Friday 18 September 2015

Fine Tuning

We have just finished the second complete week of this term. 

This was a week where we had our second poetry tea party. We invited another family, had our tea with poetry and then the afternoon finished with some impromptu tree climbing! I think that poetry teas will remain on the agenda.

The other, very successful addition to our home education, this year, is Exploring Nature with Children. This week, we had an autumn picnic which included apples from our garden 

as well as our nature walk. 




 More science has been about rocks. A friend lent us a great collection (this is only a small part)
which was handled, classified, tested for buoyancy
and reaction with vinegar.

There were little gem stones to polish as well.

Maths is one of the areas needing adjustment. Both younger children started  off doing the Centre of Innovation in Mathematics Teaching's Mathematics Education Project (MEP) this term. Youngest Son had been working on this for part of last year and it has worked well but adding a second child to a different year has proved challenging. This is a programme which requires a fair amount of teaching and also covered some concepts that hadn't been introduced in the previous programme. All in all, it seemed to make more sense to move Younger Daughter on to Galore Park Junior Maths book 2 rather than continue with a programme which seemed to be a less than good fit. 


On the other hand, All about Spelling has been working very well. This seems a better, more logical and less stressful way of teaching spelling than the Jolly Grammar so I plan to change Youngest Son to All about Spelling.

Our current history read alouds are Minstrel in the Tower which goes with the current Veritas history. I don't object to this book but it isn't the best of the Veritas selections. On the other hand, David Macaulay's book Castles is a splendid account in words and pictures of the building of a castle. The vocabulary, in places, is quite technical and my eight year old appreciates this more than my six year old. 

We tried a new home education meet up, this week, at an adventure playground. Everyone was friendly and the playground was new to us but the children and I realised that they are growing out of such venues and were some of the older children there. 

We are continuing to use The Child's Story Bible by Catherine Vos but have left the Trinitarian Bible Society Bible learning scheme, for a short time, to concentrate on some Sunday School Bible learning that the children have been given. The hymn We plough the fields and scatter seemed to fit in well with autumn time.

I guess that I am always going to be fine tuning and guess that I'm not the only person who has had to make adjustments!

If you enjoyed this post you may like to follow Delivering Grace by Google Friend Connect, G+,FacebookPinterest or e-mail.

No comments:

Post a Comment