September 12th

Have you noticed the moon tonight?

Tonight is the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival, when the moon is said to be at it's brightest and, for one night only, perfectly round. 

This year we decided to go all out celebrating the festival. Out came my Chinese festival book and I decided what we were going to do.

The main activity is eating moon cakes... which we will get to later! The book also mentioned that families get together and watch shadow puppets telling the story of Chang'e and Houyi... I don't know whether thats true, but it seemed like a great project to do with the kids! There were directions in the book, but we decided to do it our own way! :D

1. Get a largish box and remove any tape so that it is open at both top and bottom. The larger the box the bigger your theatre will be, meaning you can do larger more detailed puppets and also you can fit more characters onto the screen at a time... assuming you can hold them all!

Here's ours.

2. Cut one of the large sides off the box.

3. Cut a window in the other large side. remember to leave at least an inch or two to support the rest of the box! 

The box with the removed pieces.

NB: This is "back stage" where the puppeteers will be!

4. Cover the window and your shadow theatre is complete! I used fabric from an old bed sheet, but you could also use paper.

I stuck the fabric on with sticky tape.

The front of the finished theatre.
Shone's dolly was performing at the back! lol

I'm hoping that at some point we will decorate the theatre, even if that just means painting it black! I chose to use fabric as it is obviously more flexible, meaning it is less likely to get ripped! I was also thinking it would be easier to remove when we're ready to refurbish the thea-e-tarrr! (said with a posh English accent! lol)

Next up was the puppets!

1. Draw your puppet design on a piece of paper, Wiyot decided to do a dragon. This is just a template so it doesn't need to be too detailed.

Wiyot demonstrating his ambidextrous tendencies!

You only need to draw an outline, Wiyot got a little carried away!

2. Carefully cut around the outline of your drawing.

3. Decide if there are any parts you would like to be moveable and cut those sections off.  For the dragon, which had now become Toothless from How To Train Your Dragon, we decided the wings should be the moving parts.

4. Lay the pieces on thick paper or card and trace around the edges. Remember to add extra where the movable parts will be connected to the main body. I added about 1.5cm.

You can just about make out the extra card at the edge of the wings.

As you can see above, I forgot to cut out the eyes and mouth on the template, so I got Wiyot to draw them straight onto the card. You can very intricate designs by cutting into the card, check out this image to get an idea of what I mean. Not something Wiyot could do yet, but great for older learners. You can also create more joints to the puppet to make the movements more realistic. For example, a human puppet could have a joint at the shoulder, elbow and wrist, a rod attached to the hand would then be able to control the movements of the arm. This youtube clip will give you an idea of what I mean!

Ready to cut out

5. Carefully cut out each of the puppet parts. I used scissors for the larger areas and a craft knife for the details. Wiyot hasn't had much cutting practice yet, which is why I did this myself! Also the card we used was pretty thick and so fairly difficult to cut.

6. Now you re-attatch the movable parts. Piece a hole through the pieces you are joining and secure with a split pin/brad.

BONUS: To add some colour to our puppet, we covered the eye and mouth holes with sweet wrappers. I'm pretty sure coloured tissue would also work, but I haven't tried it myself!

7. Attach rods to the back to allow you to control the puppet. The only thing that I could find (around the house) was bendy straws! They worked pretty well, not too dangerous for little ones, and also you can change the angle on them to help you control the puppet. The drawback being that they are not very strong, so not good for a larger (heavier) puppet. Also they are not very long, resulting in puppeteer-hand shadows if you are not extremely careful!

The finished puppet:

From the back

And from the front

NB, you can use whatever colour card you like and can also decorate the puppets. The shaddow will still be black though! lol

Peek-a-boo!

And now, in his debut performance...

Pretty cool, eh?

Oh yeah, you also need some sort of light to create the shadows, a multi positional desk lamp is good for this. I used my solar power one from Ikea. (Also comes in handy for knitting/reading in the car at night.... not while driving obviously!)

Behind the scenes!

The kids loved it! Wiyot spent ages acting out scenes with Toothless, making Shone roll with laughter! :D They then held various toys up to see what their shadows looked like, the dinosaur figures were a big hit! I think its going to be pretty versatile too, we can make props and scenery as well as all different characters. The kids can then act out their favourite stories, or create their own tales. I'm thinking it will be great for halloween too!

