Lots

We've been having a productive few days, alhamdulillah. On Wednesday we met with the others and everyone showed the geography project they've been working on. J has been learning about Spain, R chose Turkey. Now they've collected lots of information they need to present it.
We also finished reading "Fish", so now I'll start preparing some work on it. The boys were all really enjoying the story by the end.
We were home on Tuesday. It was good to have a day like that again, nursery does mess things up, but its benefits are enough to keep it on. I started Ia with the preschool Learning Ladder CD, and she whizzed through lots of it, alhamdulillah. Today I got her to read a library book with me. It is meant to be an early reader, but of course she just chose it for the story. She was joining in well, lots of memorisation of course, but getting the idea of what reading is anyway.
The boys started on the Y3 Learning Ladder and got lots of that done too.
Thursday was also a full day! L came over and we did another lesson on weight, followed by the assessment. For the maths extension they used the internet to find out the weights of various animals.
In science we started the topic on magnets. They did lots of exploring with the magnets and iron filings. J went a bit far with the exploring and the computer monitor suffered a temporary green spot, from which it then recovered, alhamdulillah.
After L went home the boys added a bit to their on going dinosaur project, and we read through some newspaper cuttings about fossils currently on display in Tring. We looked at the Natural History Museum website, to view more pictures of fossils, in preparation for our planned trip.
Meanwhile U had been building towers from blocks and doing the dress a teddy puzzles. She has begun a phase of dressing and undressing herself. She can remove pyjamas and cardigans and she can put on pyjama bottoms and a coat (if it is acceptable to wear a coat over your head and back to front). Ia had drawn a long picture of a family at the beach. The girl's hair was streaming in the wind and there was a donkey with a saddle and stirrups. Memories of Wales are still vivid!
Last evening they decided to get the Water Wonders kit out, which after a couple of experiments decended into a water squirting session, so we decided to make a cake and everyone helped. The boys were weighing ingredients and grating carrot, while Ia and U squabbled over the mixing. It was a bit fraught, but once it was in the oven they all sat in front of the oven door and watched for the whole time so that they could see it "transform".
Today everyone enjoyed playgroup, the boys seeing a couple of old friends and Ia getting on with the girls. On the way home we went to the toyshop and got a "I dig Dinosaurs" kit, so once home the boys put on goggles and chipped away at the crumbly "stone" block (a bit like small pebbledash) until they found pieces of buried "bone". It took about 3 hours for them to get the whole skeleton out, then they assembled and painted it. Now they want two more kits! Keep hoping.