Sunday 28 October 2007

Three Names

This week we have looked at Three Names, a FIAR text by Patricia MacLachlan. It was ok. Hermione liked it but I have to say I wasn't overly impressed. It tells the tale of children on the prairies and their one room school house. We talked about the prairies and looked at pictures of prairie landscapes on the Internet. We found North America and Canada on the map and placed our story disc there. We discussed the title before reading the book and considered how important a title is. We did some other bits and pieces too but I wasn't particularly inspired so we probably didn't go as far as we could have. One thing it did inspire me to do though was to order a copy of Little House on the Prairie from Amazon Marketplace. If Hermione likes it I may buy a series on DVD as I'm dismayed with some of the crap that is on childrens tv these days. I wandered in the living room the other day to hear a character in a childrens programme say 'arse'. It was on a cable channel probably aimed at the 8 -12 age range. I was shocked. The children hear enough 'earthy' language from me on occasions without it being on the tv!



We haven't done anything with the computer for a while so I decided to look up a few online games this week. We found a game which involved sorting odd and even numbers, one where the player must insert the correct mathematical sign to show greater or lesser and also quite a few phonics games. They went down a treat. I must confess to sometimes feeling like a lazy parent when we do quite a lot of computer stuff. I try not to but do feel I need to be actively doing everything.

We are still full of Halloween spirit. Hermione and Craig went to a Halloween event at Hardwick Country Park on Friday night. There were crafts, story tellers, a scary walk and other stuff. They had a good time. Tomorrow night is the Halloween bash at Badgers.





We have been to Whitworth Country Park twice this week. It is beautiful there. We took bread for the ducks one day and discovered that deer can swim - well we knew they could swim but hadn't actually seen it before. Poor things must have been really hungry.







The apples in the walled garden are past their best but the grapes are good. Miles couldn't resist but try them.





Hermione has spent quite a bit of time this week making a heart shaped felt handbag. It isn't finished yet but it's coming along nicely.



Miles had a 'first' this week. He stayed for song time at gym class. Usually at the first sign of people sitting in a circle he runs to get his shoes. I'm not sure what brought about the change but this week he wanted to stay and even joined in some of the actions. He is generally coming along great. He really is mischievous and has a great sense of humour. His speech is improving a lot too. For a long time his only words were mama, boob, bra and burp. Thankfully he's expanded his vocabulary and can say quite a few things now. Oddly he's stopped calling Craig dada and now calls him 'that mama', the emphasis being on 'that.' He makes me laugh.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Whats FIAR? Are you using a curriculum? You do have some lovley books.


I love the photo of the deer :0)

You might be able to help me, I'm thinking of getting an eglu anything I should know?

Wobblymoo said...

There is a lot of rubbish on TV and it's really hard to find a balanceWhitworth Park looks like a great place, grapes too!!! Wow

Claire said...

FIAR is Five In A Row, a curriculum of sorts I suppose. It consists of a guide book and lots of story books. The guide book suggests different topics of discussion and activities to go with each story. You can buy the whole package or you can just buy the guide book for about £10 if I remember rightly and then get the books from the library. Like all curriculums I think you have to use it rather than be a slave to it. Sometimes I use most of the ideas in the guide book but more often than not I tend to start off looking at the book for inspiration and then going off on a complete tangent :-) I tend to find it's a good starting point if nothing else. Nothing too academic, much more story and chat.

Oh, eglus. I'm not sure what to say. I'm very happy with mine so far. Someone told me that they were a bad design and made hens lame. That hasn't happened here. I've also heard that they are not actually fox proof but again there have been no problems here and we are quite rural. It is very easy to maintain. There is a bit to pull out where all the cr*p accumulates so you can just easily tip it out into your compost. There is a side door for collecting the eggs which makes it handy for small people to do. It's also designed so that you can keep the food off floor level so as to deter pests.

I have to say I was a bit concerned about cleaning it out, not wanting to come into contact with hen cr*p particularly but I have found that a good once over with the power hose leaves it absolutely gleaming - with no need to get stuck into the not so pleasant bits.

You don't need to buy hay or anything. They only need something in the nesting box and we have found that cut up newspaper does fine.

These are my first hens. I don't really know a great deal as to why some lay well and other don't. Since starting to lay ours have all laid daily, however I was talking to friends last week and their two hens are now just laying two or three eggs per week between them! I don't know if it's down to breeds, the amount of time they free range or what. That may be something worth investigating further.

Feel free to drop me a line if you want to chat about them. As I said I don't know a great deal, I can just tell you what we have found.