Summer term weeks 3, 4 & 5. 2016

The term has been wizzing by with so many long hot days and lovely light evenings to play out in.

Ted has enjoyed being really active this term. Utilising  his flexi school days to gain confidence on his bike, and really enjoy being out of doors in the garden or out and about along the coast.

This is Ted”s sunflower grown in class.

Oxeye daisies along the field border behind our house

Ted has really grown in confidence  and  physicality during this term.  And the flxi school days we spend together seem to allow him space to expand into his newfound sense of self knowing & confidence.

He has learnt to trust in his own capabilities. Wih a burgeoning  sense of  confidence & independence  he has learnt to swim, exploring the boundaries  of what he is comfortable with. Stepping to the edge of his comfort zone and trusting . It has been wonderful to watch. And to have dedicated 1/1  time each week, seperate from busy family life has been invaluable. 

Flexi School Summer Term week 1

Summer term weeks 1 & 2.

The sun is shining and the blossom is coming out on all our fruit trees. The garden is alive with insects and birds. There are lots of queen bumblebees coming out of hibernation, drinking up the nectar from the first flowers.

Ted has discovered we have lots of frogs spawn in our pond. So we have made a project to record them each week and learning about the frog life cycle.

Here they are about a week old.

We had fun reading this great book ‘Tadpoles Promise’

And Ted drew the first three stages of a tadpoles life.

I found a guide on keeping frogs which we enjoyed looking at and reading all about what stage our tadpoles are at.

They have grown so much in a week. And are now just hatching out of their eggs and are developing little gills. Ted has been enjoying observing them closely through his magnifying lense.

And also looking at how it changes the way other things look too!

Today we joined seals class on their visit to Norton Church to look inside.

Ted loves this church as we go there often on our walks with Lola our dog. we usually like to sit in amongst the grave stones in a sunny spot. And this often sparks very interesting conversations about life and death and ceremony and bureiel.

We’ve never been inside so it was fun to do that. Though Ted found some of the Vicars talk of drinking Christ’s blood and eating his bones a bit confusing!

But we did enjoy the architecture and the beautiful hushed space. And on our way home picked this lovely bunch of wild flowers. Forget me not & comfry.

This afternoon we had a lovely time reading together under our Apple tree in the garden 

And we had lots of fun playing races.

Flexi School March 20016

The sun has returned and the world is waking up! And so are we!

This month we have spent a lot of time outside. Ted is fascinated by the reawakening world. Hunting for signs of spring and new life.

Sowing seeds

Watching rainbows from the sitting room window.

Ted drew and wrote a wonderful comic strip cartoon.

Woody ( the cowboy) and Sam ( the donkey) find a bag of gold!

With the gold they buy a hut.

Then they make a fire and cook food on it.

The End.

Ted found my old slr camera. We spent a great flexi school day taking film photographs and learning about cameras and photography.

Ted loves being outside in the garden.  He helped me construct some new raised beds for him to grow his peas in.

The chooks and guinea pigs watched!

Just before the Easter holiday we had fun day blowing and decorating Easter eggs.

& on to April…

Flexi School February

Beautiful snowdrops Herald the spring!

This month we have been getting outside more now it’s a touch warmer. Feeling like we’re coming out of hibernation.

Ted has been wanting to make dens and run as fast as he can. So that’s what we’ve been doing lots of on our flexi school days.

we can’t believe we are able to sunbathe in February!

On rainy days we’ve had fun making up ways to get exercise indoors. Our favourite is sofa goalie!

Ted made a beautiful castle for his school project on castles.

& On to March

Flexi School January 2016

Some how I’ve managed to delete a whole half term of blog posts, so I’m going to write one for each month.

Ted and I have been loving our  flexi school days together this winter. We’ve  had so much fun drawing , writing , making up games, and doing lots of  imaginative play dressing up, singing and learning g new exercises together.

This is an amazing transformer Ted designed for a drawing competition in a magazine.

Ted loves all his animal books and is starting to really enjoy sounding out the names of all the creatures.

We’ve been working on learning to tie shoe laces too 🙂

And making lots of delicious food together. Ted prepared this lunch for us, tomato & cucumber salad and avocado dip. He is learning to use the kitchen safely. Yummy yum !

Ted loves to dance, run, bike and to move his body! We do lots of different things to get our daily exercise!

We try to do some observational drawing each week.

And make time for lots of fun imaginative play. Exploring the world from different perspectives

Working on hand eye coordination with crafts and games. Here’s Ted making a dream catcher downtown bedroom.

& On to February….

flexi school week 10

Beautiful bright sunshine, blue skies, warm wind.

Off we skipped to Mighty Oakes parent and child group in the woods at Swanton Novers.

Everyone seemed a bit sleepy today. Maybe because we are nearing the midwinter solstice & the days are darkening. In our house everyone is finding it harder and harder to get up in the mornings! We’re like a den is sleepy bears!

Ted ran through the woods searching out fairy houses. We found an old tree stump covered in bright green moss and tiny fungi.

The boys explored the stream where they’ve been building a dam. They broke the dam and whooped as the water rushed through pulling sticks and leaves along with it.

