In which I grapple with a naughty horse!

Today, Rosie and I went horse riding together - she's been wanting me to go with her for ages and I finally relented! Although she and I went on a "walk out" while on holiday last year, I haven't ridden properly for YEARS!

Anyway, I started off on Manny (Rosie, as is usual for her now, was on Sparkie). Manny started off beautifully and we were having a nice time - it's amazing how quick the rising trot comes back to you! We had one funny moment where he reached out and grabbed at a tree as we went past and then insisted on walking along with this huge branch he'd broken off - it stuck out both sides of his mouth! Then, unfortunately, it went a bit pear shaped. I'm not sure if he got spooked by a group of rather noisy people that went past (who were idiot enough not to move their toddlers out the way which is SO dangerous) or whether he decided he just wanted to charge past everyone else, I don't know. However, suddenly, he shot forward which was fine because I can canter but he COULDN'T because it was a single file path and there were other horses ahead. So, I pulled him up which he obviously took an exception to because he then tried to buck me off TWICE! He failed because I know how to stay on a bucking horse but from that moment on he was, well, a bit mental to say the least. In the end, about 20 minutes from the stables, I refused to ride him anymore and swapped with someone else and ended up on Star who's very sweet (apart from wanting to eat ALL the time!) That was how Tim found us when he and April met us at the end - me on Star!

Here are some piccies - poor Star, I'm a little big for him - my feet were below his belly!

Here's Jester, one of the other ponies from the stable. He's TINY and so cute! Tim got this and a little bit of video of him too :) Look how short his legs are!

Me (and my dangling feet) on Star. To someone who doesn't know my feet might not look too bad but compare them with the pic of Rosie next ..... her heel is right up by his ribs, you can see mine sticking below the girth strap!

Next a little vid .... goodness, Jester is cute!

Some freebies

Well, my website is really taking shape now :) All the pages (apart from the contact form) are up and I'm starting to add content to them.

I promised a little alliteration freebie for you to celebrate the new site but I'm actually going to go one better than that (2 better in fact!) - 3 cute freebies!

First is the promised alliteration set:

Alliteration Set

Then, I made some stuff on frog life cycles. The first item is a Powerpoint which also includes a video (I didn't make the video!) When you use the Powerpoint it will ask you if you are sure you want to open it (because it contains a video) - just say yes :) Unfortunately, if you've got an older version of MS Powerpoint, the video will just show up as a picture and not actually play. If this is the case, here is the link to the video so you can still watch it.

Frog Life Cycle Powerpoint

To go with that I made a set of life cycle sorting cards and worksheets.

Frog Life Cycle Cards & Worksheets

Hope you enjoy them :) More stuff in the shop (including freebies) soon!

Have you noticed?

Look! Blog done!

Ok, I know I said it would all go at the same time but it will actually all go at more or less the same time - the rest will follow in a day or two. It proved impossible to make it all live at once.

Tim has been working very hard to get it all done for me and the other pages are coded I just have to add my text and upload them. Apparently, I have to tell you how wonderful he is ... ;)

So, Tim is wonderful .... actually, he is :)

Rest of site and lovely freebie in a day or two - watch this space!

Out with the old ....

The last post, on my fraction work with April, has inspired me.

For the last week or so I've been getting my Montessori shop up and running. If you haven't checked it out yet, please do :) It's Montessori for those who want to use some of the materials without going the whole hog. The materials are really fun and nice to use.

Thing is, that is now set up and kind of running itself (sort of!) and, as anyone who reads this blog regularly, will know I'm an eclectic homeschooler. We use allsorts. We dabble in this and that. Sure, I love certain aspects of Montessori but I also love Waldorf style nature tables and art and I also love Charlotte Mason style narration and nature study and I also love notebooking and lapbooking. We even occasionally love (gasp!) workbooks and worksheets ... and BBC Schools and other online learning. We take the best from everything and leave the rest behind.

All this got me thinking about THIS website - which is a separate entity from the Montessori one. Waaay back in 2004 I originally had a homeschool website (set up, then, under Tim's name). I did love it - it focused entirely on what I wanted it to focus on - homeschooling and a homeschooling family life. Over the years my website has kind of wandered about and lost it's way somewhat.

Now, with the departure of my Montessori stuff elsewhere, I've decided to get it back on track - turn it, once again, into a little home learning treasure trove :) It's going to get a complete overhaul, be consistent (appearance wise) throughout the whole site, and will focus entirely on homeschooling (eclectic homeschooling!) and living as a homeschooling family.

