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.

Miracles of Jesus and spring

Jude and I are going through the miracles of Jesus at the moment. And since the girls do a narration piece each week, I thought it would be a nice idea for them to write a newspaper article set in Jesus' time of the miracle of changing water into wine. We read through a few newspaper articles together so they could get an idea, and this is what they came up with.
Eden's article.
Niamh's article.
Jude's colouring in.
Jude often asks if he can colour something in, so I always save a few on our theme that we are doing. I was really pleased with how he did this spring colouring in.

And Ciara's two spring creations so far.

A daffodil day!

Eden doing a chalk pastel daffodil.

Which turned out quite nicely.
Jude's daffodil egg carton craft.
Painting some daffodils.
Niamh's paintings.
Eden copied a SPRING acrostic.
And then made her own one up.

Niamh's copywork poem.

Spring in our homeschool

It's so much easier doing crafts when the inspiration is all around.
Ciara painting some egg cartons to make daffodils.
Niamh painting the grass, the tool not being a paintbrush gave a nice grass effect.
And the sky is sponged in.
Learning is so much fun when it is turned into a game. Niamh takes away a shape and Jude must close his eyes and then work out from the matrix of shapes which one is missing.
Ciara really enjoys playing with the pyramid and opening and closing all the secret rooms.
Just is getting more and more into his lego, he has to follow the instructions to build the different pieces.

A crafty day

Some days just end up being crafty days even if we don't really plan it that way. The kids do love these days.
I was quite impressed when Ciara asked to paint this sun and then proceeded to very carefully colour in the lines.
Making tissue paper print cards - paint the card with watered down acrylic paint.
Cut out tissue paper shapes.
Place them on the wet acrylic paint, and then peel the tissue paper off after about 1 minute - I forgot to take a photo of the finished effect but it does look rather nice.
Jude decided to make bookmarks instead of a card.
Niamh decorated this card with acrylic paint of different thicknesses.