We have had a very mixed up week.  The kids have been busy playing with their gran and doing lots of other fun activities so our normal homeschooling work just kinda got left behind a bit – but that is one of the great things about homeschooling you can rearrange your week to suit your family.  And even when our workbooks and paper got left behind the kids still kept on learning.

We had a lovely visit to Hampton Court Palace.  I am not sure what the kids enjoyed more – the old buildings, the garden or the coffee shop.  But they loved it and we now have an annual membership so we can go back and walk through the rooms and talk about what it must have been like living there.

Pink is intrigued by the idea that they did not have toilets like us and can not get over their “stinky toilets”.   She also loved the fact that they also ate chocolate – pink loves chocolate and enjoyed going into the chocolate kitchen in the palace. Blue loved exploring the gardens and was thrilled when he stopped some Koi fish in one of the ponds – I was a little nervous that he might try and join the fish.

We also have been enjoying the sun shine and gardening a lot and playing lots of football.

The kids are still obsessed with earthworms and keep picking them up.  Snails and lady bugs are also welcomed visitors by my kids (and yes Blue actually brought some snails into the house to show me).  They are not scared to touch any little creature in our garden and have learned to be very gentle with them.  Although Blue did learn the hard way that it is best not to try and pick up a Bee – OUCH – Do not think he will try that again!!!

We have also been painting up a storm.  Pink is still fascinated by Claude Monet and is experimenting with using her brushes to get different effects.  The result is we often end up with paintings that do not resemble much but I can see she is experimenting with colour and brush strokes and I am enjoying doing this with her.

Oh an a big bonus about having grandparents to visit is that they get to do story time.  My kids love stories, stories and more stories.  I have to admit that I have enjoyed the break from reading some of the same stories for the 100th time.

The break in our normal routine also meant that I had some extra computer time. I manged to do some more Maths worksheets and phonic pages for Pink and I finally sat down to do my own planning pages.  I like to have rough idea of what we are going to do in the year but I do not plan day by day as I like the flexibility of being able to change and go with the kids interests.  So I have made a simple annual plan by month  for “themes” – these will change as we go along (in fact I have just changed our theme for August as I heard my hubbie has to go to India for work so August is now going to be all about India). But still I find it comforting to have some ideas planned for our next “school year”.  I also like a weekly schedule. This is mainly to put down the kids activities and block off time for projects.

If anyone would like to use these pages I am attaching the document below.

planning doc