Lanterns are also popular for the moon festival. They are used as decorations, children carry them hanging on long poles and also sky lanterns are released. I really wanted to do the sky lanterns, but I left it a little late to order them (I wanted to get the more environmentally friendly biodegradable one's) so we just made decorative paper ones instead. 

The ones we made were from a kit I got free. The card is pre-cut and scored, plus all different colours of tissue are provided. They are very quick and easy to make, but look really pretty.

Shone sticking down her tissue

Daddy giving Wiyot a hand

Very proud of her creation

No surprises in Wiyots colour choice!

Pretty! :)

I lit them with rechargeable tea lights... less of a fire hazard!

And to finish, what moon festival would be complete without a mooncake and a cup of tea!

Lotus seed paste with two yokes

I'm pretty sure this is the first time Wiyot and Shone have tried mooncakes...

Say, "Mooncakes!"

Lets just say they weren't what they were expecting! Danny and I enjoyed them anyway!

Sorry about the rather looooong post!

Thanks for reading! xx

September 8th

Bloomin' 'eck! Wiyots been a right little busy boy these last few days! I was going to combine the last three days until I realised that the post would probably take a day to read. lol I don't know where all this activity has come from, but I suddenly find myself running to keep up. Don't get me wrong, I am far from complaining... It is amazing! <3

So for Thursday he started the day with a little colouring:

Postman Pat Colouring Book.

I know some people probably hate colouring books as it doesn't allow for much creativity... I agree in some ways, but for Wiyot it seems a great way for him to practice his pen skills. I think I've mentioned before, but it is a real pleasure to see that his colour choices have moved on from red... red hair, red shoes, red trousers, etc... I don't know whether you can make it out, but he has also added a little spider and a sun shinning through the window. Bless!

Here's some follow ups of the "I luv yoo mum" picture:

DAD i -------- Luv yoo

The blue character is Wiyot (as Sonic the Hedgehog) Daddy has a unhappy face as he is smelling some stinky shoes apparently! lol. Oh and the line between the I and Luv represents Sonic running really fast!

I Luv Shonee

Shone is on the left with the brown and black hair (her hair is slightly lighter than Wiyots) and he is on the right. The dotty line represents Shone running around the lounge, which is what she was doing while he was drawing.

Straight after breakfast Wiyot got out his LeapFrog Tag system. He spent the next however long going through 3 of his books cover to cover, even doing the exercises included in the back. I really need to link the pen thing up to the internet so I can get the rewards for him!

For the afternoon I had some cooking planned for us. I asked him if he wanted to help me in the kitchen, but he initially refused. Thinking he'd just done a pretty hardcore session with his books I decided to leave him playing with his Lego. A few days ago I found a recipe for steamed buns (mantou) and couldn't wait to try it. I began making them myself and soon found I had a little helper! Mainly I think because I called him into the kitchen to see the yeast producing bubbles.

I forgot to take photos of the early stages, but this is pretty much were Wiyot joined in (plus I was lazy and mixed the dough in my food processor!)

Rolling out the dough

Wiyot loved the texture of the dough, it was lovely and soft and also still warm from the water we dissolved the yeast in.

The second rolling out and getting ready to brush with water.

The recipe was quite specific on the size you should roll your dough out to... A great opportunity to get the tape measure out and do some measuring! BONUS! :D

Wiyot enjoyed cutting the baking paper squares for the buns to sit on and I even let him use the 'big knife' to cut the rolled dough into separate buns. I think he did a pretty good job, don't you?

Rising in the steamer.

Excited and slightly floury :D

Let the steaming begin!

All done...

and ready to eat!

:9

I had to change the recipe slightly to the one I linked to. I used 400g of plain flour and 100g of corn flour  (I didn't realise I was short of the plain flour until it was too late!) and added some milk as well as water (I read here that is helps to make the dough whiter... Not sure it worked, guess I'll have to try again without milk to compare! ;D) The buns tasted really good, pretty authentic I thought. The kids ate 3 each and wanted more... I guess they liked them too! lol! I did find the texture slightly heavier than commercial buns, could be the recipe alterations though.

Lastly, a little message written on our scrabble board:

DOO YOO THINK SANTA WIL GET THE LIZ A BA - Do you think Santa will get the lightsaber?

Lets just say he's looking forward to Christmas this year! lol

Sept 7th

First of all, sorry for the unimaginative title... But at least it gets to the point! Hopefully I'll get a bit more creative as time goes on!

