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!

This week we are looking at The Vikings.  My kiddies love history so much - they enjoy these projects immensely.

Viking artefacts   

Creating

Compared to others I have seen on the net this is actually hysterically awful but I did make it at 1.30am and it did the trick for role -playing in the morning :)

Ballet Girl made a longship for her hamster, complete with treats.

Designing Viking shields

Ballet Girl's Viking longhouse and King's throne room

Panda Girl's and The Boy's Vikings - we learnt there is no historical evidence which backs the theory that horns were worn in the helmets, but we drew them all the same :)

Space

Panda Girl's lunar calendar

Ballet Girl made space biscuits with The Boy

Panda Girl's alien space house

A million stars (or glitter on sticky-back plastic)

This was the biggest hit this week.  Glittery polystyrene balls in bowls and jars. Glittery = space, right? 

We are studying space this week.  This is a cute theme for the two younger children with all the craft potential.  The older two are studying a planet, a day and learning some great facts.

A bit of alien craft

Our printer has died so I got drawing :)

Sensory space play for my kinaesthetic Panda Girl and The Boy

Discovering chocolate coins in the space treasure pot :)

It finally dawned on me that we can draw on our table!  I stuck some paper underneath to make their pictures stand out and they had some fun creating space pictures :)

*Proud*

Phases of the moon

This was a real hit.  I attached some sticky back plastic, sticky side up to a table and....

...they got creating.  We tried it again the next day with glitter.

Life in outer space