The Wellyboots Tribe Step Forth - again!!

Further to another blog crash - test!!

Yup I've moved my blog again and copied all my recent posts over - but minus the comments - sorry folks!!

The blogring is there on the right, but it's not yellow - ?? - I don't know why!!

Did a touch of school this morning with great enthusiam from Joel over his lapbook and he just 'got on' with his maths too - no fuss and few mistakes

Had a chat with Jax online about file sharing (and other stuff too which was nice ) - actually I decided Trillian is safer and Pexit is too huge - kept jamming my computer, so I uninstalled it - after spending all yesterday evening configuring it

Did a bit more school (but not much) before swimming. Still don't know if the boys are going up - maybe next week. They normally only do one or two weeks of 'testing' - this was the third !!

Fiddled around on here this evening doing not a lot

Going to have an early night now I think - back is sore, baby is manic...might even watch a vid' with Paul if he's not studying tonight.

Hope you all had a nice Saturday. Ours was busy with lots of toing and froing to various recreational activities (tennis and ballet). Jacob has gone up to 'orange' in tennis, so that means the boys are out for an hour and a half on Saturday mornings now, get back about 10.55 and Boo's ballet starts at 11am! This would be fine if we had a car, but Paul does all the runs on his (no sorry my because his needs a new back wheel) bike. Couple all that with Jacob going to a mates, Joel having a mate to play and Paul completeing his dissitation - it's been a fairly productive day.

Well, the first two flaps of Joel's Grammar Lapbook are done (nouns and adjectives) and we should manage to cover the verbs and pronouns flaps this week So far it looks really good and Joel was pleased to start sticking in the bits he'd done yesterday and see it coming together.

The Egypt lapbook is more of a struggle. On Monday I tried to get both boys working on it together, but it was a nightmare, so I think I've decided to let it be Jacob's project instead, but even then it's going to be a tough one. He did manage to finish off fact-finding for the last Egyptian Period (of ancient Egypt) but I decided he was going to need a lot more help than I had originally intended to give. Then we started putting the first little book together - which he was pleased to do He enjoyed the cutting out (well sort of) and has copied 3 pages of his notes across into sentance form, so he can see it forming a story, which is nice.

I've looked ahead though at what he should cover next (according to the project pack I bought online) and I think that some of the topics are probably going to just be too vast for him to get anything concrete onto paper - I'm not sure even I could do it very well  I've spent hours trauling the internet and lots of the information seems to either be conflicting, or arranged into differently named 'periods' and it's all a bit confusing! The kids sites don't cover the right kind of stuff and the other sites are way over Jake's head. I think maybe I'm going to have to re-think it all and come up with my own ideas - that way it will be better suited to what I think will interest Jacob and what he can realistically achieve.

For Maths, I did get out the Geomag and the 1cm cubes the other day. Jake was doing faces, vertices & edges, so we played at trying to make irregular rule-breaking shapes. That was quite fun.

Jacob's grammar this week was a few exercises on 'prepositions' (in, at, on, of, for, by, etc...) and I realised when I looked at his work why his speech is sometimes so muddled! He was reading sentances that he was supposed to correct (i.e. spot the mistake) and to him there wasn't anything wrong with them - they made perfect sense. Prepositions were the little words that didn't seep into his vocabulary until he was about 4 or so (and that Phoebe doesn't use now at 3) and it shows! So for example, he wrote "the driver was fined BY speeding", and when he prays he often says "Thankyou Father, for that..." It was a very useful thing to be able to pin-point as something to work on as it has never been strikingly obvious where his language struggles lay, but I think this was a key discovery.

Aside from school, Paul is studying hard to get his dissitation finished off this weekend. It has to be in on Monday, so we won't see him much the next two days I'm sure.   Mum has come over for a couple of days at the end of her Easter break (her school had three weeks off - the joys of working in the private sector!!) and is playing Polly Pockets with the girls at the moment, which is keeping them happy and amused - and quiet! Ellie is napping, Joel is sat here on my knee reading what I'm typing (and laughing because I've mentioned him ), Jacob is hoovering the kitchen (after-lunch chores) and then hopefully the boys are going to go outside (Joel says they're not and it looks like rain anyway  ), so maybe I'll get them to clean their room ..!

Joel's gone now (he's a weight these days!!) and I'm eating a bit of Easter egg. The house is really quiet for a Friday afternoon - it can't last!! I should make the most of it really and go clean or something, but...blogging is so much more fun! Or maybe there's some school prep' I could emerse myself in...there must be something I can do other than clean (and I did already do the bathroom this morning)!!

With a backyard this big we have our own!! Who says HE kids don't socialise? This was the scene in our our yard at 5pm tonight - I counted 11 children at one point (ages 16 months to 10yrs) - they were confined to the OUTSIDE mind !! 

More on the rest of the day later

For a change the boys had Bible, handwriting, and Maths all done and dusted by 10.30 this morning. They just sailed through and concentrated well - first time in ages - finishing at the same time as each other (like they are supposed to) which served to show me that the work & quantity I set them each is about equal to their ability, which I do doubt at times. So they got to take their break together and we had an altogether pleasent morning. In fact the whole day has been quite pleasant - a breath of fresh air after yesterday

The girls were out at 'Seedlings' with Helen again this morning (oh, how I love the return of routine!!) and Ellie joined us at the table with a pot of crayons and an old colouring book - which kept her happy and feeling included for the most part

Things fell apart a bit momentarily around lunch-time when everyone (including me) got ratty and cross , but all seemed to settle again afterwards - gladly

I didn't even go there with history this afternoon - couldn't face it!! I was awake at 4.30 this morning and couldn't get much sleep after that for some strange reason, so I started the day tired and now I feel I just need to curl up and sleep  - and it's only 6 o'clock !!

