The school have adopted a new approach whereby they set a theme for the whole school, and the different classes or ages, or homes, can adapt it their own way. The first theme is nature, and so everyone went out to find bugs in the allotment, which was great fun for the boys:
They also started working on rotations - quarter turn, half turn, 90 degrees, 180 degrees etc.
In the evening we started a new book (having finished re-reading our collection of Greek Myths) - a wonderful 1950s boys' adventure book called The Atom Chasers in Tibet - great fun, which we're all into!
Tuesday 19th May
Finn gets videos sent through from his teacher every week of things related to his work. Everyone enjoys watching them, and Oshin especially when there is music...
With the boys into Harry Potter, Cori has decided to make them all wands. They were looking very good, so she offered to make them for friends too, so now she has heaps of them, all now looking good (see if you can spot Orry's requested wand!):
They also analysed their bugs, using the phone camera to zoom in on them with - very disgusting!
From this, Cori then had the boys create some lovely pictures & little bits of information about bugs, which they stuck into an old photo album which Cori found somewhere - it makes a lovely thing!
After that, Cori had the brilliant idea of going down to the beach to do some learning in the good weather.
She had them draw out a grid, after which she blindfolded one of them, and had the other called out directions to get to where they needed them to be - using their directions & turning knowledge they got yesterday:
Please note: (a) Oshin wearing his older brothers' pants has now become a thing that he does; (b) Orry still enjoys editing Cori's pictures; (c) obviously, great fun was had by all, and both the older boys learnt their directions perfectly - win!
Wednesday 20th May
Today's schoolwork (set by Finn's teacher) was to look at books and how they can subvert the expected story. After finding some examples on their own shelves and discussing them, then wrote about them so:
After this they then planned out their own stories, with a twist from traditional tales. Here is Finn's and it's surprisingly pretty good - 'The Great Big Enormous Duvet':
One of the books they read was about the Big Bad Wolf trying to get help to make pancakes... so it was decided that we were to have pancakes for lunch, as you do.
In the afternoon everyone went off to the beach as I (James) remained at work, which was good as it meant that I was here when granny called by. - The Covid19 rules had just relaxed to allow people to visit people's houses, so she came in for a minute or two before heading on down to the beach, where she found them with friends having fun, as I found them all an hour or so later when I joined them - very nice:
After this we returned for dinner, when I hung out with the kids as Cori cooked, at which point we found the magnifying glass and the kaleidoscope:
Thursday 21st May
Finn has had slips of paper coming back from school for months before lockdown, all with words he should be learning to spell. These were all hard to manage for us, with them all getting mixed up and confused, and we didn't really manage it very well. So when Finn's teacher told everyone to work at the words from the list at their level, we had no idea where he was. She Cori decided to work it out from the bottom...
Today's spelling test had 40-60 words on it, and Finn got all but about 3 right. A good job, though they were all the basic words.
In contrast, Orry got none wrong, which delighted Orry!
Oshin has learnt how Cori consoles a hurt Orry and has started to do it when he finds Orry hurt. This is both very lovely and also very useful, as Orry tends to stop his crying and just start laughing.
We tried to catch it on film by having Orry fake being hurt. It didn't really work, but it is still a nice film of Oshin tootling about as he does:
After my work, as Cori cooked dinner, I took all the boys out for a walk. Orry would normally refuse to come, but he came out with the suggestion that he could create a record of our route. On his clipboard he wrote down a set of instructions along the lines of:
OD, TR, TR, OTR, DTH, OTD, TL, TL, OTB, OTR, OB
(Out Door, Turn Right, Over The Road, Down the Hill, Turn Left, Over The Bridge, On Beach)
Whilst we were on the beach (as I helped Orry wee behind a rock, with Oshin on me, to be precise), Finn made a friend of a boy a little younger then him. When Cori messaged to come back as dinner was ready the boy gave him the remembered-number of his house and Finn had Orry scribe it down on his paper. - It was a few days after this that we had to dodge Finn's requests to phone this random person on the beach every time he remembered it!
