Advanced Practical Life: Following Instructions

I purchased a mini green house for the garden. This time I didn't build it, instead I left it up to Little-N to read the instructions and build the green house. Reading instructions and following them is an important skill that everyone needs to learn. Unfortunately I know too many adults that dismiss the instructions and go ahead assembling something. Usually they end up with a lot more work, if not a total disaster. Thankfully Little-N followed the instructions and did really well.

Twig Sculptures

In order to make our climbing frame fit in the garden we had to cut down a few branches from a tree. I decided to keep the branches and allow the children a chance to play with them and see what they can create. Little-N and his cousin used elastic bands to hold the branches together and started creating vertical structures. They spent a lot of time working out where to put the branches so that the pressure on the structure will be just right. Having introduced Little-N to words like force and pressure, it was really nice to see him use the words in this contents.

Once the structure was complete, it stood for a whole day and the boys were very happy. The next day Little-N took it down and built another one.

Planting Vegetables

Last year I was envious of my mother in-laws garden. Every time we visited her we had salad freshly picked from her garden. This year I am growing my own. Here are some pics of Little-N planting seeds.

First he filled the recycled tub with compost. [Can you see those little cat ears? totally cute]

Then he made to grooves in the compost and sprinkled the seeds.

Next he covered the seeds with compost and watered it.

And of course he wrote labels to make sure we know what's growing. The seeds will be kept in a mini green house until their ready to be moved to the soil.

So far we've planted:

-Lettuce

-Broccoli

-Cucumber

-Radish

-Aubergine

-Carrots

Little-N is 7

Little-N turned 7 a few days a go. Seven is a special age. I'm really excited for the year ahead. He has matured so much lately and learning is on a completely different scale. His thoughts, character and personality are far beyond anything I could imagine my child to be. I'm so proud of him and person he is growing into but most of all I am so HONOURED to be his mother.

Thank you God for blessing me with this lovely child.

Primary Colours Activity 2 - Playdough

As mentioned in my previous post the children have been learning about primary colours. Yesterday they made playdough in the three primary colours. They will be using this playdough later on for another colour wheel related activity. Here is a link to an old post that includes a playdough recipe.

Primary Colours Activity 1

As part of our art curriculum I have started to present a series of activities based on the colour wheel. Here is the first activity: using colour box 1 the children were introduced to the three primary colours. This lesson was followed by drawing a primary colour triangle and labelling the colours.

The children then looked at the art work of Piet Mondrian and produced their own pieces of art using only the primary colours.

Trampoline

*Just wanted to say and big THANK YOU to everyone who commented on my last post on literature for boys. I will be buying some of the books recommended and Little-N will be very happy.*

Little-N isn't very sporty or physical, he prefers to sit and read a book than to run about or play football. I recently bought him a big trampoline so that he can have some daily physical exercise [secretly I bought it for me!]. It's really funny to watch him, he really enjoys bouncing up and down with his long hair flopping about and that's about it, he's as stiff and wood. All the other boys who have had a try on it have done 'somersaults' 'seat drops' and many other fancy moves. Little-N however is proud of his bouncing and occasional bottom landing. Over the next few weeks I'll be adding more things to the garden so that Little-N and my other students can have a variety of physical activities to explore.