Today was Wiyots first(ish) Brazilian Soccer class... He did go to two in July, but this was the first one  proper one set up for our local home ed community. A big thank you to the mom(s) who took the time to set it up! Wiyot seemed to really enjoy it, as did most of the other kids, saying straight away that he wanted to come again. I'm not exactly sure how he got on, the weather wasn't great today so the session was held inside. This meant it was hard to really watch, but from what I could see he was doing ok and for the most part listening to the coach... Wiyot has a tendency to do what he wants, rather than what someone else wants him to do!

After Wiyots class there was a second class for the older kids. Some of the families have children in both groups, so we decided to stay at the centre, playing and reading with the other children in his group and also the older ones when they had finished.

While playing outside Wiyot picked a flower for me, later when we got home he drew a picture of it:

His flower has a smiley face, around it he wrote, "doo yoo lik flowus" - do you like flowers :)

I forgot to add these on yesterdays post, so thought I'd add them here:

I'm sure you can work this one out!

He drew this for me last Friday evening, a picture of Wiyot and me with "I Luv yoo mum" - I love you mum underneath. I was so impressed as it was the very first time he had written anything independently. I was doing the washing up when he announced he was going to draw me a picture. Lets just say I was blown away when he came back with this! Even gave himself black hair and me brown :)

A couple of weeks ago while shopping at Tesco, Wiyot spotted a General Grievous Lightsaber. Immediately it became item number 1 on his ever expanding Christmas list! After telling him that he needed to write a letter to Santa he got out his paper and crayons and wrote, "I wont a jen..." repeatedly before giving up and asking for help.

I realise now (with the benefit of Google)  I spelt Grievous wrong... 

He copied my sentence and then added some monkey stamps and sound effects, I hope you can make them out! They include zooOOOM, Owch and voom, I think he got them from reading the Star Wars: The Clone Wars graphic novels from the library.

He's looking forward to doing the real letter to Santa now, I told him he could decorate it with Christmas stamps and draw pictures of the toys he wants :D

Today he also read In the bath - Book 3E again no problems. He is even beginning to add emotion to the words while he is reading... Does that make sense? What I mean is, he is sounding less like a robot! lol

Well that's all for today! xx

Sept 5th, 6th and other stuff...

Well, I said I was going to try to blog more often, so here goes! 

As I mentioned in my previous post, this is Wiyots first 'official' home ed week. Bit of a slow start so far, but plans for the rest of the week. So far he has read three books to me:

Runny Honey - Tadpoles (for newly independent readers)

The Spell - Set 1 Story 4

Black Hat Bob - Set 1 Story 5

He read them all really well, needing very little help from me. He's also been pointing various things out from around the house and reading them to me; "Not so scary halloween party," on the side of a candy bag on our dinning table and "The Little Black Dress" the name of the book I have been making a dress from.

I think the best thing about all of this for me, is that I haven't asked him to do any of it. He just goes to the books on the sideboard, chooses one and asks if he can read me a story. :D

I still need to work on our living space so that there are more educational things that can be 'stumbled upon!' It's definitely getting there though. We have made a few purchases recently which have been greatly received. Firstly our blackboard from Ikea, which I posted about before, a table and chair set from Toys r us and various new art materials, including some twistable wax crayons that I had been after for a while! 

Because I don't have much else to share as yet, I thought I'd share some of the stuff we've been up to over the summer holidays!

Heres one of Wiyots blackboard doodles that I liked:

Spyro the Dragon

Something I've had for a while, but recently decided to get out an extra set of magnetic letters:

I MIS MIKE MAWS - I miss Mickey Mouse

He loves to write little messages to me on the fridge while I am doing the washing :) He uses phonetic spellings, something I only recently read about, since allowing him to spell this way, he has become much more open to reading and writing!

A mask colouring book from Nanny Sue:

The Good Knight

wiyot has never shown much patience in colouring, but these masks have really turned things round. For the first time he has made an effort to colour inside the lines, fill in all the space... and use a colour other than red! lol

Shone hasn't grasped colouring in yet. But how cute is she!

The blackboard, masks and letters have bought so much confidence, Wiyot went on a drawing spree and named the characters as he stuck them on the fridge: (hope you can make them out!)

SONIK D HEJHOG - Sonic the Hedgehog

SPIDUMAN - Spiderman

MIKE MAWS - Mickey Mouse

No room on the fridge for Zurg!

