Portsmouth City Museum

Today we met some friends at the city museum for lunch and then had a look at the new military display.

Hannah and her friend Oscar enjoyed dressing up in British Naval Uniforms - don't they look adorable?

Looked at the replica ship and the Navy Days display

and checked out some historical army uniforms.

The museum is amazing, we love going there and everytime we go we discover something new :-)

End Of Season Splash Pool Fun

This week is the last week that the splash pool is open, and since we are having a mini heatwave we headed over there yesterday to meet up with friends and have some water fun!

Hannah had a really fun afternoon :-)

Adventure Group - Tie Dyed T-Shirts

This week at Adventure Group the children learned a tie dying craft. They all had t-shirts or plain cotton bags to decorate and started by making a drawing surface with the t-shirt / bag. Hannah elastic banded the fabric over a plastic cup to hold it steady, and then drew out her design with Sharpie permanent markers. Once the design was finished we dripped surgical spirit onto the designs to disperse the ink in a tie dye pattern.

Hannah was really pleased with her shirt, and made a little one for her doll Lanie as well.


Here are the shirts drying in the sun!

Hannah wanted to wear hers as soon as it was dry!

After the craft one of the older boys very sportingly agreed to let the little ones bury him in the sand pit - they LOVED it!

He even let them use water and got absolutely drenched - luckily his mother had had the foresight to bring spare clothes!

They all had such a fun time that i can see it becoming a regular occurrence - note to self, pack dry clothes!!

Sunday School Picture

This week in Sunday school the children learned about autumn, had an autumn story and drew autumn pictures!

Medieval Life Workshop At Portchester Castle

On Monday I took Hannah to Portchester Castle to join in with a medieval workshop being run by another home schooling group. The castle is beautiful, the subject was interesting to Hannah and it had the potential to be a really good day. Unfortunately the teachers leading the course were not what I would have hoped for. They treated the children with very little respect, and Hannah found them really intimidating, so much so that she dropped out of the workshop very early on and watched most of it from a distance. I find it so disappointing when children arrive for a workshop so full of enthusiasm only to have it squashed when they excitedly 'forget' to raise their hand before speaking, or are pushed to answer questions when they are feeling shy, or are humiliated in front of their peers for failing to notice a sign, or any of the other multitute of things that some educators seem to think is perfectly acceptable to subject children to - it's just heart breaking. Thank goodness not all workshops are led by such people.

Anyway, i did take some pictures of the activities, and the castle looked beautiful in the sunshine!

I think we'll go back on our own really soon!

Outdoors

We've had a couple of lovely autumnal days here so yesterday after Hannah had finished her lessons we went out to the park with her bike - she loves to ride her bike now and cycled miles around all the pathways making up exploring games and practising standing up on her pedals!




Today we had a lovely morning with friends, followed by a couple of hours of school work and a trip to the library. On the way home we discovered a perfect fairy ring in a different park from yesterday. Hannah was thrilled!


Can you make out the dark circle of grass Hannah is standing in?
Complete with toadstools around the edgeSo we stopped here for a play and Hannah did handstands and cartwheels around the circle,
Then it was Lanie's turn (she really does go almost everywhere with us!)
Anything Lanie can do Hannah has to have a try at lol!!
They even did a fairy dance!
And finished off with a quick visit to the playground!
A lovely end to the week :-)

A Thursday At Home

Today was a typical day at home and started with Hannah reading a chapter of her reading book while Lanie (her AG doll) researched the book on her laptop!!


Her English lesson was all about story predictions, and her Math was number bonds and addition practise.




We did some work in her 'God and Me' book, and Hannah learned the meanings of her names and wrote some words which told about her using the letters from her christian name.

Then she started her United States workbook which her best friend Sydney had sent her. If you've been reading this blog for a while you'll remember Sydney, she lived near us for three years before moving back to the US and she and her mom still send us curriculum, fun activities and goodies -we miss them so much!

Anyway, Hannah loves her workbook so that will be her geography covered for a week or two and she'll have fun doing it!


She finished up by practising her computer skills surfing the American Girl website and playing some of the games on there!
This afternoon we went to the park and Hannah spent an hour cycling around there before going out to play with her friends until dinner time!

Our Autumn Season Table

..........because suddenly it seems to be Autumn!

Chalk Art

Hannah has recently made friends with three other little girls, all 7 years old, who have moved into our street over the summer. The girls call for each other after school every evening, and are in and out of all our houses playing together. Every dry evening they collect Hannah's sidewalk chalks and create huge pictures on the pavements and Hannah is LOVING it!!!

This picture is her latest creation, it's a self portrait!!

Adventure Group - Leaf Craft

It's definitely autumnal here now, so yesterday the children all had fun making pictures with fallen leaves we had collected over the past week.

First Louise told them a little bit about the job of the leaf, why they change colour and showed them a chart of lots of different types of leaves found in England .

Then the children all chose an activity and got to work!

First Hannah tried Leaf Rubbing,

Then she and her friend Melissa designed and painted a huge tree on a roll of craft card, it will eventually be decorated with leaves when it has had time to dry.



And finally she moved on to the leaf pictures

and made a beautiful woodland scene.

After the craft it was time for a picnic lunch and then lots of free play in the sunshine!

Back To Allotment Group

It was lovely to get back to the allotment today after our summer break. The children all planted up mini container gardens with peas, beans, radish, lettuce, parsley and spinach and then decorated a wooden name label for them.




They also went bug hunting, did some watering, ate lots of grapes, tomatoes and nasturtium and ran around alot!
Hannah had a lovely time!