just another morning here » projects http://tworedboots.co.uk/blog a miracle that comes around every day of the year Sat, 11 Feb 2012 17:36:50 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Tired, tired, tired http://tworedboots.co.uk/blog/2010/07/20/tired-tired-tired/ http://tworedboots.co.uk/blog/2010/07/20/tired-tired-tired/#comments Tue, 20 Jul 2010 19:44:00 +0000 Sarah http://tworedboots.co.uk/blog/?p=3434 I know I shouldn’t moan but I’m just exhausted. Today I didn’t finish work until 6.30pm (trying to get my head around planning for next year), dashed to pick the children up, then ate a fairly rubbish dinner because I hadn’t thought about it properly so cooked the nearest thing (eggs and beans on toast). I am becoming one of those people who doesn’t see their children for more than half an hour in the day :( Really hope that this next year teaching isn’t just one Big Mistake as far as my family is concerned.

On the positive side, today Abbie’s year group displayed their Y6 projects on farming in an exhibition – they’d each had to study a local farm, picking an aspect of that farm’s produce etc. Abbie and her friend Georgina had really enjoyed their visits to Taverner’s Farm, looking around and then making ice cream. They’d worked hard on the project and were very excited about having their very own ‘Crunchy Cow Pat’ ice cream for people to taste! (thanks to Georgina’s mum for the photo :) )

Y6 Farming Project Exhibition

Apparently the rest of the year group had also worked very hard and there were loads of brilliant displays as well as different tasters for visitors to the exhibition – sadly I didn’t get to go but I have it on good authority that it was an excellent afternoon :)

And the best bit? There was plenty of ice cream left over!

]]> http://tworedboots.co.uk/blog/2010/07/20/tired-tired-tired/feed/ 3 Romans Project http://tworedboots.co.uk/blog/2007/10/27/romans-project/ http://tworedboots.co.uk/blog/2007/10/27/romans-project/#comments Sat, 27 Oct 2007 14:53:46 +0000 Sarah http://tworedboots.co.uk/blog/2007-10-27/romans-project/ At the beginning of term Josiah decided he’d like to do a project and lapbook on the Romans, so this is a round up of the things we’ve done.

Firstly we went to the library and picked up as many books on the Romans as we possibly could. Josiah particularly enjoyed reading Usborne’s ‘The Story of Rome’ himself, it was just the right level.

I confess to having cheated slightly; while googling for Roman Lapbooks I found an Ancient Rome Lapbook pdf pack at the HomeschoolEstore.com, and figured I might as well save myself the hassle of planning the lapbook out for myself so I bought the pack. I must say I was fairly impressed with it, it was very comprehensive and I think both of us benefited from not having the think up the ideas for things to do in the lapbook! It helped us to break the project down into manageable study chunks, too – as we did each section (food, clothing, specific people & places, etc) we learned about them separately. We didn’t do all of it, but we used the sections that we fancied learning about, and Joe’s lapbook turned out really well.

Steve took Josiah to the RAMM museum in town, and they inspected lots of Roman things (coins, mosaic pieces, games etc.), dressed up, learnt some Latin words [wasn't impressed at the suggestion of learning more Latin though!] etc.

Making Roman mosaics at the Museum Dressed up as a Roman soldier at the Museum

We had a trip to the Roman Baths in Bath, which was great.

Mosaics at the Roman Baths The Great Bath Mosaics at the Roman Baths At the Roman Baths in Bath Measuring the width of the bath in paces At the Roman Baths in Bath At the Roman Baths in Bath The Great Bath At the Roman Baths in Bath At the Roman Baths in Bath At the Roman Baths in Bath At the Roman Baths in Bath Measuring the width of the bath in paces

We took a trip to a rather lovely mosaic shop in town, Opus Mosaic, and bought ourselves a few tiles to make a mosaic with. Actually the lady in the shop (its owner) was really helpful and it turned out that her teenage daughter had been home educated so we had a lovely chat about that as well! Abbie enjoyed helping with this – and it was a great opportunity to bring in some maths and ‘planning’ skills as Josiah mapped out his design on squared paper before doing the tiles. Still need to get some grout to finish it off!