There will be:

• This blog for "what we've done", lesson ideas, our day trips etc.
• A shop - I ADORE making lovely little learning things (notebooking pages, lapbooks, card games, worksheets etc) and I want a place to put them. They will be colourful, fun, cute and (obviously!) educational. Don't worry - they won't cost huge money and there WILL be plenty of freebies :)
• A page for each of the kids - these will be mostly photographic records of the work they are doing in this (and subsequent) school years - their own indidivual little "class" page if you like :D

So that's what will be happening over the next week or so. Tim and I spent a fair bit of time this morning sorting out the new graphics (I brought a GORGEOUS webset to use over the whole site!) Tomorrow he's going to code the basic pages for me so I can start adding content (I CAN do it myself but he's much quicker lol!)

I'm HOPING (fingers crossed) to transfer EVERYTHING over to the new layout/style in one go rather than having to do it in dribs and drabs. So, expect everything to stay looking the same for a bit until one day the new stuff will whizz into existence!

Oh, and I've been doing some work with April on alliteration so I'm going to "welcome" the new site with a VERY cute alliteration freebie for you :)

Fractions!

I've been introducing April to the idea of fractions using a couple of fun activities :) I also made a worksheet to go with these (there's another sheet but that came from a teacher blog - will try and remember where I got it from!) Here are the things you'll need to do these activities:

The worksheets

Fraction tower cubes (or similar)

Threading beads

A bag with lots of different colour pom poms

Piece of card or construction paper

Glue

First, I explained how a fraction was part of a whole and used coloured beads to demonstrate. I had her thread some beads - as many as she wanted - and then we counted the beads up.

 

Then, she worked out how many were yellow, blue, green etc and I wrote that on a piece of paper as "6 out of 12 are yellow" and so on.

 

Next a craft activity! She drew out 10 random pom poms from the bag and glued them on her construction paper to make a caterpillar (or fractionpillar as we called him!) She added feelers and button eyes :)

 

Then we took the fractionpillar worksheet and coloured it in to match her pom pom 'pillar. After she was done, we did the same thing as the beads - how many are there altogether? 10. How many are pink? How many are yellow and so on. She filled in a slip for each colour of her caterpillar.

 

 

 

That was all yesterday :)

Today, I reviewed with her the parts of a whole thing and introduced her to writing fractions as a number rather than words. Then I gave her 4 pizza "boxes" (folded and stapled construction paper) each containing a pizza cut into parts (hand drawn pizzas, each one a different number of slices). I also gave her the pizza worksheet.

The idea was that she had to first put her pizzas together, then count up how many slices were in them and then work out what fraction of the slices had mushrooms on, what fraction had peppers on etc. She then wrote the answers as fractions.

 

 

... not sure about the blue pizza there! :)

Here are my fractionpillar files:

Fractionpillar 1

Fractionpillar 2

Incidently, most of my home ed related posts/free files will most likely be on my shop blog now so if you're looking for home ed stuff, that's the place to go - just click on the shop logo in the sidebar :)

"I Promise ...."

The lovely news of this week is that my littlest girlie is now a fully fledged Brownie :) We went to the Guide Hall last night and watched her take her Promise - it was very sweet! Here she is, looking like she's going "oooo!" but in fact is saying her promise.

 

As soon as April came home from Brownies, Rosie had to be dropped off at the same hall to do Guides (Monday evenings are a bit packed round here!). She came home saying they had started doing some project about homeless people - not sure exactly what yet, sure we'll find out in due course! She was also very pleased because they got given new neckers ... she likes it and I can see why, the turquoise/purple colours are lovely :) Forgot to get a piccy of her actually wearing her uniform so here is her cupboard door wearing it instead!

 

Back to April! She, like most little kids, likes to get into small hidey-places - here is her latest place - under the dining table reading!

shhhh!

 

"hello!"

 

This morning I made bread. We all LOVE homemade bread in this house and I get moaned at for not doing it enough so today I did. Nom, nom, nom.

 

FINALLY (and this is VERY exciting), after all the hoo-haa deciding whether to put my curriculum here or on Currclick or on Lulu, I've decided .... to give it it's own website!! Yep, Montessori Themes has been born and I'm very proud of my babba! I won't bother to describe it here - just go have a look, it's lovely! :)

Montessori Themes

Mostly pictures!

Been sooo busy with curriculum stuff - problem is, my brain is coming up with ideas quicker than my fingers can get it all typed up! As well as my April/May curriculum, I've also got my Botany 1 and Zoology 1 sets up and (taa-daa!) I've JUST finished a set about landforms which will be in the store very soon :)

After the blinding hot weather a couple of weeks ago, we've been experiencing typically spring weather here - sunny one minute and absolutely chucking it down the next. Literally, as I'm writing this, it's gone from sunny to POURING just like someone had turned a tap on! Last night we even had thunder and lightening! Once that had cleared it turned into the MOST beautiful evening and a stunning sky .... look :)

 

 

By this morning THAT had cleared to reveal this .....

 

Gorgeous :)

Here are a couple of other piccies that I grabbed this morning .....

