Time Line

I have been wanting to put a time line up in the playroom for years now, and I feel now the time has come where there will be a lot of benefit. I was very fortunate to pick up a big pack of these timelines from freecycle so at least no work has to go into making them. They are now up on the wall, and the children are drawing pictures(see below) of history subjects that we have covered to put up on the timeline.

Eden's Tutankhamen death mask.
Jude's Death Mask, I didn't ask him to do this, he just wanted to copy Eden's.
Roman Soldier by Eden.
Queen Victoria by Eden.
Shakespeare by Eden.

More Shakespeare

Eden has been enjoying reading these stories, through reading many versions the girls are getting very familiar with the stories which should make the process of digging deeper into the language easier.

Eden's portrait sketch of William.
Niamh's portrait sketch of Shakespeare.
Eden's sketch of King Lear, what a lot of twists and turns in this story.
We have loved watching the animated puppet versions of a few Shakespeare Stories, original language is used, highly recommended.

The following few images are just a few of Niamh's copywork sections from Romeo and Juliet. I have found that using a combination of copywork and dictation has really helped the girls with their spelling and writing. They really enjoy it too.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

We all enjoyed watching this movie of Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream. It was in the original Shakespearean language. There was a bit of nudity(not full) which was not appropriate so we forwarded past this.

A Shakespearean Sonnet

We really enjoyed reading and learning "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"
As usual Eden learns best when she can draw what she has learnt, so each line that she could she depicted in an artistic way, and then placed the explanation at the bottom. It was quite an eye opener for Eden and Niamh to learn how the poem was structured in terms of the usage of syllables and rhyming. It has made Eden more aware of looking out for patterns in other poetry.
It turned out so pretty that I have put it up as a wall display in the house.


I do love seeing whatever the children are learning coming out in the free art and their imaginative play. I noticed Niamh had created this picture of Romeo and Juliet. Niamh has also done quite a lot of copywork from the original score of Rome and Juliet.

Mosaic dragonfly

I came across a tiled mosaic of a dragon fly on the internet and remembered how much the girls enjoyed doing a mosaic whilst studying their Rome theme, so I thought it would be a nice addition to the insect display on the wall.
They did theirs with different shades of blue paper and card.
Eden's dragonfly.
Niamh's dragonfly.

Maths, money and modelling!

Jude has enjoyed maths since I taught him the numbers and he then used them to work out bigger digit numbers by reading all the house numbers on peoples doors. We ordered the first mathusee curriculum a good few months ago, but started on the girls old Saxon curriculum first as there are lots of fun games in that curriculum. Jude has been desperate to do the primer though since his sisters both do the mathusee curriculum. He had already done about half the book on and off over the past few months, but when I said we can do some primer he really took the opportunity to get stuck in and ended up doing 58 pages of it in 2 days. I kept on saying Jude, I think that is enough now, but all he said was, it's not enough maths yet, just not enough and carried on and on. He is now nearly finished the book and the idea of going on to Alpha excites him tremendously, I just wander how he will cope with the material in Alpha at age 5, hmmm we will just have to find out.

I pulled out this game recently which the girls used to play. It is called "Pop to the Shops" and it teaches you about buying things with money and working out the change, Jude really got into it.
Jude modelled this caterpillar out of plasticine.
Jude and Ciara's insect display.

Ciara keeping busy!

Ciara is definitely becoming more and more interested in getting involved in crafty things like cutting, colouring in and drawing.
She loved helping cut small squares for the girls mosaic.
She also enjoyed this threading game.
I wanted a photo of her holding her finished sewing job, but she didn't want her face to be in the photo, so I had to make a joke out of it.
I got some lovely smiles and laughs from her.

Pasta Collage for Brownies and Ciara's art

This is the end result of the pasta collage.
Eden's collage.
Niamh's Collage.
Ciara has been really interested in drawing and asked me to show her how to draw a ladybird. I told her what to do and she had a go on her own.

Romeo and Juliet

We have now enjoyed reading an adaption of Romeo and Juliet which is closer to the form that Shakespeare wrote it in, as opposed to a narration. We loved Leon Garfield's version as he cleverly incorporated a lot of original Shakespearean text but abridged it for younger children.
Eden's Romeo and Juliet picture.
Niamh's Romeo and Juliet picture, her own style is certainly developing.
We really enjoyed this book, we will have to look out for a Romeo and Juliet play to go and watch, but next project is making a puppet theatre, and putting on a puppet show.