Parklife

We have amazing parks around where we live. From skate parks in Marlow, Princes Risborough and Missenden, to woodland ones at NT Waddesdon and Hughenden to the local public parks at West Wycombe, Naphill, Speen, Booker, Ellesborough and beyond - we are spoilt for choice.

No agenda here - it's just a fantastic way to spend a break time or wind down after school. Councils get a hard time but I can't fault our free public parks and green spaces and we make the most of these fantastic places.

Who doesn't love a bit of balancing, swinging, sliding, hanging and climbing...?

The Complex Verb Universe

Verbs don't sit into nice little boxes. There are rules and exceptions around everything from tense to first/third person, plurals to perfect form.

I could go into excruciating detail to teach the boys but I'd have to learn it all myself first (yawn), they would be disengaged (yawn again) and the impact on their written and spoken grammar would be minimal. So what's the point of learning forms, tenses and grammatical tools?

In a nutshell it's to make sure that what you say conveys what you mean in the most elegant way possible. It's also great to be able to alienate friends and family by correcting a grammatical faux pas :
"I think you mean whom, not who."
I think you're off my Christmas card list.

Demonstrating an understanding of grammatical constructs through fluent, interesting and clear sentences is important. Being able to define and explain grammar is not.

Today we looked at three useful verb types that help us with meaning, with a little help from the Mr Men and Little Miss books.

Imperative verbs are provided by Little Miss Bossy. They tell you what to do which is brilliant for instructions, recipes and warning signs. We used a recipe book to brainstorm imperative verbs.

Modal verbs belong to the auxiliary (helping) family of verbs, which support a main verb. Modal verbs indicate certainty, possibility or a lack thereof and so they are supplied by Mr Jelly who is often unsure. They can help indicate the necessity or likelihood : should, won't, can, must. They're useful in debates, requests and nagging small children to brush their teeth properly : You MUST brush your teeth or they WILL fall out.

Powerful verbs are excellent for story telling and helping the reader or listener to imagine a situation; provided by Little Miss Magic as they add that special something to a story. They're used all the time in fiction but also pop up regularly for emotive and dramatic reasons in news reports.

Powerful verbs also provide a useful link to synonyms : I ran down the road.
Sprinkle the magic to hint at context and deepen meaning :
I bolted down the road / I flew down the road / I raced down the road / I sprinted down the road / I bounded down the road.

I don't know any adults who can confidently explain the entire verby universe - maybe it's just not a topic that comes up much at parties. I'm not expecting the boys to; by far the most important thing is that their correct use becomes natural.

The best way to achieve that is to speak well, use rich vocabulary and read often and aloud. For good grammar you need an ear for the right sound.

Flying High

Through the wonder of Tesco vouchers we were able to go to Airkix for a Father's Day treat and experience indoor skydiving.

K & S were beyond excited but this represented another epic challenge for W (with helmet, suit, goggles and ear plugs to contend with) and no small challenge for me who dislikes heights and gets a cold sweat in any situation in which I have to relinquish physical control.

To cut a long, fantastic day short - it was brilliant. I was first up (typical!) and with W wavering I didn't have time to do anything except set a good example and throw myself in there to the depressing sound of them turning up the wind a few notches to keep me airborne.

Despite steaming up his goggles with tears and having no ability to reassure him other than hand signals as the wind tunnel was so loud, W got over his fears, went for it and loved it. We were beyond proud.

Every time K walks into a new social situation with his head high and every time W takes on a new physical challenge I glow with pride. Out of everything we wanted to achieve with home ed that is the headline for our family : we want to grab the amazing opportunities life offers.

The Making of Us

What a resource -
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/the-making-of-me-and-you

This BBC link is a springboard to some fabulous human body work. The possibilities are endless but we've spent a couple of hours on some unstructured exploration:

Weight, convert between imperial / metric
Finding out height, team work required!
Big numbers - what's a trillion, what's an octillian
Imagining 2000L using water bottles
Microbes - how many and what are they up to?
How much our organs weigh & does your soul weigh anything?
Percentages - how much of you is water
Elements, which interesting things have you got in your body

There is No Hurry

Rivers know this : there is no hurry.

We shall get there some day.

Winnie the Pooh, A.A.Milne

A morning spent in the river with sunshine, dogs & wellies full of water. Happy days.

Paperwork - Practical Planning

Structure. A dirty word in some EHE families, a survival technique in others. I'm the planning type and so structure is my friend but avoid the rest of this post if you follow an unstructured approach as it may offend.

I love structure because I love stationery. Labels, dividers, lever arch files ... There's nothing quite as satisfying as well ordered paperwork, organised in files and lined up on a shelf.

Side note - good tip for stationery / stationary is that the one with the A is for Adjective (a stationary car) so the E must be the noun.

Approaching a full curriculum can be a bit overwhelming if, like me, you haven't taught the primary NC before. I've been through how to start tackling the big-picture objectives (if you're following the NC) here : http://uncommonlyeducated.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/200-pages.html) so this post is just to briefly share our organisational approach to the day to day business of planning and teaching .. through the wonder of A4 folders.

Produced Work
> One or two folders per child, with dividers by subject for them to keep their worksheets, drawings, notes, etc.

English and Maths
> One folder of Applied Maths worksheets, organised by topic. Perfect for when you need a bit of extension, reinforcement or practical application of a particular skill.
> One folder of English scheme notes, arranged by term or topic - mostly lists of which electronic or book resources to use alongside some worksheets/activities.

Topics
> One folder of exciting topic work ideas, unformed - bits and pieces, things I've found on wanders through the internet or from Facebook links from friends and forums. The place to go when I need inspiration for a theme day or scheme of work.
> One folder of stand alone activity lessons : science experiments, cooking games, challenges, etc. Perfect for when I need to pull something out of the bag after a 'bitty' morning.

