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.

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

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!

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

So, yesterday … we got ready and went into town first thing. Anna had a shield (that she won from a music festival back in the spring) that she wanted to get engraved, so we did that en route to the museum. Then realised why there are so many years left out on the shield as it was expensive! I didn’t realise and had agreed to the engraving already, but I am not surprised that some people haven’t bothered to put their names on it.

Anyway. Went via a couple of estate agents to the museum where there was a ‘Meet the Romans’ activity on – there were a couple of Roman soldiers in the museum alongside a table of various artefacts so we spent a while there, and then opened the Romans activity box in the next room. That was a bad idea, as everyone who visited the soldiers then came next door and pounced on the activities too – no problem with that in itself but as designated key holders for the box we were trying to keep track of everything and it was really busy – I think we lost one of the dressing up outfits but it was nigh on impossible to keep an eye on it all! Thankfully the museum people were very understanding.

We went home for lunch, and then had a crafty afternoon – well the girls and I did, anyway. Josiah wrote a thank you note and sealed the envelope with a special wax seal from a set he had for his birthday, and that was about all he could manage, he then slumped in front of the tv for a while. Everyone here has been slightly under the weather with colds/general tiredness and he was worse yesterday so tv and honey & lemon drinks were the order of the day for him. Nothing really bad, just that sort of illness that comes out as being really on edge and easily upset, not great when you are part of a family and other people are likely to annoy you all the time!

Meanwhile I helped the girls plan and start stitching little cross stitch bracelets that we’d picked up in a craft shop in town, so that was a nice afternoon. Reminded me how much I used to like cross stitch, haven’t really done any for years, I might finish Josiah’s birth sampler one of these days!

Emma, Robyn & Lola came round to play for a bit and have tea with us, so that was a nice end to the day.

The kids watched Ren & Stimpy before bed – got an old video from a friend who was chucking it out and we used to love Ren & Stimpy years ago so a good chance to reminisce, there!

Today we did some cooking in the morning. I made chicken & veg soup from yesterday’s leftovers, cheesy Shepherd’s pie for tomorrow’s dinner and some Chocolate Orange Potato cake. Josiah made an Apple & Apricot crumble with very little help. Then they watched tv and the girls got their stitching out again, all felt very relaxed and lovely.

Then we headed into town after lunch for a craft workshop at the Museum. They’ve had Roman things on every day this week I think, and today was Mosaic Making. We’d arranged to meet friends there too so spent a pleasant hour or so roaming the museum with them as well.

After that came a violin lesson for Joe, some house viewings with my parents who were down for the day, and then a lovely meal out with everyone in the evening. Managed to meet two lots of friends in the pub as well which was quite amusing.

Tomorrow is ‘mystery trip’ day – oooh exciting! And mysterious!

Best not to ask just why and how we have managed to end up with guinea pigs in addition to a hamster and a fish. Anna says I am working up in pet sizes and that one day I’ll manage to convince Steve to have another baby! (I think not.)

Not much else going on here other than the excitement of the guinea pigs. A couple of music lessons and a bit of music practice, but other than that we’re still on holiday so have been doing nice things like baking, seeing friends, etc. Although the other day Anna did get so bored that she picked up a spelling workbook and started doing it! She is the world’s worst person at finding herself something to do

The other two are very happy bimbling about together, lots of games of Scrabble (great for spelling practice and maths too!) and Mindbender going on, and drawing, and other bits and bobs.

Last night Joe’s violin teacher measured him up with some bigger sized violins and pronounced him ready for a 1/4 size so he’s excited about having a new violin. I’m jolly glad that from the 1/10 we were able to skip the 1/8 size and go straight to the 1/4, as it will last for a good 2 – 3 years and therefore make it worthwhile buying one.

