Vin's Learning Journey

 This week we had a bit of fun looking through the boxes of Home Ed stuff we have acquired that has been a bit harder to access recently because of being packed away! (It was a bank holiday this week too so only a 3 day week). Vin did his 3 minutes writing each day too, continuing practicing joining up letters. He also made a mysterious lost book with a map of an airship crash and the route the explorers took. Some of our discoveries: We found the weather magnets and looked up what the symbols meant. We looked on the weather app and made a little forecast using the magnets. There were lots of other magnets too so we made fun mister potato head pictures and played with magnetism. We found some print outs of dinosaurs with lots of little shapes to build pictures with. Vin held an impromptu "Spikiest Dinosaur competition". We found lots of old comics and sticker books. Vin enjoyed making a Spaceship. We went out for a couple of walks nearby and spotted a Pied Wagtail just loiter...

 After 2 weeks off to pack, move house, and unpack again, we were ready to start doing some more fun activities again! This week Vinnie has drawn loads of pictures. He's been drawing a lot of vehicles and castles for Bowser and his friends! His drawings have been becoming more detailed and thoughtful and it's fun to hear the stories he tells about them.    Vin planned some fun party activities to celebrate the first day of home ed in the new house! Every day Vin did his 3 minutes writing. We decided to focus on going quickly this week and Vin managed to do 2 pages of activities over the 4 days so he was certainly faster. He was still pretty neat and accurate too so overall did very well. Vin made a board game for us to play. There were forfeits and maths questions. We set up the nerf gun targets and took turns answering lots of times tables. Each correct answer earned a nerf dart and once we had 10 darts we could try and knock down the targets. Then we added up our score ...

 We are winding down a bit ready for moving house so a lot of activities have taken a back seat. For 2 weeks after this we will be having "time off" to sort out the new house etc so won't be updating! This week though we have done a few things. With the brighter weather, and the ease in lockdown restrictions, Vinnie has been able to play outside with friends a bit.  He has also carried on with his 3 minutes writing and has done some really great joined up writing practice. We've given each other quizzes asking maths questions, particularly on the 5 times table "fact families". We even asked each other maths questions using the morse code telegraph to beep out the numbers! We visited Scotney Castle and did their Easter trail. Vin has done loads of drawing and making up stories about his pictures. We also made snowflakes and used them as costumes for our drawings as it snowed this week! We watched some Mystery Science mini mysteries and some other fun things o...

 This week Vin got to the pages of the writing book that start to show how to join up letters! He did 3 minutes of writing on each day. He was pleased to start joined up writing. As lockdown restrictions eased in England, we took the opportunity to go to the seaside. We found interesting things on the beach and drew some of them in our nature journals. We looked up what they were when we got home and found out some interesting facts. We watched the tide change and talked about how the gravity of the moon can affects the tides on Earth. We went to the Dungeness Nature Reserve and looked at the birds and saw some petrified whale bones. We looked at the guide map for the nature reserve and used it as inspiration to make our own guide map for our local park. We used google maps to get a picture of the park and then made a key and marked the places we thought were good spots at the park. We used our map to take Vin's grandparents on a tour of the park. While we were there we saw lots of...

 This was our last laid back week of our "Winter Term" so we made the most of it to play lots of games, chat about things and just have a proper week off.  That said, we did still do a couple of notable things. Vin got his model of the solar system that we made ages ago and had fun playing with it and asking each other lots of quizzes about the planets. He had remembered quite a few things from the video we watched the other day! We made some delicious lemon fairy cakes on one day, and made jelly bean cookies on another day. It was not a healthy eating week!  We played on a little green near us on one day after posting a letter. There is a garden there and some people had planeted flowers. We had some races and had fun. another day we visited a different post box that often has a crocheted decoration on top. This time it had a world book day theme. We drew the moon again in our nature journal. Our prediction from the previous drawing was correct - the moon was larger than...

 Each day this week Vin did his 2.5 minutes writing. We had a look at some nice joined up handwriting by children his age (for "inspiration"). Vin declares his writing is even better. Good to have confidence! (Slightly misguided perhaps...). He is doing really well practicing every day and it definitely seems to be helping having the words to trace. This Saturday is the Spring Equinox. We read about what that means and looked at how the Earth orbits the Sun at an angle and how that changes which hemisphere is facing the Sun each season. We read some Spring poems and looked at a painting by Monet called "An Orchard in Spring". We talked about how it looks like the painting was done a bit later in Spring than at the start as the leaves are out and Vinnie thinks there may be bluebells which come out a bit later in the year. We finished reading the story book from this month's mystery in time. It is about Wartime Britain. We were inspired to write our own secret mes...

We found a new game online this week. It's called Dreamscape. You read stories and answer questions about them to earn different kinds of curency you can build a little town with and train creatures etc. It was OK but I think a little overcomplicated (the game side of things anyway - the reading stuff was very easy for Vin) so I think we probably won't play it much again. Vin did his 2.5 minutes writing every day, having a reminder of writing the alphabet neatly and some words in preparation for learning to start joining up the letters.  Vin played Prodigy maths on a few of the days this week - he answered questions about telling the time, 3d shapes, 2 and 5 times tables, addition and subtraction, comparing numbers and patterns. I have been setting the level at things he is fairly familiar with to start with so he can get used to how it asks the questions but I have started introducing some more challenging things now.  We read about the kinds of games Elizabethan children wou...