Magical Learning Moments

We are finding reasons to get outside *almost* every day. Particularly memorable was last weekend's jaunt up to the giant star chart, in the pouring rain. Martin and I hunched defensively against the freezing wetness, while the children danced and sang and spun.


We read an assortment of Hindu stories and made rangoli patterns out of coloured rice, lentils, and sugar last week. The children are fascinated with Diwali (and in fact, many festivals belonging to other faiths), but this year I have spent Autumn dashing from one of their interests to another, facilitating and supporting, and have offered very little in the way of ideas and suggestions myself. As a result I almost completely missed Diwali this year, it was a good job there were related activities at the Museum stay and play sessions!


The girls are playing on Minecraft quite a bit (some days an hour, other days several hours, the occasional rare day with no time at all). Jenna made colourful Octonauts for Rowan. They do very sweetly take turns and also often play cooperatively. (Unfortunately they also "cooperated" in creating a great deal of mayhem last week, which at least they did duly help me tidy up over the past couple of days.) :/

Jenna heard a reference to William Blake's The Tyger in a program I was watching whilst knitting away, and I ended up putting my project down and looking up Blake artwork and poetry for a while. She put a couple of favourites in her Main Lesson Book - and didn't freak out when all the little sisters did some liberal helping. :)

Talia is keen to do whatever the others are doing at all times. Distractions in the forms of Poisson Rouge android apps and threading beads have come in handy this week. She is also talking a lot, she has just so many words.


Remembrance day came and went, marked by Jenna with poppies in her Main Lesson Book. She seems to be back to wanting to fill these lovely big journals with interesting things, always of her own choosing and in her own preferred style. It does make me smile a little, how very much like how I imagined the books would be used, and yet so different.


This week there have been songs about three dimensional shapes, drawing around objects on squared paper to work out their area, dressing up as Tudors, weaving, baking cookies, writing about the Solar system, the elements song, a board game about survival scenarios, matching games, Venn diagrams with string and objects, dressing up as My Little Pony characters, speculating about life on other planets, Poirot, den building, and designing what Christmas decorations we're going to make when we get some more felt. Funny how much wonder and creativity and discovery can come out of a week of relative utter chaos!