Natural Paintbrushes

We went to the park this morning and collected pine needles and other coniferous evergreens after learning about the difference between coniferous and broadleaved trees. 

This afternoon we created natural paintbrushes by wrapping wire around sticks. We then had fun experimenting with paint.

Back again!

This post is the first in about 3 years or more and I'm just testing the water to see if I can maintain a blog now and then again!  

A fair bit has happened, we've added Asher Benjamin to the family and we are now home educating 2 children in year 3 and a preschooler.

This year has really felt like we've started to find our feet with home schooling. We discovering more and more what works for us and what doesn't, which makes the journey a lot easier. I'm still bursting with ideas and feel like a week is not long enough, or even a year, to fit in all the things we want to do! 

Life is a lot of fun and we're enjoying the freedom that we have. We've tried out lots of different home educating groups but also find that we quite happily fill our time ourselves.  It is great to have a wide network of options available. We've experienced some fantastic opportunities together. Workshops at the Eden Project, art galleries and museums. Seeing the Bloodhound super sonic car. Learning about all that Shelterbox do for aid situations. Capoeira, climbing, cycling. Starting an allotment. That's just off the top of my head for this year so far. 

We're enjoying getting stuck into some curriculums this year. Exploring nature with children. Life of Fred. Story of the World. Peaceful Preschool. 

I'm hoping to write a round up of what we've been up to, perhaps each month, week see how it goes!

Term Round up

I've been meaning to do a bit of a term round up (purely for my own sake so that I can look back and see what we've done each term).  So here are some things we've done this last term...

Swimming - Reuben has learnt to swim independently and Keziah is not far off.  They both LOVE their swimming lessons that we started in Sept.

Biking - both Reuben and Keziah learnt to pedal over the summer and they quickly moved on to stunts.

Parkour - any raised surface is an obstacle to flip over...

Dancing - we've had some crazy fun dance sessions in our lounge before bed.

Gardening - mostly digging in the mud but we had some yummy sweetcorn this year.

Role play - the dressing up bag is full to bursting - doctors - divers - firemen - princesses - knights - peacocks - batman - tigers - santa - angel ...

Colouring - this has been a favourite lately and they both improved hugely in the details they add to pictures.

Reading independently - this happened naturally for both Reuben and Keziah this term and they are both able to recognise and read more and more words. 

Counting to 100 - getting to grips with numbers.

Climbing trees 

Drawing

Making things

Baking

Trips out - Plymouth on the train - Truro Museum - Maritime Museum - Lifeboat Station - Boot up planting trees - Seal Sanctuary - Library - Art Gallery - Beaches - Woods - North Wales - London - Maidstone - St Mawes sleepover with Mama and Papa - Squashbox Theatre - National Trust gardens - Lights parade - Castles - Steam trains

Rock Climbing

Sewing

Playing with Seren

Visiting friends houses

Canoeing 

Skate parks

Clay

Play parks

Kite Flying

Hockey

Fishing

Naked river swimming

Boat rides

The list goes on, we've had fun!  This term we're taking the adventure a bit further with a trip to Thailand to stay with my sister on the Burmese border so we're expecting to add lots of new experiences to the list...

This was a roll the dice adding game..

Winter outside

Life has felt very full lately and time has sped by.  We've done our best to still spend time outside despite the weather.  Andrew and I watched Project Wild Thing - about a Dad trying to get his kids to spend more time outside.  Strangely unprompted, the next day Reuben said to us, "I think we should spend a day a week outside - the whole day".  So the following day we were outside at dawn cooking porridge for breakfast over the fire!

Reuben is really into 'ice hockey' at the moment so Andrew made hime some goals for the garden.

Treasure map

This was something we did a while ago for Andrew's birthday.  We had got him a canoe as a surprise so we made a treasure map as the canoe was hidden in a friend's field.  We aged the map with tea and scrupling and then I did a pencil outline of the peninsular that we live on.  The children then added details and shading, using symbol ideas from the ordinance survey map.  Lastly we put it in a bottle to wrap up for his birthday.

Table activities

We've been doing quite a lot of activities around the table in the mornings.  The children are really enjoying colouring in at the moment so I drew them an aeroplane to colour and they added birds, clouds and people in the windows.  They then wrote 'Aeroplane to Thailand'.

Keziah played with coloured rice at a friend's house yesterday so she made some with me this morning.  Blue, red and green with food colouring and yellow with turmeric.  We're waiting for it to dry to hide some objects in it and make pictures...

We're going split pin crazy and the children have made several characters this morning!

Keziah had a go at drawing mirror images on some dotted paper.

Outings

We get out and about nearly everyday, visiting all sorts of places and I usually take a photographic record on my phone.  The images don't normally make it off my phone though, so here are a few of what we've been up to recently...

We discovered this walled garden in the Penrose Estate when cycling along the bike trails at Loe Bar.

First trip out on Andrew's canoe, which we got for him as a surprise for his birthday.  Reuben and Keziah both had a go at paddling and Seren slept at the bottom!

Creating a colour wheel with leaves at Glendurgan garden. 

Using oil pastels to make a still life drawing at the Maritime Museum.

Bike maintenance - most days involve getting out on the bikes.

Butterfly collection at Plymouth museum.  We took the train there to meet up with Aunty Zoe and Matt.

Planting trees at Boot up, with SEEDS, an outdoor educational home ed group.

Keziah's tree.  We got drenched but no complaints from anyone!