Outside my comfort zone

Mr Exuberance and I, with a little help from Miss Belle, have been taking part in the 30 days of Play challenge.

Each day has a different challenge and the idea is to play, with your child, using the challenge as a starting point for an uninterrupted 15 minutes.

So far, we have done reasonably well. We missed a few days but I always knew that we weren't going to do the weekend days and Monday just got tagged onto the weekend.

Anyway, today's challenge was a sensory tub. This is way out of my comfort zone. I'm not quite sure why.

Paint, play dough and mud don't cause me too much trouble providing they stay off carpets and walls but a sensory box. I think the problem is the mess. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a tidy person but those little bits they could go anywhere and it is doubtful that I will ever get round to resorting the box.

There is also the thought of putting your hand into who knows what. Shouldn't be a problem as I've filled the tub but should I ask the children to do something I don't want to do?

Well, I plucked up my courage and made a small sensory tub with a fitted lid. It seemed a bit safer that way.

The contents were

• shredded paper
• googly eyes
• pipe cleaners
• two small play people
• a flag
• paper straws
• lolly sticks
• Brio houses

The lid went safely on the box. The next thing I knew was that Miss Belle announced that there was a box in the kitchen with a big spider-the pipe cleaners, of course.

Miss Belle and I settled down with the box. Miss Belle quickly requested glue-sure that wasn't part of the idea. She wanted to use the house blocks and straws to make a church steeple. I can't say that the straws stuck too well. Most of the time was spent making a spider with googly eyes, again, involving large quantities of glue.

So it wasn't so bad. Later, we had a little accident with the cocoa pops. If I can keep my courage up all those cocoa pops that hit the wrong part of the kitchen could be used as the basis for another sensory tub-it would fit in so well with Mike Mulligan and the steam shovel.

The Bible in English

The Trinitarian Bible Society's Canadian branch has produced some free publications for children to mark the 400th anniversary of the Authorised (King James) version.

These are well produced and there are versions for different ages.

• a colouring book for preschoolers.
• a primary school aged publication mainly about William Tyndale
• a secondary school version about the story of the English Bible to be read alongside Peter Hallihan's work, The Authorised Version: a wonderful and unfinished history.

We have used all three parts of this.

We found that reading the first few chapters of the primary school version alongside the colouring book was useful with occasional modifications of the language. Some simple printing also enlivened this as well as plenty of description about what a service would be like in Latin. A few sample sentences in Latin help!

 There are plenty of other things that would be useful-using a quill pen, illuminating letters, counting Bibles in the house, acting out William Tyndale's escape from the spies and so on.

The older version has suggestions for further thought and for construction of a timeline.

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Home school Blog Awards 2011

Do pop over to the HSBA page where it is now possible to vote for this year's nominees.

There are so many blogs to look through, in twenty different categories and you can vote once in each group.

I'm looking forward to exploring some different blogs and picking up ideas.

I'm nominted in the Favorite homeschool Mom Blog category. Of course, I would like votes but even if you don't vote for me, do pop over and explore the blog-richness!

Big Machines

This week, I am reading Mike Mulligan and his steam shovel, by Virginia Lee Burton, with Miss Belle and Mr Exuberance.

We will be using ideas from the Five in a Row manual, volume 1, along with some other ideas.

One of the things that we did today was to look at a video of a steam shovel. Steam shovels were old fashioned when Mile Mulligan and his steam shovel was published in 1939 so it was helpful for the children to see what one really looks like.

I've put a few other books together around Big Machines.
The first is another by Virginia Lee Burton, Katy and the big snow.

We've loved these two books that we brought to go with Five in a Row. One of my readers gave a really helpful list of her favourite, or perhaps I should write favorite, US authors and included Virginia Lee Burton. As a result, I've been inspired to order another title-thank you Debbie.

Our other big machine books are by different authors.
Digby and the big flood by Alan Aburrow-Newman is about how a digger saves a town from a flood.
This is one of those books that is being read for the fifth time, in this household.

Richard Scarry's Busy workers isn't just about big machines but has a couple of pages about construction sites and the types of machines found there.

Finally, The building site by Moira Butterfield is a very simple book with flaps. I have to make sure that the flaps are openned fairly as it is much loved.

 We did several further activities around this theme.

Lentil

This week, the younger two children have been enjoying Lentil. This is another of our Five in a row books and most of the ideas this week come from the Five in a Row manual.

Lentil is set in a fictional town, Alto, Ohio and features a boy who frustrated by his inability to sing or whistle learns to play the harmonica.

So what did we do?
Art: black and white drawings as the pictures in Lentil are in black and white. Miss Belle used charcoal and Mr Exuberance used wax crayon. Both children didn't want to leave their pictures in black and white so painted them.

Geography: we located Ohio on the world map. On another day, we made a quick drying clay model of Alto, Ohio.

Science: we talked about taste buds and made lemonade.

Language: started to talk about the difference between the English spoken on each side of the Atlantic. There are several relevant words in the book: "drug store", "barber shop" and "harmonica." We thought of a few more.
History: it was fun to go through the pictures and find, on most pages, indications that this isn't a modern book.
Music: we listened to the harmonica and sang She will be coming round the mountain.


There is so much more that we could do. We change book after a week although there would be plenty in Lentil to keep going for another week.
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Potato Piggies

This is a great Bonfire Night recipe. My Mum used to make it occasionally through the winter months. I loved it as a child. My children seem very happy to help prepare and eat this.
Good comfort food!

The recipe is very simple.

Ingredients:
Baking potato per person
Butter/margarine for mashing
Salt and pepper
Cheddar cheese
Bacon rasher per person

Method
Bake the potatoes.

When the potatoes are cooked, grill the bacon.

Halve the potatoes and shell out the contents keeping the skins intact. Mash the potato with butter/margarine and cheese to taste. Season.

Refill the potato skins-they will be very full.
Grate over a little more cheddar.
Top with a rasher of bacon.
Warm under a grill for 2 minutes until the cheese is melted.
Enjoy!

Update

For those of you who are on Facebook, Delivering Grace now has a Facebook page. Do pop over and preferably, press the "Like" button!
 The picture used was taken only seven miles from central London. One of the advantages of home education is being free to enjoy the outside world. I, and I suspect, the children, will miss being able to go outside so much as winter draws closer.

I recently found The Song for the fifth child. This seemed especially appropriate, yesterday, reading, about the 30 days to hands on play challenge. This is a challenge to play with your child for 15 minutes a day without interruption.

15 minutes without interruption would be a major achievement in this house but amazingly I managed to achieve this today. Some how, I suspect that this might be the only time!

Today, the challenge was to build and play in a fort. Hmmm, I built a fort from chairs, cushions and a blanket but Mr Exuberance wasn't the slightest interested. He wanted to build "Eiffel da Tower" from Duplo and was also sure that it should only have one leg. Not sure that this was quite what was intended but he loved his playtime with Mum and went back to his tower later.

On a quite different theme, Jeremy Walker recently posted a poem, In the dark of night when hell comes knocking. The sort of poem to remember and think about especially in rhe "dark of night" physically and emotionally. That makes it sound too bleak, it really is an encouragement.