Also Launch Pad

This was the quietest visit we've ever made to Launch Pad. The week before half term... maybe I should remember that. It was so quiet that you could notice how much wear this gallery gets! But it is all still strong and we added our own bit of punishment to the equipment!
The girls especially enjoyed making swirls with the iron filings below.

1001 Inventions, Muslim Heritage in Our world

Yesterday we went on a trip to the Science Museum in London. We've been plenty of times before but I thought we should go again and see the 1001 Inventions of the Muslim World exhibition, as I've been hearing so much about it.
To be honest, I was rather disappointed. You see, I have the book "1001 Inventions Muslim Heritage in Our World", on which this exhibition is based. The book is great, lots of pictures, lots of interesting information. The exhibition did not add it that. It seemed to me to be extracts from the book, displayed attractively to be sure, but basically parts of the book in display format. There were some illustrative models, and a few listening posts, but again no more than the content of the book already informed me of.
Do you see my problem? The exhibition is excellent if you do not have the book, and do not plan to get the book. If you have the book it is fine to drop by the exhibition if you are passing by, but a special journey is not required.
Apart from the text, pictures and models there was a short film, which I did feel was good and more accessible to younger visitors. The main message from it was that the "Dark Ages" were not dark in the Muslim world, they were a time of scientific discovery. The girls did probably pick something up from that.
Overall I'd say that if you are interested in this topic at all, get the book!
Personally I find it much easier to take in information when reading quietly at home than when reading harshly illuminated plastic windows in a darkened room surrounded by school groups flitting backwards and forwards like moths, not alighting any where for more than a moment.
Maybe that is just me, but I'd still recommend the book over the exhibition.

Wednesday

Some symmetry work for Ia in maths today! We did a project on reflection last year, so this was some fun revision.
I started reading Esther Hautzig's "The Endless Steppe" to the boys today. I requested it from the library and they brought it out of storage, where this particular copy had lain unread since 1997. I think this is an overlooked book. It tells the true storyof a Polish Jewish family exiled to Siberia during the war. I remember reading it when I was young, and rereading it now it seems very familiar, so I think I must have read it several times and it gave me much to think about.
And this goes to show that it is worth requesting books from the library.

Science, English, Geography

It was a beautiful, sunny day today for most of the time. H took the boys out to the park for an hour of football practice.
I've started to get the boys to do a short section of their science textbook four days a week, as progress through it had become very slow, and the topics at the moment are all revision, sometimes even of work they covered thoroughly in year 3! To do a section with the questions at the end only takes about 15 minutes. In this way we should finish it off by the summer, inshAllah.
They are also about half way through their English textbook, which seems right considering we are half way through the academic year. I know it doesn't exactly matter where we are, but although I have a structure going on I don't micro plan, so I don't lay out chapters to be covered by such and such a date etc. For this reason I like to keep an eye on marker points in the school year as a rough indicator of our speed of working!
The thing we are working most slowly on is the geography I think. I'm really not worried about that though. We'll work on it until we've had enough, regardless of whether we finish the book (Trail Guide To World Geography). I still do like that book though, and plan to use it slightly differently with the girls, inshAllah, maybe getting longer out of it.
At the back of the Trail Guide is a literature study on Round The World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne. I'm not going to do the literature study, but today I finished reading aloud the book to the boys. It is an odd book, isn't it? And I'm really not sure that it should be in a geography study, as it takes such a (now) dated approach to the portrayal of the world. It is a product of its time, of course, and can be seen as indicative of attitudes of days gone by. All the stereotypes and colonialism puts it more in the history category for me!
The photo at the top of the post? One of U's activities today. Just put it there to make the post look better.

Weekends

Weekends for us at the moment are full of sports activities, the kids meeting up with friends, computer play, drawing, reading, playing and going to the library.
And that just about sums up this weekend too.

Couple of things

SubhanAllah it has been a busy at home day! A couple of things to mention:
Phonic workbooks are good, but it can get a bit dull writing it all down. Today I cut out cards to do the exercise a different way with U. The task was to make CVC words from sets of letters, where the vowel was always the same. I'm sure you could make nice looking cards on the computer, print them out and laminate, but if doesn't improve the learning objective, then hand scribbled does the same job.
Today Ia moved onto the topic of mass in maths. The topic really called for a balance scale, but I don't have one of these. When I did this topic with the boys I was using a shared balance scale.
The lesson was about getting the feel of 1kg, so I got a packet of pasta from the kitchen and got her to hold it. Then she had to go to the kitchen and try to judge how many potatoes she needed to put in a bag so that it felt the same weight as the pasta pack. When she'd made her estimate we checked with our kitchen scale. She was a bit over, so she had another couple of goes with bananas and apples and got much more accurate, maashAllah.

Just ticking along....

Our home ed is just moving on gently at the moment, alhamdulillah. There doesn't seem to be much new or exciting to report. U keeps asking me how long it is until spring! But winter is a good time to get lots of indoor book work out of the way. I'm gradually edging U towards doing a little more each day, I'm still only talking about a few more minutes here and there, but just a few more minutes makes a difference.
We've also been having a bit of illness gradually working its way around the family, meaning several days have been affected by someone being out of action. This is the way it goes, alhamdulillah. Today was R's turn and he spent most of the day in bed listening to Famous Five CDs.
The girls spent loads of time on iboard again, and persuaded me to print out some postcards they made on there!