Vin's Learning Journey

Over the last week we have worked more on remembering our good manners, how to be polite to people, and talked about why it's nice to have good manners. We had a bit of a clear out after Christmas and gave some of Vinnie's baby toys away. We talked about why it was good to pass on things we didn't use any more. We gave some to a charity shop and talked about why we do this sometimes, that the charity can sell the things to make money and use that money to help other people. We had a big project this last week - building the Lego Carousel! This is the trickiest set we have ever had. It is marked as "Expert" on the box! We built it over 4 separate days so we wouldn't get too overwhelmed. It was fab for seeing how cogs worked in the mechanism inside and how as parts turned, other bits moved up and down. It was also a test of concentration and following instructions. We both loved seeing how it came together at the various stages! It was certainly chall...

We had a lot of fun in the run up to Christmas and over the Christmas and New Year break. As usual Vinnie has been using his imagination in more and more creative ways. Most of the things he comes up with are during time on his own and it is always fun to find out what he has been up to! For example, one day he created a cool pirate secret hideout, complete with collapsible treasure chest hiding place: Before Christmas, we did a bit more of our Mystery Science: weather theme. We learned a bit about the different seasons of the year. We also did lots of Christmas themed activities Another day, I found Vinnie had built a very elaborate structure out of duplo. It was for dumping coal into the train trucks. We built a model dinosaur We had a campfire with the other volunteers to celebrate the last volunteering day of the year. Vinnie worked so hard that day helping with the coppicing, carrying big branches onto the pile. We put on our very own lego minifigure nativity...

The last few weeks have been spent doing some fun festive activities. We have done lots of games, colouring and puzzles from Vinnie's comics that have had Christmas themed fun. Vin has also chosen some activities and thought up his own ideas. Vinnie likes to pretend to be the teacher at his school! This day he was being Mister Fantastic from the fantastic four. His lesson was for us to choose a car, have a race and see which went fastest, then to draw a picture of it and write the name. A kind friend from our park volunteering gave Vinnie some dinosaur themed play dough. Vin had a lot of fun playing with it and making some good dinosaur noises too of course. We found out a bit about what causes Rainbows. We experimented on a sunny day by putting some water in a glass and holding it over some white paper with the sun shining through the glass. It didn't show very clearly in the photo, but we saw a rainbow appear on the paper. Vinnie held a party for his dinos. We b...