Happy New Year! 1 - 8 January

It's the first full week of the New Year and we have done some fun activities to kick off! 

For Christmas, Vinnie received a subscription to "Mysteries in Time". It's a monthly box with a book and activities about different time periods. The first one was Ancient Egypt themed. Over the course of this week we did lots of the activities. We read the story book where the 2 children go back in time to solve a mystery in Ancient Egypt. We looked at the map that came with the box and put the sticker on the timeline. Vin was inspired by the story to make up his own time travel story with his cuddly toys. There was a magazine with loads of facts to read and puzzles which we enjoyed doing.

 

Each day Vin has aimed for "1 minute of writing". Vin can pick anything he likes to write a sentence about or even just make up random words and he has to write for a full minute. We started last year for a week or so and he managed about 2 words in the minute at the start. He is already writing a little more in the time. 

I printed out a booklet of "Superhero skip counting" activities to practice counting in multiples of 2, 5, 10 and 3. Vin did a couple of pages each day. During that time we also talked a bit about place value, useful ways to remember times tables, and practiced a few quizzing each other. We used the plastic blocks to help. At the end of the booklet was a puzzle to cut out and assemble which Vin did.

We had fun finding some youtube videos to dance along to. The Go Noodle ones were popular this week including one about syllables and one about reading with expression (which Vin is awesome at anyway so found it funny hearing them read like robots).

We talked about things we had achieved for the first time in 2020 and thought about what we might like to achieve or improve in 2021. We made a magic wand and wrote a wish for something we would like on it. I saw it on another website I can't remember where! We drew round star shaped templates and cut them out, stuck them to a lolly stick and wrote our wishes on. 

On a couple of the days, we watched some Mystery science videos. We had a Winter theme - we watched "Where do bugs go in winter?", "Where is the coldest place on Earth?", "Why do penguins have wings if they can't fly?" (which led us to watch a BBC video about how Emperor penguins launch themselves out of the water onto the ice after diving for food) and "How do Polar animals stay warm?". This also had an activity of designing your own extra snug home for humans to stay in the cold. Vin also had fun making his own snug den in his bed.

We watched a short video about Van Gogh and drew our own swirly Van Gogh inspired Christmas tree pictures (as we had to put the tree away this week!).

Vin got the tape measure out on one day as he was reading a toy catalogue and wanted to figure out how big some of the cuddly animals and giant robot toys were. He measured some other things around the house too. We had a look at how there are cm and inch markings on the tape measure.

Vin played a bit on a game by Natwest on the PS4 called "Island Saver". It had a bit about money, what tax is for, saving, bank accounts and also being environmentally friendly. We've also played a few maths games on the computer to help practice adding, subtracting, multiplying and division.

We had a go at a new board game Vinnie got for Christmas called "Keys to the Castle". It was good fun! 

We enjoyed another video lesson by Harriet Rose. This time about fireworks. I ordered it back on bonfire night but I forgot for a few weeks and then it seemed it might be better to watch at New Year fireworks! We heard a lot of information about Handel, his early life and friendship with the Duke of Hannover who became King of England. We learned a bit about the Chinese inventions that led to the invention of fireworks, from pieces of bamboo thrown in the fire that went crack, to the invention of gunpowder, paper and print making. We learned a bit about the origin of Bonfire Night and the gunpowder plot and Guy Fawkes. Then we found out about the disastrous fireworks party for which Handel composed his "Music for the Royal Fireworks". The fireworks got wet in the rain and didn't go off properly, the specially built pavilion caught fire, and the Duke who organised the event and the pavilion's architect had a sword fight! But everyone agreed the music was nice. We listened to a specially recorded version of some of the piece that had been recorded using the types of musical instrument that would have been available in Handel's time and we learned a bit about how they would have been different to the modern equivalents. We also learned a little about the origin of the "Catherine Wheel" and later we watched a video of the incredible Catherine wheels in Malta at their festival for Catherine of the Wheel. Then Vin drew a lovely firework.

We hadn't spent much time outside as it has been so cold so on Friday we braved the ice and frost and had a 4 mile walk around the area. We looked for animal footprints in the frozen mud, found frozen puddles to crack, and admired the still reflections in the pond. The dripping wells in the park had steam coming off them it was so cold.

When we got home we baked cookies to warm up! Vinnie put the oven on to preheat, measured out all the ingredients, cut up and melted the butter and syrup on the hob, mixed the ingredients together and rolled the balls of dough for the cookies onto the baking tray. They came out really well.

In general, Vin has been working on tidying up after himself a bit more and has helped with dinner a couple of times this week too, weighing ingredients, peeling potatoes and washing rice.