Challenges and Successes

Today we continued with our ebb and flow approach.

I had to take the guinea pig to the vets first thing, but decided to let Sarah sleep in,
as she had had a rather challenging day yesterday, due to feeling overtired.

 

 

The guinea pig needed an injection and some cream.

He had been losing weight and, we just hope there is no underlying condition causing the weight loss and making him more susceptible to infection.

When I got back, Sarah was still finding it slow to get started.
But she finally managed to settle to do some quality Music Practice.
She has two exams this term, which will be a real challenge.
I am wondering whether it is going to be too ambitious, but we will see....

She focussed on practising the second half of Sad Song on the piano, working really hard to vary the dynamics from MF to FF and gradually back to PP.
This is quite challenging, as it's easy to suddenly go from loud to soft or vice versa, without graduating the dynamics.

The left hand was also quite tricky and required some work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K--5YHQ9h0M

She had to practise the scale of F# Minor two octaves both hands together,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VZUyA3bfEs


F# Minor arpeggios in both hands, a chromatic scale and a scale played in contrary motion, both starting on a specific note.

 

She also practised one of her exercises, which she played beautifully.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GA3uUhycgHw



She moved onto the cornet, playing all her scales, except A major, as she couldn't remember the fingering for the high G#.

She played a new exercise and a piece that she was supposed to play in a Rock style.
She desperately wanted to play it in a swinging style, which she does amazingly well.
But she had to learn this new style to prove that she could!

Needless to say, after all this focussed activity, Sarah needed some downtime and chose to go out into the sunshine to relax.




Matthew created some very interesting lego designs today and was very engrossed in this activity.

He moved onto his Reading Eggs Challenge quite happily.

Then onto Conquer Maths.
When calculating the missing numbers in an addition sum, he used his awareness of how to make ten to help him to add larger numbers.
He is very good at visualising in his mind, which Numicon pieces fit together to make specific number pairs.
Apparently dyslexics are particularly good at visualising.

When we tried to add multiples of tens with varying units, he found this more of a challenge.
I made a note of these sums and decided to carry out this activity with the numicon apparatus later.

He continued his lego creations, today a sledge:

 

   

.... while Sarah started her activities on the computer.

She carried out some 'real life' multiplication problems and some division sums.

She spent quite a long time doing duo lingo French,
which she really enjoys.

Her letter to an imaginary Grandad was written under the trampoline outside...

This proved to be a bit of a sore point as this was the exact moment when Matthew decided he wanted to jump on the trampoline!

He had spent some time drawing a picture of the mole and the cat by the potion pot and,
had even included a couple of simple words on his picture.

We had calculated the sums using Numicon as planned and he had also read another reading book.

Now he was waiting for Sarah to finish her letter, so that we could all do some Art together.

It turned out to be a rather frustrating situation for us all and I ended up insisting Matthew came with me to the post office to post the letter he had written to his cousins Antonia and Imogen.
It was to be a hard lesson to understand - to give each other the quiet required and to understand each others foibles.

I decided to buy them both ice creams and was afraid that we would return to find Sarah very upset.

 

On the contrary,

she had been busy continuing her assault course challenge, ha ha!

This activity was far more important than writing a letter...

After we had enjoyed our delicious ice creams, I decided to sit with Sarah while she wrote her letter in the dining room.
In the end, she really enjoyed inventing funny adventures about a pig and a camping trip to describe in her newsy letter to her imaginary Grandad. I think her real Grandad will enjoy reading about them too....

After this, Sarah set herself up outside to do some printing with a polystyrene pizza base she had etched on last week.
She had got the idea from an activity she had tried at the Taunton Home Ed Earth Topic Day last week.
She knew exactly what to do with the colours to create the effect she wanted.

     
 
 

Although she had to do several takes of the print, as she discovered that too much paint prevents the image from showing up.
She had based her etching on a Stone Age Documentary, she and Matthew had been watching on Youtube.

Matthew went to find a flower to paint from the garden.

We had to move to the dining room to complete these tasks as it was decidedly chilly!
The wind had picked up and was blowing the paper about.
Sarah had also decided that the stones did not provide a flat enough surface for her printing activity.

Matthew wanted to paint a bright, stripy vase and a couple of flamboyant yellow flowers.

 

When he had finished his painting, we had another look at the flower,

its shape and the subtle shades of colour.

 

He drew and painted a delicate version of the flower, learning to mix the colours to create different shades and tones.

The end result was quite pleasing.