DSC_6888.JPG DSC_6890.JPG DSC_6891.JPG DSC_6892.JPG DSC_6893.JPG DSC_6897.JPG

We’ve touched on a fair bit of maths; not only with Roman numerals which Joe enjoyed doing, but also due to discussing the timeline and calendar we ended up talking about negative numbers a fair bit, and adding/subtracting them. Josiah looked at a few of the Roman emperors in his lapbook, and worked out their ages from their birth/death dates, some of which were fully BCE, some were CE so easy to work out, and some crossed the change between BCE and CE. Can’t quite get the hang of this BCE and CE thing, I kept slipping into BC and AD by accident. Anyway, I digress – he got on fine with the maths of it!

The project and lapbook were pretty much finished by half term, then we discovered that during half term week the museum were putting on some Romans activities so we went and did some of those, which was a great end to the project. I think Joe would say he’d enjoyed most of it, well all apart from the writing, anyway! He is such a reluctant writer, he must have actually written about 10 sentences at most.

Weblinks we used:
History For Kids Rome Links
BBC Schools Romans
Roman Empire – children’s section
The Romans in Britain

]]> http://tworedboots.co.uk/blog/2007/10/27/romans-project/feed/ 7 A Day in the Office http://tworedboots.co.uk/blog/2007/09/24/a-day-in-the-office/ http://tworedboots.co.uk/blog/2007/09/24/a-day-in-the-office/#comments Mon, 24 Sep 2007 16:16:54 +0000 Sarah http://tworedboots.co.uk/blog/2007-09-24/a-day-in-the-office/ Started very early this morning dashing down to the workshop to pick up a car, since mine had ended up there on Saturday in the course of a rescue mission for my parents, who broke down on their way here, dropping my sister at University. Not the start to her year that she had imagined but luckily they were coming here rather than anywhere else in the country, as it was relatively easy to sort them out (in the first instance anyway, Terry hasn’t looked at their car yet, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it!).

dead car1 dead car2

Steve’s dad is on holiday for a couple of weeks, and Terry our mechanic is ill with a horrible inner ear thing that means he can’t stand up, so we were awfully short staffed today. Meant that we had to give up on the home ed group trip we were meant to be going on but hey ho, that’s life.

Once the girls had gone to school, Josiah and I ended up at the office for the day, which was fine – we chucked a load of stuff in a box and de-camped there quite instead (as long as I have internet I’m happy!), the phone didn’t even ring until 11am so not too strenuous.

Joe did violin practice and then some of his Roman lapbook project; today he wrote out a few vocab words for a flappy thing in the lapbook, and we learnt about Pompeii and Mount Vesuvius too – looked at lots of pictures online. The whole Roman thing is making Joe want to go to Italy, he keeps saying that would be a good Home Ed trip to go on (the Roman Baths not good enough!). Went home for about an hour to scoop Abbie up then back to the office for the end of the day.

violin practice in the office3 roman project work in the office2 roman project work in the office3 playing online the after school shift

]]> http://tworedboots.co.uk/blog/2007/09/24/a-day-in-the-office/feed/ 2 Very impressed with Fuji http://tworedboots.co.uk/blog/2007/09/21/very-impressed-with-fuji/ http://tworedboots.co.uk/blog/2007/09/21/very-impressed-with-fuji/#comments Fri, 21 Sep 2007 18:31:15 +0000 Sarah http://tworedboots.co.uk/blog/2007-09-21/very-impressed-with-fuji/ On the outbound ferry back in the middle of August, we discovered that our well loved little fuji f30 camera was broken. It suddenly decided not to power up at all, so we couldn’t use it on holiday – and therefore it got put away in the trailer. Once the trailer finally got back home I unearthed the camera and tried changing batteries, etc., but to no avail, it was just completely unresponsive.

We looked on the fuji website and found their support section, so registered it and sent it off to them. It is under a year old so should have been under warranty, although if I’m honest I was prepared for them to say wear and tear had caused the problem, as I carry it around in my handbag all the time so it could conceivably have been dropped or something (although not to my knowledge).

Anyway, the fuji site has a good tracker system which told us that the camera had arrived and was in the service department. Within a week the message had changed to ‘your camera has been fixed and will be despatched to you by Special Delivery’, which it was, this week – with a brand new lcd screen and back section, all under warranty. Very impressed with that service – and very happy to have it back!

