One of those mornings...

Just pulled out my planner to figure out what's going on this week to be greeted with a quote....

I am not a teacher but an awakener!

Oh my...bring on the coffee...after a sleepless night I'm not at all feeling awake, sinusitis is a killer. I'm more of an angry bear at the moment that's hiding away so my little bear cubs don't get unnecessarily mauled. So out comes the coffee, steamy bowls of water, antibiotics and nasal sprays. Maybe in a few hours I may feel like I can take on the roll of an awakener but right now, it ain't happening. Sorry kiddos...momma bear is down!

London Baby!

My blog is called Lessons from the Home but my next few posts will be far from that, should be called Lessons from outside the Home, as we have spent a lot of our time exploring our new surroundings and making most of the recent spell of nice weather to visit some famous sights in the south of our country. London was top of Mr Cheeky's list to explore, mainly because he wanted to go see the Queen and meet Paddington Bear. Having allowed Mr Cheeky the opportunity to make a plan for the day we set off for the first time to navigate the London Underground and make our way into the heart of the capital. A walk into St James' Park took us over a bridge affording us some lovely views of the London eye on one side and Buckingham Palace on the other.

Once through the park we strolled down the Mall towards the big house in all it's grandeur.

Mr Cheeky's planning paid off as he timed our arrival into London to coincide with the Queen's Cavalry Parade. 

We took a closer look at the Palace as we pressed up against it's gate. Mr Cheeky was disappointed that the Queen wasn't at home but he has since come home and spent some time writing a letter to her instead.

Through the Wellington Arch we went as we made our way into South Kensington to visit the Natural History Museum which is a treasure trove of information. The boys enjoyed the exhibition on earthquakes and volcanoes. Due to me making a conscious decision not to include my children on the photos I share I am unable to show you the pictures I took inside the museum as they all have the beautiful smiley faces of my boys on. Maybe next time I will be more careful to take a few faceless shots of the exhibits.

The favourite find of the day though was the Princess Diana's Memorial Playground. I was impressed at this little treasure in the heart of London. A beautiful play area filled with sensory activities from sandy pirate ships and water play, to a wooden fort and slide area and a beautiful musical sensory zone tucked around the back. I never expected to find this little gem, I'm glad Mr Cheeky was drawn to the buccaneer adventure play area on his search of things to do in the big city.

Finally Mr Cheeky got the pleasure of meeting Paddington at Paddington Station, a beloved character from Michael Bond and we have since enjoyed reading his books and listening to the audio cds in the car.

Home we came tired but happy. Our first trip into London was a success.

We moved home and survived!

January was filled with cleaning cupboards and decluttering, finding new homes for unworn clothes and neglected toys. February was much the same, as it turns out it is quite difficult to declutter when your children attempt to put everything back. Amidst the cleaning, we tried to keep some normality and plodded through with read alouds and math workbooks, history texts and science. March was coming and I knew we would be taking a break. Not the holiday variety but a much busier time was to come. Our family was on the move, a whole 200 miles south, to a quiet country village. March came all too quickly and before we knew what was happening the packers were in and in a blink of the eye our possessions were disappearing into boxes.It really was quite something to watch...having only ever packed myself before it was quite a spectacle to see two men make very light work, completing in a day what would have taken me weeks to do, then again I may not have packed the salt into the same box with my crockery (a gritty disaster) nor would I have hidden my essential undergarments in a box with photo albums (too many hours spent searching), but joking aside it was helpful as I am sure my children may have made it hard work keeping those boxes closed before the move. Then came the removal van, the children were fascinated and Mr Cheeky was angling for a job. Undeterred by the lack of payment he dug deep and got to removing the contents of our house causing Mr Smiley to attempt the same despite the boxes being taller than him. Mr Cheeky didn't succeed in attaining employment (employment laws were prohibitive) but he was satisfied with his efforts.

