History Timeline Treasure Hunt

Yey! Back into it.

We've had a couple of slack weeks for Easter - of course we've still done plenty, including planting seeds, trips out and lots of art but still, it's nice to feel we've done a more 'on task' day today and it's been a full one.

The main attraction has been History. Following on from the timeline we made using photos from Francesca's lifetime, showing key events, my mum and dad have created a similar one for my first five years. It was presented to the children first thing this morning in the form of a treasure hunt, in which they had to find 15 pictures and captions, hidden in envelopes round the house.

Each child was looking for a particular type of envelope and each had a list of places to look.

At length, we had all the photos and captions, we just had to work out which ones went together. Then, there were fuller stories to read, to go with each event.

The children were very entertained by it all (well, the girls were, but Sebastian not so much).

Photos:

We started off with some instructions about whose envelopes were whose and what to do with the envelopes as you find them:

Then they were off! Francesca could read all the clues by herself and made enthusiastically swift progress. Elizabeth asked for help reading the locations and then raced to find her envelopes.

Here's Francesca searching under the settee cushion:

Meanwhile  Sebastian had decided that he had to have his hoody top on and would fasten the zip himself.

Clues were read:

"What the...?!"

Sebastian discovered that you could pick the stamps off the envelopes

The girls busily emptied envelopes and organised the photos

Sebastian wanted to throw the pieces of paper around, so we distracted him with "Maffs" on the iPhone.

At last, all the pictures had captions and accompanying stories.

Francesca set to work colouring in the lettering on her front cover for this project.

Elizabeth busied herself with a glue stick, fixing the pictures onto the stories so we could peg them onto our timeline (where they fitted perfectly, thanks mum!)

I had to finish the gluing because Elizabeth thought Sebastian's Maths game sounded fun

Here's the hive of activity:

Francesca coloured most of the lettering in purple because it's my favourite colour and this bit of History is about me.

After that, I needed a break from History - I wanted to gather my thoughts before we launched into the next tasks so I called a halt to it for now. The children went off to watch tv for a few minutes while I sorted some things I had to do. Then I called them back through to do playdough.

Francesca chose, instead, to do marzipan modelling, making some little marzipan shapes for us to eat later.

Sebastian enjoyed blending more playdough colours

Elizabeth made blueberry muffins.

Here are the marzipan creations being, er, created.

After that, I was getting peckish so I started to prepare for lunch. The playdough went away and Sebastian watched some more tv. Francesca did two pages of her Maths book, with Lego to help. She's learning how adding and subtracting are related and she seems to be getting the hang of it pretty quickly. The Lego helps.

Elizabeth rustled us up a batch of scones for lunch.

This afternoon, we went to the High Street to get some packed lunch things for tomorrow (more on that tomorrow, perhaps!) and then did some playing out, since it was so mild.

Francesca did her violin practise too, and made a birthday card for a friend. I feel as though we've been really busy, which is excellent.