Tea-time!!

It's been one of those days when nothing goes like it should! The girls were supposed to go to playgroup and the boys were supposed to get really excited about the idea of making a lapbook about Egypt, but no The girls didn't have playgroup because the schools don't start back until tomorrow here, which sent Phoebe into floods of tears. They are both SO looking forward to showing off their holiday makes (the lapbooks) to 'Nicki' - the playgroup leader. Fortunately my friend Helen was willing to take them for a couple of hours, which cheered Phoebe up - they showed their books to her instead and that seemed to settle that problem. This meant I was then able to concentrate on the boys as planned.

We got all the bitty stuff out of the way first thing, as usual - Bible study, handwritting and Maths. Maths was easy today I felt we could have spent more time on the geometry that Jacob was doing and got out the geomags or something, but he is really workbook orientated - likes to know what he has to do and does no more than he has to!! Still, maybe we'll do some 'expansion activities' on that tomorrow?

Then they had a break and that crept into lunch-time, so we had an early lunch in the hope of starting 'Egypt' before the girls came home - which we did, but only just.

Initially the idea of a lapbook was met with enthusiasm, but when I told the boys that they had to do the 'finding out' for the inside all the fun seemed to vanish in a flash I think they hoped I was going to tell them everything!! Research is NOT a big hit in this house sadly and getting the boys to work together is a real challenge. All Joel was willing to do was read, but the level was too hard for him, so he was not really understanding what he was reading and if Jacob read Joel just switched off  and rolled all over the floor, etc... Jacob couldn't seem to remember any of what he was reading either, let alone take 'notes' on it - even though it was all in nice short paragraphs with clear headings - Every time I went out of the room (which of course I had to do now and again with the girls now home and Ellie about too) all work stopped and both boys went into 'lark-about' mode. I was thoroughly stress by the end of an hour of this, but we had not really achieved much The boys were supposed to be finding out what the six/seven time periods of Egyptian history were called, when they were (what years) and what important things happened in each of them. Not really that tall an order! We got as far as the last 'period' in the end, but it took about 2 hours  - with only about 45 minutes of that really spent working though!! Not quite sure how we can get over this lack of desire to read/find out. Looking at the pictures is all very nice, which is what they are very willing to do. They do tell you some stuff I guess, but not necessarily what you are setting out to learn! More to do tomorrow - finish off taking notes on that last 'period', when a lot more is known and there will be much more to write down (sigh) and then we can put the first mini-book together. Hopefully that might inspire them & spur them on a little more..!!

One thing that was interesting was reading the history book's version of the events in Egypt and drawing them alongside the Biblical account of the growth of the Israelite nation within Egypt and then the Exodus. They match up very well. The names given to people and events are different and the perspective is altered of course, but the actual pattern of events matches very well. This little add-in I did not expect the boys to grasp by themselves, but when I read the Bible story they could see how both books said the same thing, but told the story differently  - well at least we achieved that much!

THEN I started Joel's grammar lapbook with him - which he met with much greater enthusiasm and got stuck into straight away. Not sure why - maybe because really we are just re-covering old ground and he already has an understanding of what we are doing. Anyway, at least that was more fun

And now I need to hand over the computer to Paul for his study time

Oh yes, one more FANTASTIC thing that did happened today, and brightended it up somewhat, was that some friends of ours sent us £200 for driving lessons - about the cost of an intensive course!! Now, who goes first is the question?! P. needs to be able to drive for his work; I need it to have more freedom with the kids. He is more likely to get help paying for his lessons than I am (i.e. from a church), but his need is perhaps more urgent than mine and I am heavily pregnant of course, which is a negative. I could perhaps, just about get it done before baby comes - not sure about the emergancy stop thing though, or all the twisting with the maneouvers etc... We could just bank the money and wait I guess... Hmmm - we really need to think on this one, but FAB to get given the money - a real answer to a long-term prayer (persistent widow style!!).

Well - I designed my own nappy the other night!! I'm no needle women, but it came to me in a flash of inspiration (where has this creative streak come from all of a sudden I ask myself?). It's basically 6 layers of micro-fibre towelling sown together into a sort of kite-shaped terry (only not terry) with a thicker pad in the middle and with gusseted legs. I'm really pleased with it - can't wait to try it out now!!

(and to anyone who notices - yes, this is a copy from my comments on Blogspot, but I thought the post didn't make sense without this little explanation!!)

Piccies of MY NAPPY make can be found here - click each one to see bigger

I have decided that our (well Joel's) next Lapbook topic will be "Grammar" - how boring does that sound?!! But he has difficulty remembering all the different 'types' of words - well there are a lot to learn and I don't think I ever remembered them!! Despite going over and over them (with Jolly Grammar) he still can't remember them, so I'm hoping that making a lapbook will do the trick - visual and physical skill coming into play And if he hasn't 'got it' by the time the book is made he can go back to it over and over to remind himself - which I hope he will. I actually don't think it will be that boring - I shall try not to let it be!!

Anyway, I'd best go do something constructive with the kids today (spent the whole day playing at finding a new blog-site yesterday) - poor neglected loves, but fortunately a friend of theirs did come round to play, so that helped (but not with the mess!!). I've promised the boys they can make a 'zook' (from Bamzooki) on the computer with me today and that Abbie can make a crocodile thing - so best get busy!!

Looking forward to seeing how this blog works - if it doesn't you'll find me back in blogger in about a month!!