Our Week in Home Ed

Home Ed is great at the moment. We seem to be covering lots of different topics and importantly Will seems do be learning lots and progressing really well.

Although I usually post photos across social media I know I don't share even half of what we do. Equally, I used to feature any main topic highlights on here but, again, it still didn't show what a week in Home Ed was like for us.

So, I thought I would do a new weekly feature where we show exactly what we've been doing.


Literacy:

Nouns, proper nouns, common nouns, possessive and collective nouns.

In those lessons Will had to come up with his own ideas of nouns and when they are used. The lesson then progressed into swapping incorrect nouns and rewriting sentences to make sure they're correct.

By Wednesday Will was breaking nouns into the different types of nouns. Specifically naming and changing nouns to collective nouns.

By the end of the week Will was using all of the above types of nouns. He was able to correct, identify and create different sentences.

My favourite independent sentence of his was "The fleet of ships disturbed the shoal of fishes in the ocean.

Numeracy:
This week we have been doing a short bursts of maths. We spend 10 minutes covering different topics. So this week Will has covered addition, multiplication, ling multiplication, subtraction and graphs and charts. All within 10 minute bursts a day.

He is showing that he has a good and solid foundation for this and can be left to push towards with the individual topics.

Cooking and Baking:

This week, Will wanted to concentrate on his cooking over his baking. He decided to do a popular dinner in this house that we haven't shared online before. Subsequently, he made Chicken Fajita pasta and made sure I put it up as a "My Little Chef" post.

Science:
Eco bricks.

We've been receiving Whizz Bang Pop magazine on a monthly subscription. One of the topics inside was Eco bricks.

Recycling and being eco friendly is a popular theme in this household due to our personal beliefs.

Us adults knew about eco bricks but we haven't done it before either as a family or in home Ed. Something we thought we would correct with Will. We added additional information on recycling to make the lesson more rounded.

STEM:
Binary and Coding:

Also in the Whizz Bang Pop magazine it featured about coding.

Something that caught Hannah's eye was learning about Binary code. Normally if it catches her eye Will loves to get involved too so they sat down and read about different types of coding.

When they had a go at the magazines coding game and got it right they had such fun they both made it into a full on lesson. They then scanned the Binery Code and printed it off, they wrote a bit about what they had learnt and Hannah wrote a message for Will to decode. He then wanted to know about numbers in Binary codes so they did some research themselves (unbeknownst to them, the numbers were featured in the magazine a few pages on but never mind!)

Since the lesson he's been leaving coded messages on our whiteboard which is fun because Hannah and him are the only ones who know how to de code it!

History:

We have decided this term to break away from historical themes like Egyptians or Romans as we've covered it a few times over the years. Instead, we decided to do historical fact files on different types of transport.

We started with cars.

This week Will investigated what the very first car looked like and when it was invented. He found that it was made in 1876 although not sold and released until 1885 by Karl Benz (From Mercedes Benz). He found out that the cars looked quite different.

There was no top, no windows or glass. Instead of a steering wheel the car had a steering crank which accelerated and was also the brake. Finally, we found that the design meant you could only fit 2 people in it and didn't have any seat belts.

Although there were other invented cars like electric and steam the first car, like the ones today, ran on Gasoline. Which, at the time, was sold in pharmacies as a cleaning product. Like cars today it also has an acid battery that was used to start the ignition.

We ended the lesson by jumping 30 years into the future when the real changes started to happen and discussing a comparison of what we've learnt to what we saw in the pictures.

Geography:

Like our history lesson, we have changed how we are choosing our topics.

We decided that we would concentrate on our local area by starting off looking at the town we live in, then the council area and finally our county. We have the hope that this will push forward to having days out for practical lessons.

Will started a fact file on our town by printing off a map of it. He then added sites on the map that we knew or could identify.

That's our week and everything that we have covered. Will is always slightly difficult with the 2 core subjects but that is mostly down to age. However, he LOVES all the other subjects!

The stuff he is retaining and then passing on is always a pleasure to see and hear. The topics and lessons are always just the basis for him too. We will often find him off researching or watching something in his free time relating to what we have learnt so he can come back with more understanding.