Our new unit:  The Normans and the Feudal System / and the Middle Ages

I'm noticing a bigger gap now between the two eldest and the younger two now, resulting in having to have lots more ideas every day to keep them all interested in whichever theme we are studying.  Sometimes I gear it more to the older two or vice versa.  We are moving steadily on with our history, recently studying The Battle of Hastings and the Norman Conquest.  It seemed apt, therefore to have a castle theme for the littlies to enjoy, while the older two learnt more details of castle life, castle architecture, defense and attack means and all that goes with it.  Ballet Girl is especially interested in the use of falcons, merlins and buzzards in the Middle Ages.  She dressed as a huntress this morning and spent a good while reading up on the subject.

Here's a selection of how we got the ball rolling:

Fairytale castle sensory box for my Kinaesthetic Panda Girl

Castle story words for Panda Girl to use to create her own story.

 Dragons and a castle for The Boy

The Boy's favourite musical castle

Castle cards

The Boy is learning to do worksheets.  He especially enjoys matching and tracing over dots.

Some of our castle books and activity books.  The older two have started lap-books: watch this space :)

Our half term week

We booked a session at our favourite forest centre and learnt about fossils and rocks...

...and made pre-historic creatures out of clay :)

Uncle T showed The Boy how to use his new saw....

...and made a cross :)

 And we spent the week catching up with friends.

St Valentines and Lent

The kiddies made St, Valentine's biscuits for our morning snack

At the end of our week we went for a St. Valentine's meal. I love my children!

Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent.  

I used this idea from Catholic Icing last year, but created my own version and explained it all in more depth with the children this time.

I love this idea :)  We have stored our Alleluia until Easter Sunday...

Panda Girl's Lenten promise is to "wash up the breakfast things every day to stop your hands crumbling Mummy" (I have sore hands from washing up so much - oh I love my children!)

For our alms giving we have made a Valentine's basket for our elderly neighbour who recently lost her husband of 57 years. The Boy made her a paper aeroplane :)

Finally completed after a few days work, the snow table and chairs were put to good use at snack time.

After some English and history we experimented with melting crayons.  Ideally I wanted this to be done in heart-shaped tins for our St. Valentine week, but round ones will do for now.

L

Last night I spent a little (i.e. a lot of) time preparing this week's unit: St. Valentine's/Jesus Made me Special/Lent - all rolled into one :)  I used some of our display things from last year and created some craft ideas for them to copy and for them to get cracking on before we got dressed for the day.  I loved some of their own creations and we had a great day!   

This is how I spend my evenings :)

And we also woke up to five inches of snow.

The Boy did 17 pages of his activity book today.  Monkey Girl worked on singular and plural pro-nouns, her 8 and 9 times tables, her crossword book and her new Deadly Sixty Activity book which I ordered for her and which arrived today.  She knows every animal fact going, that one :) 

Potato printing for two littlies to do in the morning

A few extras..

Pouring fun.

Panda Girl made home-made pizza for lunch

Yummy!

The Vikings

We've had a lot of fun with this unit!  We found some awesome videos on the net of how to make a real longship  (gosh the craftsmanship is astonishing); had fun with Viking runes, made Viking bread, role-played in our own longship, made Viking jewellery out of dough, written our own sagas, Panda Girl and Mummy studied the lay-out of a typical Viking settlement, they all designed Viking shields, made lap-books, Viking helmets, read Viking books - lots of them!, drew and painted Viking artefacts that might be found on an archaeological dig, used boxes to make longhouses and longships, and did lots and lots of Viking painting.  :)

After the children made lots of Viking shields, The Boy used plasticine to match the colours.

Our finished Viking jewellery.

 A cute story-book which I ordered just for The Boy for this unit.  The girls have had their heads buried in about ten factual Viking library books all week - it's amazing how for some projects it's so easy to find resources!

Ballet girl's Viking helmet

Ballet Girl and The Boy made Viking bread for lunch.  Yumma.

Panda Girl painting Viking jewellery she made out of dough.

Our printer is out of ink so I've been busy creating our own worksheets for the children to do.  Fun but easier with a printer!