Niamh's maths

Niamh finished her first level of Alpha Mathusee maths on the 16th December, and naturally wants to get a reward like her sister. So she has also chosen to go and watch a movie which we will try and fit in this week while Mike is off. She has been doing some drills on the mathusee website because there are a lot of number facts to remember, and I don't want all of that hard work to go out the window due to the Christmas break.

Jude's tracing

Jude has enjoyed taking out the tracing cards and tracing them all out over the past two weeks, it certainly makes him concentrate on keeping his pencil hold steady, good practice for fine motor skills. This is just one of the cards he traced today.

A small milestone

I always wonder to myself how old the others were when they could get past certain milestones, and wish I had kept more of a record. Jude has just finished his first handwriting book which he really enjoyed doing, finished up to 3 pages a day too. His counting and Maths skills seem to be quite sharp too, and at 4 and a half he is counting up to 100 as well as identifying all the numbers up to 100, he counts backwards too and has just started skip counting in 10's. Eden was learning skip counting in sixes this week and I could see he was really trying to pick up on it too.
Ciara is slowly learning all the letters, and has just started asking what the colour of things are, she seems to be pretty certain that her most favourite blanket is pink, and says about other things that are pink - "pink like my didi(her name for her blanket)".

Making the Advent Calendar

Niamh has finished sewing her sweet pouches.
Niamh helping mum stitch the pouches on with her new toy - a glue gun.
Gold fabric paint for the numbers.
Planning the layout of the Bethlehem scene.
Eden and Niamh putting the final decorating touches on - the stars!

Ciara's painting, Eden's narration!

Ciara paints a rainbow.


Eden chose to do her narration on the Greek myth Pandora's Box this week, and of course there had to be an illustration to go along with it.

Art by Eden

Watercolour of a misty castle.

Marker dragon.
We went around to a friends house for some Christmas crafts on Saturday, and she had three beautiful cats. So Eden sketched this as a Thank you card for her.

Learning to sight read

Up till now Niamh has been playing violin by ear, but now the teacher is showing her how to sight read. She has picked it up very quickly, and loves just doing drill sheets to learn the notes. The tunes she plays by ear are a lot more advanced than this one, so it will probably take a while before her sight reading can keep up with her level of playing.

Hama beads and plasticine creations

Jude enjoying some Hama beads.
His finished creation.
Niamh's plasticine butterfly.

Learning about the Tabernacle

This has been such a rich subject to learn about with the children as it ties in so many Biblical truths and spans the Old and New Testament.
Eden's drawing of the tent of meeting with the laver for the priests to wash and the altar. The cloud is rising out of the Holy of Holies at the back of the Tabernacle.
Eden's drawing of The Golden lampstand which was never allowed to go out.
Uncle Grant got us these books at a discount price through the website he purchases his church books through.
This book has the model of the Tabernacle to make, so we should have fun building this. What is interesting about this book is that it tells the story of the Israelites and the Tabernacle as if it was a story rather than the truth, and the girls picked up on this straight away, criticising it for it's approach. It is great to see they are developing discernment even now.

Eden loves English

Eden really seems to have a passion for reading, writing and grammar/spelling. She has been doing synonyms and antonyms and when she struggled to find a synonym for one of the words in her workbook I showed her our Thesaurus. She was quite blown away that someone had made a book just listing many synonyms for so many words, that she just started reading one after the other. But that wasn't good enough either so she pulled out some paper and just started copying them. Needless to say I had to stop her after two pages so that she could finish her work.



Another narration piece, Eden chose to do it on "The Sun and the North Wind", the above piece has not been proofread yet.
Often Eden will ask me to read words out of our Essential Spelling list book so that she can test herself, she just loves to spell things right.

This is Niamh's narration of "The Sun and the North Wind". She has taken to writing really quickly and did not seem to have to get over the writing block that Eden struggled with when she was the same age. The only thing that gets to Niamh is that she remembers so much of the story so feels that she needs to write down so much, and then gets frustrated because she takes so long to finish.

More Desert Crafts

The final display(well nearly, we added some more to it this afternoon after the photo was taken).
A gila monster, one of the only two poisonous lizards in the world. We have enjoyed watching some youtube vids on this lizard as well as a lot of other Desert animals on the National Geographic channel.
Another Gila Monster.
Jude painting a camel.
and gluing brown sugar down for the sand.

Eden has a hand at a bit of origami with this camel.

Jude's first sentence

Friday afternoon was such a lovely afternoon, we spent it in the playroom, it was cosy inside and raining outside. Jude said he wanted to write "I have the best dad" on the board for his dad to see when he got home. He did the whole thing himself I just had to tell him to put an "e" on have. He was so chuffed to write it by himself. I tell you I wouldn't swap these firsts for anything in the world, I wish I could just imprint on my mind how special they are.

Niamh got busy painting, and with Guy Fawkes just past she decided to put some fireworks on her painting using glitter glue.
Not sure if you can see this one, but they all took the pattern blocks and got very creative tracing around them to make all sorts of pictures.

Desert Craft - Desert Scene

This was quite an interesting craft, because the cactus was created by using Ciara's welly - the kids enjoyed that thoroughly.

Exodus Craft - The Golden lampstand

Niamh has finished her Menorah!

High Priest sketch by Eden

For as long as I can remember Eden loves to draw things that have a lot of detail, so grabbed the opportunity to sketch a picture of a High Priest in full outfit with breastplate, ephod, robe, embroidered coat, turban and girdle.

Learning about the Desert - cactus

Jude's new theme is the desert, and he made and decorated this cactus with spikes and blossoms today. Eden couldn't resist drawing a little birdie nesting in the cactus.

5 children and it

We have had this audio cd for a while and the children listened to it a few times, but after getting it out again a couple of weeks ago, they have listened to it over ten times I am sure. What is great is that Jude is starting to really enjoy the stories now too.
And then we managed to get the DVD out of it too. They changed the story quite a lot for the movie, but the children enjoyed it nonetheless.

Mozart

Mike won an amazon voucher so we were able to buy some new books and cd's. This is one cd the children have been begging for, for a long time, and we have not been disappointed. Three children voyage with Mozart's son into the past and watch his life as a young boy growing up. (What was really funny is that I left them in the car while quickly popping into the shops, they carried on listening to this and actually turned up the volume even higher while I was in the shops they love it so much, it made me think how lovely it is that they have such an appreciation for this music - when I got back in the car, Eden said "All of his music is so brilliant and beautiful").

We were all astounded to hear this symphony below, it was his first complete symphony which he wrote at the age of 8.

Exodus Craft - The Golden lampstand + Ciara painting

The girls have started making a golden lampstand from gold beads and pasta shapes.
In the holy place there was no window or place to let in the light. It was lit from a glorious golden lampstand, which stood directly opposite the table on the south side in the Holy Place. Made from one piece of solid beaten gold it weighed about 43 kg.



Ciara enjoyed painting with these non messy paintbrushes that she got for her birthday, she wanted to try out each and every colour.