Silent Sunday

The Salamander Room

The Girl chose The Salamander Room as our last FIAR book before Christmas. I looked in the FIAR Vol 3 manual and saw that it was very light on certain days and realised we could do this book in 3 days - which was handy because we were out and about 2 days last week :)

It is the story of a little boy, Brian, who finds a salamander in the forest and takes it home to keep as a pet. The rest of the book is a conversation between him and his mother about how he will care for the salamander.

We briefly discussed the mother/son relationship as recommended in the manual and concentrated on the Language Arts activities instead. We looked at parallel construction  and used a mini-book from HSS for The Boy. Meanwhile, The Girl wrote a short story that involved a change of setting. We also discussed reading for knowledge and looked at some of our non-fiction books that had entries on salamanders.

They enjoyed the Art activity in the manual (as always). We looked at the pictures and they noticed for themselves how the illustrations spill further and further out into the frames which made that day go very easily. The Boy made himself a minibook and then wrote a short story which he illustrated in a similar style, with the pictures slipping further and further into the surrounding frames.

The Girl devised her own activity. She looked at an old book on sketching and used the ideas in it to draw something from nature with a fantasy twist. She thought that the illustrations spilled more into the frames as Brian's fantasy grew larger and so she wanted to incorporate fantasy elements into her drawing.

We skipped the Maths section completely and went straight on to the science activities. We went on a nature walk, not on the beautiful sunny Autumn afternoon when I suggested it. Oh no, we had to go the next morning in the rain :/ Actually, it was lots of fun. They put their wellies on and declared it a water walk and splashed through puddles and squelched in mud. Very amphibious ;)

Back home, we talked about vertebrates and got out a pack of Animal Families cards, dividing them into vertebrates and invertebrates, along the lines suggested in the manual. We also looked at the lifecycle of the Salamander and its place in the food chain. The Girl did some beautiful illustrations and The Boy did a minibook from HomeSchoolShare.

Seeing as how The Boy only had 3 minibooks and a picture, we made a Really-Mini-Lapbook which basically consisted of a piece of A4 card folded in half. We stuck one minibook on each half and then sewed his story into the middle, like pages :) He's very pleased with it.

We watched a 1920 film showing the development of a salamander from egg to adult, and were sent a link to this catchy little number from a friend. I think this song inspired the Boy's story. Thanks J :)



After all that, I thought it would be fun to go and look at some real salamanders. They're not native to this country so I rang The Manchester Museum to see if they had any in their vivarium. They were very helpful and I booked us in for a vivarium tour.

What a fab day we had!!!! We were the only people on the vivarium tour and this gave us the chance to see lizards and chameleons close up and out of their tanks. We even got to see the chameleon being fed, I was so excited I clapped (blush). The museum staff were great, very friendly and enthusiatic about their work. I never knew amphibians could be so interesting :)

Then, as the salamanders aren't on public display, we were taken into the back room where they care for and breed many rare species of amphibians - mainly tree frogs - of which we saw some amazingly colourful ones, some that had been thought to be extinct until recently. And we got to see some fire salamanders from Corsica. Fantastic! The kids said it was their best afternoon EVER ;)

Baby salamander

Adult salamanders

Useful Links
wikipage
BBC page
Kids National geographic page
List of Facts page
lifecycle printable
Colouring sheet
More colouring sheets
And more colouring
Make a paper salamander
Online jigsaw


Useful Books

Silent Stir Up Sunday

Currclick Cyber-Monday Sale

 Just in case anyone doesn't already know, Currclick are having their annual Cyber Monday sale and there will be 8 freebies to find and 2 extra on their Facebook page. This is a 48 hour only event starting on 26th November.
And yes, I'm plugging this because I'm an affiliate, so if you click on the little advert above, I might get a few pennies if you spend some money and it won't cost you anything extra :)
Cheers :)

Reed Boats, Patchwork and Fossils

We've been so busy around here. Too busy to blog, it would appear :/
Mostly, they've been carrying on with all their usual activities - cornet, singing, swimming, drama, Little Ninjas, beavers, scouts and more singing, as well as extras - Jazz parades, HE workshops, Scout camps, Halloween, Bonfire Night and two weeks of free cinema with National Schools Film Week....

