Maths Game - Naughty Threes

This game requires two dice. We also used a paper and pencil to keep score.

It's very simple. Take turns to roll the dice. NB Don't instruct young children to 'throw the dice'. It's not what you want, really ;)

If you roll a double, score 5 points. BUT! If you roll double 6, score 25 points and if you roll double 3, those naughty threes erase all your previous score.

See who can get to 50 first.

This is another idea from 501 Tv Free Activities For Kids. It was quite fun and easy for a five year old to grasp. It was good for practising counting in 5s, but wasn't as mathsy as I'd hoped, since doubles (and therefore points) were few and far between.

The Plot Develops

Swimming seems to have tired them all out.

Sebastian has been utterly whingy all day, with much screaming and complaining. He's saying "Ow" about his knee, which he bumped in the swimming baths, and about his neck, which wasn't bumped. He's had quite a high temperature at times, to the point where paracetamol was necessary, and I wondered if he had a sore throat or swollen glands or something. Anyway, he wanted to be carried about all day, which was most inconvenient. At one point, the screaming got so much that I put him in his coat, in the pushchair and parked him in front of CBeebies, hoping he'd fall asleep. He didn't but he sat quietly until it was time to go out.

Elizabeth, finding herself unable to get a word in edgeways over her screaming brother, also joined in the wailing and clamouring for attention.

So... amidst all this Francesca did get some 'work' done.

We looked again at the opening paragraph of The Enormous Crocodile and decided that Roald Dahl quickly introduced some intriguing dialogue and thus, we'd need an extra character to be involved in a conversation.  Francesca invented a girl called Emily, who was friends with the crocodile in her story, and she was the only child the crocodile didn't want to eat.

The story now reads:

"In a big, fat house at the top of the tallest, steepest hill in London, there lived an enormous, greedy, scary crocodile. He liked to eat children. But there was one child that he did not want to eat and she was called Emily."

I was especially pleased that Francesca wanted to write the next sentence herself, since writing has been such a chore to her so far.

We then thought up some possible questions for Emily to ask the crocodile to move our story on and increase the curiosity factor. We're not going with, "What are we having for tea tonight?" (the first suggestion) but we've thought of some better ones, which we'll decide upon tomorrow.

For something vaguely mathsy we played "Naughty Threes" which I'll write about separately.

Then, in the afternoon, Abuelita came round to teach Francesca how to work with watercolours. They painted for nearly two hours and Francesca loved it.

One of Francesca's friends came to tea, which was a nice end to the day. Sebastian even cheered up long enough to show Abuelita his new tool set and work bench. Needless to say, we had a prompt bath and swift bedtime.

Literacy - Opening Sentence Mystery Game

Can't believe I have only taken one photo today. I've been so busy. We crammed a lot in. I suppose I didn't have time to stop and take pics.

Anyway, here it is:

There. Bet that brightened your day. I probably brightens Auntie Becca's day, at least, since that's the Christmas present she gave to Francesca. It's a mirror mosaic. We've started sticking the tiles!

Elizabeth went to playgroup with a friend this morning (who also brought her back) so I didn't have to go anywhere/spend time walking there and back. Thus, Francesca and I did loads of things.

She started with violin, with hardly any fuss at all. Then we did Maths but I didn't tell her it was maths - we just played a game called "Shut The Box" (another Christmas present) that involved plenty of addition. After a while we played Fox and Geese. Not sure if that counts as actual Maths but it was fun (until Francesca lined all her geese up round the edge of the board and none of them 'dared' to come out. Urgh. I quit.)

Then for English, we played the Sentence Mystery Game. I chose "The Enormous Crocodile" by Roald Dahl and showed Francesca just one word at a time. After each word, we thought of several options for what word could come next and jotted down our ideas. After the entire first sentence was revealed, I helped Francesca to write her own. She (we?) came up with:

"In a big, fat house at the top of the tallest, steepest hill in London, there lived an enormous, greedy, scary crocodile. He liked to eat children."