Today we had one of Anna’s friends with us, and took her into town to do a drop-in craft workshop at the museum. We had to wait a while so spent the time doing one of the museum quizzes in the Egyptian Mummy section, so that was interesting. Back down to the activity room – Abbie’s choice of the workshops on offer this week was felting, and all three girls came away with great felted pictures. Joe opted out and sat doing jigsaws in the museum instead.

Followed that with sausage rolls from the bakery eaten on the Cathedral Green. I love our Cathedral Green, it is always packed out with people sitting around on a beautiful day like today, and such an eclectic mix of people – from those sitting outside the cafe of the poshest hotel in town, students, business-people on their lunch hours, mums and dads with buggies and small children, to the Big Issue sellers and today some drunk person singing very loudly entertaining (or not!) the rest of us. And there is something about the cathedral being right in the middle, accessible to everyone … I dunno, I just like it! You can almost always meet someone you know there as well. And for some reason the children love it too. Just another part of my ongoing love affair with this city …

Monday was a non-event of a day really, although Joe and I did defeat one big bad boss in Sonic at teatime so that was good (only one more to go now!). We did some maths and music workbook pages, and also played with pattern blocks and talked a bit about symmetry, reflections, rotations and translations. Reading and comprehension activities over the past couple of days have taken the form of hint guides and walkthroughs for Lego Star Wars and Sonic!

Anyway, we’ve had a busy day including the regular music practice, a trip out to help Steve with transport, spray painting a dalek, and lots of baking this afternoon because I thought my friend Ivonne deserved a birthday cake

Steve helped Joe with spray painting … this was after we’d glued little pony beads onto the dalek’s body … next we’ll have to use a little brush to paint the individual beads in a contrasting colour. At this point though it’s hard to tell that it’s an egg! Steve and I have enjoyed ourselves immensely helping Joe with this one, we might even make another one to keep ourselves! The patterns are in our little set on flickr if anyone else is interested

Josiah joined in with baking too – he didn’t like the fact that I was doing baking to take out this evening so he found his favourite Annabel Karmel cookbook and made some choc-chunk-cookies all by himself. He managed to drop an egg on the floor, spill some mixture at one point, and then finally upturned the bowl on the floor just as he was putting the last cookie on the tray. So the kitchen floor needs a clean, but hey, they taste great. I made gingerbread for home as well, some of which Abbie has taken to Wind Group.

Joe’s just had a good violin lesson, he learnt a new piece today, so we’ve got The Happy Farmer to practice this week. And Anna’s at Stage by Stage where they are doing High School Musical, aargh, are we ever sick of those songs already.

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?)

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. 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

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.

Joe started off with a Draw Write Now early this morning while the girls were still around. This was mainly so that he could cajole Anna into colouring the background and writing some of the sentences for him Still, the writing that he did was probably neater than hers! While this was going on the other three girls in the house (Caitlin & Riona were over here very early) were simultaneously practicing their recorders. Steve and I wondered if Rog & Ruth had done that on purpose?!!

Once the girls had gone, we sat and read the end of Monster in the Wardrobe which we’d started yesterday at the Music Festival. We quite like that Treetops series, they’re not bad stories. I think I did more reading than Josiah today though. Sometimes I insist on sharing the reading with him but other times I want him to enjoy the story without worrying about the mechanics of reading so it’s more fun to read to him. And often he’ll read something without really taking it in … I’m still generally waiting for his understanding to catch up with his de-coding abilities. He can read me a sentence out loud perfectly and then still turn to me blankly if I ask him what it said! Ahem, anyway. Moving swiftly on!

He went on to violin practice after the story, and that was very quick today. I told him if he could play his two pieces without stopping/making mistakes then that would be it, so he pulled all the stops out and did it. Fairly effortlessly as well. Which *really* makes me wonder why we have these torturously long and arduous violin practices!

After that he did some painting, from a Kipper kit that he had years ago. He got bored pretty quickly (it was colouring in by another name!) so had a bit of a play on Sonic Rings, then went and got the Lego out to play with for an hour or so while I spent some time with a Miscarriage Support Group person. Have had a couple of people through the group recently who’ve helped make it all feel worthwhile again so I’ve got a second wind with that whole thing.

