Cauliflower's fluffy and cabbages green

We have been watching our vegetable garden grow over the last few weeks, and this song that we used to sing at Eden's music group when she was one, two and three came back to me. All the children have enjoyed learning the words and singing it too, and then we even found it on youtube. Very sweet song, and catchy too.

Cauliflowers Fluffy and cabbages green
Strawberries are sweeter than any I've seen
Beetroots purple and onions white
All grow steadily day and night

The apples are ripe and the plums are red
The broadbeans are sleeping in their blankety bed

Blackberries are juicy and rhubarbs sour
Marrows fattening hour by hour
Gooseberries hairy and lettuces fat
Radishes round and runner beans flat

The apples are ripe and the plums are red
The broadbeans are sleeping in their blankety bed

Orangey carrots and turnips cream
Reddening tomatoes that used to be green
Brown potatoes in little heaps
Down in the darkness where the celery sleeps

The apples are ripe and the plums are red
The broadbeans are sleeping in their blankety bed, Yea!

Watercolour, insects and maths

Eden's friend gave her watercolours and a canvas for her birthday. She surprised us all by painting this country scene.
Jude and Ciara have started a theme on insects. No child should go through childhood without making a splodge butterfly.


And then Niamh kicked off the next craft by making a caterpillar with a cork for printing - finished pic to follow.
Ciara wanted a go too, nice control Ciara!
Jude doing an exercise with a scale/balance. I am trying my best not to slow Jude down in his appetite for more advanced maths, but at the same time I don't want him to miss out on the fun things the girls got to do at this age too.
Eden has zoomed through her Gamma, and learnt the multiplication tables as if they were a hidden sense I never knew about, I was seriously amazed at how quickly she picked them up - perhaps it is because this curriculum lays it out in such a sensible way. She chose a bar of dark chocolate as her reward, and is now zooming through Delta which is division - the way that multiplication was taught in gamma has made the progression to division really seamless - great for her enthusiasm. I think I have picked up a mantra that I heard another hs mum use - in my house you are NOT allowed to NOT enjoy maths!!

Touch typing, reading and senses!

Eden has been begging to learn how to type like me(touch typing) for a long time, so when we saw this package on special in a pc shop we snapped it up. She is picking it up really quickly, it follows the technique that I used to learn touch typing way back when I was 14, but the software has games too which is great to apply what she has learnt in a fun way.
Jude's reading is coming along nicely, and he like his sisters will be seen throughout the day pouring through books, with him deciphering all the new words. I love love love been a part of this process, and then standing back and watching him put it all together himself. We also play reading games along the way which Jude loves - below is a version of snakes and ladders but each different game follows a new phonics lesson, he learns the rule so quickly this way.
I have always been one to buy lots of books, in fact a month never goes by without some new books been bought. Sometimes it is overwhelming to have so many books in the house, but most of the time it is lovely to see the children pick up a book and suddenly show an interest in something they never have before. Jude picked up an Usborne body book 2 weeks ago, and suddenly wants to know everything happening on each page. We are currently doing the senses, and he wanted to try this fun experiment that you see below.
An ear experiment to show why we have two ears :D - both ears are needed to locate a source of sound. Jude had to close one ear and his eyes so that he could not see where the music was coming from, he spun around.
And then had to point where the music was coming from, his direction was completely wrong which shows that he needs both ears listening. Of course the girls just had to try this out for themselves too.

Jude had fun making this bouncy ball from crystals, a really nice pattern

I think one of the things the children enjoy the most when painting, if not as much as the painting itself is making new colours and experimenting with different colours. Here Jude is trying to make brown for the drum he is painting.

Learning about the Victorians

We have thoroughly enjoyed learning about the Victorians, but as is the case with learning from home, we have learned so much more than we ever imagined.

Eden loves drawing so I have let her draw a lot of what we have been learning, she is really her happiest when she can do this.
A street scene in Victorian times.
Pip in the graveyard - A scene from Charles Dickens' Great Expectations.
Florence Nightingale was a nurse in the Victorian Times who nursed soldiers in the Crimean war in Turkey.

The Victorians

After our Victorian Day out, the children were so enthusiastic about studying the Victorians and so far we are all enjoying it thoroughly.
We watched this DVD about Queen Victoria in her early years.
Charles Dickens was a Victorian author and many of his books give a great insight into what it was like living in the Victorian times. Eden is reading this Classic Starts version.
And I found this easier one to read to Jude and Ciara.
We also have the story on audio cd for the car. It's a great story which we have all enjoyed so far.

The children all love this humorous history series of books, this was a good one for showing the conditions inside a Victorian factory.


This is also another history series which the girls love reading, they have enjoyed reading these two about the Victorians.

What is the night? by Eden Macneil

We have been learning similes and metaphors in poetry, Eden chose to do a poem on the night using metaphors:

What is the night?
The night is a black monster creeping up on you,
it is a black page with yellow spots on it,
the night is a shadow that covers the sky,
it is an ink spot that is spreading on a piece of paper,
the night is a bar of melted dark chocolate with no sugar.
Eden Macneil

Drawings, spring, music and narration

Ciara is getting good at drawing circles now, and shows a lot of interest like Eden did with drawing - always asking for pencils and paper to draw. So this week I showed her how to make faces, and she turned her circles into faces.
This is our second recipe we try for coloured popcorn, and it worked out a lot better than the first, we got the recipe here: Coloured popcorn
Niamh mixing the popcorn into the pink mixture - this would be great for parties.
But we used it on our spring trees for blossoms.
Niamh's tree with blossoms falling down.
Ciara's tree, she wouldn't let me help her at all - such and independant little girl.
The girls music certificates came through a few weeks ago, and Eden heard the good news that she will be doing grade 4 in two months, she is flying through the grades and a lot of work needs to be done in these two months.

This weeks narration was from the miracle of Jesus feeding the 5000. Eden and Niamh did the story from the perspective of the boy whose fish and bread Jesus used for the miracle, it has been fun for them to write these stories from different perspectives.