The Puzzler

Pippin, 2, is diving into puzzles. We did the floor puzzle again repeatedly today and found the insert puzzles which were received well. She also spent a long time colouring whilst Bean, 9, and Plum, 5, were in gymnastics. We read and looked at a lot of books together together and watched Topsy and Tim and Bing.

Plum, 5, enjoyed her gymnastics class today although as it was the last of term they played games together and she said she prefered the classes to playing games. We played in the garden in the afternoon, penalty shot out and shut the box. We played Charlie and Lola snakes and Ladders this morning too and have definitely covered ordinal numbers, 1:1 counting and written numerals today. We then made a den behind the sofa and she played with Bean and Pippin and Pumpkin in it.

Pumpkin, 8, organised running races whilst we were at gymnastics today. The big three raced each other many times. He gave Plum a head start and he and Bean played at tying on races by matching their running and placing their first foot across the line in exactly the same place. He played on the wii with Bean when they got home and watched Fairly Odd Parents in the evening.

Bean watched Hugo today for the second time. He has plans to make his birthday invitations and began by taking a picture of himself and placing Pokemon all over it using an app that he has.

Take a walk on the wild side

Friday

It has been recently reported that today's children can suffer from Nature Deficiency Disorder, not so in our house. Today we saw a second visit to Nyman Gardens and loved it all over again. Bean and Pumpkin made me read all the signs they could see on trees and plants and where the plants were from (really must brush up on my Latin) and we felt and smelt and observed and described and hid and climbed and fell. (Asher fell out his first tree.)


We shared our lunch time with a Robin and two field mice, all of which were less than a foot away from us. The mice running around in the hedge row behind the benches we were on. The boys spent about 15 minutes watching them and I had fresh satisfaction and delight in our choice to home educate. 






















Our house is full of collections of sticks and leaves and cones and seed pods and various other natural findings. I can remember David Attenborough once talking about the importance of collecting things. In fact Nyman's Gardens itself is a huge collection of plants from far and wide. So our house may be full of odd bits and bobs but it is the beginnings of great discoveries.


Pumpkin has spent a lot of time with Plum today, holding her hand, singing to her, cuddling her and playing 'boo.' I love watching the boys relationship grow with each other and their sister and am glad that the transition from two to three has been a smooth and natural one for them all. 


The drawing is one of Bean's, it is the Horsham Museum. The bricks are a skate park built by Pumpkin. Bean also asked me to write "all the numbers" so he could copy them. As a teacher I was always quite apposed to giving the children worksheets of numbers or letters to copy but in the spirit of 'unschooling' I dutifully wrote down the digits from 0 - 9 for him to copy. Sometimes I think it's me that needs de-schooling, not my children!