A Day off To Catch up
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)!! 
