First half of term

Being English, we divide our learning into terms: Autumn, Spring and Summer. I don't know what happened to Winter but it has never existed as a term. We are just finishing the half term that we started in September. Next week is half term which is a week's break.

This last half of term, has been a settling down time. Middle Son has had an additional tutor and a new on-line tutor for history. Younger Daughter has started her eagerly awaited piano lessons.

We have fine tuned our resources, mainly, adding a spelling programme for the two youngest. None of this family could be described as strong spellers. I am thankful for spell check. Traditional spelling lists and workbooks just weren't working for the children and I can understand why. So many seem to have lists of words to remember with no rationale. For example, verbs where the last letter is or isn't doubled before adding -ing. We are now using All about Spelling. So far, so good! It has a logical, multisensory approach which seems to make sense.

Science has involved making bird feeders.

We are using the Apologia Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day. We are enjoying this in many ways but I am finding that I have to translate what we read from American birds to UK examples. Has anyone else in the UK used this book. Any advice?

Maths has involved workbooks (Mousematics and New Maths Horizons), various manipulatives-buttons are the current favovurite, games-Time Lotto and Sum Swamp, treasure hunts from Clued in Kids to help with tables (review soon!)

and reenforcement on the computer with IXL (another review soon).

The children are loving their self paced history from Veritas.

and the literature which goes with this. Currently, we are reading Detectives in Togas by Henry Winterfield.

We had a trip to the Tower of London with friends from the home education group.

Poppies in the moat which commemorate the First World War dead.

I'm listening to a prayer meeting talk from a London church. I don't know the family concerned nor any more details but this sounds worrying whatever your views on discipline. Please pray.

We are looking forward to our half term break, at home, and hopefully, some battery recharging and cleaning, cooking, planning, tidying, decluttering....

This post is linked to the Weekly Wrap-Up at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

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