Week Seven - February 12 - 18

I have been reading a book called "Reading Reflex" this week. It was recommended by another homeschooler so I put a hold on it and got it from the library. It's great! Definately been a few lightbulb moments reading it - it just makes so much sense! It talks about how confusing the phonics system is for children and also just the terms and way of looking at the alphabet and letters. The book also has lesson plans and materials to make to teach your children to read. It is well worth a look. I'm going to try some of the activities and see how we go. I had been going through the letters and alphabet the way that I had been taught - with learning the names of the letters and the sounds. Liam was already getting confused with it all. Letters like C - where when you say it's name it sounds like "see" but then it makes the sound "c". Reading the book made me understand why he was having trouble with it. Anyway, will let you know how we go over the next few weeks. You can check out Read America for more info about it.

This week was Letter G g week.

~* We made up a booklet that I printed off the net with pictures and words of things that started with the letter G. The boys also did a bit of writing whilst making the book. When the boys had finished the book, our conversation moved to colours and how when you combined them you could make other colours. Using crayons they rubbed and mixed colours together. I also showed them how you could rub crayon on one side of the paper, and then by placing the crayon rubbing face down on a clean piece of paper, and then drawing on top of it the crayon would rub off making the same pattern on the clean piece of paper.

~* Following on from our colours activities we also got out some tubs, glass jars, water, and food colouring to play with. The boys had a ball mixing different colours.

~* The boys drew some pitures and I wrote letters (dictated by them), for their cousins and Uncle and Aunt. We received a lovely present in the mail a few weeks ago so wanted to send a thank you note to them. I have been thinking about the art of letter writing lately. It's come up in a few conversations and the more I hear people talking about it, the more I think it's a great thing to encourage. I know how lovely it is to receive them and the boys enjoy receiving mail so much - it would be great for letter writing in general to make a come back. I used to write heaps of letters as a child and loved having pen friends.

~* We had lots of outside activities planned for last week but they unexpectedly got rained out! Despite that though we still got to the park twice this week - in between the rain. We met with friends in a great park and stayed on until the light shower turned into pouring rain. They also got to play in the rain. The boys were on their way to the park with Ben this morning when a storm hit. They weren't far from home so got back just before the downpour - the boys couldn't resist being out in the rain and ran around stomping in the puddles. They had a ball.

~* We had a meeting at a nursing home about starting as volunteers doing residential visits. The boys were great despite being in such a small office - though Liam was a bit dissappointed that we didn't get to meet any of the residents! We will be visiting the dementia ward and will go there next week to meet the coordinator and also the residents.

~* The boys pulled out their blocks again this week and we had lots of fun building towers and lookouts - for Star Wars characters of course!

~*I picked up some cheap tubes of glitter glue during the week on Liam's request. The boys spent ages making pictures with it. Liam would squirt out the glitter glue and then use a lollipop stick to spread the glue out and make patterns.

~* We saw the movie, "Happy Feet" on the weekend. The boys really enjoyed it and it sparked a lot of discussion about penguins, the impact human's have on the world, how the different animals interact (food chains and stuff like that). It was a little scary in a couple of parts but quite realistic and the scary bits were no different to things you would see in a documentary about penguins - sea lions trying to eat the penguins for example. So a thumbs up from us for Happy Feet.