Then came lunch, and we watched Friends and Heroes on CBBC. Because I’d seen it advertised and told Joe I wanted to see what it was like, he immediately said he didn’t want to watch it, he hated it, and it was rubbish (just like everything else at the moment it seems). However he then stood transfixed for half an hour while it was on so it can’t have been that bad

Another hour or so of Sonic, and I had a phone conversation with the other local Suzuki teacher who’s doing a group lesson in a couple of weeks. After the last disastrous attempt to join in with this group I’m more anxious than ever to get it right this time so I wanted to find out what she was planning so that Joe can be as prepared as possible. Apparently she’s happy to have older siblings joining in so I’m hoping to enrol Anna to help me by joining in on her cello. Anyway, more on that when it happens!

Then we played some other games together. We did some mindbender type puzzles from a puzzle calendar that we hadn’t even looked at since Christmas (got to about the end of January today!) so that was fun. Then we got the draughts out and had a looong game. It was looking touch and go at one point, I thought Joe was going to beat me but then he made a silly mistake at the end so I took him out.

The girls are home now and having piano/recorder lessons, and alternately playing chess and draughts with Joe. Then it will be tea and the mad rush out for violin, Stage by Stage (must write a cheque) and Wind Group. I’m missing my chauffeur tonight too … but at least that means I can take a short cut across town rather than sitting in traffic wondering if we’ll be late

Started off with some pattern block play, and followed that with violin practice (surprisingly enough, this is where we skip a few details. How a 10 minute practice can sometimes last an hour and include so much stropping and rolling around the floor I never will know. And yet when he actually manages to play something he’s really good ). We talked about doing a bit more science; I produced some books for ideas and Josiah pronounced them ‘stupid’ without even looking at them. At which point I decided to call it a day and give up on him to do my own stuff instead.

Went to Sainsbury’s then into town for lunch with Steve at the garage. When we got home Josiah got his bike out again while I was hanging up washing (oops, forgot to bring it in) and fiddling around with old bikes that we’re giving away via freecycle. He did even better than yesterday – now confidently starting, stopping, and even turning corners! Then he came in and drew a bird from one of the Draw Write Now books, and managed to write one of the sentences from the page without too much trouble. The nice afternoon just about compensated for the awful morning!

The girls appeared home and we played Wii Sonic together for a bit before going to try and sort out the hamster – he’s made his nest under the wheel which is a bit daft really and I’m paranoid that he’s going to get too cold there. Still not sure he’s been persuaded to nest in the little house in the cage but there we go. The kids watched a dvd together and then we had a late tea.

I was especially asked to put this one on the blog, Anna was very proud of it. When asked about it apparently she did it ‘in reading time’ and it took her ‘about two terms’. You really have got to worry

We started today with an assembly at the girls’ school, because Abbie was receiving yet another Thank You Certificate. We and she were fairly proud of her for this one because she was apparently the first person in all of Key Stage 2 to achieve a certain level of reward for hard work/good behaviour.

After that we took Josiah and Robyn out to this exhibition, which was lovely. (as an aside, can’t believe it’s been three years since the last time we went there!) We had the gallery to ourselves, which was great. Joe sat for ages doing the children’s activity pages and drawing a picture of Parsley the Lion (from the Herbs) for a competition, while Robyn pottered between the rooms and did some drawing of her own as well.

The Wombles were the highlight for me – not sure that I really used to watch any of the others (Huxley Pig, the Herbs, and something else I can’t even remember now! Oh and Paddington, which I did watch but I preferred the books!) Not really supposed to take photos in the gallery but I don’t think you can see any of the actual exhibits in this one

Came home and I faded fast, had lunch and got Joe through maths and music in record time so that I could veg out for the rest of the day. Girls have arrived home from school so now it’s officially half term which feels very nice indeed