Wednesday, 15 March 2017

WRITING and READING : Excellent Little Hack!

Excellent little hack to practice both reading and writing in a very FUN way, esp. children who are obsessed with lego, like O and Jo here,  and it gets children to discover new words, too! ( My collage app refused to work properly for some reason, but the words are still there!)







And this is great, too.  Gifted Oliver had no problem laying out his racing car track while we are taking stock what letter of the alphabet he remembers well, and which of them we need to work on some more.  I think doodling actually improves his concentration, something I can definitely relate to! 







Monday, 13 March 2017

ALMOST SCIENCE: First Video

Boys now have their own Youtube Channel Called 'ALMOST SCIENCE

'Almost Science' on YOUTUBE!

Now.  The new thing we have going is activities where we have own take on excellent kids'  experiments run by DadLab and similar or just do something educational that is not core subjects and HAS to be 100% fun.  This element of our HE is boys'  favourite, always involves both of them and they are sure to ask me 'Are we going to do SCIENCE today?' as soon as they wake up which is a fantastic thing.



NUMBERS: Using 'Counting Sticks' Again!

We are working on 22-2 , 26-6, 78-8, 67-7 and so on.

 The easiest way to explain this concept was to stuck up the sticks in 10s and singles, so it's clear that when the singles are subtracted, all that are the extras to the 10s, only 10s are left.  

It seems really confusing to describe in writing, as it was to explain in words, so perhaps the pic will make more sense.  I practice it worked really well.  

Now we just need to go over it here and there, so it settles in O's mind! 




Home - Schooling, Early Years: Russian Lessons

Oliver dear started weekly Russian Lessons in a. nice group of about 7 or 8 children.  I thought he was going to hate it, because unlike all other kids he understands it but can't speak, but he seemed to haver really enjoyed it! Very pleased, as it's to be his weekly thing, not optional.




Thursday, 9 March 2017

Home Schooling: Bilingual Russian-British Kids' Seasonal Party

O and Joey  had a fantastic time during this 3 hour indoor party with games, fancy dress, pancakes etc as well as an inflatable castle. Definitely coming to the next one.  Group Russian Language lessons are in pipeline. The same with Chess , except for this one, we'll need for Jo-Jo to get a bit older!


Home Schooling, Early Years: Numbers

Over the last couple of weeks, we started writing down the numbers we were doing in cards.

O deducts and adds up to 5, reasonably easy. Sometimes he agrees to use his fingers but prefers not to.  He loves ticking off his correct answers and bargains for being correct 'on the whole'.  I think he finds the whole thing quite easy , esp if he's in a 'mathy' mood.

The next steps are to explore swapping number around in case of '2+9' and things like 18-8, 30+7, 50+6, 90+7;




Writing: Individual letters & Writing as Hear

We are continuing with our revision of the individual letters.  Oliver mostly relates to sounds so it's easier for him to recognise them, but he gets about 60% of those he gets right by the names of letters, too.

This week we were going over the letters up to 'I' not inclusive, but also including random letters like 'n' and 'm', which he knows very well. He gets confused with 'P' and the difference between 'd' and 'b' still, but seems to be getting his 'inventory' together bit by bit.

His capitals are in a bit of a disarray.  He's not too sure about most of them, but never gets wrong 'X' or 'W', so go figure.

His writing is really smooth and effortless for his age, I find.

On the other hand O really struggles with writing words by sounds.  The first sound is really challenging for him, as is the next , esp. consonant sound.  The vovel that follows is slightly easier and the last consonant is normally quite easy for him to name currently and write down in a straightforward phonetic word.  I'm not entirely sure why it's working out for him this way.  I think he's a bit too young for writing from hearing. So we just gently touching on it, really.

The final thing we started to work on is to persuade O to write with correct line spacing , start at the beginning of the line and have the capitals take the right place within the line space. He's not convinced it's worth the effort, but I keep nagging him about it.

Below is the first effort at this new writing assignment we are exploring