Transfer Test
> One folder for 11+ skills sheets, examples, practice questions, etc.

Magazine Files 
> By subject, with workbooks for spelling, handwriting & particular maths skills, plus leaflets for exciting outings.

Electronically I keep files by subject with powerpoints, useful links, activities and worksheets - as soon as I'm planning to use them I'll print out any necessary resources and add to the folders above, ready to grab.

Our curriculum choice is our own so although we follow the NC we're under no legal obligation to do so - having a record of the work we've done also isn't a requirement. From a personal perspective, I find it reassuring and gives me a measure of progress and continuity, putting the boys in the best position to slot back into mainstream when the time comes.

And it means I get to buy loads of stationery. Yay.

Making Fire

Loving these sunny days. We've found EHE to be the reverse of school in terms of work pattern : we get loads done when the sun is shining. The summer term is full to the brim with science experiments, reading and talking in the sunshine and outings to interesting places.

When I was teaching the summer term was the toughest - a room full of kids (and one teacher) who wanted to be outdoors but were trapped in a small, hot room together for hours on end. I miss an awful lot about teaching in a school, but not that.

So the sun is out and our pace picks up. We're motoring through literacy, science and maths and the boys are actively seeking out learning opportunities. At 8am this morning we were making potato stars because W wanted to set up an experiment about osmosis.

The other awesome thing about the sun, other than relying on it for life, is that it is actually interesting. The moon might be great for tides and werewolves but it's just a rock. The sun is super-hot, gassy and destroys things - what's not to love? Curriculum links are easy: from ancient Egyptians and their worship of Ra to space, chemistry and geography.

Nothing so fancy for us today, just a good bit of exploring how a magnifying glass works and testing out what burns (no ants harmed, obviously). Learning shouldn't be this fun.

Getting On

A bad day yesterday doesn't mean a bad day today : we start fresh, the past is past (thanks mindfulness app). K asks if I want a cuddle. I don't need asking twice.

Lots of parents wish they could spend more time with their children at this age; I'm in the unusual position of spending almost every waking hour with mine. It's a blessing and a curse.

First out, I like my kids. I know they're random and a bit awkward socially and they sometimes don't listen and they wind each other up but they're also kind and funny and interesting and independent and brave.

Loving them is easy but it's not a given that you'll actually like your children. Traits that are completely adorable in me are downright irritating when W demonstrates them. That analysis and overthinking which make my husband successful at work - it hinders K and I get frustrated with him. We've been lucky that the boys got a very equitable split in the personality-gene-department so I get equally annoyed by both of them. It's good to be fair.

There are particular quirks with spending so much time together, foremost that my roles get muddled. I'm a teacher, housekeeper, mum and colleague. Using physical spaces to define and segregate our day and my role isn't something I considered before we started EHE but, even in our open plan set up, it can help mark distinctions.

When we're at our desks we're in work mode and I have my teacher hat on. The kitchen table doubles up - at mealtimes it's family time, it's a desk when we're working. The sofa is for snuggling and chatting with Mum hat firmly on head. I don't feel bad escaping to spend 10 minutes reading in my bedroom where I'm just boring old me and it's good for everyone.

Spending time together helps you to get to know who your children are; watching them learn gives you an insight into how their minds work. I love the moments when they give me an answer lightning fast, tell me their own way of working something out or show me something they've made or found.

Whatever our future holds I am grateful I've had the chance to do this. If I can survive another year and still like the kids, we'll call it a success.

Ouch

Low point today. Tired children, tired me, too much to do, too little time.

An argument with eldest that ended with a cutting truth :
"I'm fed up of you Mum."

Today I'm fed up of him too.

Tomorrow will be better.

Rhyme and Reason

Rounding off this poetry section I wanted to focus on rhyming couplets. Free verse is great but there's something satisfying in finding a rhyme. Less satisfying when the word is 'hamster' or 'spider'. Wasted a bit of time on those.

Rhyming couplet poems are prolific; we read lots for laughs and then looked at whether we can spot rhythms which sound best and why (tip: if the number of syllables is one different between the two lines it doesn't tend to flow).

Inspired by Grizzly Tales and the idea of morals in fairy tales the boys came up with a character called Billy with big eyes (no, I'm not sure either) who is cruel to animals and gets his just deserts.

There's a charming definition of poetry which is "the best words in the best order". We start with a brainstorm : a big board of words, rhyming pairs and ideas and then we pick out the best. Saying the couplets aloud helps choose - some just sound better than others.

W comes up with the name and K sets up the back story. W questioned K's premise throughout - why would a boy who is teased for having huge eyes be mean to animals? It's a leap, but I like K's logic that the big eyes hint at what might become of Billy later.

They managed to include an onomatopoeia (W's new favourite word!) with 'whizzed', rhyme, some sense of rhythm and alliteration (big brown bear).

A true team effort, here's the finished poem :

Silly Billy

There once was a boy called Billy

With big eyes which looked rather silly.

Because he was bullied by everyone

He started to hurt animals for fun.

At the zoo he stole a small giraffe

Then had a laugh when it took a bath.

In the woods he caught a big brown bear

At home he shaved off all its hair.

Billy took his neighbour's snake

And baked it into a birthday cake.

In the desert he found a cheetah

And roasted it inside a heater.

He woke one morning, my oh my,

Billy had turned into a fly.

As he whizzed around the ceiling

Billy got a sinking feeling.

He tried to find a way to flee

Bu a spider ate him for its tea.

Recipe for Survival

The reality of managing EHE, work and family/home is pretty brutal. Social media and blogs tend to highlight successes and happy moments but there's usually a lot of hard work behind the scenes.

Some nights I work until 3am to stay on top. I try to fit in 2 hours of work before school starts. On days I haven't left the house I am boggled that I can still rack up 7000 steps (thanks FatBot. Sorry, FitBit) as I bounce like a pinball between sink, computer and children.

