Spring outside

This week, there has been a flurry of bike rides. The younger two seem keen to cycle before they start work each morning-I haven't decided whether this helps or hinders the rest of the day. The cycling though has lead to some impromptu nature study. 
We have seen goslings and ducklings,

  a heron,

 now flying away

 and a cormorant, in the tree.

We got talking to someone who told us that the heron was probably after the duck and geese eggs. The cormorant was an exciting sighting as we haven't seen one locally before.

Back to more traditional work, Younger Daughter has discovered a new way of practising times tables. She records them on my phone which gives her a time. We have found that it takes about 15 seconds to say a table clearly and without hesitation. It is possible to say them more quickly but they tend to get gabbled! Anyway, this is proving an excellent way of becoming more proficient.

We have almost finished the Veritas Self-Paced history on the New Testament, Greeks and Romans. Younger Daughter has loved this course; I have learned a fair amount and Youngest Son knows the history song well. We are signed up to start the Middle Ages course soon. The main issue around using this course is the time commitment. It takes about 40 minutes a day. Recently, I have found that fitting everything in is challenging. We have a daily Bible time, reading, handwriting and maths sessions but I am struggling to fit in creative writing and would like to have a daily spelling session. Against this, the children need time to play and I like to keep the afternoons for reading aloud, science, geography, art and exercise. Any suggestions? 

This week's science was meant to be looking at stems, water uptake and transpiration. I have a long history at failing at the "easy" demonstration of water uptake using coloured water. This is the current effort. Looks the same both sides to me. I now have different food colouring on order to see if I can get this to work.

What I'm reading:
What Your Year 2 Child needs to Know
Bitesized Biography of Ulrich Zwingli-review coming soon.

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