Reptile encounter!

Today I took the girls to an animal encounters event being held in a community centre nearby. The girls wanted to hold the corn snake here, and they held it for quite a while. The snakes's tail went about 5cm up U's sleeve. She said it tickled!

Geography

This morning the boys were researching an African country each, using the internet. This is part of our geography study. I printed out a notebook page with the outline map of the African country chosen (today it was Egypt for R and Ethiopia for J) and they just got on with filling the page.
While they were doing this I thought that I really should mention the Trail Guide to World Geography again on this blog. Our geography study is based around the guide, and it really makes it easy for me to set independent work for them to tackle, maashAllah.
I have not bought the student notebook pages for the Trail Guide, just the main book. I use outline maps and notebook pages sourced elsewhere and put it all together in binder files. This also gives me the flexibility to get the boys to do some work as word documents.
As Ia moves into keystage 2 next year I think it will be a good time to start using the guide with her too, inshAllah. I think she'll use the project differently from theboys. I think she will be more interested in the wildlife and habitats of various countries, and we'll probably add some lapbooking elements as well. The guide is so flexible, and although it is sheduled into weeks I just ignore all that and let it flow along at a speed that works for us. After all, even if we never complete the whole world tour it won't matter. Skills will have been picked up along the way and more will be known about the world than before we started, inshAllah.

French Club

I've just finished using this French bookwith the boys. It comes as a set with a book 1 as well. I got them from the Book People. Book 1 was ok, but many of the audio pieces were songs which I did not like. Book 2 however is very good! The chapters do not teach a systematic or thorough approach, the book is not designed that way, but various bits of grammar are built on and through regular use the boys picked up lots of vocabulary, maashAllah. What I really liked about book 2 was the audio. The listening comprehension exercises are really good, varied with a varied way of recording answers. The conversations are relaxed, and go at a good speed, just enough for challenge. I found that the boys benefitted from the listening exercises, and this also improved their pronunciation.
I have been searching and searching for more such listening exercises, but the materials designed for use with children in keystage three areVERY expensive. I mean £80 plus for an audio cassette to go with a pupil book. Adult courses are cheaper, but generally just contain the sort of tourist vocab that young kids don't need to use. They are also usually set in a social context suitable for young adults, or business people, neither of which is any good either. I'd love to get Rosetta Stone, but it is just tooo expensive at the moment. All of this makes the Book Club course even more praiseworthy, as it comes at a decent price. There is a Spanish set too, (which I have not got.)

Quite some weeks ago the girls and I planted some seeds. Coriander and sunflowers. Here are the results so far, maashAllah!

Library books

I was very used to my old blog style. I don't bother to change things often. The look of something doesn't interest me too much, but because of the little arrow marks on the old template just where the date was I kept thinking there was a grubby fingerprint on my screen, when in fact it was the overlapping template. I would have probably been too lazy about it to make the change until blogger put that new design thing right in front of me!

The library books in the picture have helped keep the girls busy over the weekend, maashAllah. The Usborne Science make and do book has lots of fun activities inside. It is not really that scientific, as it doesn't explain the science behind the activities, but the activities are fun for exploring and building experiences. The girls have made shadow puppets and floating ice boats this weekend.

Since having the opportunity to handle a lizard recently Ia has become quite interested in them and picked out some lizard books from the library this weekend. She has been reading through them independently, maashAllah. She is very interested in animals at the moment, in fiction and non-fiction books, maashAllah. Last week she read about barn owls and large mammals. Having given her thoses reminders to read regularly I now findthat she has developed this into her own habit and I no longer need to remind her often, alhamdulillah.

Light and shadow

Today we've been learning about light and shadows and experimenting with the distance from the light source and size of shadow. J remembered that there is a night vision feature on one of the old mobile phone cameras, so we were able to get this picture!

As part of her games U has been writing out badges. She wrote "U r a star". I helped her spell star, she did the rest herself. Oh no, none of the others has begun writing in txt!!! She is the only one to just try writing it herself. The others always asked for the spellings! That is U being different again, maashAllah!

Basic update

We've been getting back into routine thisweek. Ia still has six weeks left on themaths curriculum. Every year the Collins maths is the last thing to get finished! The boys are making steady progress on the Conquer Maths programme. Whenever they find a lesson tricky I pause and do lots of further practice over the following days, usually from Galore Park book 1, until they are comfortable with the topic. I intend to just keep plugging along with the maths until we break for summer, inshAllah.
The boys have finished their English textbook for the year. We have used Galore Park 1. I liked this book, the texts were at the right level for us and the writing tasks were interesting without being prescriptive or over structured. However, the variety of texts was disappointing. There was no poetry or playscript in the whole ten units. I really can't understand why. I made enquiries on a home-ed forum and found that book two was not recommended, and I was advised to have a look at the WHSmith Challenge books instead. At first I had my doubts. I thought that a WHSmith book wasn't going to be up to much, but I was very surprised to find that there is a good variety of interesting tasks in there! Plus it comes with an answer key, has 20 units, and is very cheap! Of course the real test will come when I have to actually use the book from September, but I'm hopeful inshAllah. Until then I'm doing some read aloud literature with the boys, inshAllah.
Other topics and subjects are continuing slow but steady, maashAllah.

Our social week!

We have spent this week mainly meeting with friends, visiting our friends and having friends visit us! A social week! The boys have played cricket and football as well, but mainly it has been fun with the friends who usually go to school but who have been on holiday this week.