I'm not complaining - this is my choice and I wouldn't swap places with anyone but when life doesn't fit inside the 24 hours granted each day it's draining.

I am writing this from a place of deep, deep tiredness but it occurs to me that my bad and good days from an EHE perspective can be predicted regardless of the amount of sleep I've had. Or not had.

This is my recipe for a good day :

1. I've made packed lunches the night before
2. The plan for the day is written up on the board when we start
3. I printed all my resources for the week on Sunday night
4. I had a theme or topic running through the day's activities
5. We have at least one tangible outcome, worthy of fridge-display
6. I focus on the things we did, not the things we didn't

So I know the recipe. I wish I was a better cook!

Free Verse : Best Value Poetry in the Curriculum

Free verse can be engaging and funny so it is the perfect start point for two boys who wailed 'I hate poems' as soon as I put it on the timetable.

They were easily swayed thanks to the likes of Michael Rosen, Kit Wright and Mandy Coe.

Free verse is defined by its lack of rules. Without the constraints of rhyme and a fixed rhythm, there are no distractions from other interesting poetic devices : we focussed on imagery, line breaks, alliteration, repetition and onomatopoeia.

First stop - The Magic Box by Kit Wright.
A fantastical poem with an easy to follow structure. Alliteration, imagery and onomatopoeia all feature in the first 2 lines so it's packed full of useful examples. We read it twice and then brainstormed what could go in our magic box - focussing on feelings, smells, tastes and sounds as well as things. The boys wrote their poems and then typed them up for display for a sneaky bit of ICT.

To say they were proud of them would be an understatement.

Next lesson was deeper into nonsense with Don't by Michael Rosen, who uses repetition for impact. We covered the way reading a poem aloud rather than in your head changes the feel and impact (link to slam/performance poetry) and watched some YouTube videos of poetry performances. We brought in elements of rhyme within phrases and I wish I could share them here but any poems that include lines like 'Don't put a plum in your bum' and 'Don't burp' are best kept offline. Thanks boys.

If I say there are no rules I can't be surprised that they produced rude poems. Hooray for freedom of expression.

Their 'Don't' poems might have lacked the charm of their Magic Box attempts but they did present them as a performance for Dad in a mini slam poetry jam.

Using the theme of 'Don't' we imagined a friend in a fantastical situation (the boys settled on : locked in an iron room and hair on fire) and wrote them a helpful postcard of Dos and Don'ts for a literacy link.

There's always scope for a bit more silliness so this week we'll move onto rhyming couplets with poems by Marian Swinger and Hilaire Belloc covering metaphors, similes, personification and some Spoonerisms from Michael Rosen.

Resources:
Michael Rosen compilations are terrific fun for browsing
Roald Dahl Revolting Rhymes are a classic
The Works, chosen by Paul Cookson, is a great one-stop compilation and includes lesson plans at the back

Our favourite onomatopoeia examples : buzz, crunch, pop, whizz, bang. Roald Dahl is the master of using these, especially in The Witches and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Turning Negatives into Positives

K wanted proof that subtracting a negative number is the same as adding. The rule is clear cut but I was failing to convince K. There were raised voices and it was not fun.

Luckily MathsIsFun delivered on its promise and rescued us from a mother-son rift.

I went with their hot air balloon example which has the added bonus of reinforcing the number line concept.

My hot air balloon looks like a flower pot (art is not my thing) but the idea is sound and it works like this:

The orange circles are balloons, worth +1. The grey are weights, worth -1.

• Start with the balloon pointing to zero then remove balloons (subtract a positive) or add weights (add a negative) to make the balloon drop. 
• Add balloons to make it rise (add a positive).
• Remove weights to show how subtracting a negative results in the balloon rising (a positive).

It's an effective way of proving to a 9 year old that taking away a negative can make a positive and there was a bonus bit of craft work preparing the number line and stamping out the circles.

Fabulous ideas from : http://www.mathsisfun.com/positive-negative-integers.html

Triangles

2D shapes aren't tricky but their names are. There are a lot of them and some are subsets of others which is mind blowing to my 8 year old. Today we're on triangles.

"It's just a triangle, like a normal triangle" he muttered, thoroughly defeated, as I pointed to yet another shape that, to him, still looks like a triangle.

Repetition and familiarity is the only way forward so we'll rinse and repeat in the next few days but here is our system for those pesky names :

Equilateral ... Equal easily spotted because the sides and angles are all equal.

Scalene ... Scatty Scalene - so muddled up that every side is a different length.

Isosceles ... iSausages - Okay I was desperate. Here is my artist impression of why isosceles is iSausages, based on the flimsy premise that if you ate two sausages for tea they're highly likely to be the same length (but the size of your plate might vary).

Also :
Right angled triangle ... Right Angle the clue's in the name - if it's got a right angle, this is your triangle. Can also be a scalene or isosceles, just to confuse any shape-name-matching activities. To prove this, I had to show W that you could lay your sausages in an L shape.

For reinforcement we're going to make pizza over the weekend and cut the slices into various triangle types.

Sausages and pizza. Not a great week for nutrition but a good one for maths.

Money Matters

It's never too early to start teaching children about money. Last week we had a gentle introduction to the evils and joys of money.

As with most things, it was driven by my sanity being at stake.

As we stood in a shop for the thousandth time with one boy or another insisting he had enough in his money box at home to buy the Pokemon / Lego / book / cuddly toy in front of us, I'd consider gambling with my own money.

Should I lend these mini people the cash - do they really have enough at home? Do they have honest faces? Do they know that I'll probably forget I lent it to them? Am I being hustled? Will I be clawing back repayment of the 60p debt in weekly instalments? Should I charge interest? Will I need a spreadsheet for this? Why am I making this so complicated?

