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U works best in short, 10 minute activities. Today we spent a short time on these puzzle sums. She used her fingers to help her when necessary. Before that I had drawn up a page of work for her to do. I drew dominoes and got her to fill in the numbers in addition calculations based on them.
Later on she did a few minutes phonic work, choosing the vowel to go in the word. She is also getting on well with her reading books, maashAllah, and can manage both books in the first level of Peter and Jane. I'll let her go ahead while she is still finding it easy, maashAllah.
The other evening I received some good news in my inbox! iboard is now free to use (no longer subscription only). U had been asking me to get iboard back as both girls really enjoy it! They've been using it loads for the last two days!

Quick Link

Today we watched an episode of the BBC series Chemistry, A Volatile History
Very visual and interesting, and very pleased to see that experiment making hydrogen from zinc in acid we did last week! Gives it a whole new dimension for us!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00q2mk5/Chemistry_A_Volatile_History_Discovering_the_Elements/

Birds

Today we have had the opportunity to examine the skulls of birds and look at their differently shaped beaks to see how these are adapted to obtaining the foods they eat.
Alhamdulillah. The intricacy and detail of Allah's creation is truly amazing.

Friday at home

Today has felt quite relaxed, alhamdulillah.
The Conquer Maths is allowing the boys to just get on with their maths by themselves, and so far this is working well. The topics they have been covering are still revision, so the real test will come with a completely new topic.
The boys have also done some French again today. This has been neglected a bit recently, but I need to make the effort to get the resources out and use them. We are still keeping things light with cartoony activity books and the Jump Ahead CD. I'd like to get the Rosetta Stone programme for them, but this isn't possible just yet.
They are still working away with their other Rosetta Stone language programme. H is sitting with them to help them through it now they are getting on to more complex sentences. Seeing how they benefit from having someone just occasionally repeat the sentence more slowly, and seperate out the words a little makes me feel that the programme is most beneficial when used alongside someone who speaks the language being studied. H does not change the programme, or add to it in any way, so the language learning method is still the same. He spent a whole hour on it with them this evening! Wow! That was long!
U has been doing a mixture of things today, including playing board games, playing colouring games on Sheppard, doing a few addition pages, writing a few words, reading Peter and Jane book 1a, listening to stories, using Jump Ahead French and watching a Big Cat Week dvd. Ia hasn't been well today, so she has just relaxed, but joined in the the board games, dvd, French and stories.

Geography bits

Oh, dear, I'm not doing very well with the post titles at the moment!
I blogged recently about using geography study to aquire and develop skills. More of this has been going on. We are currently learning about the Central American region. On Monday I asked the boys to find out a little about the ancient Mayan city of Chichen Itza and to put together a powerpoint presentation of what they found out. They have done several PPPs before, and doing one of these makes a change from handwritten or typed work. It gives some variety, refreshes their knowledge of using PP, and can count as integrated ICT! I know, terrible of me to use these terms, but it is what we are doing anyway, and presenting it in these words might come in handy one day!
For today's geography the boys wrote up a report on the earthquake in Hati. They used the Newsround website to find out information. Although they had seen about it on the general news anyway they needed to gather some facts. Then they wrote a half side report in their own words. I'm filing all this geography stuff in folders.

At some point during the day the girls went up to their bedroom and were very quiet. It turned out that Ia had been reading aloud the last chapter of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory so that they could find out what happens!!! I'm still required to fill in the rest of the chapters.

Tuesday

More chemistry today. Here is some zinc reacting with a solution and producing hydrogen bubbles. We did the same thing with magnesium and were able to collect the hydrogen and then do the test for it with a match, and got the POP! We did that a few times actually!
The boys have finished off the Oliver Twist topic now. In total they wrote three mini essays and one longer one. Having tried this approach out I now have a much clearer idea of how to go forward and improve on beginning essay skills, inshAllah. The best approach seems to be to just get on and have a go, and learn from the experience. I want to look for a very different type of text to work with next. Until then, back to the textbook for English.
I've been reading a book on desert environments to the girls in preperation for our next topic. From one extreme to the other, from oceans to deserts. I'm also reading "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" to them in the evenings. I don't usually like to read Roald Dahl books aloud to my children, as I don't enjoy the books myself. As far as I'm concerned they can just read them to themselves if they are interested! I can make an exception for "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" though, as it seems less gross, if you see what I mean! U is loving it anyway, it seems to have really captured her imagination and she is reading the book to her self for long periods every day, maashAllah. (As usual, when I say read here, I don't mean reading in the grown up sense.)

Lapbook

The end of another home edding week! This week the girls finished off this oceans lapbook, from Hands of a Child. We didn't spend too long on this as the girls have studied oceans again and again, but I think they are finally ready to move on now!
I would have preferred a blue folder to put the project in, but we seemed to have run out of blue and I'm not sufficiently interested in presentation to go out to buy blue just for that. It seems Ia was not that fussy about her colouring either!