Steve, Joe and I went to the Roman Baths in Bath today so made good use of it there – random photos I know but it was naff light for actually photographing buildings, plus most of these were actually taken to illustrate Josiah’s trail/sheet thing! It was a good visit, we enjoyed it and learned a lot.

At the Roman Baths in Bath At the Roman Baths in Bath The Great Bath The Great Bath Measuring the width of the bath in paces Measuring the width of the bath in paces At the Roman Baths in Bath Mosaics at the Roman Baths Mosaics at the Roman Baths At the Roman Baths in Bath

Steve enjoyed driving home ‘in time for the girls’ afterwards – luckily we made it only 5 mins late, as I’d supposedly given them a back door key just in case but it was the wrong key so they were waiting for us in the front garden!

Lots of other stuff has been happening but I’m not sure I can be bothered to catch up on all of it. In brief: home ed group on Wednesday plus extra coffee with friends including an introduction to some home ed blogs (waving to you, J!!), a trip into school on Thursday to learn how to make ‘momos’ (indian pasty things) which we have volunteered to help with over the next few weeks in Abbie’s class, baking, workbooks, shopping of various sorts, music practice, roman lapbook stuff, building an indoor run for the guinea pigs, nights out with friends, and there, phew, we got to the weekend.

]]> http://tworedboots.co.uk/blog/2007/09/21/very-impressed-with-fuji/feed/ 2 A relatively good day at last http://tworedboots.co.uk/blog/2007/09/12/a-relatively-good-day-at-last/ http://tworedboots.co.uk/blog/2007/09/12/a-relatively-good-day-at-last/#comments Wed, 12 Sep 2007 14:40:07 +0000 Sarah http://tworedboots.co.uk/blog/2007-09-12/a-relatively-good-day-at-last/ Haven’t felt like blogging really – as usual when the girls go back to school it takes Joe and I a few days to adjust, and I don’t want to speak too soon, but today’s been ok. Wondering if the new star chart in the kitchen has helped at all – probably, as he had done his workbooks, piano practice, and brought us a cup of tea in bed all before 7.30am! The kitchen was a complete tip but we’ll gloss over that ;)

After saying goodbye to the girls we did his violin practice which went well for once. It’s been a long summer without seeing his teacher and it’s been hard to wind back up into regular decent practice (everyone, not just Joe!), but today he managed great posture/bow hold, as well as actually remembering his pieces, hurrah.

Then we started putting his Romans lapbook together, which involved me doing lots of cutting out and Josiah doing lots of sticking. Joe chose to complete a little flap thingy on Romulus and Remus, so he drew a picture of them as babies, and then dictated a very brief version of the story to me (there was no way on earth that he’d have been able to write it out, so better to go for the CM dictation approach than have a frustrated writer on my hands).

He played outside for a bit, got the guinea pigs out, nearly lost one of them in the garden but we managed to catch it again! Then played with a lego creation for a while, before Steve came home from lunch.

After lunch I had a lovely chat on the phone with my friend Liz, and then I taught Joe how to play San Juan. This took a long time but was worthwhile as it’s a game I actually like playing! I am so so bored of most of our board games, I really need some other new games that are enjoyable for adults as well as children. Literally the only games I really like playing are Yahtzee and Mastermind/Mindbender, everything else makes me groan when he suggests them. So we went off to PlayMerrily and had a look there – we like a look of a few of the games :)

By the time we’d done that the girls were home, ravenous despite having had school dinners, and Laura turned up for piano lessons. Tonight it’s Stage by Stage and Wind Group so a busy evening ahead.

]]> http://tworedboots.co.uk/blog/2007/09/12/a-relatively-good-day-at-last/feed/ 2 Duck Dogs and Chocolate Kebabs http://tworedboots.co.uk/blog/2007/03/30/duck-dogs-and-chocolate-kebabs/ http://tworedboots.co.uk/blog/2007/03/30/duck-dogs-and-chocolate-kebabs/#comments Fri, 30 Mar 2007 15:48:44 +0000 Sarah http://tworedboots.co.uk/blog/2007-03-30/duck-dogs-and-chocolate-kebabs/ Food Festival was great fun as always – I love tasting everything from jam to chutney to cheese to … the duck sausages we had for lunch – Duck Dogs with plum sauce, mmm!

