School Nurse Service

An interesting development today stems from a letter I got last week. It was from the School Nurse team. Something along the lines of, "Since you're home educating, we want to make contact, incase you have any worries or need any support or advice about your child's health..." etc. So I phoned them.

Not that I have any worries I want to discuss, just that I wondered if we could work together.

I spoke to the lady who had sent the letter and we had a great chat. She and her team are keen to offer the same sort of service that is given to school pupils, to home ed children. In other words, she'd be prepared to come and do the health/growing up talks at appropriate intervals, bringing the resources that they have to teach about health/puberty etc.

Not only would it be refreshing for my children to hear their information from someone else, and, no doubt, fun to access someone else's resources but, I'm thinking, some information is easier to take from someone who isn't your mum. Francesca got all hygenic after the school nurse visited the reception class to talk about hand washing...

So, we're in the process of lining something up for what I hope will become a long-term partnership to enhance our home ed curriculum. Watch this space.

Cake Decorating For The Young

We had a pretty slack day today. No maths, no English (not officially, in any case) and lots of tv.

It's because Monday is the new Friday. We've moved tv day to Monday so that Francesca isn't such a zombie for her violin lesson on Fridays. Also, today, we had friends coming round for afternoon tea and a play, so all we had to do was get through the morning.

Violin was done - quite thoroughly, actually. Then we iced the cakes that Sebastian made the other day.

I'll leave you with that thought.

Timeline Project and Other Stuff

Yesterday was much better - at least in the morning. Francesca was equipped with a list of Things To Do and keenly got on with them. I guess we will have down days when motivation is lacking and energy is low but at least it only lasted one day in this case.

Today has been ok. Only 'ok' because a lot of faffing has accompanied the various tasks, meaning that we never did get onto Science (yet again - I've been hoping to finish the little seeds project all week! Partly, that is due to Elizabeth having been to Playgroup and us waiting for her to be there to do it with us, so not by any means entirely down to lack of motivation.)

Anyway, Francesca is powering through her Heinemann book with a reward in sight if she finishes it on Tuesday or before. She's totally got the hang of subtracting via 10 (bridging) which is brilliant.

I'm also pleased to report the completion of the timeline - at least the first stage, anyway. We have yet to add to it, expand upon it and develop the idea of events in the past/history but I'm very pleased with the display of Francesca's life-time. She's worked hard to write all the labels for the photos. I haven't taken a picture of the finished thing yet - not that you could see much from a distance - but here's Francesca working to get it done:

Sebastian and I did some of his Maths app today. He doesn't operate on the same wavelength as an older child (of course). He likes the "duh" noise when he gets answers wrong and he likes pressing all the pictures - the app is designed for people trying to get the right answer but Sebastian isn't driven by that concept at all. I'm not surprised by this, just interested in how differently he interacts with the app compared to Elizabeth.

He did some painting - that was yesterday, for what it's worth - making butterfly shapes by folding over the paper. This is just the beginning but he was prolific.

And I'll leave you with Francesca and a beautiful birthday card she made for a friend.

I particularly like how poshly she has spelled 'barthday'.

Bridging Through 10 - KS1 Maths - Subtraction

It's not all bad... but can I just say, in the interests of solidarity with other home schooling parents whose children are, at times, uncooperative, shouty and downright badly behaved... we had an awful, write-off morning. We all fell out. I considered leaving home, or at least selling one or two of them. Especially the bossy, stroppy one... We didn't get anything (much) done and I really felt like sending her back to school. There were time-outs and A Serious Conversation. I walked away from the violin battle but, amazingly, Francesca finished the practise, unaccompanied.

After lunch, it all got better. Elizabeth and Sebastian were engrossed in a make-believe situation which, I later discovered, seemed to involve emptying the wardrobe and scattering everything all over the floor, but never mind, I was sooo pleased that they were happily cooperating and out of the way(!) Francesca and I finally cracked the 'bridging through 10' thing that she has, thus far, avoided understanding. I say 'avoided' because I've tried to explain it to her before, when it had come up in her various maths workbooks. She usually shouts me down and says she KNOWS how to do it and then counts on her fingers and messes it up. Anyway...

How I Finally Got The Bridging To 10 Message Across

Having no multi-link cubes (as pictured in the Heinneman maths book) we used Duplo for this task.

The aim was to use 10 as a 'bridge' in the process of subtracting single digit numbers from 2 digit numbers. We started with fairly simple sums such as 12-6 and 13-7.

The 'bridge' idea is a method for going via 10 and then using the (hopefully) familiar number-bonds to 10 to make the sum easier. Francesca has learnt her number bonds to 10, so she is quite confident in recalling that 1+9=10, 2+8=10 and 3+7=10 etc.

SO, for the sum 15-9, she used Duplo to represent '15' by making a stack of 10 bricks (one ten) and having five loose bricks (five units). Then, to subtract 9, she first took away the five units, to get to ten, then worked out she needed to take away four more, from the remaining ten. Knowing that four goes with six, to make 10, she could deduce the answer quite simply.

