Here are Elodie and Lucia's activity books which they have completed this year. They range from dot-to-dot to maths, phonics, counting, motor skills etc. I have found some of the best ones come from France -I have a regular supply from my Mother-in-Law for which I am truly thankful.

The girls have learnt an awful lot from these and watching their progression has been extremely pleasing. I let them pace themselves - on the whole Lucia generally spends a great deal of contented time doing her activity books. Elodie does less work but is more precise and neater with hers. Lucia is very quick at activities such as 'spot the difference' or 'match the pairs' and Elodie is doing really nicely with her addition and subtraction and she enjoys using her abacus.

Elodie's reading books - Primary Phonics. These are great and evolve really nicely.

Elodie and Lucia's Jolly Phonics books

The girls' religion books - Treasure box.

Elodie and Lucia have been poorly for the last few days with a throat infection so we have done a lot of relaxing and fun play. Both girls love their workbooks however and we have spent a fair amount of time on these. Lucia spent over an hour on hers and completed a whole book with me today AND asked for another one!

I set up a mini-gym for them in the living room this afternoon (which is basically all the sofa seat cushions and throws spread about on the floor - a bit of music and off they go!) Lucia wasn't up to much but she did try to teach herself to somersault in the air...

Lucia deseeding Lupin pods and planting them in her flower pot - which she had previously decorated with butterfly stickers.

Dom and Lucia experimenting with glitter, star sequins and blue food colouring water!

This is the remains of our sweet factory. The girls used tissue paper, boxes and playdough to 'make sweets' and then sold them in their shop.

Firework window display.

I suddenly decided to do a mini-firework project which was really just lots and lots of craft, a poem and some sparklers.

We made star and lameta rockets, sequin swirly things, glitter glue pictures, and lots of gluey, sequin-ey, sparkly, pictures on black paper.

Neither of the 2 eldest are too keen on fireworks. They find them too loud. I decided to use this project as a way of getting them to understand that they are merely pretty, sparkly and exciting. They enjoyed all the sticking, especially Lucia. Elodie spent a lot of time sticking things in order; the sequins in a row, the hexagonal sequins in a pattern , the stars in the different colours etc. Dominique is developing an amusing habit of painting her fingers with glue and then picking off the dried glue with her other hand. It keeps her so quiet that I let her get on with it!

Firework display

Grandad and Elodie with their sparklers

Dominique inspecting her sparkler

The girls with their sparklers and Aunty Grace

Elodie and Lucia making firework pictures

November, Month of the Holy Souls, All Saints Day

"To be a saint is a wholly practical and realistic growth into our own truth. It is what we are meant to become, it is our deepest fulfillment, our own personal realization of what we have been potentially from birth." (Sister Wendy's Book of Saints, pg. 8)

Scotland window display.

Elodie and Lucia are so enthusiastic with their learning at the moment - it is very pleasing and encouraging. Things may change but for the moment all is well :)

They enjoyed this project - we looked at lots of Scottish images, watched some videos of Highland Games and also of Scottish dancing. Elodie learnt to sing along to a Gaelic song about porridge and Lucia learnt that the Loch Ness Monster can actually have a smiley face if you want it to. We used different media to create lots of pictures of traditional Scottish images, we made flapjacks, wore tartan kilts, and had great fun making funny looking pipe-cleaner skiers - see below.

Scottish thistles, castles, the Loch Ness monster, lochs, the Highlands, tartan and bagpipes

Locating Scotland on the map

Elodie and Lucia chose colours for their tartan and created this Scottish man (each part was cut out). A few days later I asked them to then observe their pictures and find the corresponding felt-tip colours from their desks. They then had to create tartan-looking bagpipes (using horizontal and vertical lines) with the same colours.

The girls really enjoyed this - each flag is on transparency paper and they girls were intrigued to see how it made the Union Flag when you put it all together - Lucia, out of the blue, demanded to know where the Wales flag was :)