Mince pies and soft play

We finished off some more Christmas cards this morning then made our first batch of mince pies. Harry loves this job and actually did most of it himself. We made the mincemeat several weeks ago and made pastry for the pies this morning. 

After lunch we met some friends at soft play, which was a great energy burner for two hours! 

We've been reading Christmas themed books at home, both our own and library books and we watched a Mr Men Christmas DVD this afternoon. 

Our busy week

Wow another week has whizzed by! We have been really busy in the evening finishing the painting in our hall, so I haven't had time for anything else. Hopefully it will be fully finished next week. My dad visited again to fit a new front door and the boys were pleased to see him!

Our best day this week was meeting our very new nephew and cousin in Harrogate, Jacob. He is my sister's first baby and the boys loved him. I am sure they will all have some great times in the future.

We have been to sit with Monty the Penguin at John Lewis and Stuart took the boys to Gibside on Sunday for some outdoor adventures.

Harry and Peter baked some cookies using the BBC's Cookie Monster recipe in aid of children in need. They sold them to friends and family and Stuart sold some at work to raise £8. 

We went to a pizza express school workshop with friends, where the boys made their own pizza. We had a bit of a travel adventure too as we went on the train. Harry bought the tickets from the machine and used a map to find the way from the train station. 

Harry completed his latest art class picture, using watercolour for the first time.

We have played at the park with friends.

Harry has been working on his faith badge at Beavers, reading and listening to the Spy Dog series of books from the library and playing cello. Peter has had his enjoy a ball class and has been playing Shut the Box lots. He has also been using magnet letters to (almost) spell his name and practise some letter sounds.

Harry also had enjoy a ball class and won the weekly trophy. He has a friend to sleep over tonight and they are currently working their way through Harry's collection of Sea Quest books: it's a very nice sight!

Autumn, robots and outdoors

We have been so busy over the past few weeks trying to fit decorating into our days too, it's been a bit of a whirlwind... and I am still ill! We have been doing our usual reading, cello playing and maths work and these are some of the extra things:

We have played in parks with friends.

Painted faces for a Halloween party.

Made a giant autumn tree.

Baked the first Christmas cake of the year.

Had a visit from Harry and Peter's cousins. We went to the beach and flew kites.

Attended a robot workshop at Durham University, where we learned about the different uses of robotics and tried some out. Harry had to programme a tracked vehicle to go round a cone.

Play, story starters and decorating

Harry and Peter played Lego together for an hour this morning, without any bickering! This is unusual and very nice so I let them carry on without interrupting and I researched some WW1 activities and started thinking about Christmas ideas. If we don't have anywhere to be, or anything urgent to do, I do try to let them get on with self-directed activities if they are doing them well. I think this skill is just as important as the activities I prepare for them.

I brought some big cardboard tubes home from Scouts this week and we had a great play with these for an hour as well. We started just rolling marbles and balls down them, then we taped a starting line to the carpet to test which ball rolled the furthest.

We also built small towers to knock over by rolling things down the tube and an arch for them to roll through.

Harry built a 'city defence' for one of his towers and was pleased that this couldn't be knocked over! This was a great use of engineering skills: he knew that the building needed a wider base to be more sturdy and eventually it became a city wall to protect his tower.

We have been using this online story starter resource from Scholastic. The boys love spinning the wheels to create their story starter and the finished pieces can be printed to keep. 

We had been waiting for a delivery today, so when it came we went out to get Christmas cake supplies and paint testers. We didn't make a cake today, as I needed the oven to cook pizza for tea, but we will soon. We also talked to my dad on the phone and he is coming to help us decorate our hall this weekend so we spent the rest of the afternoon pulling wallpaper off! Harry really enjoyed getting involved with this and they will enjoy seeing their Granddad at the weekend. 

Teddy bear picnic

We had a nice activity waiting to occupy us post-holiday today. While we were on holiday Harry's Beavers group had a teddy bears picnic to complete their healthy eating badge, so we have done this at home. Harry loves Beavers and is always keen to earn the badges! 

Harry chose all the food and made it himself. He had to make two kinds of sandwich. 

Houmous and cucumber wraps.

Tuna and sweetcorn wraps.

Satsumas and fruit kebabs.

He asked for tomato bread made in the bread machine too (which uses passata and sun-dried tomatoes) and made ham and chicken sandwiches using this. 

We also baked and decorated buns as we often talk about the role treats can play in a healthy balanced diet. 

We all really enjoyed doing this and I think Harry was proud of himself for making everything. He also cleared everything away. They haven't quite realised it's Autumn yet and are still wearing sandals! 

