Outdoor play/p.e

Outdoor play/p.e ideas

Suggestions from the kids have included a wooden cricket set, badminton set and a tennis set. Ideas I've found to add to this via eBay are: a wooden skittles set, a quoits set, large garden darts, large twister/snakes and ladders. The idea is to get outdoors as much as possible playing sports while the weather is nice.

Design and technology sticky toffee pudding

Design and technology, food technology.

Sticky toffee pudding recipe:

 

Nine ounces Dates

One pint water.

Three ounces butter. 

Nine ounces sugar.

Nine ounces self raising flour.

Two teaspoons bicarbonate soda.

Three eggs

Method: 

Put dates and water on to simmer for fifteen minutes.

Cream sugar and butter until pale.

Add eggs and flour slowly until fully incorporated.

Liquidise dates with bicarbonate soda, add slowly.

Bake one to one and a half lhours at one hundred and sixty degrees.

Butterscotch sauce recipe:

One pint cream

One pound brown sugar

Three quarters of a pound unsalted butter

Method:

Mix together stir until sugar and butter dissolves.

What happened?

Drew successfully made a gorgeous cake and sauce.

Design and technology lessons at home

Yesterday we did some DIY jobs around the house I taught my eldest daughters how to repoint brickwork as some damaged pointing was causing damp on the kitchen wall seems a good idea to count this as a lesson in design and technology for my home schooled daughter. 

I showed them how to do pointing then let them practice on the back hard wall as it had quite a few places that needed repointing my daughters really enjoyed themselves learning a new skill and spent two hours repointing bits on the garden wall with me then we did the brickwork that had needed doing. 

Today my home schooled son is doing a design and technology. Food lesson with his daddy who is a chef. This will involve cooking a proper dinner and pudding of his choice from start to finish, he's chosen gammon with honey and mustard glaze, roast potatoes and green beans with home made sticky toffee pudding with sauce for six of us! Much more practical for real everyday life than cooking a basic recipe like cake for one person at school.

New timetable

So finally decided on a new timetable with more flexibility for outdoor learning across the summer our new summer timetable runs April to end may with summer holidays starting the start of June as our new baby is due around then :) then back to school still on our summer timetable until the start of October so timetables don't change mid week. Across the summer structured topics they study are optional to allow making the most of outdoors play and learning across the good (I hope) weather this is thirteen weeks around the long summer break and new baby then in October the winter timetable starts with eleven weeks before Christmas hols then January to the end of march on the winter timetable before back to summer timetable in April. The winter timetable will be more structured hopefully combatting boredom being indoors with the bad weather. At the moment we study in two and a half hours of structured work a day five days a week in the summer this is flexible in the winter it will be two and a half hours five days a week with an extra two or three, two and a half hour sessions alternating weeks offset from the summer timetable if they have done structured work across the summer timetable they won't do all of these so basically across a year we have three weeks more holiday than my daughter at school but only Christmas and summer no half terms, more outside time and less structure across the good weather ( fresh air, sunshine, play and fun) then structure in the winter with set topics and we still cover across a year the same home school hours on structured topics as we do now but there's something to suit all of us.

Design and technology (making) project ideas and electronics projects ideas for 2014.

Been working hard to come up with creative projects that are within the abilities of my 9 year old to complete and not get frustrated with.

Project 1: woodcraft f-18 kit.

These kits slot together like puzzles so I thought they may be easier to try to start with than an air fix kit and they have less fiddley pieces. Although the instructions are purely picture based with numbered parts which did resulting a minor error putting two pieces in the wrong way up it it was also simple to fix as there's no glue involved the only minor mishap was my 3 1/2 year old accidentally breaking some of the missiles that book onto the wings off as the books were quiet small and weaker than other bits but nothing super glue won't fix once painted it won't be noticeable.

My son was able to follow all the instructions himself and it kept his interest from start to finish, it took 6 hours to complete without painting it above all he was so proud he finished his jet.

We are using this as a design and technology project so my son wrote about what he did.

Aim-build woodcraft kit using instructions included and end up with a completed f18 to paint. Method- how he made it. Conclusion-what problems he had and how problems got fixed, anything he'd do differently next time.

This project has encouraged concentration. Learning to follow the instructions but problems solving skills and thinking when the instructions have come up a bit short. Creativeness, artistic skills, practise of fine motor skills painting tricky small areas. So lots of transferable skills from a hands on making project and at the end he has a cool jet model for his room :)

Other projects we have planned are a wood craft helicopter kit which may be a bit trickier as its a smaller model and a 14 in one robot making kit this is aimed at his age group from maplin with parts that click together to make 14 different variations of robots that then run using battery power. Hopefully I going to find some further slightly harder electronics kits and some science based kits to move onto as the year goes on.

Home ed challenges for a new year Jan 2014.

Very annoyed by lack of computer and mobile access of late making it very awkward to update our website and blog and use online resources like conquer maths. So at the moment making do with iffy access via iPhone with a cracked screen and limited pc access via the local library.

This has meant adopting a more low tech approach to home schooling and £60 on stationary and hardback lined books from the pound shop to use in conjunction with textbooks.

Evidently this has worked fine as we sailed through our visit from the local authority guy and he doesn't need to see my daughters work again for another year.

My nine year old son has joined us home schooled so his work will be looked at in February. 

Having never done ks2 work there's even a few challenges and my son finds written work hard so I'm taking a more practical approach to his learning and just hope the local authority feel this is adequate. 

His interests are different to my daughters although he wishes to do sewing lessons with her. He's more interested in practical design and technology projects, electronics and using workbooks and activity packs to help complete work with less hand writing required.

This year will present many new home ed challenges with a new baby also due the end of June.

However at the moment just taking each day as it comes and looking forward to all the wonderful activities the warmer weather will bring in the next few weeks.