Packing list...

Our holiday is coming up super fast, so today I got the kids to think about want they want to take in their hand luggage. I printed two packing lists from ActivityVillage.co.uk for their travel journals; one as a kind of wishlist, and one that they can fill in with what they are actually taking.

Here's Wiyots, I like that he wants to take his comb and fishpaste for his hair! hehehe

And here's Shoshone's, think she really enjoyed figuring out how to spell the things on her list.

Shoshone's gone off to play with her old pal trixi the trunki, but Wiyot has got out his Dragonology book and is currently deciphering a message written in runes. :)

He's enjoying working out the secret message, but finding it a challenge when one rune could be one of two letters. 

Here Shoshone has found a tape measure and is practicing counting to 150. :)

Below are some of the pages I have printed for their travel journals.

I love this Mickey Mouse one, was very tempted to print out a set for myself! Who knows, if the kids don't use theirs, I might nab them anyway! :)

And some of the others. I decided to print a variety and let them choose a page depending on their mood. Some have spaces with lines for you to write, others empty boxes so you can draw or write, and some a combination of both. I think I'm also going to put in an envelope to hold tickets or other things they might want to keep. Also thought I could use card as a cover and as somewhere they can stick down any stickers they might get. :)

Wowza!

I think I said on one of my recent posts that Wiyot has suddenly exploded with activity. So as before I felt the easiest option would be to photograph some of my favourite bits to share with you. Yesterday he wrote some lovely messages on our scrabble board, unfortunately I wasn't really having a good day and forgot to capture them on camera to share with you. :( Thankfully I've generally been more on the ball!

Sonic & Minnie, plus Daddy & Mommy asleep underneath.
Daddy has one eye open! lol

Mommy & Sonic, complete with his green eyes and red shoes.
The detail is increasing in his drawings :)

If you look at these you can see that his writing technique has already improved. Again he did all of these without any input from me, the letters are becoming clearer, generally facing in the right direction and also the spelling is getting slightly better. It's amazing to witness him literally teaching himself! :')

For those of you who aren't fluent in Wiyot-ese the last one says "and I Luv eevu" - and I love Eva (his aunty)

A message for Daddy:

I no les pla fitng aftu dinu
I know lets play fighting after dinner.

On the above message he attempted to correct a mistake by scribbling it out and putting a cross under it! Not sure where he's got that from?

A couple of cute little drawings:

The first pic is Wall.E and Eve (with her arm gun out) and the second is Darth Vader. I love the detail of Darth's mask :)

On September 9th Wiyot found an activity book in our bedroom. One of the ones you get at restaurants to entertain the kids... Well straight away he got out his crayons and completed all the exercises in the book. Seeing how much he enjoyed it, we tried to find him some more to do. Unfortunately the shops seem to have a fairly poor sellection these days... or we're looking in the wrong place? We did however find this fantastic book in WHSmiths. Here's some of the pages that he completed on September 10th:

All of the colouring pages are colour by numbers. Not great for creativity, but it is refreshing to see the lovely colourful pictures... you know not just RED! lol

The dot-to-dots and other activities where what we were really after. Unfortunately there was only these:

There are so many different activities, bellow are two he decided to do:

Drawing the ingredients on the pizza and filling in the missing letters. I was really impressed by the letter one, I didn't think he would do that one... It looked much better before he scribbled over it! Loving the zzZZ's for the "sleepy" person though! lol

As well as all of the above, there are many other things to make and do. The only one we have done so far is the cat mask:

Shone's been watching Cinderella and so Wiyot wanted to
make a 'Lucifer' mask

At this point it had already had a thorough playing with, so the fluffy nose is looking a little shaggy! He calls it his cat beard.

And finally, some little bits from today!

A message for me:

mumeey I am Hgreey soE les go get froot
Mummy I am hungry so lets go get fruit

Followed by:

I'm sure you can work this one out!

A pretty detailed drawing:

Wall.E
He tried to write his name on his belly too,
Wolee

And some construction work:

Building his Thomas Duplo train set

He built the entire set all by himself, including station (above), water tower, windmill, signal box and a tipper thing (I don't know what its called!). Again I forgot to take a picture... :(

I didn't want to leave out our littlest learner! Here's Shone showing me some of her latest works of art and holding them up to be photographed:

She liked the new coloured papers I bought and was matching the crayons to the paper colour! Bless :D

He's also been doing a lot of reading over the past couple of weeks. So much so that he has pretty much read all of the books in the library... at his reading level of course! I think we may have to venture to one of the other libraries to see if they have a different selection!

On September 9th (this day was pretty much the beginning of the learning spurt!) we went to the library to get some new reading books for him. In the car on the way home he said the most wonderful thing:

"Mommy!

When I've finished these books, can we go back to the library

 and get some more?"

:')

Very Happy Mommy!

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