Sports sessions have almost all gone back to shedule in spite of the continued snow disruption this past week, which everyone was pleased about!

Snapshots of Today

Snowing again.

Geography.

Rounding to the nearest ten.

Both boys have enjoyed reading this book over the last couple of days.

Ia's reading.

Learning about water of crystalisation.

Tuesday

We got the chemistry set out again today and did a couple of experiments on crystals. We used it for a while last year before getting tired of it, but maybe it is time for it to come out regularly again.
The Conquer Maths CDrom arrived and after a few worrying moments when the computer would not read/recognise the disc it is up and running, alhamdulillah (our computer has a problem, not the disc.). I'm really hoping this will be a big help for maths, inshAllah.
We've started a new routine with the boy's Quran reading. They used to do all their Quran work for the day at one time, usually around lunch time, using the computer. However, now that they are getting older we decided to move their revision and private efforts towards memorisation to Fajr time. They still do "new" work with the computer, later in the day, but the recitation that they do not need the "repeat after" facility for they now do in the morning. The reason for this is to help them establish habits for life, inshAllah. Throughout life it is more likely that they can do daily recitation in the early morning, than in the middle of the day. They also need to take responsibility for how much they do, and for making sure it is done, so this seems like a way to work towards that, inshAllah. I will still continue to review their memorised surahs with them on Thursdays, inshAllah.
Obviously this will be more difficult in the summer, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, inshAllah. Maybe they can do it when they wake in the morning rather than with Fajr if they feel to sleepy to focus at earlier times.

Maths Stuff

On the advice of a friend and after encountering some hiccups with our textbook I decided to invest in Conquer Maths. The boys have done a couple of lessons on it, so very early days yet. The explanations are very good, clear and easy to follow. The only reservation I have with it is that when it comes to the worksheet the student chooses from a range of answers, and so does not actually write much out themselves. I'm wondering if this could be a disadvantage. For example, you may know in theory that you must leave a small gap between groups of three digits when writing out a long number, but will you remember to do it if you haven't had to do so often? Sometimes we know things in theory but forget to put it all together.
Maybe I'm thinking of this only because we've just started the programme, but I'm still inclined to use the textbook as back up practice once the foundations have been taught by the programme.
Anyone else used Conquer Maths and have a comment?
For maths with U today I played the egg and chips game. I remember blogging this when I did it will Ia, but can't trawl for the link now.
This is what you do:
Make lots of cut out egg and chip shapes. (Mine are kept in a plastic bag in the drawer)
Get 5 plates.
Child arranges the eggs and chips in combinations so that each plate holds 6 items but so that no two plates have the same combination of eggs and chips. It is interesting to observe how each child deals with this in their own way.
This is what U did: first she put 6 eggs on a plate, next 6 chips on a plate, then 3 chips and 3 eggs on the next plate, then finally combinations of 4 eggs and 2 chips and 4 chips and 2 eggs. She did this all silently.
MaashAllah!

Winter at home

So, we've had lots of snow again. The kids did not even ask to go out in it! I think the novelty has gone for them now!
The boys slept in after Fajr, so I started work early with Ia today. She got most of the way through some English word work and handwriting before anyone else got up. To help her retain and revise her maths skills I bought a Schofield and Sims mental arithmetic workbook. She just does a few minutes worth from this at a time, just to polish up the work she is doing in her main maths work. I think this will really help her to remember what she is learning, inshAllah. I thought about choosing online practice, but decided against it as I think she prefers the written way. I can understand why some children like the onscreen activities, but there is often the overlooked advantages of the written way. For example, you can see at a glance how much you are going to do, and get a rough idea of the questions. This kind of quick scanning actually is an exam skill, but it is also a convenient way for a learner to guage what they are about to try. Often in online practice you may know how many questions are in a set, but you won't know their range of difficulty until you reach each one. I think Ia finds it preferable to see it all in advance. Personal choice really.
With this continuing cold weather and refreshed from our short trip I feel that we'll be settling in to another period of quiet study at home again. Alhamdulillah we also managed a trip to the library on Monday, and the boys found lots of books to interest them. So, lots of reading is being done too, plus of course computer time!

Winter Day Out

We've been to visit the ss Great Britain. It is a great visit for children as the ship has been reconstructed and dressed to show how it was when it was in use. The most shocking thing is the size of the bunks, narrower than a modern baby cot! I remember the ship when it was a rusting empty shape! Nothing like that now!

This is The Matthew (a replica), the ship in which Cabot sailed to Newfoundland in 1497.

Imagine facing the Atlantic in that!

It was freezing cold, but we arrived at opening time and had the place almost to ourselves for the first hour of our visit.