These aren't going to be around for much longer

 

Hello there :) The tree he's sitting on is JUST coming into blossom - soon it will be pink all over

 

The Easter Bun cometh

'Twas a very drizzly and dull (and EARLY!) morning when the Easter bunny quit her cozy burrow (duvet) and ventured out into the rambling garden to leave little treats for the kiddies.

Off she went, hoppity-skippity leaving nice things in cunning hiding places ... and not so cunning ...

Then the famous gold bun made his appearance and hid up a tree ....

"oh, hi ....."

Once the lovely chocolatey things had been hidden, out came the children, in rain macs, wellies and pyjamas!

They hunted and hunted and found many eggs but some were elusive and in the end mummy bun (getting a trifle impatient for breakfast by this point) started handing out clues to find the ones that were left.

... and so the Easter Bunny has done her work for another year and she can now reward herself with a rather large box of Thorntons Continental. Nom, nom.

HAPPY EASTER!

A little work, a little play, a little rest ... and it's all good

Hello lovely people!

First off, eagle-eyed readers may have spotted the Twitter "follow" button in my sidebar - I started a Twitter account mostly for work stuff because it's easier to update new products there. I can also put any other education related stuff I think is fun too :) I DO occasionally put non-education silliness on there as well. Anyway, if you wanna follow then follow .....

So, work. It's going good! I made the big decision to move my purchase products from this website to Currclick. Currclick is HUGE and I can reach a far bigger potential customer base there than I can through my website. The free stuff (English and Maths) continues to reside here. So what's in the shop? At the moment I've got my first theme book (April/May) and my first set of Montessori Basics - this is a little something I put together for those who want the materials but not the theme element. They will come in sets for 3-6 year olds and 6-9+ year olds - for example Botany Set 1 (in the shop now!) is for 3-6 year olds. Botany Set 2 will be for the other age group. I'm currently working on Zoology Set 1 and hope to have it in the shop in a couple of days.

I seem to have settled into a nice little routine at the moment. Get up early, do some yoga, have breakfast with the kids, work for an hour or so on the shop/products, do some stuff with the kids, lunch, do some housework, play about, answer emails and so on ..... It seems to work well, it's a good routine :)

What else has been going on?

Well, the other day, we took delivery of a new bed/shelf combo for Rosie ... that had to be assembled. Tim went out in the morning and I was left clearing out all her old stuff and dismantling things. Errk! What a horrible spidery nightmare! Anyway, whilst doing this, we happened upon an old bubble wand under her bed so, feeling rather tired of the work, we went outside to play in the sunshine ... spot the bubble :)

I also made little lemon cakes. Basically just regular cupcakes with lemon juice and zest added to the mixture. They are then decorated with icing made with lemon juice and bits of zest on the top. Rather hastily thrown together but quite yummy :)

Finally, yesterday afternoon, I had a check up with Mr Tiernan the surgeon who got rid of my facial mole a couple of months back. He seemed very happy with the way it had healed up (not NEARLY so happy as me - I can't tell you how pleased I am with my face now!) Unless the thing grows back (small possibility) I don't have to see him again. I'm very glad I had it done, he did a FAB job and I can heartily recommend him if you need anything like that done. I saw him at Newhall Hospital in Salisbury - it is private but, honestly well worth the money if you really feel bad about something like I had.

That's about it for now :)

Hoppity-Hop!

Easter is coming! Yippeee!! Chocolate!

I do love Easter - for me, it's the start of spring proper (although with the weather we've had recently you'd be forgiven for thinking we'd skipped spring and gone straight into summer!) I do my Easter bunny bit (no, not the Bridget Jones bunny costume although I'm sure Tim would love that!) - I just get up at the crack (ha ha) of dawn and go outside in the garden and hide eggs for the kids to search for. I ADORE doing it - so much so in fact that I believe I shall still be doing it when the kids have grown up - Tim will have to look for them instead! :D

Anyway, to celebrate this forthcoming holiday, April and I decorated the seasonal table with Easter stuff. We now have cute yellow fluffy chicks, an Easter "tree" (branches decorated with paper eggs) and even a small Easter bunny popping out of an egg :) Here's a piccy:

 

We've been taking a bit of a break from homeschool work for the Easter hols but I've still been working hard! I've finished my first curriculum book! Yay! It's now available from my home education pages (link in sidebar) and is on the theme of "spring" ....... I shall start work soon on the June/July book which will have an ocean theme to it.

Other than that, not much to add ... other than Floyd diving down by the side of the cooker this morning, rummaging around, backing out very suddenly closely followed by (I'm fairly sure) a large hairy housespider. He then pounced on the hideous arachnid and ATE IT!! Mmmm! Crunch, crunch, squelch, squelch ..... *barf*

Whilst I applaud Floyd's efforts to save me from 8-legged monsters I wish he'd not done it just as I was about to eat breakfast! Blleeeurgh!!