Thankfully GoHenry have come up with a simple solution for forgetful mothers like me and the kids now have their own pre-paid debit cards. GoHenry is for children aged 8 and up so we're bang on for using their joyful services. If you fancy it, you can link their weekly pocket money to chores and if the tasks aren't ticked the pocket money won't get paid. Now that's motivating..

There's a monthly charge but for us it's worth it as the lesson in responsibility and practice in handing their own funds is worth its weight. Even better, the children feel about 6 feet tall.

When we went for our first 'use our new debit card adventure' (who says HE isn't exciting) .. the nice lady at the supermarket couldn't quite believe they were allowed to check out and pay for items themselves with their very own debit card and very own (very secret) pin.

The cards came with a price - the boys had to endure a one hour lesson on money skills with me before the cards would be issued and so we covered interest, savings, loans, pin numbers and debit vs credit cards.

I left pension planning for next time.

For brilliant teaching resources for all levels :
https://www.barclaysmoneyskills.com/Information/Resource-centre/School-Children.aspx

The 7-11 pack has a brilliant board game at the end of the pack.

The Joy of Long Division

The first step to teaching the boys long division was to teach myself long division.

I'm sure I did it at school at some point but that was at least a decade (*cough* or two) ago and it turns out that's it definitely nothing like riding a bike.

Step 1a : Google the topic and print out step by step instructions
Step 1b : Print out drill sheets and sit at the kitchen table with a garibaldi and a coffee
Step 1c : Check facebook a few times and empty the dishwasher
Step 1d : Do about 4 sums before declaring the invention of the calculator the best thing since sliced bread

Step 2 : Teach the boys long division

Here's a neat little trick to help them remember the steps :

Daddy Division
Mummy Multiplication
Sister Subtract (or in our case Stevie the cat Subtract)
Brother Bring down (if we've had an argument with our brother, we can substitute Bailey the dog)

So for example:

Then repeat, by saying Daddy divides 29 by 3 and writes the answer on the line .. and so on.

As soon as there's nothing for Brother (or Bailey) to bring down, whatever we're left with is the remainder.

(Thank you BBC skillwise and Explore Learning)

Crime & Punishment

On a car journey last week I drove past a guy on the pavement who threw some litter casually into the road and the boys had to endure my rant that it was the "worst sort of lazy, selfish behaviour", "low standards", "no respect for himself or others" and "if you're going to be a criminal at least do it properly".

Always eager to please, K cheerfully comments that "If I was a criminal I'd do it properly and rob a bank ...." "... or burgle a house" adds W helpfully. I spend the next 10 minutes explaining how there are much better career options than criminal mastermind but they've seen Despicable Me so I don't think they're buying it.

So we had crime on the mind (hopefully not dreaming up more ways to be an evil genius) while we did a bit of craft and W came up with a cool robber design for a peg person. Just to be clear being a robber is definitely not cool, but W's peg person was.

He set about making a prison for his robber. As we chatted about prisons we ambled onto escaping which led us nicely to the Great Escape which took place 72 years ago, on the night of 24th March 1944.

The co-incidence of the date was too good a history opportunity to pass up, so we did some WWII revision and took a quick tangent into the Jewish faith, persecution and brain washing.

Using the fabulous resources from the National Archives, which are easily adapted to suit upper and lower KS2, we looked at Belsen and eye witness accounts from the liberation. It's a perfect platform for exploring human reactions to cruelty, hunger, trauma and the logistics of war.
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/sessions-and-resources/

We read an interview with a now elderly Auschwitz SS guard who escaped prosecution to briefly explore the difficult issue of holding individuals to account decades after an event. It's heavy going for an 8 and 9 year old so we only touched on it lightly, but I was amazed that the boys were able to articulate thoughts on something so ethically complex - they recognised it wasn't a black and white issue and felt that what he'd done with his life in the intervening decades might be relevant.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/spiegel-interview-with-a-91-year-old-former-auschwitz-guard-a-988127.html

Cheering up was needed and it was too early for me to have a gin so we moved onto the headline topic : the daring and wonderful great escape from the camp at Sagan. We thought about the practical problems of escaping and looked at the ingenious ways the escape committee managed to conceal their efforts, shore up the tunnel and make civilian clothing.
We used this history of the great escape, plus it has a handy quiz at the bottom :
http://www.historyonthenet.com/ww2/great_escape.htm

War and imprisonment never have a happy ending so it was fitting that only 3 of the escapees made it to the UK, 23 were returned to the camp and 50 were murdered on Hitler's direct orders. The boys could hardly believe it and looked genuinely crestfallen; we're too used to the good guys always beating the odds in stories and films.

To finish off, we looked at images and plans of the tunnels and the boys reconstructed hut 104 and 'Harry' tunnel in Minecraft.

An unplanned topic and fairly heavy going but we covered a lot of ground and had some fantastic discussion. So it's not all doom and gloom.

Except for peg robber. He's serving life.....

.... for pinching things.

Normal Week?

It's felt like a rubbish week.

Nothing untoward, just the usual minutiae. Now throw in a major work pitch, a vet visit for the cat, social and family engagements... Juggling is such a confidence killer. It's a wonder circus performers can keep a smile on.

I've limped to Thursday with FAILURE blazoned across my forehead because the kitchen is a mess, the children's nails are dirty, I haven't organised that birthday present to be posted yet, I should really wash the car, the dog needs his vaccination boosters, the oven has broken and I haven't chased the electrician etc etc and to top it all off, most heinous of all, I am convinced that I haven't done enough 'school' with the kids.

I hit the imaginary pause button - which conveniently generates a scone and a cup of tea - and did a reality check on our school week.

What has actually happened since 9am Monday?