This was no time for school. The boys' surroundings were changing, their friendships were changing. To begin with, the boys enjoyed the adventure. The new house was like Aladdin's cave to them as they explored their new home and attempted to discover in which box their favourite toys were hiding. I, however, was a woman on a mission. With Mr Faithful due to start his new job in a week from arriving at the new home I was determined to get our home looking like a home. So many late nights, so many early mornings...box after box, flat pack furniture after flat pack furniture, I set about transforming our new home, albeit fuelled by chocolate and coffee (not recommending this approach). By the end of our first week, I was placing the last of our books on the shelves, hanging up the last pieces of laundry in the wardrobes, placing the last game in the cupboard. I'm fairly certain the boys must have thought I had lost the plot or my senses sometime during the move, they had a crazy woman for a mother (could have been the excessive chocolate consumption). The poor lads were tired and grumpy by the end of that week, desperate for their Mummy to sit with then, play with them, interact with them meaningfully. A cafe hot chocolate and smoothie treat cheered them up somewhat and some hugs later we came home to a home that I felt comfortable in and ready to resume our normal activities. I know we could have spent longer unpacking but it would have driven me to distraction living around boxes.

We resumed our educational activities the second week in our new home. We started off slowly, introducing each subject and activity every few days, not wanting to shock or overload the children. Also, we were having glorious weather and it was the perfect time for exploring woods and parks and being outside making the most of our notorious British weather. Each time we stepped out of our front door we were greeted with some beautiful scenery.

Isn't it beautiful! I keep pinching myself and at times think we are on holiday and that soon we will have to return to the big city. We are now well into May and we are really enjoying our new home. The boys are beavering away with their work and relish our times in the afternoon where we go outside and find new places. The house isn't quite finished, there are still a few curtains to be made and pictures to be hung on the wall but that I am happy to do in time. But we survived the move with very little scars, Mr Social achieving the biggest scar by peeling his thumb with a vegetable peeler consequently giving to a rather panicked mother trying to stop the bleeding whilst discovering that her network coverage was useless and her knowledge of local walk-in centres was lacking. I did eventually manage to stop the bleeding but in the chaos, I then failed to notice the large hole the movers had made in the top of my washing machine...and I'm glad to say that even at 9 years old, the washing machine took the major dent on the chin and is persevering. Time to put my feet up...oh wait, the baby is crawling, there goes my rest.

Penguin Colours and Numbers Game

Mr Smiley has always liked to be involved with the older boys work and has taken to emptying boxes of educational materials in the search for something intriguing and yet easy enough for him to feel like he is doing something useful. He has enjoyed building with math cubes, making patterns with pattern block shapes, threading wooden letter beads onto string and using my handmade educational helps to classify animals and build a human skeleton (in his own way...the results can be quite terrifying). But the older boys always complain he leaves things messy and so I thought I would make up his very own box of school related items.

Today's make is a cute penguin themed game. I came across on Pinterest a tot learning game where a child rolls a dice and places the corresponding amount of paper fish into the mouth of a large cut-out of a penguin. So I thought I would take this idea and make it a little more creative...the result....

I had previously bought some differentiated instruction cubes and they are great for small hands to throw about and I can fill the pockets with any picture I want. So I created some die. The first dice has the numbers 1-4 both with written numbers and dots and then also has 2 special sides. One is a penguin and one is a colourful fish.

The second dice is simply 6 colours, red, orange, purple, blue, green and yellow.

Then there are 6 colours of fish, 8 of each colour and a large penguin that I printed then laminated to protect. Out of the penguin I cut a small slot across the beak big enough to fit the fish through.