Joe bought himself a strawberry, doughnut and marshmallow kebab from the chocolate fountain stall – which was supposed to keep him quiet while Becca & I watched Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall do a demo in the cookery theatre but it was packed to overflowing by the time we got there so we didn’t bother after all!

Highlight of the Food Festival Chocolate Fountain kebab Beaten by the last marshmallow

He managed all bar the last marshmallow of it – no mean feat, it was huge! The rain held off and it was nice enough to have lunch outside, then we went back to Becca’s for a cup of tea.

As I write, Anna is out playing with a friend from school. Meanwhile Abbie is creating culinary delights in the form of a jelly sweet kit that she’s had since Christmas. Joe did some more maths and music workbooks this morning and we’ve set a goal of finishing them both off before Easter, which should be manageable, only a few pages left in each one.

Forgot we did a science kit the other day, which just happened all about the solar system, good consolidation/revision for Joe. He quite enjoyed making this poster using pastels on black paper, and cut up a planet factsheet to label each planet.

]]> http://tworedboots.co.uk/blog/2007/03/30/duck-dogs-and-chocolate-kebabs/feed/ 4 Stars and a Dalek http://tworedboots.co.uk/blog/2007/03/20/stars-and-a-dalek/ http://tworedboots.co.uk/blog/2007/03/20/stars-and-a-dalek/#comments Tue, 20 Mar 2007 20:40:15 +0000 Sarah http://tworedboots.co.uk/blog/2007-03-20/stars-and-a-dalek/ We’ve had a return to the Space theme here over the past couple of days since Josiah started on the latest science kit which was all about stars. He made a mini-book all about stars from muddled up factsheets in the kit (ie you had to put the right answers with the questions), and I was pleased that he pretty much knew all the facts anyway.

The rest of the kit was making a telescope but we decided not to carry on with it, as the magnifying glasses they’d sent to be used as lenses were so rubbish that I thought it would be a waste of time, especially as Roger lives down the road. (Rog, when the extension and Ten Tors are over, perhaps Joe could come and have a look through your telescope and you can show him how to interpret the constellation map he’s got from our kit?)


Making a mini-book Star facts minibook Space project - the return Space project - the return - 2

This morning the girls got in on the act as well. This was mainly due to Steve and my threats of getting rid of pocket money if school mornings didn’t start to be a bit more organised/less stressful … so they pulled all the stops out today. We had cups of tea brought up at 7am, by which time I’d already heard Joe doing his music practice. The girls were completely done by 8am, leaving them half an hour to do Space Activity Sheets (I brought them some home from Dynamic Earth!) when Josiah got his folder of space stuff out, and draw space pictures on black paper. Joe didn’t fancy drawing, but he read all his space books again and did a couple of ‘fill in the blank’ activity sheets.

We have also done some more puzzles – Joe especially liked this sudoku puzzle which was divided by rows/columns/colour blocks. And we have both played far too much more Sonic. Josiah has overtaken me and is now at a higher level, and it’s taken him half the time it took me to get that far. :oops: No comment. I’m sure it is teaching him *something* … if only that practice makes perfect, and that dogged perseverance is important in some situations ;)

Junior sudoku Dal-egg

Then finally this afternoon after clearing out a cupboard we found a book of Easter activities, so thought we’d look through it for some ideas. Nothing in the craft/painting/card-making sections appealed to Joe, but he decided he did fancy decorating an egg, especially as he’d remembered about some competition or other that he could enter.

We decided to make a dalek egg – Dal-egg? Egg-sterminate? and other eggy jokes … thought it was an original enough idea but then found another one on the net, but there we go, couldn’t think of anything better by that point! So the latter part of the afternoon saw us printing instructions from here and adapting them slightly to fit the egg in. I said I’d build the dalek body if he decorates it, so I’ve done my bit – and he has a project for tomorrow!

Anna had a cello lesson after school, and Abbie went along for the ride. She wanted to pay a visit to the charity shop with Steve because they’re having a Viking Day at school next week so she needed to pick up some fabric for making a viking tunic. They managed to find something suitable for £1 so that was good. Any more than £1 would have been too much ;) Photos will follow next week I’m sure.