Maths, ICT & science
Online maths lesson, every day
Explore learning session for English and maths
Long division revision and practice (W)

Column subtraction recap (K)

Science morning - human body theme with gross science

Programming - Flappy Bird computer game

Geoboard shapes app

'About Me' powerpoint (inserting text & images)
Endangered animals research & creating a poster

Literacy, art & music

Group reading, Firework Maker's Daughter
Exercise on Expanded noun phrases (K) & conjunctions (W)
Synonyms (K) & more conjunctions (W)
Creative writing lesson (W)
Literacy tutor (K)
Independent and aloud reading
Verbal reasoning practice (K)
Daily, new vocabulary and spellings

Piano lesson (W)

Art - glitter patterns, peg painting and colour mixing

Life skills
Hamster care - researching treats, cage cleaning, design & build maze tunnel systems
Trampolining
Parkour (K)
Cooking basics - independently making boiled eggs and beans on toast

8 point compass readings

Money skills lesson - debit cards, credit, interest and savings


That's not just okay, it's plenty.

I think I've earned another scone.

Maths is Fun

Exploring maths apps today - the ones below are ideal for consolidating fractions, angles, area, tessellation, 2D shapes and symmetry work. If we're ticking boxes then it's also a winner for ICT and art.

But who cares about that when you can make cool patterns?

http://www.mathlearningcenter.org/web-apps/geoboard/

http://www.mathlearningcenter.org/web-apps/pattern-shapes/

Little Miracles

After two weeks missing, presumed gone forever - Whiskers the hamster returned!

He was found in a box in the garage, which we presume he fell into from the rafters having crawled through the floor space above.  Dehydrated, dusty, considerably slimmer and looking as shocked as we were - but otherwise alive!

Not much else to say except : wow.

He might be just a rodent but in our house he's now a legend.

Pompeii

By no means the only Vesuvian town Pompeii is iconic, giving us an extraordinary link to a natural disaster occurring 1900 years ago. The site gives a snapshot of human civilisation and highlights how family, status, art, religion, business and community have remained relatively unchanged over the intervening centuries.

Archaeologically interesting, we looked briefly at artefacts online but the human aspect is where we were focussed. We touched on causes of volcanic eruptions from our Weather topic last year, disaster response, beliefs and looked for similarities in our own town (despite our notable lack of a volcano, much to the boys' disappointment).

We read extracts from Pliny the Younger who wrote to his uncle about what he'd seen at Pompeii, watched a fantastic CGI animation of the timeline of the eruption and finished up with a virtual tour of Pompeii thanks to Google Streetview.

Resources

"You could hear the shrieks of women, the wailing of infants, and the shouting of men; some were calling their parents, others their children or their wives, trying to recognize them by their voices. People bewailed their own fate or that of their relatives, and there were some who prayed for death in their terror of dying. Many besought the aid of the gods, but still more imagined there were no gods left, and that the universe was plunged into eternal darkness for evermore." Pliny the Younger

A computer animation showing a timeline of the volcanic eruption:
http://www.openculture.com/2016/02/watch-the-destruction-of-pompeii-by-mount-vesuvius-re-created-with-computer-animation-79-ad.html

Google street view, explore the ruins from the comfort of home:
https://www.google.com/maps/@40.7489468,14.4848331,3a,75y,209.48h,82.37t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s1e-bu_kis-dL1BnVGZhDdw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=en

Pompeii in images (good for quick reference):
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturepicturegalleries/9557356/Pompeii-in-pictures.html

Pliny the Younger:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/pliny_the_younger.shtml
Plus an extended version of his letter:
http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/pompeii.htm

Full, detailed information on the various buildings etc found:
https://sites.google.com/site/ad79eruption/

Sunrise Colours

One morning last month we had the most beautiful sunrise. The boys spotted it over breakfast and so I took a quick snap, hoping to catch the layers of colours in the sky.

Inspired, we set about having an art lesson (over 3 days) with tree techniques, paint washes, blending and drawing with various pens.

W (landscape minimalist) interpreted the image with typical focus on a single tree and had to be encouraged to add any further detail. A house was born of imagination.

K (still life perfectionist) got stressed that there were too many trees to recreate so needed encouragement that we were using the image as inspiration not to produce an exact copy.

Both boys were really proud of their work.

What nature supplied:

Creating a wash and blending:

Planning & drafting:

The finished artwork:

 

Shaping Up

We've been playing with shapes lately; we've looked at how things are made up of shapes, revised 2D shape names (I can never remember what a trapezoid is) and talked tessellation.

One activity was to see what animals we could draw from common shapes. I'd have gone for a slug or starfish but the boys were more ambitious and made some beautiful creatures. We made tracks, spirals and walls with jenga blocks with a side note on strength and stability.

For tessellation we played with the fab website at http://gwydir.demon.co.uk/jo/tess/tess.htm and created patterns inspired by Victorian tiling. To finish off, we looked at tessellation in nature, with a google image search bringing up wonderful examples in flowers, honeycombs and snakes.

A note on shapes - we had to look up the difference between a rhombus and a diamond :
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-a-rhombus-and-a-diamond

Sorry Whiskers

Whiskers, W's beloved hamster and all round awesome rodent, has been missing for a week and we have concluded that he's probably now in hamster heaven.

He went missing and (ever helpful when hamsters are involved) Stevie the cat suggested Whiskers may have taken refuge in the bathroom. Out came the cupboard contents to reveal a very unhelpful hole in the wall giving access to the wall cavity and entire upstairs floor space. My heart sank.

We emptied rooms, lifted carpets, used angle mirrors, left inventoried food piles in every room with closed doors for days. S set up a motion detecting Ham Cam in the bathroom to monitor the hole. I stayed up late 3 nights running to lie on the landing and listen out for scratching or scuffling.

Nothing.

We agreed as a family that we're not giving up on Whiskers, but we are ready to accept that he isn't coming back.