The teddies enjoyed a bit of tree climbing in the garden afterwards and we read a couple of stories outside as well. 

Baking, reading and listening

I am pleased that this week has started positively after we had a bit of a dreary last week. 

We spent yesterday morning baking some treats for the week ahead - chocolate brownies and Swiss roll. We haven't done baking for a while and will have to fit it in more often as we all enjoy it.

We went out yesterday afternoon for Peter's enjoy a ball class and Harry's beavers group, where they were looking at unusual fruits and vegetables for their healthy eating badge. 

Harry has been working on another Batman picture. He copied the shape from his art class picture and coloured it differently. 

We have really enjoyed reading this book from the library. I am a big Shakespeare fan so I was secretly very pleased when Harry chose this. We have read The Tempest and A Midsummer Night's Dream so far.

Harry has also continued reading his Sea Quest books. There are some top trumps type cards in the back of each book and he cut these out for us to play with too. I asked him what writing he wanted to do this week and he chose to write about series 1 (4 books but with the same story weaving through them). He started this today and will continue to work on it. 

The new season of BBC School Radio podcasts started this week. I really like these and they encourage listening and participation. We listened today to Something to Think About, which asked about what we have enjoyed doing recently and what we are looking forward to. We are going on holiday soon so we talked about that.

Harry and Peter have been making trumpets and spy glasses from marble run pieces too and Harry had his swimming lesson this afternoon. 

Courgette bread, salt letters and enjoy a ball

It's that time of year again when our allotment courgettes are producing abundantly. I found this super recipe last year and made our first batch of courgette and mint bread today.

http://www.homemadeloaves.co.uk/2013/06/garden-mint-and-courgette-batards.html?m=1

Harry has been at enjoy a ball holiday club today from 9am-1pm with a friend. He has done lots of sports and ball games and some crafts. Peter and I played in the garden, played ker-plunk several times and he practised 'writing' some letters in a salt tray with his finger.

We all went to the allotment when we picked Harry up. I put the pepper plants into larger pots, we removed the first pea plants which are now finished and we harvested the rest of the onions. It was very hot and the boys were flagging a bit, so they played with water and ice in the garden when we got home.

Brainbox magazine, games and a cake

It has felt like The Endless Day today! Peter has had a week of disrupted sleep, so I was tired anyway but this morning he woke up at 5.30am. I don't even want to think about the amount of coffee I have consumed! We have actually had a very nice day despite this, although I am hoping for more sleep tonight. 

Home education is great on days like this; Harry had also been woken up by Peter so he was tired too and we packed all the things from my list into our morning so that by lunch time we could relax more and do whatever was needed to enjoy the rest of the day. Harry often goes to bed to listen to audio books if he is tired but they both enjoyed quiet Lego play today instead.

We have been working through all our games this week and have played several from the Games for Learning book. This morning we played some Orchard Toys numeracy board games. Harry and Peter both like Spotty Dogs and Ladybirds so we played these together then Harry and I played Magic Cauldron. Harry also played cello ready for his class tomorrow.

Earlier this week we played Maths Dice too. There is a 12 sided die which you roll first to get a target score. You then roll five other dice and use the resulting numbers to make the target score.

Harry received a new reading book yesterday, based on Lego Chima. It is his first DK level 3 book and he read it all today! He needed help with a few words but wasn't phased by it. I have also been reading the Greek heroes section of A Little History of the World and we will be reading some Greek myths to go along with it.

I spotted this magazine in the supermarket and thought we would try it as we like the Brainbox games. We started it today by reading the Roald Dahl and news sections. Harry was pleased to learn that another David Walliams story, The Boy in the Dress, is being adapted for TV this Christmas. I really like the magazine. The pages are not too fussy and contain lots of well set out information that Harry could read on his own. There are code activities, colouring pages, hard dot-to-dots and book reviews too.

We read some of our newest library books and Harry and Peter had a bath with their Lego at lunch time. I think they would say that one of their top activities is a daytime bath! They make Lego models especially to play with in the bath and it can get quite excitable so I often prefer them to bath during the day rather than at bedtime, as it's very much playtime not relaxing time for them! They were both under these towels pretending to be stones!

This afternoon has mainly been about Lego and they both managed to play really nicely together for nearly two hours, making up games about cargo planes and gold mining. I put some BBC podcasts on in the playroom and I planned several book study activities for the coming months using the very helpful Teaching Ideas Library while the boys were occupied.

We have also baked a very nice chocolate cake this afternoon.

Peter licks the spoons like he has never tasted chocolate! We found it very funny that he didn't care a bit about being smothered with mixture, until he had finished then it had to be removed immediately.