The Boy and friends' Egyptian reed boat

The Girl and friends' Egyptain reed boat

And when at home, we've been trying to do music practice - cornet for the Girl and xylophone for The Boy, maths, spy school (The Boy), Story of The World (we finally made it to the Greeks), English (The Girl got newfound enthusiasm and did 15 pages of her book in one day!), Five in a Row and lots of crafty stuff.
I've mainly been knitting gloves and mittens and The Girl has been learning how to do American style quilting thanks to another HE mum :)

We've also been doing some work on fossils and learning about Mary Anning for our next bookgroup session. The book this month was Stone Girl Bone Girl: The Story of Mary Anning of Lyme Regis by Laurence Anholt. Conveniently, the BBC put on some Mary Anning related programmes - True Stories Part 1on iplayer, a secondary schools programme, the 1st of the Dinosaurs episodes of Time to Move on BBC schools radio. And yes, I do have to dance around the living room with them....it's cheaper than a gym ;)
The BBC also have an audio slideshow of her life, and a news article of the ichthyosaur fossil that she found returning to Lyme Regis after 200 years..
We looked at our fossil collection and used the Fossil Detective Field Guide to identify them. This was a free publication from the OU via the BBC a few years ago (I knew it would come in useful one day :D) but you can download it for free from here.

What a busy week that was!

Last week was SOO busy... I think it's taken me till now to get my feet back on the ground LOL. The second week of any month is usually busier than most with bookgroup and our local themed meeting taking place on consecutive days.
Our last bookgroup read was Friend or Foe by Micheal Morpurgo. It's a shortish read - 8 chapters - which we all enjoyed and made me cry - as Micheal Morpurgo usually does. It's an interesting book about 2 boys evacuated from London at the start of the war. They are taken in by a farming couple in Devon and are the only witnesses to a German bomber crashing on the moors. As the story progresses, the boys discover that the lines that define the enemy are often blurred and they have to deal with the moral dilemma this causes them.
As a result of reading this book, my two built an air-raid shelter under the dining table and got out evacuee labels and ID cards to take to book group. We also got out our children's war replica pack. The Girl particularly liked the children's newspaper and wants to get a copy of First News - the nearest thing we've got today.
On Wednesday, at our local HE group, the theme was Plants and Trees. The group planted about 50 bulbs in the borders of the church hall where we meet, dissected some bulbs and examined them, waxed leaves to preserve them, looked at photosynthesis, started some sprouting seeds, made leaf collages and identified trees aongst other things. (Sorry, I can't remember them all).
Thursday we went to Little Ninjas as usual, which both my children thoroughly enjoy, and then managed to go and visit my Dad before they went to choir.
On Friday (get ready for photos ;)) we went to a Home Ed climbing group. This is on every fortnight but usually consists of bouldering with the ropes coming out about once every half-term :) Now, please bear in mind that I am absolutely terrified of heights, so even watching my children do this gives me palpitations....

 

 

The week ended with dancing and jazz parades and lots of tombola prizes. Next week is National Schools Film Week so we'll be spending some time at the cinema :) Can't wait for a nice sit down ;)

P.S  In amongst all this, we finished off our FIAR book from last week and did some maths, some handwriting, read a few books and made some stuff....

The Girl's sewing project so far...

Creswell Crags trip + useful links

 

On Monday, it rained and it rained and it rained. We were booked onto a Home Ed trip to do a Ice Age survival skills workshop at Creswell Crags in Derbyshire. We were also going to look at the cave art - the oldest Ice Age cave art in Britain. Until recently, it was the ONLY known Ice Age cave art in Britain but then they found some in Gower, Wales.

Ice-Age bison carving

Ice-Age flint

Baby stalactites

The staff at Creswell Crags were really helpful and accommodating, changing our activities to better fit in with the weather. They were knowledgeable and enthusiastic, even though they were getting as wet as we were. They were great with the kids and easily coped with the mixed age range of our group (3-13ish). Although they were getting VERY wet, none of the kids complained and they all seemed to enjoy themselves - as did the parents who were also roped into the survival activities.