Friday 22 May
Today's spelling test was 'mega' as it appears in Finn's diary - as indeed it was:
Finn's is on the left, as it is for the Manx here also:
If you can make out Finn's spellings, some of them are rather worrying for a boy of 8. Cori wrote to his teacher about it, who confirmed it as remarkable for someone who was so good at reading to be so poor at spelling. It was a possible marker of something, but it wasn't anything that needed to be anything but monitored at this stage.
A part of it is as if he is leaning on guessing too much. It is certainly something he does in reading too much - just guess the word and move on regardless, catching the gist as he goes - but in writing it is a disastrous approach as it leads him down blind alleys he can't get out of. And in trying this guessing approach he doesn't appear to actually try and think about how it is spelt - he just guesses it, and if he's told to try and guess, he does so utterly randomly, pulling in letters from around without any sort of real plan.
... But, as Bnr. Clague recommended, we're only observing it now, and being very thankful that we now know of it, unlike when these sorts of things were hidden behind the classroom doors.
Having done their spelling, and everything else they had to do this week, Cori gave them the afternoon off to do what they wanted... which meant that she was able to read more of her book:
She's not read a novel in a very long time, but she got this for her birthday and her To Do list is sufficiently lean these days that she was able to pick it up and devour it in a couple of happy days. A good thing!
Also a good thing is that she finished it quick enough to be able to cook dinner for everyone, as we detained Oshin by a train video, which ended up being a fascinating 1980s film about the trains in the Isle of Man which we were all enthralled in:
After dinner Finn spoke to someone that used to go to his school over the computer. It was a bit of a strange one as it's unclear that they are friends, and they had a troubled relationship when they were both in the same school, but they seemed to get on when they did chat over the wires, at the friend's suggestion:
Saturday 22 May
Of course, today brought the allotment, which granny was very eager to get back working on also:
As well as being lovely to see her, the boys are especially delighted by granny joining us at the allotment as it means that they get biscuits & fruit too. Oshin tried his hardest to have a biscuit in both hands at all times, as he does.
Lots of good work as done, planting and clawing back the weeds on the edges (and trying to keep Oshin from stamping on the plants he watered!), so it ended up looking like this:
We also worked on a Lego version of Peel Castle around the allotment outing. It's rare for me to site down with them and we all work on something together, so it was good fun for everyone, and I think we did a pretty good job of it:
The Tardis etc. were later additions, once they were simply playing with it, but before that we made a film. - Having done all the building, we realised that we therefore needed to have some real learning involved, so I jotted down some facts as they finished off the walls, and we made this video:
Finn's version in Manx is also good.
I then created a Kahoot game which we played the day after and which Orry and Finn both did surprisingly well at! See how you do: Peel Castle Quiz.
A rarity since lockdown has been a Film Night, which made the Saturday's one even more delightful, especially was we all enjoyed the film (Howl's Moving Castle). - A lovely Saturday treat.
Sunday 24th May
Today was a relaxed day, though Finn & I (James) went out for an 'adventure walk' as Finn described it in his diary!
This meant going to Port Erin and taking a series of paths marked on the map which we didn't know, but which were inevitably lovely:
They led us up close enough that we couldn't resist going up to the Neolithic burial mound & WW2 Radar Station of Meayll Hill:
Very lovely!
Monday 25 May
Today was a Bank Holiday, making it a three-day-weekend (hence it creeping into this week's blog).
Part of the morning was dedicated to the kids doing the Kahoot quizzes we've made. They then decided to do one themselves, about the house, which me & Cori drew on. Here they are working on it over lunch (at a makeshift table as the dining table was full of paperwork being sorted):
The main thing for today was going out to Maughold to collect in some sea life for their nature week. We had planned to find things in rock pools, but we were short on time by the time was got there so we turned off before Port Mooar and went to Port y Vullin... which doesn't really have any rock pools!
However, we gathered in different types of seaweed, ready to take home and study (whilst having a lovely time on the beach):
We were out in Maughold (and pressed for time), as we were afterwards to Ramsey for a BBQ at the cousins house. A lovely treat now that gatherings of up to 10 people are allowed outside!
We all had a great time, including Finn and Orry who got to bounce on the trampoline, and all three of the boys for getting to play football with the older boys.
We were also delighted to find real beer in the big Co-op there, produced in milk cartons - how marvellous, and delicious!
