Saturday 9 November 2019

Our Week in Home Ed


Home Ed this week has been quite enjoyable. 

We started this week with Hannah's parents here. Although Hannah and her dad went out, Will and I stayed at home with Hannah's mum and did our home ed. It was quite nice to show a little snapshot of what it's like. Even if it was a little difficult at times. 

It was, however, a good excuse to throw ourselves into it first thing Monday.


Literacy:

Past, Present and Future tense.

In the beginning of the week Will had to identify from past, present and future tense words to complete sentences correctly. He then had to create 2 sentences independently that could represent 2 different types of tense. 

This then progressed by thinking and finding the correct tense within a sentence. Finally, Will had to create a chart that listed 30 words and then place all three tenses for each word.

Will found this quite easy. The actual activities didn't take that much effort. If anything, it created more dialogue between us to which would be best used when some words actually impacted the way we said them. An example of this is "brang", "brung" and "brought" to which all 3 would be acceptable depending on the dialect that you have. 



We also decided that we would spend time having some free literacy playing scrabble. It's a popular favourite in this house and really helps support our English work. Will did well and came second. His highlight was when he found Human and managed to get a high score from it.


Numeracy: 

This week we have been doing short bursts of maths again and have been spending 10 minutes covering different topics. So this week Will has covered percentages, decimals, ratio and place value.

He is showing that he has a good and solid foundation for this and can be left to push forwrds with the individual topics. However, he did struggle with the age appropriate advanced work. 

In the end he needed a lot of one to one guidance and reassurance on doing each activity. 

By the end of the week he produced some good understanding and managed to put his results down but I think this is a topic we will have to do again. Some of his Maths understanding is behind and I think this week just showed some of that. Yet, this is the beauty of home ed; we can just find slightly easier work and push him through it to solidify his understanding.




Cooking and Baking:

Will is still in "Winter cooking mode' and subsequently he made us all leek and potato soup this week. 

It is such a simple recipe of his and a family favourite so it went down a treat. I know I will be featuring it this Wednesday for our Little Chef post. 



He also made Cornish pasties with Hannah which tasted great and they attempted to make fortune cookies. However, the fortune wasn't on their side and the cookies didn't work. I think they are planning to research it and see if they can master this for next week. 


Science: 

There was a bit of a detour this week in science from our current theme. With it being firework night Hannah and Will combined a mixture of history and science by looking into fireworks. 

They researched how and why they were invented, discovered when they were first made and found out the chemical compounds in them. 

They extended this by learning about the reactions that are caused when lighting fireworks and why and how they change colour. 

As an adult hearing about what they learnt I have to admit that it was quite interesting! 

STEM: 

Binary and Coding:

Having dropped it last week I have to admit it was difficult trying to get Will to jump back in. 

We did managed to find some activity sheets that offered coding and messages that Will had to complete. It wasn't a massive learning week but it did solidify his understanding to move forward with. 

History:

We have been continuing with our History of Cars topic. Over the last couple of weeks we have seen the development of the car. We saw what they first looked like and how they worked. Will had learnt about the safety features and how they have evolved.

Following that I thought it would be fun to create a timeline of cars. Starting with the first car in 1880 and jumping every decade to today and then sorting each car out into the right order. 

Initially I thought it would be quite easy but it wasn't. The cars seemed to go in different stages. The first 3 were easy to identify as they had a very clear look and style. However the cars between 1930 to 1960 wasn't massive difference in design. This then repeated itself between 1970 to 2000. It looks like in the last 5 decades the design of the car hasn't changed more than a cosmetic feature of the frame and shell and the internal modern additions.




Geography:

Like our history we continued in making our fact file in geography and we looked at the main feature of Rochester; the Castle.

Having such a fantastic historical landmark on our doorstep is amazing. It is an opportunity to explore not to miss. 

We then spent some time researching the history of it. We found that it was a crucial point in history. It was the castle that held the rebellion of the Barons against King John. Resulting in a massive siege that lead to the corner of the castle being blown up/pulled down when King John's troops dug a tunnel under, put gunpowder underneath and send flaming pigs on through. 







Art:

Will and I spent some time doing Art this week. He has been learning lots of different techniques and it has been great watching him replicate the things I've taught him in other pieces if work. 

This week I was teaching him how to blend colours. We looked at colour wheels and charts, what colours merge and are part of another and then how to layer them next to each other. 

He particularly enjoyed the blending between by softly shading, using a rubber to blur the edges and then overlap the next colour. 





Another week and lots done. I'm really proud of the effort Will is making at the moment. Some days are hard and he can be oppositional and others he is doing work with ease. What remains important however is that he is working each week, learning and trying to tackle new things. 

What do you think of our week?

1 comment:

JOhn Adams said...

Fascinating reading this Martyn. In fact I'm feeling a bit guilty. I need to get my kids more into coding!