To set up the game I placed the penguin against a bowl to catch the fish that would be fed to the penguin and let Mr Smiley sort the fish into colours. To play we then threw both die and followed these simple instructions. If the die landed on a number we would feed the penguin that amount of fish in the colour that was rolled. E.g. if a blue and a two was rolled you would feed 2 blue fish to the penguin. If a colourful fish was rolled then you get to give all the fish of the colour you rolled to the penguin. E.g. if a red and a fish was rolled you would feed the penguin all your red fish. If a penguin was rolled then you would get back all the fish of the colour you rolled. E.g. If a purple and a penguin was rolled then all the purple fish in the bowl behind the penguin would be given back to you. (My boys had great fun at making the penguin look like it was regurgitating fish.) If you roll a colour that you no longer have then just roll again. The game ends when all of the fish have been given to the penguin.

We played a team version variety to the game as well. We split into two teams and each team had 4 fish of each colour and took turns in rolling and feeding the penguin fish. However if you rolled a penguin then potentially you could end up with all 8 fish of the same colour in your possession.

We played both versions and all the boys enjoyed it. Mr Smiley was pleased with his penguin game and we had plenty of fun learning colours and numbers and making yuk noises as the penguin regurgitated fish!

Christmas Round Up

Christmas has quickly come and gone and with the new year starting we are back into the swing of our educational studies. I thought I would share what some of our Christmas looked like. Unfortunately I can't share some of my favourite photos as I endeavour to keep away from posting photos that have a clear shot of my children. But hopefully you will enjoy the shots I have chosen.

Our Christmas started early in December with the annual tree decoration extravaganza. Enjoyed by all the boys the tree is trimmed with old and new decorations and then later in the day retrimmed by me as I have seem to inherited my mother's neurotic tendencies where the tree is concerned and prefer the evenly spaced look to the I got a box of decorations and threw them at the tree look.

A week later after tree trimming we visited a live nativity and was treated to a delightful adventure into a reimagined Bethlehem. People were dressed in rich coloured fabrics, rooms were decorated to resemble inns and refreshments were placed on low lying tables with cushioned seating for us visitors to enjoy. Outside Roman centurions paced the floors, huts were decorated to look like market stalls selling food, pots, spices and gifts. Animals were kept in makeshift stables and one special stable housed the baby of the moment: Mary, Joseph and Jesus (a very real new born baby). It was a lovely nativity and my children were in silent awe with all that they saw.

A giant LEGO train came puffing into our city centre and we had to go and see it. So I battled the crowds and the busy shoppers and we were delighted with the carefully built piece of artwork strung with lights. The picture is of the carriages as the train itself has my children onboard as they pretend to be drivers of the colourful Christmas LEGO train but I can assure you it was stunning.

What is Christmas without a chance to build and decorate some gingerbread houses. It became a lesson in construction as we carefully cut out pieces to build the houses and then piece them together. The larger fancy house was done by myself, the smaller house was created by Mr Social and Mr Cheeky and Mr Smiley took on the rest of the gingerbread and made and decorated lots of stars. This gingerbread extravaganza ended up feeding lots of family members as we visited them.

Christmas day was spent at Church, opening gifts and then the long awaited dinner. The food was planned by Mr Social, cooked by myself whilst the boys were outside testing out their new archery sets and eaten and enjoyed by everbody except the newest member who very kindly chose to sleep through this part of the day so I could enjoy my food without having to juggle a baby. The crackers were home made and filled with a few chocolates and party hats.

With only Mr Faithful keen on Christmas pudding the dessert of choice was a Christmas log which was decorated with holly from our garden.

Post Christmas day was an opportunity to play with toys, enjoy a cinema trip, spend time with family and have a trip to the sales to find some bargain clothes. The two eldest boys were treated to a session of wall climbing by their uncle and so I spent some time with Mr Smiley painting and building his new boat.

Into the new year we came and as tree and trimmings came down, toys tidied back into bedrooms their was one more celebration to come...my birthday. I was a little more excited about this one than I normally am because my gift of choice was to be a sewing machine. Now that is exciting and I can't wait to put it to good use.

The first week of January found my husband to be a little more romantic than usual as I received not just one but two lovely bouquets from him.