A soggy Girl building a shelter

An equally soggy Boy also building a shelter

Job done!

Hunting mammoth - the Girl hit it :)

Another mammoth hunter

Fire-starting demonstration

 The Girl says: It was very good but I didn't like the cave spiders. I liked the shelter building and hunting the mammoth. I'd recommend it and my favourite cave picture was the one of the Ibis bird.

The Boy says: It was very good but they were actually quite mean because they took down our shelters when we'd finished them and I wanted to sleep in mine. It was VERY wet.

I say: 'No chance' to the Boy sleeping in that shelter. It was very exciting to hold real Ice Age artefacts - antler is surprisingly heavy and stone-like. I learnt that there were cave lions in Britain and that there are cave spiders now. I'd definitely recommend Creswell Crags to other Home Ed groups as a place to visit. I'm looking forward to going again - probably next summer....on a sunny day ;)

The trip was a follow-up to our local Home Ed group's themed meeting where the children learnt about cave painting, made clat beads, knapped some flint and played Settlers ofthe Stone Age whilst the mums made a model of Stonehenge :)

As a family, we learnt a bit about the Stone Age when we did Chapter 1 of The Story of the World Vol 1. Here are some links I found then which maybe useful to anyone learning about Prehistoric man.

Activities
Cave painting lesson
Recipes

Info
Virtual Tour of Caves at Lascaux
Virtual Tour of the Cave at Chauvet-Pont-D'Arc


Printables
Stone Age Family picture to colour
Toolmaker and tools to colour
Woolly Mammoth to colour
Prehistoric hut to make

Clip Art
Prehistoric Mammals
Cave Paintings
Prehistoric Animals

Andy and the Lion

This is a bit of an overdue post because we did this through the summer, in one of the rare quiet weeks we had. I know it must sound really weird to many people, but it felt like an oasis of calm in the midst of 2 very hectic months - which is probably why it's taken so long to post it :)
Andy and the Lion is a Volume 3 FIAR title. It's a re-telling of the Aesop fable of Androcles and the Lion, set in America probably around the middle of the last century. It introduced lots of interesting discussion topics - telling tall stories, animal conservation, animal welfare, staying safe when your being helpful to strangers amongst others. They could relate these discussions to lots of other stories, books, films and TV programmes as well.
The Boy made a lapbook and The Girl continued with her notebook which she really prefers and seems very happy with :) It gives her more space and scope to write and draw.
We pretty much stuck to the FIAR manual for this, adding a couple of extra picture books as go-alongs. I wanted to watch Born Free, but they refused because they thought it would be too sad. Instead, they watched The Lion King (again).

The Boy's Lapbook

 

 The 'Who's who...' Minibook came from Homeschoolshare. It was part of the science lesson and he wrote some facts in about each lion he drew. We used stickers for the art lesson - we have tons of stickers and not many magazine pictures to use. I added our own maths lesson, which tied in with his maths book - he made a 4 legged lions book to practise his 4 x table.Also for science, we found out the classification of a lion - the minibook again came from HSS. But most of all, i think I'm quite impressed with how he managed to sneak the Doctor in when we looked at how the text was laid out in the book and he made his own example ;)

The Girl's Notebook

The Girl started the week by finding some circus facts. She also wrote and illustrated her own example of a picture book with sentences that run on to the next opening. She enjoyed the art activities and did a good job of getting her circle to look like a sphere. For her maths activity, she made a seating plan which gave her the opportunity to practise her 8x table. For science, she picked 3 facts and then drew lots of pictures of lions doing lion stuff :)

 Another of the art activities was to look at sculpture, so we went to our local park and climbed on investigated the stone lions there to compare them to the illustrations in the book.

We picked the right week to row this book. It was a very lucky coincidence that a circus came to town, so it was only right and proper to visit it on the last day of our row. Of course, there were no lions - or any other animal acts- but we had a great time and oohed and aahed happily :) (And got very sticky from the candy floss.)

Books etc that we used (and almost used)
 

P.S I do still intend on watching Born Free, even if I have to watch it by myself !