Last night, W cried and cried until eventually he fell asleep. It was a heart breaking display of deep grief combined with guilt - he had left the cage open.

Loss is always hard but W has had it quite tough for an 8 year old. He's lost 2 cats, 2 grandads, 2 great grandparents and his hamster in under 2 years. I'm not being flippant when I list them together - as an adult I'm sad about the pets but devastated about the humans. As a child, they all hurt equally.

He's familiar with my speech about how lucky we were to have <Grandad / Lily / Great Nana / Whiskers etc etc etc > in our life and how many happy memories we have to hold on to. He glazes over when I say I know it hurts and it's okay to be sad. He's heard it too many times.

Some things can't be fixed - they just have to be carried.

Applied Cake

I wanted to do some applied maths with the boys - weights, measures, ratios - so they could demonstrate they understood what we covered last week. We halved a cake recipe, weighed out the dry ingredients, measured the liquids....

Or perhaps I just fancied cake.

Creative Boost

In 1999 a detailed report into culture and creativity in education was written by the National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education headed by Sir Ken Robinson.

Well over a decade later, the world has changed but most of the points raised in the report have not:
https://www.thersa.org/discover/videos/rsa-animate/2010/10/rsa-animate---changing-paradigms/

The impact of creativity on learning and engagement cannot be underestimated.

Pick any 30 adults born in roughly the same year as you. Go and sit in a room. Someone arrives and tells you what you're going to do today. It's a task to build a tower of newspaper as high as you can. You've been given a blueprint showing a base with tubes of paper stuck together and so you get to work. Every adult will build a tall tower, but what was the point?

Rewind a step and imagine you're not given any instructions. How many inventive and interesting adaptations would 30 adults come up with? How much more challenging and engaging would the session be? How much more would you learn from the people around you?

Was the purpose to build a tall tower, or to work out a way to build a tall tower?
Which approach would produce skills that were useful in other contexts?

In essence, creativity is about unlocking potential : your own potential and the potential of those around you. Being surrounded by different ideas and viewpoints inspires and expands your own.

We are so worried about ensuring children meet targets that we demonstrate a lack of faith in them. Rather than risk missing a target we stay safe and guide them to a solution, give the instructions and lay out the blueprint. At the outcome - they built the tower, they got the grade - we reassure ourselves, pat ourselves on the back and feel we did the right thing.

A short term win; a long term loss.

If you still need convincing, put the kettle on and have a look at this article which gives a broad and well researched view on the vital skill of creativity in children and adults :
http://www.journeytoexcellence.org.uk/resourcesandcpd/research/summaries/rsfosteringcreativity.asp

In the words of Albert Einstein : 'Imagination is more important than knowledge.'


Further reading : 

The full All Our Futures report is here : http://www.creativitycultureeducation.org/all-our-futures-creativity-culture-and-education

The BBC reviewed it in 2009 and pulled together further research into the benefits of creativity in teaching, specifically its impact on results : http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8064306.stm

Sir Ken Robinson reviewed his report in 2011, providing a brief assessment of whether the content was still relevant : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqjQ6iMGYKk

The 11+ and Other Horrors

The title is a lie, there are no other horrors as fearsome as the 11+ which incidentally had a friendly re-brand and is now called the 'Transfer Test'.

So instead of failing the 11+ kids can now proudly say that they failed to get a STTS (Standardised Transfer Test Score) or 121 or above. Much better for self esteem.

When it comes to the 11+ the fear, loathing and responsibility is overwhelming.

Let's dive in with the cohort statistics. Out of about 10,000 children, 3,000 will be selected for grammar. The magical score children have to achieve is 121, sat on a scale of 0 - 200. Those pass numbers are skewed though because out of area applications have a much higher pass rate: perhaps if you don't live in county you only bother to take the test if you think you've got a good chance of passing. Within county, there's a pass rate of roughly 23%, so let's call it 1 in 4 children from the primaries in our area who get selected for grammar.

Looking ahead, children at grammar schools get better grades at GCSE level because only the most academically able are there. If you go to a grammar school, you have a 99% or so chance of getting A*-C in your GCSEs. In a comp, it's nearer 65% and the intake is the start point for the difference.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that unless your offspring get into a grammar then they are doomed to a life of mediocrity and low grades, which is as stupid as it is untrue. The problem is that the frenzy that parents whip up around the test can't fail to make children, and other parents, scared. Tutoring needs a blog all of its own. So does pushy parenting. But this blog is just about me and my kids so to hell with everyone else.

In order to retain some sense of sanity and order, I am repeating the following mantras:
They take the same exams whichever school they're in.
Kids with a good attitude will succeed regardless of the school they attend.

The headline is that 75% of children in our area go to comprehensives and while we have some excellent grammar schools, we have some excellent comps in our area too. Lucky us!

K is a smart kid. He works hard, questions everything and has a great memory. K is a process thinker; he likes to do one thing at time and get it perfect. He doesn't like to guess, still thinks short cuts are cheating (despite my protestations) and won't give up on a problem until he has the answer. These admirable personality traits will cost him dearly in the 11+ which relies on fast analysis, quick decisions and an ability to give rapid fire answers to rapid fire questions. Despite ability in non-verbal reasoning and literacy, K's maths is average and so the upshot is that he's a borderline case at best. It would be easier if he was a definite no or definite yes. Even if he did pass, would grammar be right for him anyway?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/10328580/Weakest-pupils-suffer-crisis-of-confidence-in-top-schools.html

It's a divisive, unnecessary system I have come to hate on every level, but no one forced us to live in this county and so we have to concede that our son will end up in the school that is right for him.

