Precious Moments #1

This week has been a bit of a disaster week from the point of school.  We had the plasterers in to plaster the living room and dining area (our main living space)  so the children and I have had to spend the week in the hallway and  mine and Gary’s bedroom which has not been conducive for much schooling.

A4’s school is the one that has suffered the most, but really we’ve all done very little compared to most weeks.

I abandoned usual maths in favour of our hands on maths.  The reason being that geometry is fairly new to all the children, in particular angles and so forth. I wrote about our first furore into ‘living’ maths ( http://angelicscalliwags.com/2012/11/12/unmuddling-maths/  and http://angelicscalliwags.com/2012/11/13/making-an-aged-viking-map/ )  and how successful it was, so I tried once again to link it (albeit very loosely!) to our Viking studies using the stave they used for writing the runes accurately.  I’ll post on Monday  more detail, but suffice it to say we really are enjoying this journey and it has been a welcoming change for us.

On the writing front, we did very little but we did make headway with our presentation prep work.  T10 read through and highlighted everything he wanted to include using this method:http://www.milkandcookiesblog.com/2012/10/history-notebooking.html

He made a plan of the sequence of his presentation and then dictated what he would like to say.  I get him to dictate because he dislikes writing and this makes quite a complicated procedure easier for him.  After dictating, we sat down together and went through the work making improvements.  Finally we put it into key words.  It is these key words that will be available to him to prompt him throughout the presentation.  Once we have got to this stage it is full on practice, practice, practice until the presentation night!

The girls and I had decided to do more of a drama for their presentation, with Daddy as an almost willing participant.  We, therefore, worked on their presentation together rather than them being independent.  They also continued with their weaving for their Viking doll’s costumes, also using their Lucet to make belts and the like.

We finished off some of our Viking rune work which I posted about here:http://angelicscalliwags.com/2012/11/15/viking-runes/

Next week will be ALL about our presentation: making the dressing up outfits; preparing the meal; making the programmes using a very versatile note page Jimmie (notebooking fairy) made especially for this purpose; and practising their presentation until they know it almost off by heart.  They really enjoy these few days before the presentation as the excitement builds and everyone, including Gary and Granny (who lives next door), joins in with the preparations.