Update on our Home schooling Journey - A whole month.

Its a whole month since we decided to Home school and wow what a month we've had.
Cram packed with so many different lessons , learned so many new things and even had fun while we done them.

This week, I had thought that I had not done that much with them as I was feeling very unwell and had caught a tummy bug which caused me severe pain and discomfort , not only that but Kaiden pulled a muscle in his neck causing  two days of moaning and groaning , basically refusing to move from his bed and  Drew got a caugh that kept us all up for the week .

Not feeling to grand in myself , I was lucky that my printer worked and I had paper there for them to choose their subjects and with help once again from Twinkl I was able to give them another fun packed week without the hard work .

At the beginning of the week we found a recommendation to do some activities on Epilepsy which was shown in the events calender as Doodle day  (September 22nd 2017) so we were a little early but interested still so proceeded.
I though this would be a great introduction to the children learning about Epilepsy just like last weeks subject of the heart and they learned how to deal with seizures , what to expect from someone having a seizure and why seizures happen . Kaiden especially took a deep interest in this and I feel confident that he would know exactly what to do if ever he came across someone in need of help during a seizure.

Since taking the children out of school , Drew has been telling me how they had been reading ''Goodnight Mr Tom'' and so I thought it would be fun for her to finish learning and also take on some role play with the others .  

For two weeks our eldest interests have been with World War 1 and so he was very pleased to have finished his journey of learning this week.
He was rather surprised at the weapons used back in those days such as the flame throwers. Watching Hacksaw Ridge made him even more interested in this historic event .

Towards the end of the week , we all seemed to be feeling even more unwell and so I felt it was time for some fun, queue the Cornflower experiment -

I can vaguely remember signing up to Principia's Space Mission but I am so pleased I did after finding it on a home schooling group . It's a great free resource where you get a free download of a Diary for the children to fill out and learn about being an astronaut as they follow Tim Peak's journey.

As you can see, Leon loved learning about how astronauts need to be really fit and healthy to go up into a rocket .

If you have been following our journey , you may remember last week that Drew wrote her first ever Pen Pal leter to a friend she met on holiday last year.
Well this smile said it all this week when she received her reply just days after putting her letter in the post. Drew is now so happy and is currently writing her second letter to keep the friendship going.

Seen as though the weather was not so grand and everyone was rather poorly, we had not been out much this week so we decided to take a venture to our local library to restock on our reading books.
Sian had been waiting two weeks for a book she was rather excited to get her teeth into , she's become very fond of David Walliams and all of his books and I do not blame her, they're fascinating me also, and it had arrived so it made the visit more fun, it's always great when your excited about getting something you've been waiting a long time for. I have ordered two books now, one I can not get hold of from the library at all , and another two I am still waiting on three weeks later for .
After our library visit, we decided to then take a detour.
You may remember that I had been saying we were in dyer need of crafts for our hands on projects and after asking some advise from the Home schooling groups on social media , I was advised to visit the local scrap store.
At first I thought they heard me wrong and instantly thought that a scrap store was something like the scrap yards that my husband visited for metal but after a little research I came across some information regarding a not so local scrap store in Middlesbrough which we were able to visit on the Saturday hours.
As we arrived, We were instantly welcomed by a man who showed us the ropes and where everything was, explained what was what and handed us a basket to help ourselves.
Basically, our local store was called Percy Middlesbrough Scrapstore.
This scrapstore was for collecting safe, clean business/retail waste and by-products that will be then used as low cost arts and craft resources and it was available to the public for a small fee.
There are a few options for memberships and visits but we literally did not know what to expect and paid a daily fee of just £2 to enter and filled a basket at the small cost of just £8.

We were able to walk through the whole shop and pick up what ever we wanted in the craft section , there were rolls of paper, fabrics and materials from paper cups and jam jars, sponge but outs and even shotgun shells which the smaller boy wanted instantly to use for something in his imagination for crafting later on.
We filled our basket and came away with quite a lot of different things the children wanted to use and for just £10 for an unlimited amount , we felt this a great experience and lesson on recycling for the children as well as a saver on the purse.
There was also other sections in the shop where you could purchase items at a small fee but we felt the basket deal to good to miss for starters.

The big kids had had a busy week and not only had they been learning about new things but even the baby of them Joshua had been giving some hands on work with his daddy when the breaks on the family vehicle needed replacing.

We're really looking forward to sharing our next update.
Not only is it St Valentines Day but we also have the joy of celebrating two of the boys birthdays. Hopefully we will all be back to normal and well again .
I hope however the ink arrives for the printer in time for Valentines Day though , on the day I need it the most we had to run out , typical.
How has your week gone , have you learned anything interesting or new?