Just quickly

U has been doing some more of this rod work today. Copying designs, and inventing her own.

This morning Ia played some of the sentence games on Roy the Zebra. I heard about the site from a sister on the IHSAN forum, maashAllah. It is just right for Ia at the moment.

The boys had calculator work today in maths, which they were happy to do! Tomorrow's maths page is the start of a series on shape and symmetry. Not so popular.

Triops again

Last summer we grew triops, or rather, one surviving triop. My mother gave each of the three older ones a triop kit, but we didn't really have space to set them all up at once, so this year the second kit is coming out. The eggs went in last night, so inshAllah something will hatch tonight or tomorrow. The photo is of the tank. Even if we get a triop, it will be too small to photograph.

Another Friday

Everyone has done a bit of French today. The girls used Jump Ahead and the boys had a go with the BBC site.
The boys finished off the fact v opinion exercises by writing summaries of the ways in which not everything stated/written must be true.
This week Ia has written a couple of little stories. Today's was on the bears and pandas theme that she has started on this week. Yesterday the boys also did pieces of creative writing.
The boys have been reading books from the Horrible History series. The library has plenty of these, and more in the other series of Horrible Science etc, so this will, inshAllah, satisfy their reading requirement for a little while.
Ia has gone back to reading Usborne Beginners books, this week reading the Bears book and the Under the Sea book.
U has continued to collage, done some work on the letter "C" and a little practise in hand writing letters.
All this just goes to show what sort of destructive intentions I have towards my children's education and why the government needs to make an urgent crackdown on me and my like.

Use of a magazine

Yesterday I also bought a copy of National Geographic Kids for the boys. I've never bought it before, I was just curious. I wasn't that impressed, but then I probably wouldn't be!!!
Anyway, the boys are studying some exercises on distinguishing facts from opinions at the moment, and we were able to use the magazine for that!
It only took a few moments for them to identify lots of examples of opinions expressed in the magazine, and for this purpose I see the benefits! Being able to see when text is being used to promote an editorial (or other) viewpoint is very important. When a DVD is described as "great", who says so? And what about those info ads, how sneaky are they, presenting themselves as informative articles?
So THAT'S what you can do with a magazine. Read it for the purpose of dissection. Be the opinion sieve.
(And, by the way, you might want to do the same with this blogpost).

In the town

With the boys out for the day with H, the girls and I set out to the library with the usual shoulder wrenching bag full of books. I had a reserved book to collect and the girls went through the picture book boxes while I found a few books for the boys.
On the way U had complained that her shoes were hurting, so I took her to a shoe shop, found that she now needed the next size and got her replacements.
Next we went looking for lined paper, squared paper and graph paper. I also got activity magazines for the girls.
On the way home we called in at the park playground and the local museum before getting home for a quick meal followed by activity magazine collage. U got the Cbeebies Art magazine, and it is just right for her age.
I'm not really sure about magazines in general. Personally I don't like them, as they are too bitty and superficial in their approach to subjects. If I'm interested in something I want to know about it properly. If children need "topic tasters" to find out whether they are interested in something they can just get out a library book to dip into and for "news" there is the www. Maybe it is just me, but I don't understand what people really like about magazines!

In the valley

The water here is so cold that the boys could stand no more than 10 seconds at a time.

Do you think this is a badger sett?

At the beach

A sea urchin. The shell is more fragile than eggshell, and covered with an intricate pattern of perforations and bumps, subhanAllah.

Sand pools, where tiny sand coloured fish live.

And the occasional crab.(See blob in the top left corner). Don't worry, we put it straight back.