Viking Longship

The children have loved putting this together in stages and seeing how it all comes together. It is not quite finished as they have to put oars on, and finish the deck.

A nice reward

Eden finished her final test for her Delta maths course today. She has a fantastic grasp of multiplication and division now, and can do more complicated long division than I ever needed to do by hand. She can also write and read Roman Numerals far more proficiently than I ever have, more fun than useful, and she can work out areas on a few different geometrical shapes. She knew I was going to give her a special gift for finishing this, and did 6 pages in one day yesterday, but I insisted she finish the test today, before she got her reward, and I am glad she did, it was a great confidence booster to her to see she got a distinction in the test.The reward is something she has been asking for for a long time, a quill and ink set.
She tested it out straight away, and will now be able to learn some calligraphy.

Gladys Aylward

Eden writes:

Gladys Aylward was a missionary who went to China to teach people there about Jesus. Soon after she arrived Japanese soldiers came to China and dropped bombs on their city. China was at war. Gladys adopted orphan children, her first was a little girl called Ninepence because she bought her for all the money in her pocket which was nine pence. Soon she was looking after many war orphans. One day the Japanese discovered that Gladys had been a spy for the Chinese, and was against them. They offered a large sum of money if someone could hand her over, but Gladys had escaped into the mountains before anyone could hand her over. Gladys miraculously managed to get all her war orphans across the Yellow River and to safety.

Niamh writes:
Gladys Aylward was a missionary who went to China. She was going to work with Mrs Lawson, after many weeks she found her in Yang Cheng, a beautiful Chinese village that looked like Cinderella's palace. After Mrs Lawson died, Gladys was asked to go from village to village inspecting every little girls feet making sure they were not bound, and telling Bible Stories as she went. Soon a lot of people became Christians. Very soon everyone was calling her Ai-weh-deh which means virtuous one. Gladys had also five adopted children of her own and 394 war orphans that she was looking after. The Japanese were fighting the Chinese and Gladys had to take all of the kids to the caves in the mountains to hide. They went back to Yang Cheng when the Japanese had moved out of the village..... but the Japanese came back and Gladys had to take 94 of the children across the Yellow River. After travelling across big mountains they got to the river safely. They had to pray for a boat to come so they could cross the river. God answered their prayer, a boat came and they could cross the river. Gladys and the children arrived at Sian safely.

Maths update

Well Eden is into long division, and seems to be doing sums that are a lot more complicated than I ever remember us doing when we learnt long division. Did we ever have to divide numbers like 863,458 by 232 by long division?? When she first saw it she took a gulp, but upon doing it through the mathusee graduated way she is really learning to master it, and enjoy it too. It really was music to my ears today to hear her say "Maths is soo much fun", and not because that is how I view Maths, but because it is lovely seeing children enjoy learning so much. I normally mark her work soon after she has finished it so we can go over any problems that she has got wrong, and I have to encourage her not to get despondant if she gets any wrong, she gets upset if she gets two wrong on a page(which in school would be a good grade), but thankfully she does bounce back quickly and is enthusiastic again the next day. I have found this site really good for printing off all manner of long division worksheets as additional practice for her:

Maths drills

Jude is definitely mathematically brained. He pages through our Study Bible daily so that he can count the pages into the thousands. He speaks about time and watches the clock throughout the day. He asks me continuous questions about addition and subtraction, and place value and how many days in a year type questions. If the timer is on, he watches it count down so he can understand time better. He loves his Alpha mathusee, and every time we start a new lesson I think perhaps he is not old enough to grasp this, but he grasps it straight away and even has to skip the dumbing down questions as they frustrate him. There is an introduction to basic algebra in this book, and it is so sweet to hear him say, mommy can I do al be gra now?

Unit Studies

We are all well immersed in Viking History and their way of life. The girls have written their own Viking Adventure stories and Eden has written a poem/song. We have read novels and non fiction, and have thoroughly enjoyed learning about them. The children haven't done as many crafts and illustrations as they normally do, but they have gleaned a lot from books(which they normally do anyway), but that is what makes the studies so interesting in that we never have exactly the same approach.
This will be our last Unit study for some time now as December will be taken up with Christmas crafts and Bible Study, and then we are off to SA. Eden has wanted to learn about rocks/crystal/fossils for a while now, they excite her tremendously and she has bought a few specimens. Uncle Grant will well remember how hysterically excited she got down by the beach when he broke open a granite rock to reveal crystal inside, and Aunty Lindsey gave them a great little science lesson on how crystals form. So that looks like the new Unit Study, perhaps we will be able to get to a cave whilst we are in SA.

Making a Viking Longship

Creating the sides of the longship and the holes for the oars to go in.
Eden learning how to use/getting frustrated with a compass to make many shields to go over the sides of the Viking ship.
Niamh creating the nice wood effect on the boat.

Making an ice table decoration

Eden is working towards her hostess badge for Brownies and had to make a table decoration as one of the requirements.
We picked some winter berries from our garden.
Fill the bowl with water and place berries and leaves in the water.
Place a smaller bowl in the middle, and place the bowl in the freezer.
Once all the water is frozen, remove the inner and outer bowl.
Place frozen table decoration on a plate with a candle in. The effect of the light on the ice doesn't really come through on the photo, but it does have a lovely Christmassy feel about it.