Wednesday 7 January 2015

New Year home education

Happy New Year! We had a lovely two week Christmas holiday and saw all of our close family. It feels like a long time since I updated here!

Stuart went back to work on Monday but before that we went swimming, visited the Centre for Life and Gibside together. We have also played many, many games of Uno, read lots of new books and built Lego Christmas presents.

We are slowly getting back into routine this week. Harry and Peter have both done some reading and writing practise, Harry had Beavers and his swimming lesson and we have started reading about The Stone Age, which we will be working on for a couple of weeks.

Harry has also been playing cello and we have watched some videos by The Piano Guys. We especially love this Batman themed piece. Peter and I listened to a BBC Playtime podcast called 'Robin'. 

We've been on the bus to City Library too, to return our Christmas books. Harry has borrowed a couple of Michael Morpurgo titles to read along with his beloved Beast and Sea Quests!

I won't be changing much about our routine this term. I think we are doing the right amount of external classes - both boys are doing enjoy-a-ball and music and Harry also does art class, swimming lessons and Beavers. Peter isn't school age until September so we may start him with an extra activity then if he wants to do one.

Last year Harry's main aim was to read independently and he has exceeded my expectations in that respect; he reads so quickly and fluently now and I expect he will start to read longer books this year. He will be working more on written English and we will be starting the Galore Park Junior English textbook. He will continue to use Conquer Maths online.

Peter is enjoying Reading Eggs online so he will continue to use that and he is now able to read three letter words by sounding the letters. He loves practising writing letters too! We will start using the early stage Oxford Reading Tree books as well. He will be using workbooks for learning to write numbers and practising early maths skills.