Half term and lots of crafts

We don't always follow the schools holidays, but it is officially their half term break now, and since it was Eden's camp, and Niamh has also been invited to play this week, I decided it would be a good time for mum to have a nice break too :D. So we are using this free time to just make and play. The girls have been given so many craft sets for their birthdays that I thought it would be a good time to use them now.
Eden got stuck into making a fairy mobile for their bedroom.
Three of the five fairies made so far.
Niamh and Jude got to enjoy some plasticine. They normally mold with playdough, but this is a bit more rigid and easier to use many colours without mixing them up.

Some nice designs.
Jude made his name.
A crazy monster.
And they all had a lot of fun building this kaleidoscope.

Exodus

I have decided that since the Bible lapbook and study is going to take too long, we will carry it on alongside another theme. After all 39 books of the Old Testament is going to take some time to study. We are ALL very excited about making a Tabernacle for the Exodus craft, I have always wanted to see exactly how it looked, and the girls and Jude will learn so much about it once they have actually built it.

The last of the London crafts

Jude really likes colouring in, and has done quite a lot of colouring in of sights for the London them. This is St Paul's Cathedral, he was really meticulous about the symmetry with this one.

The London post box finished.

School work and Jude

Jude is living in a world of numbers and letters at the moment, and I can see he is thinking about how to write them and use them throughout the day as he talks about it a lot.
He has learnt to go quite high with numbers now, and counted to 100 yesterday(with the help of a 100 chart). The dot to dot he is doing above has helped quite a lot with counting.
Eden often sets her younger siblings schoolwork to do. Here she drew Jude a picture of a clown for him to colour in. Yesterday she wrote a story with no punctuation in for Niamh to correct and add capital letters, full stops, commas and quotation marks.

Healthy stew collage

The girls were really consumed with doing this craft, and so enjoyed putting all the beans in place. This is the craft for the Jacob and Esau's story.
Niamh's craft.
Eden's craft.

London craft - Tower Bridge finished

Jude really enjoying decorating this craft. The girls also remember going on the boat with Grandad under the bridge - their boat was not big enough for the bridge to be lifted.

And the bridge opens as the boats come through!

Pandora's Box - Niamh's narration

Niamh chose to do Pandora's Box for her narration. She wrote all of this on her own, I made her fix the spelling mistakes and rewrite it neatly. (She still needs to do the conclusion of the story on the next page).

Genesis craft

I have decided to give the girls a craft to do for each section of their lapbook to make things more fun. Nana had given them a beautiful bible craft book a while ago, and I am so pleased they are going to be able to make some of the crafts out of it now.
This is a stew pot from the story of Jacob and Esau.
Eden is making a collage out of things that would go in a stew, like beans and lentils. Watch this space for the finished collage. (And this has also inspired Eden to want to make a stew herself).

London craft - The Tower Bridge

Jude sponging the river Thames.
I drew the Tower Bridge for Jude to decorate, and tried to make it as accurate as possible. He was so pleased that it looked so real.

Maths

It has been a bit frustrating waiting for Eden's next Maths curriculum level which has taken a lot longer to arrive(from within the UK) than it did on the previous occasion, and every time the postman knocks, she says "Do you think he is bringing my Maths Gamma" (at least she is eager). So she has been keeping busy with some logic exercises every day, and she has thoroughly enjoyed them too. This book is just up mum's street as it has all the types of logic puzzles in that I loved as a child, things like complete the pattern, or copy the(detailed)pattern. Word games like, cocker spaniel is to dog like......., and lots of visual puzzles.

Jude finishes his London Bus

he called it Judees bus and gave it the number 4.

Narration

We read some traditional tales this week, and I asked Eden to write a narration back of a story. She chose to do "The Frog prince". The last time we tried narration, she did not enjoy it, but this time she really got into it. She rushed the first draft, although she wrote a lot so she made some silly spelling mistakes and grammar mistakes, so I asked her to proofread completely by herself and fix all the mistakes. She then wrote it out neatly. I was quite pleased to see that out of her own, she had only ended up making two spelling mistakes in the entire story, and had fixed all grammar.

Some Artwork by Eden

We have been reading some traditional tales this week, and so Eden drew this picture based on a Japanese tale.


This painting of a little doggy is meant to be Toto from the Wizard of Oz, I like his proportions and character.

Learning to read, Christmas and Poetry

It has been so much joy to teach Jude how to read, and he is loving it so much. He can read quite a few of his starter books, and the stories are really humorous, so a real winner with him.

We have started making Christmas cards early this year, it always seems to creep up on us and then we don't have time to post them overseas, so hopefully this year we will get them posted in time.
One of Eden's favourite spare time activities is copying out and illustrating poetry. I have now bought her a poetry journal too, so she can copy them in the book, this one will just be glued in.

More magnet games

Experimenting what materials magnets can work through.
Working through paper.
Working through thin card.
Working through cardboard.
Even through a thick book.
But very very little through metal.
Making a butterfly fly with a magnet.

More London crafts

I love this pic of Jude singing as he is painting a box that will soon become a London bus.

Niamh enjoying the craft too. We started this one with poster paint, but it just cracked off as it dried, so we had to redo it with acrylic paint.
The acrylic went on a lot thicker.
Making a Royal Mail postbox.
Niamh made this London eye, and drew all the people in the pods. She was so pleased when we got it to turn like in real life with a split pin in the middle.

Learning by Osmosis

Jude was busy playing with the pattern blocks and said to me, "Mom, I just made a hexagon with the two red ones." I did not even know that he knew what a hexagon was, but this is what I call learning by osmosis, he had obviously picked it up from teaching the girls and just learned it.
And the next day it was applied further, when he showed me this Big Hexagon.

Girls new study - The Bible

This study is something I have wanted to do with the girls for a while - an overview of the Old and New Testament, including facts and themes along the way. They know so many Bible stories, but don't really know all the books, and how they all fit in, so this will be a learning experience for them as well as me :D