I had her build with the blocks for every sum, in each case taking away the spare units (that weren't part of the 10 stack) then taking away the rest from 10. And she Got It! Yey! She really listened to me. She really tried to do what I was asking. She was willing to talk me through her method as she did the sums, until I knew she understood.

Actually, this was after she had shouted at me this morning and tried to do the same sums with her number line, getting about half of them wrong. This gave me good grounds to insist that, this time, she really try to take on board what I was explaining. I sat with her and worked through the ones that had been wrong, then helped her to do another page. I think she was pleased with herself, in the end. Perhaps she'll believe me next time I say I've got a good method that's different to her own(!)

In Other News

We finally did some IT. Francesca heard her daddy talking about Excel and decided that she wanted to learn about that too. My mum and dad have made her an Excel-style grid, on paper, to work with to help her understand how the cells are labelled: A3, B5 etc.

Here she is 'cracking the code':

Her grid comes with a set of coordinates. When she colours in the correct cells, she will see something revealed (actually, it's going to be an F but she doesn't know that yet).

I'm pleased (again) with her organisational skills. She said, "I want to give it a title," and immediately ruled a line on which to write "Crack The Code."

Then, instead of colouring in as she goes along, she is writing the coordinates in the correct cells, to colour in all at once at the end. She's also circling the ones that she has done, so she knows where she's up to. I'm impressed!

Sebastian's been honing his cutting skills:

Elizabeth's been keenly doing more maths - two pages of her book, which is bringing her on to simple addition.

She did some of her English book, too, writing the letters 'ck' and 'qu' in the right places.

Francesca didn't do English as such, but she did some writing for History. We've started the long-awaited time line:

It runs from Francesca's birth to the present day, with a selection of photos of key events during that time. She's writing a sentence or two to go with each photo. I'm hoping to develop the idea, perhaps adding more past events or introducing things that happened prior to her birth. We'll zoom out a bit, to a larger scale, and do events from my lifetime (perhaps) and then zoom out again to do events in our house's lifetime (c100 years) etc. I'm excited to have finally got started with this project.

And finally... We played outside today, with neighbours, after school. It was cold enough for coats and gloves but dry and pleasant enough to get the toys out/use the scooters/ride the tractor/use the slide. Roll on summer!

Three Top Times Tables Apps For iPhone

In this post, I have some recommendations for iPhone apps to help 4-6 year olds learn their times tables. All in good time though. If that's all you came for, scroll down, otherwise, indulge me while I regale you with the usual sort of tale of our day...

Elizabeth has worked super-hard today. She did her maths app while I did violin with Francesca. Then, she moved on to literacy. She read some of the words from the last Jolly Phonics big book. Words like: swing, broom, roundabout, bat and ball, squirrels and lobster pots. Good stuff!

Then she did her word wall with me and we've started ticking on the backs of the words she is confident with, with a view to removing these from the pack and replacing them with harder ones. These are the words that I am hoping she'll get to know by sight - like 'said' which is hard to sound out but very common.

Then she did some of her new maths book. I had found it in a pile of stuff donated by a kind friend. It's perfect for where she is with her maths because it is about counting to ten and number recognition and formation. She did the first page and got a sticker reward. She was especially pleased when I showed her that the book is for 5-6 year olds.

Then she did some cutting and sticking to match pictures with the letters they begin with and the word written fully.

Still more after that, she did one of the phonics sheets that I'd made her - with sounds b and f. She drew a bone for b and a fan for f.

AND she did some of her literacy book, practising writing sounds ff, ss, ll and zz in the right places to make words. I'm very impressed with her work ethic. Long may it last!

Francesca did a pretty good practice on the violin this morning. She didn't get through everything but there was an awful lot to do, so we'll tackle more tomorrow.

After that, she went off to listen to a story tape (she's found the long lost and much loved Matilda) despite my saying that I wanted her to do her maths and English. This meant that later, when Elizabeth had her tv time, Francesca was still working on her maths and English. She didn't mind too much and she did get to watch some tv later. We've moved tv day to a Monday so that Francesca isn't such a zombie at her violin lesson on a Friday.

Later, she appeared downstairs again and did some maths on an app. More on those apps in a moment.

She's not the only one interested in maths apps. Sebastian wanted my phone and refused to be fobbed off with the easy-peasy drawing thing or the fishy game. "My maths!" he insisted, so, I made a log-in for him to do that maths that Elizabeth has just worked through. It was too easy for Elizabeth. It didn't do any harm to let him play with it.

Well, he followed the instructions perfectly and had no problem with the first section, on grouping objects according to shape and colour. He fell down on the second section, which required one to know ones colours. So, we know what to aim for next with Sebastian - once he knows his colours, this app will be a breeze!

For literacy, Francesca made a word family picture. This is a way to help with spelling. You take a group of words with the same spelling pattern and make a picture to remind you that they all belong in the same family.

Ours was 'ound'. Francesca's picture represents lots of 'ound' words.

