Reading (again)

Anyone who reads along here from time to time may notice that I have an ongoing theme with sourcing reading materials, especially for the boys. It just gets harder and harder. The library selection of books for the "young teen" age range is very poor. If horror or fantasy is your style, then maybe you are happy with what's on offer. If you are a girl whose interests are gossiping, backbiting and general rudeness then you are probably satisfied too. If you don't like either of those types of books then the library has hidden away the reading stock you'd like in the "reserve store".
You have to be pretty determined to unearth items from the reserve store. To start with you have to know the authors or titles you want to read. This means you need someone who read them to recommend them. If you are a kid then this is quite hard. Your friends can't recommend books they've never seen either. I asked around on a home educator forum full of clever home educators and someone suggested the author Geoffrey Trease.
Since getting this name I've ordered lots of Geoffrey Trease books from the reserve stock and the boys are really enjoying them. Most of these books have not seen the light of day for as long as ten years. They have the price in shillings on the cover. They are historical, adventure stories. The main character is always a teenage boy. I liken it to grown up Famous Five in an historical context. The boys are always "decent", the girls are always no-nonsense with a touch of tom-boy. The history in there is often based closely on real events, but is so wrapped up with the adventure story that it is effortlessly absorbed. It's ideal for my sons at the moment. So good not to be hearing "What shall I read now?" every few days!
Geoffrey Trease wrote loads of books, but the library stock is dwindling. Only the survivors remain in the store. Enjoy it while it lasts.

Geography fieldwork

Today we took advantage of some sunny spring weather to do a little more on our rivers project. Today we did fieldwork on measuring the rate of flow. We found a shallow, but quite fast flowing area to investigate. We placed markers using string attached to either side of the bank, to mark the start and finish lines. On one side we tied the string to plants, on the other we found a piece of wood lying about, which we made into a post. We placed the two lines 10 metres apart.
Next the boys took measurements using a measuring tape. They measured the depth of the channel by either bank, and in the middle, then they measured the width of the channel. They did this at both lines.
Next it was time to measure the flow. We used clementine peel as a float. R put it in the water at the start line and started the stopwatch. J caught it at the other end and called out to stop the timing. I recorded the results. We measured from the left, right and middle three times each.
After that everyone had a paddle in the water (except me), then we came home. InshAllah we'll be putting the results together later this week.

Home ed still going on!

Home education is still going on. In fact, everything seems to get busier and busier, alhamdulillah.
We've been working on a rivers project amongst our other usual activities.
I've discovered that U gets much more motivated when she is given something new to work on. Always a new book, preferably one that can be got through fairly quickly. If working through it takes too long she will lose interest. I'm not talking about working in one day here, but using a book over a period of weeks.
Today I tried her with an Emaan series workbook. I bought some of the reading series years ago, just at the time when it temporarily became harder to get hold of. I just picked up the copies that remained in the shop, these included a level three workbook. For whatever reason I never used the workbook before, but decided to try it with U today, as something different. She read the story " A Home for Fuzzy" then did the few pages on it from the book. It worked out well, alhamdulillah.
These days the reading books are available again. You can find them here.