Creative Afternoon

With the boys out playing football the girls spent the afternoon doing arty things. Ia made this picture from tissue paper. (Idea from Deep Space Sparkle again).

They both coloured in sheets that we had picked up from the museum some time ago. Ia decided to trace and reproduce the flower sheet, and all that tracing took her ages, maashallah!

U wanted to do some writing around hers. She then decided that she wanted to copy out some writing from one of Ia's old lapbooks. She works on this in her own way. She has also started to spell out printed words to me, maashAllah.

World Map

A couple of weeks ago, while I was waiting for the girls at their gym class, one of the other mums offered me some large pieces of card which she had received for free but had no use for. I was happy to take the card, of course, as it had been offered. I felt that I somehow needed to show that I would be putting it to good use, so I just said the first thing that came into my head,
" We could trace a world map poster onto that!".
And so the world map tracing project began.
We have a simple world map poster on the wall at home. I took it down and we used tracing paper, attached with blu-tak, to trace it all out. Ia andthe boys all had a turn.
Then we transfered it onto the large sheet of white card.
This fits in with our Geography Trail Guide theme, and is a really useful way to properly study the shape of the continents and countries. It is easy to overlook the many islands at the far north of North America, or the many islands of the Pacific, but once you have traced them, gone over the tracing, transfered the tracing and gone round the whole outline again to make it show up - it is much, much harder to forget all those places!!!
We decided to shade the oceans, to make the distinction between the land and the water, but not to colour the countries because this would obscure the labels, and I didn't feel it would add much to the learning objective. It would just get the boys fed up with colouring!
So, here is the finished map project!

I used some of the other card for lapbook covers, and still have more left for other projects, alhamdulillah!

Days out

These are the souvenirs we brought back from yesterday's trip. U also insisted on bringing back a number of sticks, as she was planning to build a stick castle. I think she was imagining a version of Eyore's house, from the way she was trying to prop them up.
From today's trip to a nature reserve we mostly brought back mud, but the girls had done a couple more apple pictures too.
I think we can really say that we are seeing Autumn this year, with its mists, its drizzles, its mud, its sunshine, its autumn colours and its apples. Alhamdulillah, Al-Khaliq.

Busy

We've been out a lot for the last few days. Lots of the usual football, library,visiting friends, and today off to a local museum and park, with a couple of extra kids in tow, off for the half term.
This morning was a little stressful, trying to get everything organised, receiving a supermarket delivery, and U deciding that this was an ideal time to practise handwriting skills, just as her brothers attempted a new geometry chapter, with lots of new work in it.

In the autumn sunshine

This is what the girls did with the leaf print idea I saw on Deep Space Sparkle
There has been warm autumnal sunshine for the last couple of days. Yesterday we were out all day enjoying the company of friends and fellow home edders, alhamdulillah. I always feel satisfied to see the children playing for hours outside!
Today we were out walking again and the girls collected lots of different fallen leaves. U said she'd be making an autumn picture with them. In the end they are still on the table, as she has so many other ideas she wants to get on with first, maashAllah!

Plans, and adjusting plans

Although I do make plans before the beginning of a school year, listing topics to cover and textbooks or resources to use, these plans are never fixed. I'm always finding reasons to adjust my plans. Maybe the child has developed and moved on in their learning quicker than I expected, maybe their interests have changed, and anyway, I'm always finding something new!
Due to U's enthusiasm for lapbooks we are now going to have a running lapbook project for both girls to enjoy. it can be on any toipc, whatever they like. U enjoys this work but she just likes to do a little at a time. Ia would gladly do more, but she is kept at U's pace for this session.
So, Ia will also have a topic running at the same time, aimed just at her level (currently it is the "Where I live" geography project). This means Ia may do a little on two projects in a day. This will allow me to introduce topics in science and Islamic studies which would be too much for U at the moment. But this is not what I planned, I thought that U would tag along with bits of Ia's projects, as she did last year, but instead she needs something specific to her as well.
Other things crop up too. A dear friend recently used my Education City tell a friend code when she subscribed for her children. I was surprised to find that this reactivated my son's account, which hadn't been used for several years, alhamdulillah! I had not bothered to subscribe to Education City for the boys as they do not enjoy the style of it too much (the girls like it though), but now we have it for free we may as well make use of bits of it!
Things like this happen constantly. Just because I have made a plan it does not mean that I sit back and stop investigating other options, and neither does it mean that I believe in following that plan to the letter. Change and growth, that's what it's all about!

At last a lapbook!

Ia finished working on the frontcover for this quick-dash lapbook yesterday. Having made all the fuss about doing a lapbook U, of course, has not yet got round to her cover! Some of the bits inside are free from www.homeschoolshare.com and the other bits we did ourselves. It is very basic, just the names of months, days and seasons and the number of each. The photos are of Ia's work. U decided she wanted to include pictures of an octopus and a jellyfish in hers. I know it is off-theme, but I didn't stop her.

I took this photo on Friday, as they stuck it together. Lapbooks are very enjoyable for them, alhamdulillah. Ia wanted to get started on another one at 9pm last night, but it was bedtime, so I had to make her wait.