Things we have been doing.

Having had rather a slow period as regards things that obviously look like education, it's been rather busy round these parts.

K has continued with writing her 'bloggy' and finished the post about our trip to the Natural History Museum.  Once she's finished it, we looked through it together and corrected some mistakes.  There were a couple of errors she was making consistently, such as writing 'witch' instead of 'which' and 'were' instead of 'where', so I've asked her to make sure that she checks for those things when she does writing.  We also talked about punctuation and using it to help make meaning clear and avoid ridiculously long sentences.  K told me that she has also picked up a grammar workbook that she started ages ago and has been continuing with.  She tells me that she will show me when she's finished the book.  When I asked her if she was getting on okay with it and understanding it, she said that she was and on further questioning she said that she thought she might be able to use some of the things that she's done exercises on when she does her own writing.

Having made a start on the maths workbook, M has been picking it up regularly and has been working through it well.  We have now covered sequences, which she really likes, to the point that she asked me to rub out all her answers so that she could do the exercises again.  She also said she'd like some more around the level of the ones in the book or a bit more difficult and I also found her some more to do online here.  She was doing really well with them until she had to continue one which was something like 4/15, 1/3, 2/5, 7/15....  Then she decided that it was too diffcult, which given it was aimed at a school Year 8 (so approximately 12 year olds - she's 9), was understandable.  However, we had a look at it together and she did have a go at the next sequence, which was similar but with fourteenths, so a bit easier, and managed it fine before deciding that she'd had enough.  By that point she had done about 15 minutes of them though, so it was fair enough and she'd finished on a good note.  Other topics that we've done, usually snuggled up either on the sofa or in my bed, once before I'd even had breakfast, include addition and subtraction, multiplication of two digit by one digit numbers, angles (acute, right and obtuse) and pyramids and prisms.  M decided that she would rather skip the division one and come back to it, although there is only measuring left apart from the recap at the end of the book, so we will be addressing that one soon. 

Both girls have also done baking recently too.  M has made flapjacks and chocolate brownies (although these were somewhat overbaked, but that was my fault) and this morning K used two different recipes from her cupcake book to make marbled chocolate and vanilla cupcakes ready to decorate with friends who came round this afternoon.  They had eaten the best ones before I managed to take a photo, but here are some of K & M's.

When it comes to decorating cakes, more is definitely more!

We also played a game that the friends (they're K, M & A, so rather confusing for the purposes of my blog!) brought with them.  It's called Qwitsh and it's rather good, depending on the role of a die, you have to get rid of your cards, which each have a number from 1 to 8 and a letter from A to H, with either a number or letter that is one less, one above or the same as either the number or letter on the card showing the pile, as quickly as possible.

Mid-game of Qwitsh.

Finally, it's nearly a fortnight since the last Asfordby, but I forgot to blog about that session, which was on the theme of the Chinese New Year.  As well as the activities that various parents had brought along for the children to do, one of the mums who grew up in Taiwan, I think it was, brought along some Chinese cakes for the children too try as well as a writing set.  She did a little 'show and tell', about the language and the writing, as well as about some of her memories of living there.  Some things that stuck in my mind, were how the written language is not phonetic, and also how what would sound like the same word to us can mean four very different things depending on the tone of how it's said, for example a rising or falling tone.

C, S, M & K dancing with the Chinese dragon the children had helped decorate.

M did some tangrams

Some of the celebration cakes we tried.