Nearly Autumn - homeschooling & having fun

This little boy is so delightful - such a joy to cuddle and talk to him. The other day I was sweeping the floor while he was sitting in his pram and every time I looked over to see if he was ok, I was greeted with the most lovely smile. Just looking at him makes him smile. :-)

We started back at lessons over a month ago (after summer holidays). It was nice to have a break but always fun to get back to the books again! I often have people ask what curriculum I use, so thought I'd mention a bit here. After all the years of homeschooling when I was growing up and helping my siblings, I've seen such a wide range of stuff. My opinions change over time too. One thing I do like is to have a mix of curriculum/publishers. It seems one company will be the best at science but not very good at history, etc. So I like to pick and mix and find what I like best for each subject. Benjamin is doing Math-u-See for maths and Abigail is doing Tee-Jay maths (Scottish schools curriculum). We are doing Abeka for science and some Italics books for handwriting. We have spelling books from Christian Liberty Press - they seem really good and the children are enjoying them - spelling tests too! :) And best of all, The Mystery of History, which we all love! We started it last year (vol 1 is a huge book!) and are still working through it, though are already around 520BC, so have covered quite a lot so far. I won't say everything is perfect, or that I like all the suggested activities, but it's the best history curriculum I've found and I love that it's in chronological order! It's a lot of fun to cross the world reading about what happened in different places at the same time, learning who lived at the same time, etc. The children especially enjoy making a time line as we go along. Here's a picture of it below:

Our history time line! Sometimes they draw their own figures/pictures for it, but other times I make use of the fantastic resources available on the internet and print pictures from there, which the children colour in. I've decided to use a ring binder to keep it in; the sheets are inside plastic sleeves so they stay clean & dry when they look at it.

This was taken in early August, on Benjamin's first day of homeschooling as a "school age" boy! :-) We were learning about the Ishtar Gate and Benjamin wanted a colouring picture to go along with the lesson. So after a bit of internet searching I found this image which turned out a great picture to colour.

Deborah was colouring her pictures when the above one was taken, and here she is trying to show me hers and that she wanted to be included too!

So here's all 4 of them - and Deborah is wondering why her brothers are making such silly face (and loud noises)! lol

This is what Benjamin does when he thinks it's a bit boring to learn how to tell time! :-P We were using the Math-u-See blocks to learn about the minutes on a clock and rather than think about that, he started creating a design in the middle of our circle. I have to say, teaching him is going a lot better than I thought it would. In the past I couldn't persuade him to write his name or other things like that. But so far, he's (mostly) working hard at his lessons - writing his spelling words everyday, doing a page of handwriting practice, some maths, history, science, and LOTS of time spent reading books in his "spare" time. But as the above picture illustrates, sometimes he just finds it boring (probably because he knows it already) and he has to find a more interesting way of doing it, or just something altogether different. For example, a sheet of math problems might be handed back to me with the word "no" written as an answer for every problem. Or he wants to write his numbers soooooo tiny that only he knows what they are! But hopefully I'll get the hang of it and work out a healthy balance of enough practice for him to learn something (master it) without being tedious. He picks things up very quickly, but also needs practice of course (esp when it comes to writing things), but since he only needs to look at something once and then remembers it, he finds "busy work" totally annoying! Which is unlike Abigail, who is happy to have busy work, as long as it's something she finds easy! So yeah, it's a bit of an adventure teaching a child with aspergers/high functioning autism (esp when he wants to verbalise/make noises/move/jump/etc the whole time!), but can be fun & exciting too.

Deborah & her 2 big brothers hanging out the window :)

Elijah in the Bumbo for the first time - sometime last month, as he already looks quite different!

Such a sweet little boy

Staring at something - and holding his favourite toy!

My dear husband and my smallest darling boy :-)

Peacefully sleeping! And yes, he still loves to sleep at night - I can't complain, he's perfect! :-)

His favourite toy again! It really is great - so many places for him to grab onto, very lightweight, and great for chewing! I'm sure I saw it mentioned in an email from Mumsnet recently - saying it was a best buy for baby (at around £10!). But I got this from a charity shop last year - only 10p, so really *was* a fab buy!

He's really strong and eager to learn how to sit up on his own.

Happily playing together in a fun pop-up tent - a great way to help contain the toys they've dumped out! ;-) And morning lessons with the oldest 2 are soooo much easier when they decided to play together in the next room!

Summer

My darling little boy at 8.5 weeks old - full of smiles & giggles! :-)

Big blue eyes! :)

Finally getting round to updating this blog. We've had a nice break from schoolwork over the summer (even if it's not been a particularly warm/sunny summer). Sometimes I think the school holidays are more for me than the kids ;-) though they've enjoyed going out on their bikes and being able to spend the whole mornings outside when the weather is dry. But all good things must come to an end, and this time next week we'll be back to lessons again. I'm kind of excited about a new school year. I'm mostly organised now - with ordering some new books, pencils, exercise books, etc. It will be a bit more of a challenge now that Benjamin is school age. It's not always very easy to get him to do specific tasks (esp if he's not in the mood for it) and when it's not a good day, I'll often only focus on Abigail's school work, and leave him to read books on the couch. So trying to do regular lessons with him might be difficult, but hopefully it will go better than I think it will. I think the hardest part is trying to keep 4 occupied at once, not to mention a 2 month old baby too! :-P But I've bought some large colouring/activity books for Deborah and Clement - and a workbook for Clement too. So hopefully if I've got something to keep them busy with at the table, they'll be less likely to draw on their older siblings schoolwork.   

