Today was unlike our ‘normal’ homeschool days were we sit and do Circle time around the table like I mentioned in this post. I decided to mix it up a bit to keep the kids interested and it worked well. 

We sat on the floor in the lounge and used our ‘Betty Lukens Through the Bible in Felt’ to tell the story of Gods promise to Abraham “Look up into the sky and count the stars if you can. That’s how many descendants you will have!”

 

The kids loved putting all the pieces on as the story unfolded!

Then we got out our musical instruments and sang ‘Father Abraham had many sons’ while dancing around and making a beautiful band together! ☺️

  
Then I surprised the kids by getting out our puppets to ‘teach’ some table manners from this book!

  
The kids absolutely love talking to the puppets and telling them all about their day and even using their own teddies to talk to him! 

 

 
‘Daffy Duck’ read them the book and then ‘Dad’ and ‘Billy’ role played some scenes and the kids had to say if they were using their manners or not. They thought it was hilarious when they slurped their food, stood on their chairs and walked around during the meal. 

Once our puppets went to bed I settled on the couch with a read aloud book we are almost finished reading while the kids played cars on the floor!

  
The kids and I have thoroughly enjoyed this true story about a lion who was bought from Harrods Dept store by 2 Aussie guys living in London who eventually release him back into the wild in Kenya, Africa. (I think it’s quite a famous story but I had never heard about it before) It’s written simply enough and the chapters are short so that Miss 2 has been able to follow the story and enjoy it too!

After we’d read 2 chapters Master 4 and I made play dough! He played with the kitchen scales experimenting with what different items weighed and it was a good exposure to large triple digit numbers! We had trouble getting our green food colouring to colour the play dough so ended up also adding all our purple colouring which only just tinged it slightly so we then used all our pink colouring! This is the final colour we ended up with a nice purple colour!

 

  
 

Once our play dough was done
we went outside and the boys played while Miss 2 and I weeded the backyard garden beds in preparation for some seed planting! By this time it was lunch so we had to stop for something to eat and then the kids went into rest time! After rest time they had a snack and watched a video and then we went back outside to finish the weeding and plant some seeds!

So now we have thyme, oregano, sweet basil, parsley, marigolds and sweet peas planted in our herb and veggie patch! The kids all got involved in planting the seeds and I hope we have better success than the last ones we planted which got eaten by the bugs most likely slugs, snails and slaters. It’s going to be their job to squish any they see from now on. 

Once this was done Master 6 decided he wanted to make a bug catcher like we’d seen in this book!
  

So I gave him a shovel and he dug a hole to put his jar in to catch the bugs like this …

  
I’m sure they’ll be out there every 5 mins to check it’s got bugs in it this week! I was amazed though at how resourceful he was in finding the right sized rocks to hold up a brick he found to cover the jar to stop rain getting in exactly like the book had! He also dug it all out by himself which was a big job for him! All I offered was encouragement and told him where to find the jar and the rest he did himself! 

Wish I could show you photos but it’s too dark outside! Maybe I’ll attach them later! 

Anyway that is how our ‘perfect’ school day went today! Lots of learning but heaps of fun too!