Getting Into Routine

These last few days have been quite samey and a bit un-bloggable - only because we've been in 'routine' and doing the same sorts of things that I've written about before. It's good for us to be in a routine, though, and I feel as though we're achieving a lot, especially with Elizabeth who is ploughing through her key vocabulary and learning to read her Kipper books.

It's been daily violin, Maths and English every morning and then general fun in the afternoons.

We've done baking, listened to story tapes, visited relatives, played games etc.

A particular favourite of the last fortnight has been the marble run. It's really great to see all three of them collaborating on a project. Often, Daddy builds the run and then the girls maintain it, where they might not be able to actually construct it so well themselves (they can make small runs perfectly well) and Sebastian might be a bit clumsy with it - with all three of them there, it works!

It's been nice having Daddy at home more:

Francesca's been enjoying her work. She's been enjoying violin practice and so have I! Imagine, we've been playing duets and rounds together - me on recorder and her on violin!!

She loves Maths too. The 'Minute Maths' idea is a great success. I had to make a new sheet yesterday. You can download a copy of Minute Maths - Adding 1 and 2 here, if you like. She's not so fast with this sheet - it's more challenging using numbers up to 100 and having to add either 1 or 2, but she still enjoys it. She's loving her Heinemann Maths book too.

English, she's not so keen on but she was enthusiastic when she set her own task, yesterday, to write a thank you letter to her grandparents for having her to stay over at the weekend:

She also really loves practising her spellings, doing the 'look, cover, write, check' method. In fact, I'm amazed at her motivation lately. She's been helpful, efficient, enthusiastic, happy, relaxed... With the occasional bout of shouting and the odd tantrum, obviously(!) We're all loving the home-school and I almost wish I'd started earlier :)