Vin's Learning Journey

 Handwriting practice continued this week, practicing more joined up words rather than just individual letters. We dropped off our patchwork squares so should hopefully hear more about when the complete one is being made. We watched some videos on youtube about plumbing and how taps work as Vin asked about that. We saw a cross-section of a tap to see how turning the tap lets the water through or blocks it and we saw a video about how water comes through the pipes and waste water flows away. We did the next lesson on Mystery Science. We made the bumper coaster and experimented with the different combinations. We filled in our next conceptual model from the anchor lesson about storing and releasing energy. We read about one of the fastest rollercoasters in the world and answered some comprehension questions ...and of course watched some videos of the rollercoasters!   We read about how leaves change colour in the autumn, read a poem and looked at Autumn Foliage paintings by the ...

 The start of the new month! We noticed September had 30 days as we updated our calendar each day. We also practiced some handwriting, again using sheets from letter-join but also on one day Vinnie wanted to practice writing in a different way. He wanted to find an interesting fact to write about. At first he wanted to find something out about Hong Kong. On the sidebar of the site we used, there were other places listed and he was intrigued by a particular photo which turned out to be the Tiger's Nest monastery in Bhutan. So we read about Bhutan as well and Vinnie wrote a fact and drew their flag.  We read about classical music in our "School of Music" book. We learned about the different classical music periods and listened to some examples of music from the different styles. Vin had enjoyed picking different genres from the page last week so we also found some more examples of that too - this time Villenella, mariachi, Bollywood, lieder and a sitar player. We did the ne...

 This week we have continued to practice joined up writing and to update our calendar each day. There was an interesting change this week at last as the season changed to Astronomical Autumn! We read about the harvest moon and the autumnal equinox. We read a couple of poems and closed our eyes to imagine the scene as we listened to them. We talked about what things remind us of Autumn.  We started a new mystery science unit about energy and electricity. We watched the music video of the song This Too Shall Pass by OK Go - it's a giant Rube Goldberg machine. We observed the different things moving and the chain reactions. We filled in our "Conceptual model" sheets and the "See Think Wonder" chart. We also watched some other Chain reaction videos that Vinnie likes (The Sprice machines ones on youtube).   Vin did more food prep again this week, helping to prepare snacks and lunch independently. We did some activities from Twinkl about having a positive learning att...

This week we have continued practicing joined up writing using sheets from the letterjoin website. We have practiced all the letters now so will try them a bit smaller next and then more words. We've been updating our calendar each day too. Vin has done lots of good helping with snack and lunch preparations. He's been sharing fruit and snacks out fairly, picking and washing grapes, and chopping up apples. We did some puzzles from the Wild West magazine from Mysteries in Time and also gave the magic card trick a go. We used the cards to make up a board game too. We laid out a board with the cards and had to move our counters to each card and roll a 12 sided die then multiply the die by the card. Vin extended the board with some more cards too after I took the picture! Vin has been playing out in the garden every day this week, riding around on his trike. He got some rope out and had fun tying his trike and gokart together and towing one with the other. We thought about what our ...