The tricky thing is that K cares, A lot. He understands that this is a test that you pass or fail, however they play with the words. What child wants to fail? So as a parent even if you trust the system and allow the chips to fall as they will, you can't sit back and do nothing. You have to give them the best shot, so whatever number appears next to their name, be it 80 or 180, they can feel good about it and know they did well. I wouldn't go to an interview or test unprepared and I don't expect K to do so either but this is one single test with a score that proves only the narrowest of skill sets.

It doesn't test athletic or musical ability, kindness, science, ICT, real life problem solving, resilience, teamwork.

It's tests of character, not maths or verbal reasoning, that define success in life.

Comfort Zones, Stepping Out Thereof

The focus of our efforts this year for K has been confidence and for W - challenge.

The perfect test for whether we've made progress since Easter : Quad biking.

W is used to things being easy and he gets frustrated if he can't quickly pick up a skill or idea. Also noteworthy are W's excellent fine motor skills which contrast dramatically with his gross motor. When he learnt to climb stairs he did it in one go. No practice, no building up slowly. He'd never climbed the stairs but one day my little toddler decided it was time and crawled up at top speed, stopping only when he reached the top and head butted the wall with extraordinary force. As he fell backwards into my arms past my horrified face I had a glimpse of the shock and hilarity of what life with W would bring.

Bike riding was another challenge. Weeks and months of patient attempts came to nothing but tears, frustration and declarations of the bike's obvious stupidity. We abandoned it: "He'll learn when he's ready" we said, in defeat. The bike returned to the shed and lay untouched until a visit to Wales, months later. We got the bikes out, had a cup of tea and steeled ourselves for spending the next few days cajoling, encouraging and reprimanding uncooperative bikes. I stood at the kitchen window, deep breath.

He did a short stretch with S running alongside. Then he was gone, off into the distance. 45 seconds was all it took. W can ride a bike.

This child is binary, it's 0 or 1.

So my apprehension as I stood in the waiting area for quad biking was palpable. I know what we're up against but I have cheery determination. One challenge at a time.

Challenge 1: W hates new things ("I don't want to quad bike."). You don't know you've never done it; we're here now, it's paid for and you might love it. It's happening, go with the flow.

Challenge 2 : W hates helmets. And safety vests. (and harnesses and wellies and things that are too tight, or too loose, or scratchy). I'm a pro at getting W into safety equipment now, it's an essential skill: I ignore complaints and enthusiastically point out the amazing level of adjustment, making a rapid sequence of unbelievably tiny changes until W's anxiety abates and he accepts the kit.

Challenge 3 : W's co-ordination is not his strong suit. He finds it tough to control 2 things at once at a gross motor level until he's got the feel for it, then he'll look at you like it was the easiest thing in the world.

The boys are queued up and one by one they do their test lap. One by one they make it look easy. I notice W is the littlest of the group by some margin. I'm taking deep breaths and being unseasonably cheery, internally willing everything to go our way. I know he can do it. He's last to go.

W flunks it. Badly. He can go forward, but not turn. He can't control the throttle. He finishes an agonising lap by crashing into another go kart as the instructor pulls the safety cord.

Challenge 4 : Humiliation. Hot tears fill his helmet and my heart breaks. We're down but not out; this is the toughest challenge W needs to face.

The antidote to humiliation is kindness and its presence changes the course of our morning. The boss, Tim, doesn't like seeing 8 year olds cry and he's only there today to oversee a new employee so he's got time on his hands. He's patient, he's kind and he's our hero. He shows us the garage bit where they fix the quad bikes, sets up some cones there and teaches W the controls. In less than 5 minutes, W is back on the course and has another go. He's got the hang of it, and loves it.

W faced a lot of challenges in one morning but with a little help, he rose to all of them; there was no giving up. When it comes to challenges, that's all you can ask.

PS. I want to hug Tim.

PPS. More to follow on K's confidence later, but check out that smile! He had such a great time.

Nutrition

A quick breakfast diversion into the basics of nutrition. Who doesn't love a bit of Pritt Stick with their toast and tea?!

We do a quick cut and stick to see what various food types do for our bodies and then line up our various packets and jars for closer inspection.

We play vitamin bingo and see it's okay to eat acid but only if it's folic ... we find products high in salt, fibre or fat and line up our cereals in order of sugar content. We compare white, brown and 50/50 bread and (to my surprise) spot that brown bread might not be that much better for us than white.

The boys look delighted.

I declare it needs further research, babble something about moderation and grey areas and make everyone eat a banana.

The Black Death

What killed 1/3 of the population of Britain in the middle ages?

It sounds like a bad cracker joke but it's just our intro to our topic. There's nothing like starting the new year with pestilence and agonising death.

I like a bit of context with my history, so we started off with a timeline to get a rough feel for where we were parking our history train on the recent-human-history timeline.

Timelines are a bonus as you can cover quite a few historical periods or events while surreptitiously sneaking in some maths with negative numbers and do some cutting and sticking to boot. We cover BC and AD, major and minor ticks and identify our (humbling) little centimetre of our own personal history. Cross curricular link: Maths, number lines.

The boys cut out pictures to represent the major time periods like stone age, middle ages, Tudors, Victorians and so on and stick them on, marking the periods they covered. "Why was the Stone Age so long?" I ask. "There are a lot of stones." Fair enough.

Next lesson, we talk about life in the middle ages and begin to explore the Black Death and how many people in Britain and Europe died. Cross curricular link: European geography.

Lesson 3, we look at causes, creating a flow chart of how the plague spread and talking trade routes and shipping. We explore the ideas people had at the time about the cause (angry God, planets, bad smells) and how the poor were worst hit and why. Cross curricular link: Science, flow charts / RE, beliefs.

Lesson 4 was symptoms. We act out the stages, with apples under our armpits and give ourselves the dreaded black spot.

Lesson 5, on to cures and the bizarre and disgusting ideas (like exploding frogs and dead pigeons) that were popular at the time. Cross curricular link: Science, medicine, germs, hygiene.

