Home education first day back?

As the schools go back this week after the summer holiday, it felt like it should be our first 'week back' too. In reality we haven't had a true summer break as our style of home education fits more into everyday life than into a termly schedule but I thought it wouldn't do my peace of mind any harm to have a productive day today.

We started with a reading game, nonsense stars, to help Harry read sounds. This is a game from the Games For Learning book. He often guesses at words he doesn't know straight away, which gives him problems when he is faced with more complex words as he doesn't try to work them out. In this game, we each had a star picture and I wrote some nonsense words using the sounds in the phonics book we are currently using. Harry got a chance first to read the word and, if he did, he coloured a section of his star. If he couldn't read it, I got a chance and coloured a section of my star. He seemed to enjoy this, even though it was challenging and asked for harder words next time!

We followed up by doing some more activities on our literature study, which I will include in a separate post when we have finished, then we baked blueberry muffins. 

We built Lego, did jigsaw puzzles and listened to story CD's. The boys had a great time in the garden for most of the afternoon. They floated boats in water, ate ice cream and sprayed each other with the hosepipe! So, all in all I would say its been a pretty great day of home education!