Giggles

 

 

 

 

 

Here's a photo of our self-catering holiday house in Edderton. We had just about finished decorating/furnishing it in the weeks before Elijah was born, but we didn't advertise it until he was a couple of week's old. We had our first guests (a family of 5) staying in it last month. They said they really enjoyed it, so that was good to hear! We were probably rather late in the year to get many bookings for this summer, but hopefully as time goes on more people will find out about it. Should anyone be interested in finding out more, our website is:http://www.highlandbreak.co.uk

This is the sitting room area of the holiday house. The photo above this one was the master bedroom with double bed, and the 2nd bedroom has a set of bunk beds & double futon. So it will sleep 6 + baby.

Tandem baby wearing! ;-) Last week I was trying to get the dinner cooked, but both Deborah & Elijah kept crying. So I decided to try 2 slings at once, and it was great! they were both happy. And most amazingly, it was really comfortable too!

Last month we took the kids to a small museum in Invergordon. I found it quite interesting, and the displays were good for being such a small place. Benjamin had seen a sign for it a couple of months ago and *really* wanted to go there, so we finally got round to going. :)

An Iron Lung - I have to admit, I'd never heard of one of these. Can't imagine people having to spend *years* of their life in here - just to be able to breathe. :( This was on display in the museum, along with lots of other stuff from the old County Hospital in Invergordon.

Not sure if this is readable about the iron lung, but here's an interesting article about a man who *still* finds it necessary today to use one of these devices - amazing! http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3182096.stm

A model oil rig! The boys always love to see these out in the Cromarty Firth and thought it was great to see a model of one.

Not sure what Deborah is pointing to here

Invergordon has lots of lovely painting on the walls of building around the town

A massive cruise liner that was in the harbour that day - which means the streets were full of foreigners! lol

Benjamin's favourite spot - on the couch right next to loads of books!

I've done a bit of reorganising of the children's rooms this summer. I bought this storage unit for Benjamin's room. It has nice tall spaces, which are just perfect for all the over-sized books that don't fit on normal shelves.

And this one for Clement's room, which holds a lot of books too.

Found the kids like this one Saturday morning - a pizza party!

Some lovely flowers in the hanging baskets on the front of the kids' playhouse. Only problem is they require *full* & intense sunshine to open, which means the ones below the lower windows have been a bit wasted, as they don't get much sunshine most of the time. But they *are* lovely when they open!

Abigail & Benjamin decided to recreate a scene of demolishing a North Sea gas rig, after watching a programme about it on the BBC iPlayer. They're quite creative kids! lol

Me and my littlest boy - though he's a lot bigger than this now, as this photo is a few weeks old.

Enjoying an ice cream when the sun shone! :)

Deborah

Sleeping beauty - at around 6 weeks old.

Already a month old!

Where does the time go? It's hard to believe Elijah is already a month old. He seems such a part of the family that you almost don't remember what it was like without him. :-) His four older siblings love him so much - they fight over who gets to cuddle him and he gets soooo many kisses per day! He's such a sweet little boy and he happily sleeps at night too, which is always helpful. 

So, at last I've decided to attempt an update to my blog, which ends up being mostly photos these days. I used to have time for saying stuff too, but those days seem long ago! I usually try to put the photos in some kind of order, but unfortunately Blogger has a new format and has put the photos out of order. :-/ I'd *like* to re-do it, but since it's taken me this long to get here, I think I'll have to live with the chaos of disorderly photos, and just post the blog as is. 

Elijah at 5 days old

9 days old

Deborah and a space hopper

Elijah meets his Nana (my step-mum Anna) at 2 weeks old! :-)

Last week our homeschool group had a trip to a children's farm in Beauly. As you can see, the skies were rather dark, but thanks to waterproof suits & wellies, the children had lots of fun despite the rain - and their clothes were still clean & dry underneath!  Some friends who were on holiday in the area joined us for the day, with their 7 children. It was really nice to see them again and the children enjoyed meeting new friends and playing with them. :-)

Playing with friends

Off to feed the animals

Our born climber is now attempting trees! She *loves* to see this photo of her too - she says "Deborah up high in a tree" and giggles!

15 days old

3 weeks old and wondering what his adoring big sister is going to do next :-)

3 weeks old

And finally, a recent photo of him - 4 weeks old.

4 weeks old - I think he looks rather clever & thinking here - almost could be a school boy! ;-) lol

The week *before* Elijah was born, we had some fantastic weather - warm & sunny. One Saturday was especially nice and I thought we just *had* to make an unplanned trip to the beach. I knew it would be harder to go with a newborn baby and the weather might not be so good again, so we packed a picnic, bought buckets & spades, and headed for the sand. We had my sister Anna and brother Gerrit with us too, so was nice to get out while they were here. As it turns out, we're (so far!) having a very dull & damp summer, so I'm glad the kids got a trip to the beach when it was nice. Here are a few pics from the day.

My darling Deborah - she *loved* being there!

Benjamin really enjoyed it too - I think he found it quite relaxing.

Abigail has *always* loved the beach!

All 4 together

Working on a big hole