The writing says, "A hound found flowers in the ground round the mound. A pounding sound is bound to wake them."

It was a fun way to think about spellings - I hope we'll do a whole set of these pictures, for memory jogging when it comes to spelling. Francesca asks for lots of spellings when she's writing her stories. She hates to make mistakes so she always wants confirmation. I'm writing them all in a spelling book for her, so she can look them up herself. This word-family work ought to reinforce this.

Elizabeth made cakes again. I wrote my Be-Ro recipe out more simply for her, with pictures, and helped her through it. I'm hoping that it'll jog her memory when she does it the next few times, even though she may not be able to read it all, so she'll become more independent when cooking. She's certainly confident and enthusiastic. No reason why she shouldn't make her own cakes these days!

Those apps I mentioned....

Someone was asking me if there were any apps I could recommend for getting a child of about 5 to learn their times tables.

These are a few that we've been using to encourage Francesca.

Mental Maths by Trilliarden - This is our favourite maths app at the moment. Well worth a few pence for the full functionality, though you can try it in 'lite' for free. It does all sorts of maths and caters for many levels of ability. For times tables, I love that I can specify which tables I want Francesca to work with. She loves the challenge of finding out what the picture is going to be and she works hard so as not to get any grey squares (questions wrong). It only goes up to 10x, which is fine for us at the moment but I wonder why it doesn't do the full 12?

Times Tables Game by WissApp - This is a simple, sweet little game for practising times tables. It is easy to use and very cheap to upgrade to get all the tables, right up to 12x12. I like this as a change from Mental Maths. I can select which tables are to be practised.

Times Tables Personal Assistant by Unit11 - For variety and versatility, this app scores highly. Francesca loves the fact that she has her own login and a little icon which she chose to go with her name. I like the fact that I can choose from a range of styles of questioning - multi-choice, keypad entry, drag and drop etc. It is useful for practising the full range of tables and, again, I think we'll enjoy using it as a change from Mental Maths.

Cooking and Sewing

I don't usually bother to blog what we've been up to at the weekend because we don't 'do' school, officially.

Never the less, learning takes place all the time, as we know, and I took some nice photos today of some learning and collaboration happening, simply through the things the children wanted to do.

Elizabeth renewed her interest in sewing and continued her little bookmark that she started ages ago.

Sebastian got our the ever-popular woodworking tools for a bit of claw-hammer action.

Francesca and Elizabeth baked little chocolate cakes while I cooked tea. Francesca had to read and interpret the recipe herself, and instruct the sous-chef. They did really well and the cakes were delicious.

Invisible Ink And Secret Messages

It was enormously gratifying to hear Francesca skipping out of her violin lesson today declaring that she had had such a brilliant day. "I haven't done anything I didn't want to do! I even wanted to do violin!" Wow.

Her lesson went well and her teacher has selected one of her exam pieces to make a start on this week.

We didn't do an official violin practice this morning but, as we had friends round, Francesca got out the violin, unbidden, and gave an impromptu concert, which was nice, not least because it was in the other room(!)

With the friends, there were 8 children round my dining table this morning. Their mums had brought some delicious baking round for snacks but we did manage to do some 'work' before the food.

We did some 'secret messages' and made some 'invisible ink'.

The secret messages were prepared in advance, by me. They consisted of drawings done in white wax crayon, which could be revealed by colouring over them with felt pen. I think everyone enjoyed that, except the two year olds who didn't quite have the staying power for such intensive colouring in.

Once my 'secret' pictures had been revealed, the children had a go at making their own.

I then showed them some ostensibly blank peices of paper, on which I had written things in 'invisible ink'. Actually, the writing wasn't as invisible as I'd hoped and I was waiting for the older children to read out the words, but they didn't (thanks!) I had tried to disguise the words by adding extra squiggles in plain water.

We had to develop the messages using heat. My radiators and hair drier weren't up to the task so I popped them in the oven for 10 minutes at quite a high temperature, whereupon the messages were clearly revealed, showing what had been used to write them in each case.

Then we had a go a making our own invisible inks using:

• lemon juice
• milk
• vinegar
• sodium bicarbonate solution
• onion juice
• sugar solution
• soap solution

It was fun! I wish I'd got pictures of them all sitting round the table working enthusiatically. There was also a wonderful interlude of quiet chomping when the flapjacks and melting moments came out...

At another time during the day, Francesca, completely without prompting, took out her seeds project and helped herself to a piece of plain paper. She then neatly wrote and underlined a title "Wake up Littel Seeds" and drew a wonderful flowering plant, with soil and some orange blobs which are probably worms. Underneath, she ruled some lines for writing and paraphrased the worksheet that she had done last week, about the plant needing sunlight and water and soil. I am amazed at her presentation skills - all so neat! Much more artistic than me, perhaps. This, she said, was her English work for the day. It wasn't much but at least she was keen.

Both girls did some maths on the apps.

We walked up the the High Street for milk and Sebastian walked there and back - no pushchair! Then we all walked to violin - No Pushchair!! Liberating :)