And my final picture is a little more educational...the night sky. One evening last week I climbed the stairs to put my littles to bed and as I reached the top of the stairs out of nursery bedroom window I saw some bright lights in the sky that were fascinating. The photo doesn't do it justice but I think you can just about make out all 3. The moon stands out strongest being the largest in the picture, to it's right and down a bit is Venus shining brightly and to the left of the moon and up a bit (roughly in the middle of the picture...trust me it's there) is mars. It was such an impressive display of moon and planets that I had to take a picture.

Whew! That was my Christmas round up. Bring on 2017!

Christmas Crafts

With daily task lists as long as my arm around this time of year I have always found it helpful to have a collection of activities and crafts that the children can do by themselves. I put through occasional orders with Baker Ross, an online shop dedicated to selling art and craft products, particularly for children. They have great deals on their powder paint and air dry clay if you buy in bulk, and they last ages. So with Christmas preparations gearing up and presents needing to be bought, cakes being baked and cards to be wrote, house to be decorated and carol service performances to be rehearsed, I wanted some crafts to help occupy the children (and stop them from trying to make my Christmas cards for my Clever Little Scraps business). Here are some of my favourites:

Nativity lanterns that we will put battery candles in. They come in packs of 4, Mary with Jesus, Angels, Wise men and shepherds.

Mr Social has been taking some interest in the sewing and knitting that I do, so these cross stitch decorations seemed like a good introduction. My 7 and 6 year old have done these with little supervision whereas my independent 2 year old had to be coaxed into doing an alternative craft.

Cross stitch was a little hard for Mr Smiley (2) to handle but these wooden colouring decorations were perfect. He recognised the characters and happily sat colouring them in. He is an excellent colourer which we discovered recently and is able to stay within the lines remarkably well for his age.

Dotty Art nativity pictures I'm sure will be a hit. These are still in our to do pile, but having done some before I know this will be an independent craft. What kid doesn't like stickers!

In a bid to also kill two birds with one stone as the saying goes I have got these Christmas cards for the children to colour for special family members like their grandparents.

Another decoration craft, but one which I can class as Maths - recurring patterns, addition, multiplication, area...all done with pipe cleaners and beads.

Putting these alongside baking sessions involving gingerbread, peppermint creams, snowmen cupcakes and Christmas wreath pastries, we will be having a fun filled month.

What invention changed the world the most?

A tough question was posed in our history lesson recently. What invention changed the world the most? I wonder how you would answer this question.

My first thoughts landed on the wheel. Transportation, water wheels, motors and engines have all benefited from this simple design. Or what about communication technology? Telephones, televisions, radio, telegraph, internet all make pretty impressive inventions and are used daily by the young and the old, and communication is now instant. Or maybe the lightbulb? and not just the lightbulb but the infrastructure that is needed and used now to provide electricity for power. Mr Social thought the automobile was the greatest invention whereas Mr Cheeky was backing R2-D2.

Our history programme however put forward a very good argument for why the printing press is the invention that changed the world the most. Over in Germany, Johannes Gutenberg, used his skills as a goldsmith to create the first ever moveable printing press. Previously books, literature, instructions were all either wrote, carved, or sewn by hand. His invention brought books to the masses. Information could be recorded and passed on. A person's works and achievements could be recorded for other people to learn from and add to.

Here is a list of resources that you can use to discover more about Gutenberg's printing press.

• An informative video
• A short biography
• A lesson plan with stamps and ink
• Some online activities...the be a printer for the day was quite fun

We decided to do some potato printing. I gave the children some potatoes that had been sliced in half and showed them how to carve their image on to the potato and had them cut around it. We stuck to fairly simple shapes and with some ready made paint and brushes they were good to go. Here are a few snaps from their printing endeavours.

As a side note we are quite a creative family and this activity is great for when you don't have suitable wrapping paper available. Stamp some fun images on some brown paper for your own personalised wrapping paper. Also for some more intricate potato designs you can use a metal cookie cutter hammered into the potato to create the shape for printing.