The end of the school holidays.... Hooray!

It is nearly the end of the school holidays and I cannot wait, not for the reason of many...kids back at school but for the peace and quiet that will descend when the go back! 

Everything will settle down, parks will become quiet again, museums will be free to walk around, and people will stop having free time to pop around! 

We can instil so order back into the household. Although we will still be really busy with home ed activities and visits it will be up to us which ones we do and which ones we don't. And the time in between will be our own not a constant race from place to place.

I am so tired from 6 weeks of chaos and the holidays have not given us a good sense of a normal home ed life at all so roll on September and let the fun begin!  

Total chaos and a trip to the zoo

It has been a while since I have posted, now although I didn't plan on breaking fully for the school holidays I seem to have been swamped with things to do from family visits to running activities at my church! We have done so much and I just keep forgetting to share!

So on Tuesday this week while visiting family we went to Dudley zoological gardens. It was a fantastic day out and we spent 6.5 hours walking around the zoo so we were all very tired. The zoo I built on castle hill so as the name implies there is a castle at the top. The children loved it and now want to learn more about medieval times and knights and castles. So one little visit has given us a project! 

We walked around the outer wall and entry as above and went up the castle the views were amazing

And the range of animals was wonderful we saw tigers and meerkats, monkeys and reptiles. A whole range of creature and now we plan on putting a little animal book together with photos of the animals in and information about each one on the page so a great little science project!

The Sumatran tiger

The Siberian tiger

The Barbary sheep

A dwarf crocodile

And we must not forget the chair lift and the amazing view on the way up and down castle hill

The James Dyson Foundation

Recently I saw a post on a forum about the James Dyson foundation, an how they do an ideas box and an engineering box for schools and that these could also be loaned to home ed families. I decided to send off for one as felt it would make and excellent ongoing science am engineering project and it arrived to day 

The contents was fantastic firstly the air multiplier fan was included, this is only on a six week loan

Secondly was a book of ideas and projects to follow through this could be kept and so you can take your time with it 

You also get six poster to keep 

And there is a display stand that can be used for the six weeks of the box loan 

I will post updates as we complete the different tasks in the ideas box!

The wonders of poundworld

while out today we popped  into poundworld and it is fantastic some of the craft materials and resources thy have it may not sound like and educational destination but it is a pretty decent place to pick up low cost resources.

Sums are a problem fort eldest she is not a sot down and do worksheets sort of child but in poundworld I picked up this

A great way to set work and questions that will feel more fun than overwhelming 

My younger daughter is just learning her letters and sounds and so I picked up the following to help

An alphabet puzzle with picture associations great :-)

We also picked up things that will be very creative including the following 2 books 

Something to fill the time and we may use them for creating our own stories using the setting and characters in the books so a great language starter activity.

Then finally to support our science work and learning of the natural work we have models to build 

One for each daughter and a great stater on where do they live? sub species of elephant? what do they eat? Why do they have long trunks? 

So by looking in unexpected places you can home educate on a budget!