots of buds on trees, nesting birds at the Wildfowl Park and thought about other 'new life'.

This afternoon the Chops made a display of the life cycle of the frog by cutting and sticking the pictures onto a tin foil pond. His scissor skills have improved vastly over the past few weeks. It was really noticeable how much more confident he is now with craft activities. I left it up to him to spot the differences between the stages (legs, tail, live on land) which he did easily and he also worked out the order without a problem. I'm planning to take the boys to the Botanic Gardens in the next few days to see the frogspawn there.

In other news this week, Chops has been reading a lot. Not so much of the ORT but 'proper' books (with help) and a lot of reading signs and packets and adverts when we're out and about. We played a 'stepping stones' game where I wrote a lot of words down and laid them across the 'river'. He then had to read them to get across to the other side away from the Roly monster! It was a very quick, fun way to do some reading practice!

Speaking of the Roly one, he's making more sounds and generally being highly amusing. His face when he does something mischievous is fantastic. Can't wait to see what he's like as he gets older. He scaled the pirate ship at the park this week. I'm sure his older brother was 3 before he even attempted it but Roly was half way up before I could catch up with him!

Reading contined

Chops' confidence in his reading is growing so quickly. I love to see his face when he deciphers a word and he is so proud of himself! We moved on today to stage 2 of the Songbird scheme and also have a new batch of 'tricky words' stuck around the living room for his exercise game.

Reading Success

The Chops read his first book today without any prompting from me. He was so so proud of himself and said afterwards that he didn't think he could do it but he could!

It was ORT's Songbird Phonics' book Zak and the Vet.

A big moment indeed!

We've had a lovely day all round that included pancakes for breakfast, a bike ride by the sea, lunch in a cafe and lots of board games and books. Simple pleasures.

4 words in a row

Tweaked an idea I found online today to make our own 4 in a row game. I made a grid with 6 columns and wrote in a variety of words - some phonetic and some tricky. I made sure that a lot of them were ones he already knew but introduced another handful of tricky words too.

We took turns rolling the dice then picked a word from the column to read. Once we'd read it we put on a counter. The first to 4 in a row wins!

Chops did really well with it. The phonetic words he read pretty easily by sounding them out. He remembered most of the tricky words we'd looked at previously. The new ones we'll look at again soon but it was nice to introduce them while he was engaged in something fun and 'competitive' which is what makes him tick.

Literacy Crazy

The Chops is *loving* the tricky word exercise game so much that he wanted to add more words today. I am over the moon that he seems so engaged with it.

He's getting more and more confident at reading phonetic words and now recognises the first 18 'tricky words'!

Very very proud mummy here

He wrote a birthday card for his friend today too

The tricky word exercise game

..as the Chops so succinctly named it. It involved reading tricky words and doing exercises and he loved it!

Introduced 6 words today - all, her, they, you, my, are. I stuck them up around the living room and then asked Chops to run, jump, roll, hop, walk backwards etc to the word. In typical Chops style he wanted me to time him doing each one. Not that I know where he gets his competitiveness from...ahem.

He really enjoyed and asked to play again this afternoon. Will definitely be mixing in more words to repeat this one. And the bonus is that we could do it while Roly was awake as he just did the running and thought that was great too.

The noisy word game

Chops and I have played this lots recently. It involves writing a 'noisy word' ie boo, pop, bump, rarrrr on the board for the other person to read and then shouting it and pretending to be shocked.

4 year olds are awesome.

Ch ch ch ch

Chug chug!

Learned about the 'ch' sound this morning with a train game

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.

Arrrrrr

Lovely chilled out morning at home today. Made the boys some pirate hats and wrote 'a' and 'r' on them. Roly was 'happy pirate a' and Chops was 'grumpy pirate rrrrrr' and when they stood together they said 'arrrrrr' pirate style! We turned our play tent into a ship and had an adventure on the high seas.
Once we'd finished we sat down at looked at the 'ar' page in jolly phonics. Chops sounded out all five of the words by himself. Yay!

Literacy Update

Chops and I use a few different resources for learning to read and spell - including Jolly Phonics, Oxford Reading Tree's Songbird and Read at Home series', Reading Eggs and a range of other books, websites and iPhone apps.

We went through the Jolly Phonics series today and he recognises all of the individual letters and the sounds they make. We now need to work on the different digraphs. He consistently recognises 'oo' and 'ee' (without sounding out the individual letters) so I'm going to have a look for some activities to introduce 'ai' next.

He's really enjoying literacy at the moment. When I came down from getting Roly to nap today he was looking at the phonics books and using his finger to trace the letters. I love seeing his face when he successfully sounds out a word. His aim is to be able to read the introduction on the Star Wars films!

Ooooooo

Chops did his usual treasure hunt to find his pocket money today. It was the first time he read 'oo' without separating them and reading 'o''o' first.

Love seeing the progress!

Lamination Station

It's true. My life has become so dull that I am excited about the arrival into our household of a laminator. Yes, a machine that attaches a lovely shiny film to pieces of paper.

Of course we had to try it out immediately so I printed off a phonics worksheet for Chops and off we went.

Success! Look at the shiny-ness! And that pen just rubbed right off so we can use it again.

Oh, and he completed the worksheet just fine too.

Bb!

We started making an alphabet book today. My plan is over the next few weeks to do a page for each letter using different mediums.

Today's letter was B. First we spotted lots of things on our way back from toddler group that begin with B. Chops then drew a bus and cut some other things out of catalogues and magazines. We then glued lentils onto a piece of black card in the shape of the letters and practised the shape of them in his Jolly Phonics book.

'A' next I think. Going to have a look online for some ideas for activities.

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.