Vin's Learning Journey

Vin has really been working on his cutting skills and writing skills this week. Not to mention a lot of dressing up! We printed out a fun activity from the totschooling website. It had some lovely autumn leaves to cut out and match to their silhouettes on another sheet. Vin snipped out all of his leaves all by himself. He wanted to give up but persevered! Then he matched them all up and glued them on. He was pretending to be the stig from top gear so wrote his name on the sheet as "Stig". He also practiced writing the letter l in his spider-man writing book. We did some activities from a cbeebies numberblocks comic. We also played some more with the toy blocks that came with the comic. They are really great as Vin just naturally does adding and subtracting as part of the games he plays and things he copies from the TV show and comic. Vin dressed up as a pirate. Vin's Oma came round and we all baked amaretti biscuits together. Vin helped read the recipe, hel...

The weather this week has turned a bit colder but still been really nice so we've been making the most of it and getting outdoors. We've made lots of fun chalk trails with challenges to follow in the garden. We designed a spooky halloween pumpkin. Vin wanted it to have 4 eyes. I copied his design onto the pumpkin and then carved it. Vinnie did some more writing practice most days this week. He is pretty keen on it at the moment (for a few minutes at a time anyway!). We've been using the Spider-Man writing practice book and a teenage mutant ninja turtles wipe clean book that has writing and maths activities in. We went to a talk for home ed families at the local museum. This month it was about Archaeology. Afterwards we went to a new playground in town. Vin was very excited about it! He was proud of himself for managing to climb up a very tricky climbing frame to get to the big slide! The topics group on facebook has chosen "Artists" this month for ...

The past couple of weeks, Vin has started being interested in learning to write. We've been practicing a little bit more than usual from his comics so he can see the "correct" way to form each letter. I've been keeping it very laid back still though as don't want him to feel pressured about it! We did some activities from a Sarah and Duck comic, ready for fireworks night! Of course, Sarah and Duck came to help too. I was so proud of how well he concentrated with the writing activities. We had a good laugh when his toy Sarah had a go at writing too. See if you can spot her rather unusual handwriting attempts on the page :) As it's apple season, we made some fun decorated apple slices! We got some toppings - choc chips, banana chips, and raisins and stuck them to our apple slices with nutella or appelstroop. Vinnie's favourite topping was nutella, raisins and choc chips. My favourite topping was nutella and banana chips! Vin liked the Sarah and Du...

The past few weeks we have done a variety of things in addition to a LOT of reading and playing. We've been keeping an eye out for interesting Autumn fungi. We took some samples of the water at our local park and tested them for phosphates and nitrates to get an idea of how good the water is for plants and creatures to live in. We painted our salt dough models and made a "harvest festival" display. We went on an insect walk with some other home ed families and a local expert. We worked hard at the park, sweeping loose gravel off the paths so they are safer. Vinnie set up his own preschool for his cuddly toys. He made a sign and laid out different activities for them. We made a delicious apple cake. Vinnie made a safari train ride. We helped cut back overhanging branches at the park. And had a celebratory BBQ with the other volunteers. Vinnie organised some wheelbarrow races! We visited the museum and saw some objects people used to have in th...