The Drew Patch: March 2015

Hello from the Drew Patch! Bill was very pleased when he got to have a go with kid-safe scissiors.

We had a train play time with chairs lined up as the train, thanks to our Sonlight P 3/4 Richard Scarry reading. This was the suggested accompanying activity! Mercy is joining in with Nate's Sonlight Core A studies but I am also incorporating some of the preschool fun she may have been too young for when I did it with Nate.

We are also pressing repeat on some crafts, at their request. We did this one last a couple of years ago now. I love my "Crafty Ideas A-Z" book so I'm happy to do it as many times as everyone is happy! This time we not only made the ants but also an ant hill. We painted the ant hill and ants this time, which appeased my home school mummy guilt about not painting as much as might be good!

Mercy is "reading" our Curious George story book to their monkey. He was formerly called Luca, but is now George for obvious reasons!

Nate is showing the number book we are putting together. The rice in the dish in the backgrond was an attempt at tactile help for letters like lower case a and h which are difficult to write correctly when you first start. The idea is that you form the letter with your finger in the rice, and therefore feel the way it is formed.

Our biggest achievement though was our terrarium! It has taken me some weeks to get all the materials together. A jar from the reject shop, appropriate ferns from a garden centre, potting mix and peat moss from Grandad, charcoal and pebbles from our garden.

These are they types of things that seem oh so daunting when I read about them in the curriculum. Where am I going to get the time to organise all those extra bits and pieces I think to myself??? Yet when it is eventually done we learn a lot, have a lot of joy, and it is all worth it.

We have had lots of good times with the "I See Sam" books available for free download from http://marriottmd.com/sam/index.html

You can print them out and colour them in and most importantly, read them!

We are really pleased with Nate's reading progress so far this year.

Our schooling was a bit more challenging to get to when road works visited our cul-de-sac for nearly an entire week! "Dozy" (Bill's word for the digger), and compacter that jumped up and down on the soil, and the vibrator to smooth the soil were all much more interesting than the school books!

Bill has begun to use chalks. So sweet!

We had a fun family apple harvesting time.

It is surprising how much fruit our little tress can give. We have dwarf and espailier trees. There are lots of apples still ripening on the other trees!