Maths!  My dreaded subject!  How do I make the kiddies enjoy it?  I've pondered this one for a while now, having spent years just ploughing through workbooks with the kiddies and often asking Papa for his expert help.  More recently I decided that we should may be attempt to love it so we're doing a whole thematic unit on it.  I thought: games, hands on, activities, interactive, books, drawing, team-work etc and may be we'll grasp some new concepts and even have fun while we're at it.

Here's how it went today :)

All ready for the morning:

Snakes and Ladders for breakfast.  Three kiddies were playing this in their dressing gowns this morning.

Books to explore

These have been invaluable over the years.  A gift from a good friend, and well used.

I made a few worksheets for the boy.

 Learning about the history of numbers.

Weighing and balancing

The Boy did so well today.  He conquered writing the number 4 AND the concept of adding.  He was thrilled.

Maths games

Ballet Girl did a mini-study on planning pathways and flowcharts, and the other two did some shape work.  We also did some poetry work, where this term, the two eldest are breaking down the poems and looking at rhyme schemes, narrative and lyrical and re-telling or point/moral-based poetry.  Ballet Girl completed her map-work book; Monkey Girl continued with hers, and Panda Girl did pages and pages in her literacy and numeracy book :)  The two eldest both finished their Spanish books while the two youngest took a break before all four went to their trampolining lessons. A constructive day :)

Spring

Our Spring project was cut short after my father died unexpectedly and traumatically a few weeks ago.  The children have spent the past two weeks enjoying time with Papa while I have attempted to get my head 'round things.  We did, at least, have a colourful notice board to look at everyday :)

Panda Girl's cute life-cycles.

Please pray for the repose of the soul of my dear father who died unexpectedly on Thursday night.

My 1000th post!!!!

Our thematic unit for the next week or so, is Spring.  The girls have enjoyed some bird study; observing flight patterns, recording bird numbers in and around the garden, and making fact books. 

A rainbow for Spring :)

Ballet Girl helped The Boy make a bird cage

Sunshine!

Learning about bluebells in ancient woodlands.

Sofas are primarily for dens.

Our much-anticipated trip to Warwick Castle.  What a fabulous day and how delighted the kiddies were to put their history studies into action!

The largest trebuchet in the world.  We watched it launch a rock and later on, a fireball.

The portcullis

Bonnie Prince Charlie's shield

The boy got a book from the library about the emergency services.  He asked me to read it again and again and then he played with all his emergency services vehicles.