Not bad, eh? And she's already planning the next bit of the story, so at last, we have some enthusiasm for creative writing (although it has to be said that I did the actual writing - she's written a lot of thank you cards this week...) [Edit - We develop our story more here]

Once the 'work' was done, Francesca chose to do some of her mosaic and also asked me to read the rest of "The Enormous Crocodile". Then Elizabeth arrived back and it was lunchtime.

This afternoon's activity was swimming! Much excitement all round. A kind friend came with us, to help, otherwise it's not easy/safe for me to be in the pool with all three little ones, on my own. Someone always has to hold Sebastian and that doesn't leave any spare arms for teaching swimming to the girls. Within a few minutes my friend had them both swimming with their arms out in front, holding a float. Progress!

Getting Creative With Seeds

Today, it all started with cress heads. Elizabeth's request. I duly liberated some egg shells and here they are, waiting to grow:

I helped Sebastian to draw a face on his, and put his wet cotton wool inside, ready for the cress seeds but when I looked away for a moment, he had completely crushed his shell.  Oh well. The girls are very excited about theirs.

Growing cress made me think about other seed sprouts so I dug out some pinto beans, black turtle beans, lentils and chick peas, which is what you can see soaking in the pots behind the dinosaur (cool card that my mum made). We're all going to make some pulse sprouts to eat, so they're soaking overnight, then we'll rinse them and tip off the excess water daily, until roots and shoots appear.

Having the lovely coloured pulses out made me think of doing a collage with them all, so I rooted out some extras - yellow split peas, green split peas, barley, red lentils etc to give the children a range of colours to work with, on black card, with PVA.

Sebastian was very keen. And very messy. I tried to ignore the sound of falling seeds in all directions. Thank goodness Seymour bought that Dustbuster.

Francesca thought she would draw an actual picture. She thought of a rabbit and gave it features of black beans, ears of yellow peas and a body of red lentils. She used barley for the tail.

Elizabeth decided to make a leopard with yellow and black spots.

Aw, bless 'em.

Elizabeth was very pleased with her work.

Francesca complained (even, nearly cried!) because it was Too Hard!! She was trying to sort individual colours from a mixture. I gave her a pot of just red lentils and encouraged her to squirt large quantities of glue directly onto the page and suddenly it was all better. Until she realised that the back legs were so fat there wasn't really room for the front legs(!) Such a perfectionist :)

Sebastian demanded more and more glue and more and more pulses until I had had enough of the mess and cleaned him up. He seems to have had fun.

Later, I made varnish from diluted PVA and Francesca varnished her rabbit. It's not drying particularly shiny so perhaps my varnish was too thin and/or we need more coats.

Just for the record. Elizabeth's:

Francesca's: (the varnish puddles are not yet dry)

And, to continue our pulses experience, I've left some soaking overnight to make into soup tomorrow.

How To Play The Paper Race Game

It was kind of hard to photograph this one, so bear with me while I try to explain.

The Paper Race requires a long space (we used our hallway). I marked the start and finish lines with electrical tape (we were taking this very seriously, of course!)

We raced one at a time, due to the width of the hallway and timed each other using the stopwatch on my phone. This in itself was a learning experience for some(!)

To race, you start with your toes behind the line and a piece of paper in each hand. On "Go!" you put one piece of paper on the floor and step onto it, placing the next piece in front of you and then stepping onto that. You then move the first piece of paper to in front of you and move forwards without touching the carpet (I didn't think it fair to really enforce that rule too heavily.)

We snuck in some maths by recording our results in a table, having three goes each and calculating the average (mean) time for each person. You don't have to take it all that seriously, of course.

Here's Elizabeth doing a photo-shoot run:

And over the finish line...

...which we strategically placed in front of a doorway so that the person with the stopwatch could have a clear view of the exact moment when the line was crossed.

