Finding out what they know.

While we haven't had entire pyjama days here, due to the need to leave the house for various activities, we have been having pyjama mornings and even pyjama 'as much of the time as we can possibly get away with' days.  Today for example it was mid-afternoon before clothes were donned.  As ever though it doesn't stop the learning.  K was very proud today to have managed to move on to the next stage of Timez Attack, which means that she has 'done' all of the 2 and 3 times tables plus up to 6x4 of the 4 times table.  In order to complete the stage, you have to get all the questions of the stage you are on correct with a pretty short time allowed to give your answer in what is effectively an end of stage test, although it's not presented as such.  I suggested that she get the Vapoosh! board, so that we could see how many of the times tables she knows, as I had a feeling it would probably be more than she realised.  As well as the tables she's covered with Timez Attack, she knows her 10 times table very well, the 11s very well up to 10x and 11 &12x when she stops to think about them and when I tested her on her 5 times table she was reasonably confident on that one too.  Finally, as we'd made up a silly chant when we first played Vapoosh!, that goes "Seven eights are fifty six, eight sevens are fifty six as well!", we could cover up the two 56 squares, so that the board looked like this.

Admittedly it includes the 1 times table, but when K counted up how many squares were left to learn compared to how many she already knew, we discovered that she knows over 78% of her tables, which I must admit is even better than I had anticipated!

M has also been going on Timez Attack, but so far has just missed out on moving on to the next stage.  Something that she likes to do every so often, is watch clips of the art and craft programme Mister Maker on the CBeebies website.  Today, she not only watched some but then went away and had a go at this one.

She was rather pleased with the result.

In other news, both K and M are in the process of making things in the hope of getting a Blue Peter badge each and we are continuing to watch more episodes of Heidi.