Learning About Astronomy - the Stars

Our next topic in our astronomy project was stars. Stars are such a broad topic and you can cover many different areas; types of stars, the life cycle of a star, the birth of stars and our star - the Sun. We started off by watching a short video about stars which I found on YouTube by Storybots. Storybots really make learning fun by introducing topics through song.

Learning About Astronomy - the Moon

We have spent the last month or so learning about astronomy as our science topic. We have learnt about the planets, the Earth, stars and the moon. We go to a project group once a week where the children learn about these topics together with other children. They love this weekly group and have started to make some good friendships. We often continue learning about these topics at home and they form the basis of our science curriculum, giving it structure and focus.

We were not able to cover the moon during our project group sessions so we spent a week learning about it at home. 

Nature journaling at Bowood Woodland

I have been reading a lot about nature journaling recently. It is a lovey way to study nature using art and observation. By sketching or painting, it allows you to slow down and analyse something in great detail and you may spot things which you otherwise might miss. Look at the colours, the shapes, the textures in detail and experiment with techniques in your artwork. Nature journaling is a great way to learn skills, document your observations and gain knowledge about the natural world around us.

Ramadan Calendar Tutorial

Here I will show you how I made a Ramadan calendar for my children. A Ramadan calendar works like an advent calendar but instead of counting down the days til Christmas, it counts down the days of Ramadan til Eid day.

During Ramadan Muslims must fast from dawn to dusk. This means that they must not eat or drink anything during daylight hours. The length of time of the fast varies each day as the days either lengthen or shorten throughout the month. At the end of the month, we celebrate Eid.

Indoor Fun Review

The second of the review posts I am doing will give you an idea of all the indoor fun we have had over the last two years. Yes, two years is a very long time but I will try my best to sum it up.

Outdoor Fun Review

This is the first post of my review on the past two years. Here I will share some of the fun we have had outdoors.

Almost 2 years ago, a healthy baby boy joined our family. I spent a lot of time baby wearing.

We fed the ducks.

We climbed trees.

We went fruit picking.

We went to see where our vegetable boxes come from.

We did a cooking class at Tyntesfield, one of our local National Trust properties.

We played in dens.

We jumped in leaves.

We played with water.

We went pond dipping.

We played in muddy streams.

We jumped in puddles.

We made fires.

We watched a battle reenactment.

We grew our own fruit and vegetables.

Riyad tried to cut worms out of the apples (there were no worms in the apples!)

We went to the park.

We played in the snow!

We rode on a steam train.

We rode on a miniature train.

We went to the beach.

And enjoyed many wonderful family days out.

What do you and your children like to do outdoors?

A new start

How has it been almost two years since I last posted?! Time slips by so fast you could just blink and miss it. The last two years have definitely been a roller coaster ride. Welcoming a new baby, business ventures came and went, my eldest went to school and then we went back to home educating again, I stopped my PhD and now we are finally beginning to settle down into an enjoyable and happy routine. I finally feel like I know where we are going. 

I have decided it is time to start blogging again. I find it such a useful way to document our day to day happenings and share my knowledge and experiences in the hope that someone out there may find it useful. I have enjoyed looking back at my old blog posts over the last few weeks and reminiscing about days gone by.

As so much time has passed since my last post, I am going to start by writing a post or two about what we have been up to over the past two years. It's a review of our lives which will help you to get up to date with what we have been up to and allow me to piece together our journey that has led us to the place we are now.

Here goes....