Shoshone doing a bit of colouring

She holds her crayons really well!

Inspired by mommy's new hair, Wiyot got out his Incredibles suit and colouring book:

More colouring.

Very proud of his FIRST completed picture.

So proud, vastly improved from previous attempts!

Well that's all for now, I'll be posting again soon!

xx

Compulsory School Age!

Here in the UK children don't become 'compulsory school age' until the term following their 5th birthday.

I wonder how many parents actually know that fact? I'm betting not many!


Wiyot turned 5 in July, so this week is officialy the beginning of our home education journery... I guess we just ignore the past 5 years of exploration and learning! lol ;)

My hope for this blog is that I'll keep a record of our daily/weekly activities, which I can use should the LA ever come knocking, but mostly so we can keep track of the progress we have made.

And so... May the education commence!

xx

Planning... sort of...

Last week most of the schools in the UK broke up for summer. Ironically this is the time that Wiyot has started showing an interest in writing!

Recently I've been reading various books and articles on the internet, mainly about the Montessori method of education. One of the results of this is that I am trying to create a better learning environment for the kids. This basically means I'm gradually moving all the toys up to the kids bedrooms, as well as evicting some of my craft stuff, to make room for more educational stuff.

I'm hoping this will result in them choosing to do educational stuff, rather than me trying to instigate it. When I try to get Wiyot to do something it rarely goes smoothly, he becomes very resistant and usually doesn't do anywhere near as well as I know he can. This results in us both getting very frustrated and me occasionally loosing my temper, which is obviously very upsetting for us both.

I REALLY, TRUELY believe that learning should be something that you want to do and you enjoy.

I guess its natural, but I frequently find myself having a crisis of confidence, wondering if I'm doing the right thing by them... If I'd sent him to school in January, I wonder if he would be doing better with his reading and writing... But then I know I shouldn't compare him to schooled children, as I know he has knowledge in areas that wouldn't be pursued in school for some time... As you can probably see, my mind is going round in circles!

I guess its only natural, as a parent all you want is the best for your child...

Back onto the positive side of things!


As part of the improved environment, I decided to buy a double sided blackboard/whiteboard easel type thing from Ikea.

One of the biggest area's of resistance for Wiyot has always been with writing/drawing based activities. I don't know why... even when he was little he showed no interest in playing with crayons, other than pretending they were cars or aeroplanes or something. Recently when he says he wants to draw, he will get the crayons and paper out scribble over the paper, draw a few lines and a cross, roll it up and declare it a treasure map. Don't get me wrong, I value all his attempts and do think the whole idea is quite creative, but I know that when he puts his mind to it he can draw and write very nicely.

So anyway I have bought the easel, and as I said at the beginning of the post, so far it seems to be working wonders!!!! :D

I'm hoping it will last!!!

I'm trying to keep the montessori stuff in mind... I should state that I AM IN NO WAY CLAIMING TO BE USING OFFICIAL MONTESSORI METHODS, simply that the methods are inspirational and providing me with a new way of approaching things. I hope that makes sense?! So basically I am trying my absolute best to make everything really fun, like a new game, with no expectations and no feelings of failure.

Yesterday I began writing messages to him on the board using purely phonetic spellings, allowing him to easily read the words. For example:

"Wot shud wee hav too eet?" (what should we have to eat)

Then I drew a circle for a plate and asked him if he could draw what we could have. He thought this was great fun and laughing drew a few lines in the circle.

Me, "Hmm, I wonder what that is? Can you write it on the board?"
Wiyot, "I guess I can try..." he writes on the board telling me each letter:

"pasd" (pasta)

 I responded drawing a :9 and asking him to write what sort of pasta he wanted.

"red"

was the answer and I wrote:

"tomartoe" with a picture of a tomato

Again lots of laughter and a very happy little boy!

Later, as I was washing the dishes he came into the kitchen and said he wanted to write me a message on the fridge.

Here's what he wrote:

MOMY DYOOW WOTOOW BATH US NAW!

Translated, "Mommy do you want to bath us now!"

Has struggling for letters and had to improvise... Q's became o's and an upside-down f became a t. Also the i was turned to become an exclamation mark... apparently he was shouting to me :D

I was so pleased with him and even better, he was over the moon with himself! He declared he no longer needs to speak to me, he can just write me messages! lol