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.