Sebastian even wanted to have a go.

Sort of...

Make Your Own Flying Saucer

Today, I decided that we would make our own flying saucers. I was following instructions I had found in a brilliant publication called 501 Tv Free Activities For Kids.

We needed a paper plate and a paper cup each. I didn't have paper cups but I decided that plastic ones would do.

They children had fun decorating their flying saucer first, with felt-tip pens.

Sebastian did his alien green:

Francesca drew a family of three happy, smiling aliens. How does she know with such certainty what aliens look like?!

Elizabeth coloured the night sky onto hers.

We had to cut flaps round the edge of the plate and fold them, one up, one down. Then stick the cup into the middle of the plate, by cutting off the top half and snipping round the top to make flaps to stick with tape onto the plate (are you following?!)

Here's are the flying saucers in action:

And the finished products. Not sure why the girls look so glum. I suppose it's a serious business, launching a flying saucer.

They didn't fly very well, actually. I think the design spec was somewhat lacking. I might Google it and see if we can find a better design. Francesca's worked best, with the longer, narrower flaps. Maybe our cups weren't central enough, or maybe the flaps needed to be more evenly spaced.

Anyway, making them was fun and the girls enjoyed flinging them down the stairs.

How To Make Lavender Bath Fizz

Well, I haven't updated for ages.


It was all to do with Christmas. The lead up to Christmas, Christmas itself and the aftermath of Christmas. We sort of slacked off for a while and had a holiday - which really just meant a lack of routine in which behaviour deteriorated and I got cross a lot. We did some useful things in that time but it was all really ad hoc and I definitely missed the structure.

So, I sat down with myself and planned out a new Daily Plan - a sort of Way It Will Be (on a good day) including a routine for fitting in meals, breaks, 'lessons' and free time.

Armed with that outline to work to, we started easing ourselves out of holiday mode with increasingly mummy-directed days.

We did such a lot today, I'm feeling really virtuous(!)

After breakfast we all sat down to write some thank you cards. We're doing three a day, which is quite enough for anyone, I find.

Then Francesca wanted to colour in one of the Father Christmas drawings we made last week following instructions from here.

Next, Francesca did some violin practice before lunch, at which point she went as white as a "sheep" (Elizabeth said!) and refused any food. We cancelled the planned swimming excursion and decided to do some quiet activities at home instead. Which turned out to be making Bath Fizz.

Lavender Bath Fizz is made by combining:
3/4 cup bicarbonate of soda
2 tablespoons cornflour
1/2 cup cream of tartar
A few drops of different food colourings
A few drops of lavender oil

Stir them well...

...and you get a mixture that looks like this:

Pour the mixture into a tub with a lid, to store it. A glass jar would be nice, but not very practical, I thought, so we used some recycled food containers that used to have something like glacé cherries in them.

Then we drew some labels for our tubs. I showed the girls how to draw a sprig of lavender. Can you tell?

Francesca also drew a bath on hers:

They had great fun sprinkling spoonfuls of their Bath Fizz into the bath and seeing it bubble and, well, fizz. It smelled nice too.

After the Bath Fizz, they all did painting using pictures from Elizabeth's painting set, which has the paints at the top of each page. It's fairly difficult to get a good result but Francesca achieved a good finish, and I was impressed with her staying-power. The other two enjoyed themselves a lot too.

After that we played the Paper Race game. I'll have to blog about that another time, I'm too tired. It was fun though, and involved measuring time, recording results and calculating an average (although it didn't have to include all that maths, you could do it just for fun).

Then I decided that Sebastian was finally old enough for playing with rice. It's just dry rice, in the baby bath, on a big towel to catch the spillages.

They all loved it. I sorted some of the piles of washing in the same room.

I managed to enforce tidy up time and we sorted out the lounge and their bedroom before it was time for the bath.

Yay! We're back into the swing of it again and I'm remembering why I love this home ed lark :)