]]> http://tworedboots.co.uk/blog/2007/03/20/stars-and-a-dalek/feed/ 4 Spaced out! http://tworedboots.co.uk/blog/2007/02/19/spaced-out/ http://tworedboots.co.uk/blog/2007/02/19/spaced-out/#comments Mon, 19 Feb 2007 16:31:23 +0000 Sarah http://tworedboots.co.uk/blog/2007-02-19/spaced-out/ This is a collection of links/resources that we’ve used for our space project with Joe at age 5, just an additional post to keep it all in one place really, and so that we can easily come back to the links when we want to take it further, as interest has petered out due to half term!

Solar System Trading Cards (pdf file)

Solar System pages from Enchanted Learning

Spaceplace – kids’ games from Nasa

NASA Kids’ Games

Astronomy Picture of the Day


Muddle Puddle Space Page (well ok, actually we didn’t use this but I thought I’d link to it anyway!)

Ravensburger Space Map jigsaw

Interfact CDroms – Solar System and Space

DK Encyclopedia of Space and the Universe

Science Museum Solar System Mobile kit (found cheaper elsewhere, I must add!)

]]> http://tworedboots.co.uk/blog/2007/02/19/spaced-out/feed/ 1 Not scale representation of the Solar System! http://tworedboots.co.uk/blog/2007/02/13/scale-representation-of-the-solar-system/ http://tworedboots.co.uk/blog/2007/02/13/scale-representation-of-the-solar-system/#comments Tue, 13 Feb 2007 14:13:57 +0000 Sarah http://tworedboots.co.uk/blog/2007-02-13/scale-representation-of-the-solar-system/

I hope this looks right! (There are notes on the flickr page for anyone interested as the photo doesn’t really show anything.) I went by these measurements that my friend Liz gave me the other day (how I love having blogs and friends that read them and give me helpful stuff!).

In any case even if we’ve not got it quite right (it was bad enough coping with her measurements being in inches let alone checking the maths myself!) it was enough to give Josiah a good impression of relative size and distance.

Sun: 22″diameter
Mercury: 1/8″diameter, 1 3/4″away from the sun
Venus: 1/4″diameter, 3 1/4″away from the sun
Earth: 1/8″diameter, 4 3/4″away from the sun
Mars: 1/4″diameter, 7″away from the sun
Jupiter: 2 3/4″diameter, 2′away from the sun
Saturn: 2 3/8″diameter, 3’8″away from the sun
Uranus: 1″diameter, 7’5″away from the sun
Neptune: 7/8″diameter, 11’8″away from the sun
and if you want to include it
Pluto: 1/8″diameter, 15’3″away from the sun

]]> http://tworedboots.co.uk/blog/2007/02/13/scale-representation-of-the-solar-system/feed/ 26 Strange Hook on the Hall Ceiling http://tworedboots.co.uk/blog/2007/02/09/strange-hook-on-the-hall-ceiling/ http://tworedboots.co.uk/blog/2007/02/09/strange-hook-on-the-hall-ceiling/#comments Fri, 09 Feb 2007 17:38:43 +0000 Sarah http://tworedboots.co.uk/blog/2007-02-09/strange-hook-on-the-hall-ceiling/ Since we moved to this house I have wondered why there is a hook on the ceiling in the hall, I can’t for the life of me remember what the last owners had hung there … anyway today we finished that solar system mobile and decided it would hang perfectly there – adding hugely, no doubt, to the first impressions of the house as anyone walks through the door ;) Not to mention Steve, who hasn’t seen it yet!
Solar System model mobile Snapping Jupiter together All planets assembled Solar System Space project

Okay so since I last blogged we’ve done a fair bit more on the solar system thing as we’ve painted planets and assembled the model, which Joe has really enjoyed. We also sat for a while watching various space-related videos online. And we’ve done the normal (for us) maths and music stuff every day. And read lots of library books. Just the usual really.

In addition we have done a bit of car-related running around, some house-related running around, had a visit to Crealy, and then something of a wind-down and do lots of washing day today.

Anna’s been on a school trip to the Eden Project today, and Abbie’s getting another Thank You certificate at school, so despite all her moaning about not wanting to be there recently she’s obviously still doing something right.

Abbie has a friend here for tea this evening, and as usual came home and went to say hello to the hamster, only to find that he’d died :( Bit of a downer, that.

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