There was a big tree  which was being logged. On his own accord Ted began to count the growth rings. There were over 40! ” This tree us older than you mum”!  we had a yummy home made snack of bread rolls, jam, fruit and seeds. We then enjoyed this week’s craft activity; twiddling willow into beautiful little hoops. Ted loved the way the willow bent round on itself.Back at home we made a delicious salad for lunch.

Ted enjoyed playing with clay again. Making a Wild Dog & a Crocodile.

I taught him how to join the clay so it stuck together fast and wouldn’t come apart when dry. We are going to ask our friend Kate to fire them for us.

We had a really fun day today, and revisited some things we learnt in recent weeks.

 

Flexi School Week 9

Blue skies and Sun after days of rain.

Today Ted and I decided to do Flexischool at home. He had been poorly earlier in the week and we wanted to cosy in and do some projects we’d been planning.

In the morning we enjoyed playing with his alphabet floor puzzle. A piece was missing so Ted made a replacement and drew the picture of a butterfly for letter B.

He worked really hard to trace out the shape, draw the butterfly and cut it out. We had a great discussion about shapes and area and design.

We then made some apple and parsnip soup, flapjack & bread for lunch!  Ted used his numbers to count out the ingredients, and we looked at weighing and measuring and volume.

Ted got very messy!

And here is Ted eating it later!

Whilst we waited for our lunch to cook we enjoyed reading and talking about all his favourite animals.

And later had fun sounding out the letters in each animals name and practicing writing.

In the afternoon we had a good runabout in the garden, trying to catch the chickens, and playing football.

what a great day, lots of fun and precious 1/1 mama & Ted time

Flexi school week 8

A calm morning after wild storm Barny roared over Norfolk last night.

 

Ted rushed downstairs to start working on his Zoo of animals. He has been inspired to draw his own zoo by his book Zoo Ology which we have been reading in bed every night for a week or so. Ted enjoyed sounding out the names and spelling them.

We drove along the leaf& branch strewn lanes to Mighty Oaks.

The woods were very calm, hardly a breath of of wind. A complete contrast to last night’s storm.

Ted enjoyed kicking up all the fallen leaves as we walked through the Woodland trail.

The children inspected the dam they’d made last week. It had become a sort of water filtering system. Ted noticed the murky water running in and the clear water running out.

Much time was spent in rebuilding the dam, and finding the right sort of sticks to hunt a crocodile with! Apparently they had to be thick and sharp.

Back at camp we all happily tucked into a delumptious (Ted’s new word!) home made snack .

And after we learnt how to make origami stars.

Ted and his buddies enjoyed climbing on the wooden horses. And flying on the hammock.

 

There was also more drumming on the wooden drum kit!

when we got home we had a yummy bowl of soup to warm us up.

And then Ted wanted to make some clay animals to go with his Zoo.

He made a T.Rex, a Wild Dog, a Fast running Dinosaur & a coconut tree.

We love flexischool!

flexi school week 7

A perfect autumn day, sunny  with a touch of chill in the air.

This morning Ted decided he wanted to do some Yoga. So after dropping the girls at school we did 20 minutes of yoga in the sitting room.

Ted knows Tree pose, Cobra, Downward Dog, Tiger, Cat, Mountain, and the sun salutation!

Look at this cheeky chicken, Mrs Fluffles, who wandered into the kitchen this morning looking for her breakfast!

With our bodies all warmed up we headed off to Mighty Oaks. On the way we passed many tractors pulling trailers full of potatoes , and fields of mud like dark chocolate. As we went we munched some delicious apples picked from our apple tree.

When we arrived at Mighty Oaks we headed off into to woods to see what’s changed since last week’s crazy rain.

Most of the leaves have fallen now, the ground is a carpet of many colours and shapes.Ted enjoyed looking for shapes in the surroundings. He spotted lots of circles in the ends of logs, and lots of triangles and squares where branches crisscrossed.

Ted’s best friend Danny is camouflaged in brown today!

We rebuilt a den which had begun to fall apart. And made it sturdy for winter.

The boys had a wonderful time down at the little stream building a dam with logs, stones and earth. They worked together to negotiate the big logs into position.

Everyone was very hungry and ready for the yummy snack back at camp.

This week we continued to practice crochet at craft time.

During the farewell songs Ted and Danny played on the log drums with sticks. Beating out different rhythms to accompany the songs.

When we got home Ted enjoyed drawing animals from his Zoology book and writing out their names.

He also spent some quiet time playing with his wooden bricks and animals, building a zoo.

Yet another lovely flexischool day!

flexi school week 6

It’s raining its pouring! What a wet wet day!

We got our full wet weather gear on and headed off to Mighty Oaks , windscreen wipers going like mad, soggy phesants huddled under trees and we zipped by.

As we arrived at mighty oaks we decided it was just too wet to go on the woodland walk. So the boys sheltered in the cosy warmth of the bell tent. And played with all the lovely wooden animals.

We then joined the rest of the children and parents in the big tent for delicious home made snack of fruit, bread and jam.

This week’s craft was crochet. Ted enjoyed hooking and looping and with some help he made a beautiful red  bracelet.

Lots of fun was had sploshing in the puddles and making mud mixtures.

And balancing along the logs.

We collected lots of different leaves; oak, silver birch,cherry & wallnut, to press at home

We sang ” oak leaves, Apple, hazel too, falling down.in the autumn breeze”

What a wonderful flexischool day enjoying the elements in all their glory!