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U works best in short, 10 minute activities. Today we spent a short time on these puzzle sums. She used her fingers to help her when necessary. Before that I had drawn up a page of work for her to do. I drew dominoes and got her to fill in the numbers in addition calculations based on them.
Later on she did a few minutes phonic work, choosing the vowel to go in the word. She is also getting on well with her reading books, maashAllah, and can manage both books in the first level of Peter and Jane. I'll let her go ahead while she is still finding it easy, maashAllah.
The other evening I received some good news in my inbox! iboard is now free to use (no longer subscription only). U had been asking me to get iboard back as both girls really enjoy it! They've been using it loads for the last two days!

Quick Link

Today we watched an episode of the BBC series Chemistry, A Volatile History
Very visual and interesting, and very pleased to see that experiment making hydrogen from zinc in acid we did last week! Gives it a whole new dimension for us!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00q2mk5/Chemistry_A_Volatile_History_Discovering_the_Elements/

Birds

Today we have had the opportunity to examine the skulls of birds and look at their differently shaped beaks to see how these are adapted to obtaining the foods they eat.
Alhamdulillah. The intricacy and detail of Allah's creation is truly amazing.

Friday at home

Today has felt quite relaxed, alhamdulillah.
The Conquer Maths is allowing the boys to just get on with their maths by themselves, and so far this is working well. The topics they have been covering are still revision, so the real test will come with a completely new topic.
The boys have also done some French again today. This has been neglected a bit recently, but I need to make the effort to get the resources out and use them. We are still keeping things light with cartoony activity books and the Jump Ahead CD. I'd like to get the Rosetta Stone programme for them, but this isn't possible just yet.
They are still working away with their other Rosetta Stone language programme. H is sitting with them to help them through it now they are getting on to more complex sentences. Seeing how they benefit from having someone just occasionally repeat the sentence more slowly, and seperate out the words a little makes me feel that the programme is most beneficial when used alongside someone who speaks the language being studied. H does not change the programme, or add to it in any way, so the language learning method is still the same. He spent a whole hour on it with them this evening! Wow! That was long!
U has been doing a mixture of things today, including playing board games, playing colouring games on Sheppard, doing a few addition pages, writing a few words, reading Peter and Jane book 1a, listening to stories, using Jump Ahead French and watching a Big Cat Week dvd. Ia hasn't been well today, so she has just relaxed, but joined in the the board games, dvd, French and stories.

Geography bits

Oh, dear, I'm not doing very well with the post titles at the moment!
I blogged recently about using geography study to aquire and develop skills. More of this has been going on. We are currently learning about the Central American region. On Monday I asked the boys to find out a little about the ancient Mayan city of Chichen Itza and to put together a powerpoint presentation of what they found out. They have done several PPPs before, and doing one of these makes a change from handwritten or typed work. It gives some variety, refreshes their knowledge of using PP, and can count as integrated ICT! I know, terrible of me to use these terms, but it is what we are doing anyway, and presenting it in these words might come in handy one day!
For today's geography the boys wrote up a report on the earthquake in Hati. They used the Newsround website to find out information. Although they had seen about it on the general news anyway they needed to gather some facts. Then they wrote a half side report in their own words. I'm filing all this geography stuff in folders.

At some point during the day the girls went up to their bedroom and were very quiet. It turned out that Ia had been reading aloud the last chapter of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory so that they could find out what happens!!! I'm still required to fill in the rest of the chapters.

Tuesday

More chemistry today. Here is some zinc reacting with a solution and producing hydrogen bubbles. We did the same thing with magnesium and were able to collect the hydrogen and then do the test for it with a match, and got the POP! We did that a few times actually!
The boys have finished off the Oliver Twist topic now. In total they wrote three mini essays and one longer one. Having tried this approach out I now have a much clearer idea of how to go forward and improve on beginning essay skills, inshAllah. The best approach seems to be to just get on and have a go, and learn from the experience. I want to look for a very different type of text to work with next. Until then, back to the textbook for English.
I've been reading a book on desert environments to the girls in preperation for our next topic. From one extreme to the other, from oceans to deserts. I'm also reading "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" to them in the evenings. I don't usually like to read Roald Dahl books aloud to my children, as I don't enjoy the books myself. As far as I'm concerned they can just read them to themselves if they are interested! I can make an exception for "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" though, as it seems less gross, if you see what I mean! U is loving it anyway, it seems to have really captured her imagination and she is reading the book to her self for long periods every day, maashAllah. (As usual, when I say read here, I don't mean reading in the grown up sense.)

Lapbook

The end of another home edding week! This week the girls finished off this oceans lapbook, from Hands of a Child. We didn't spend too long on this as the girls have studied oceans again and again, but I think they are finally ready to move on now!
I would have preferred a blue folder to put the project in, but we seemed to have run out of blue and I'm not sufficiently interested in presentation to go out to buy blue just for that. It seems Ia was not that fussy about her colouring either!

Sports sessions have almost all gone back to shedule in spite of the continued snow disruption this past week, which everyone was pleased about!