We look at persuasive writing in advertising and briefly divert into how humour, glamour, alliteration, rhyme and catchy tunes and slogans can help sell products. Cross curricular link: Literacy. The boys come up with their own crazy cures and design posters to sell their wares. We have a bit of fun with ageing our paper with candles and tea bags. Cross curricular link: Art.

Some persuasive writing tips are to use exaggeration, flattery and to start off with a question. K's opening gambit on his poster is perfect "Have you got the Black Death? Don't worry - the new Black Cream is in town and it will cure you in minutes!"

"Guaranteed to prevent death, or your money back!"

Finally, the short book "The Plague, a cross on the door" about a boy whose master dies from the plague was a perfect round up. Cross curricular link: Literacy, reading and listening.

Next stop in our British history scheme for this term : Tudors...

Let's Eat Grandma

It's an old one, but a good one. The importance of punctuation.

Dictionary Challenge

It's a challenge to make book-work seem relevant to children. We so rarely pick up a dictionary or use an encyclopaedia when we have google at our fingertips.

I'm part of the transition generation who were taught book-skills but didn't use them much by the time we entered work, thanks mostly to the internet and all the hilarious cat videos it brought us.

Knowing how to search for information, even on paper, undoubtedly supported the acceptance and use of technology that blossomed in the 90s and 2000s. A decade on and the ability to search through an index is not yet obsolete: it translates onto screens in the form of timetables, menus, sub-menus, alphabetical and numerical ordering, contents pages and (my personal favourite) the lengthy PDF document which never quite navigates how you want.

Any skill that helps you sort, locate and order information is more relevant than ever, at a time when the quantity of information being produced every minute exceeds imagination http://aci.info/2014/07/12/the-data-explosion-in-2014-minute-by-minute-infographic/

We tackle the dictionary work at year 3/4 level lightly with a view to keeping it fun; we go on a treasure hunt for words between words, find a few definitions and learn some new vocabulary along the way.

If there's ever a global catastrophe and all internet communications are down, we will be the ones laughing as we confidently check our spelling, from apocalypse to zombie...

Big History

A sense of time isn't the easiest thing for anyone to grasp, especially when the numbers run into billions of years.

I wanted to kick off some work on the history curriculum, but where to start? The past is a very big place.

TED talks came to the rescue via Louise Leakey and her loo roll analogy. Armed with a roll of loo paper and a pack of stickers we started to try and gain a sense of scale. It was all very inexact but then when we're counting in millions and billions of years a few inches here or there doesn't much matter.

We begin in the kitchen, with the Big Bang. Appropriate as it is the scene of many unimaginable concoctions and explosions. We're roughly 14 billion years in the past which is unimaginably far away: "Were there cars then?" No darling, so we side step into the concept of nothingness.

We lasted about 20 seconds before our brains ached and so we carried on unrolling.

As we trek around the ground floor and then up the stairs we note that land formed, the first signs of life started to emerge and dinosaurs ruled - and we add stickers to mark each occasion. A few feet from the end of the roll and we mark the end of the dinosaurs, marvelling at the length of their dominance over millions of years.

Apes appear on our final sheet of toilet paper. We use the smallest stickers we can find in the last couple of millimetres to show the inauspicious arrival of homo-sapiens and our puny 200,000 years of human history.

The house was covered in loo roll and Bailey was happy to bounce around like a giant Andrex puppy. Big picture done and we're all set up to start zooming in on our next history topic.

For the most inspiring and addictive history of our past 14 billion years, head to http://histography.io/

For a rough guide to the universe on toilet paper -
http://www.earthintransition.org/2013/07/how-history-is-like-a-roll-of-toilet-paper/

Holidays

We usually work through the holidays; it means we can take breaks when it suits us the rest of the time ... however ... it's Christmas.

In the interests of honest reporting: we wrapped presents, saw friends, watched too much TV, ate sweets, played games and did absolutely no work whatsoever.

Happy Christmas!

PS The multi-coloured tree was not my doing. I went out for some final Christmas shopping, leaving a very classy all-white-lit tree in the safe hands of S & the boys. I came back to find it had been upgraded to a disco tree and the thing flashed a rainbow for the whole of Christmas.

Coding Magic

Coding skills are becoming increasingly important from KS1. The focus of ICT skills in the NC is firmly based in the process - the logical reasoning, sequencing and problem solving inherent in writing programs to accomplish a purpose.

Without Scratch, I was floundering a bit. We did some background work off-computer looking at flow charts, what 'IF' really means, and repeating actions but we needed something to demonstrate how it works for real.

Imagine my insane level of excitement to stumble across the Learn an Hour of Code initiative at code.org https://code.org/learn

This is one incredible resource. With a number of themes to choose from, it takes you through a simple set of challenges before letting you have free reign to create your own program. Seeking maximum engagement, we started off with a Minecraft challenge.

Starting with simple sequencing using command blocks, there are instructional videos interspersed to introduce repeat blocks and then if statements. Our hour came and went. The boys spent a further 3 hours coding various scenarios. The rest of the timetable went out of the window : they concentrated, planned, designed, built and tested. I only stopped them when it was tea time.

A particularly nice feature is that they can view the javascript behind the blocks. So what skills are key here? The logical reasoning is vital, the sequencing helps in all manner of cause and effect scenarios but for me it's the debugging where the gold lies. When something doesn't work like it should, the boys couldn't blame the computer or anything else. It's their code, whatever it's doing, it does it because they told it to do it.

It's a detail but I love the responsibility aspect. On a practical level, having to go back through to work out why something isn't doing what you expect, fix it and re-test (repeat, repeat, repeat) until it does what you want - it is a profound and powerful lesson in problem solving and tenacity.

And wow - what a peaceful afternoon for me.