Hama beads

Amy was bought some of these last year and she is loving creating patterns with them.
Here are a few:

Daisy chain

Now I've finished all the wedding crochet I decided to make a little treat for my daughter. We had a go at making daisy chains in the summer but they don't last very long so here is my crocheted version.

I saw the idea on pinterest here but liked this pattern for the daisies.

Here is my finished daisy chain:

Wedding Anniversary - 20 years

Day 1

After dropping the children off we headed to Sedburgh in the Dales. Had a picnic lunch and a wander round all the bookshops (Did you know Sedburgh is a book town) Then we set off for a walk along the river.

Found 3 geocaches along the way. Never seen one like this before!

It was time to check in to The Fat Lamb where we were staying

and get changed for a lovely meal in the sunshine.

Behind the pub was a nature reserve where we had a little wander till it got dark.

We went for a cuppa till it was properly dark and then headed out again to spot meteors!

Day 2

After a huge breakfast we set off on a geocache hunt. A series called Walk the Clouds was just nearby. We saw lots of sheep, lots of limestone, a few birds ?Stone chats and no people!

On the way home we stopped at Carnforth and then at the beach where we tried a spot of art

A lovely peaceful and relaxing weekend - will definitely have to make this an annual thing!

Summer Acer study

Today we had a look at the leaves on our Acers in the garden.

Here are all our trees in July

We found out that the leaves are compound leaves i.e. they are comprised of a number of leaflets in a palmate arrangement. The leaflets all had toothed edges but were smooth in texture. The colours of the leaves varied considerably and Ben wrote a lovely description of his on his notebook page.

Dad crafts

Birthday card for daddy

Fathers day card

Term 3 2015

Maths
Both been working through Khan academy
Amy loves watching the Numberjacks DVDs and has been estimating how many peas there may be in the pea pods she picks

English

Ben has finished Far form the Madding Crowd and done a presentation where he had to answer questions as the character of Gabriel Oak. His last book for his CM live course is The picture of Dorian Gray.
Ben has now started to work through the Rod and Staffs eighth reader " A Time of Peace"

Luke has been doing some vocab from an English Basics book
Luke has started working through Rod and Staffs fifth reader "A Time to Plant"

Amy has carried on with her alphabet book - we are now up to 'G for grass'

R.E.
We have started  a new study with The Williams on "Who Am I"

Topic work
Continuing with Machines and Motion - the theory of relativity, Laws of Motion and gravity
We have started looking at 'The Fossil Book'  in The Wonders of Creation series

Gateway
The topics this term are

• Geography of The British Isles and
•  The Church: Rebellion and Revival

Other
We took part in live below the line for 5 days, planning our menus on £1 each a day.
You can read about our experiences here and here.

Sports
Monday sports group
Monday evening athletics group

Social
Friday 8th May
We went to our monthly Chosen generation meet up where the theme was growing.

Ruth Ann talked about sunflowers and how we should keep our face towards
 The Son like these flowers do ;)

We played at being all kinds of beans!

Lunch in the sun

Over the wall was the place to play!

After lunch there was some lapbooking and planting

Decorating pots to plant sunflowers

We have been watching the bean grow and our cress head is growing a good head of hair

Friday 15th
Maths games at Rachels - we shared lunch and learnt a new dice game called Farkle - good fun and Ben seemed to have the lucky shake.

Fri 22nd
Boys went to Smithills Hall in Bolton to learn about the martyr George Marshall ( I had to take my dad to hospital appt)

Wed 27th
Foraging walk with Ruth Ann and Dakota in Newton Heath

Fri 5th June
Playing Farkle

Fri
Meet up at Chadderton Hall Park
Gorgeous day and lots of water play