This is our (rather late!) home education diary for November 2022. We’ve done a lot this month, although I haven’t written it all down. Instead I’ve used the pictures and videos we’ve taken each day to remind me of what we’ve been doing. So there’s a good chance that I’ve missed a few things! However, we still have covered a lot of topics and subjects, as you can see below!
Table of Contents
Science
We’ve run out of new home science experiments to do, so we don’t tend to have as much hands-on science at the moment. If anyone has any ideas of good science experiments for tweens let me know! We’ve done all the kitchen science experiments many times, which are fun, but we need some new hands-on things!
Conversations
We often have discussions at the kitchen table at dinner time, which I don’t always remember to write down here. However, one I do remember from this month is discussions about tectonic plates and earthquakes away for plate edges. We ended by looking up where earthquakes were located in Scotland and why they happen when we’re not at a plate edge. This lead on to discussions about the different faults in Scotland and the earthquake magnitude here compared to other countries like Japan. Although I dislike phones at the table, they are definitely useful on occasion for googling questions like these!
Podcasts
The kids love listening to Podcasts when we are in the car. It means they don’t argue in the back and they get a lot out of the different stories. We listen to various podcasts including these science based ones: Tumble, Flip and Mozi’s Guide to the Galaxy, Mysteries of Science and Wow In the World. These have included how robots work, how robots can be programmed to laugh and understand emotions and how lactose can cause people to fart! All told in fun ways to keep kids interested.
Art and Lego
The kids have been doing an art class once a week this month. One of the art techniques was very science based. The children had to make impressions in clay and then mix up and make plaster of paris to pour on top of the impressions. It was a great experiment and the kids were particularly interested in the process of making the plaster.
The eldest has been busy building various Lego creations again. Both children have enjoyed watching the repeats of the Lego Masters series from 2017 and 2018. So the eldest has enjoyed using this as inspiration for creating some interesting designs. There’s another special Christmas Lego Masters this year, so they will definitely want to watch that!
Space Observations
The 8 year old has particularly enjoyed looking for constellations on clear nights. He also got his astronomy badge at Cubs for bringing in a poster about different space things. He chose to write about the Andromeda constellation and Curiosity rover.
His cubs also had an evening out at the local observatory. Unfortunately it was cloudy so they didn’t see anything past the Wallace Monument! They did enjoy some interesting talks with the staff at the observatory.
History – Home Education Diary
The kids most favourite topic at the moment is history. They particularly love Greek mythology and history thanks to the Greeking Out podcast. They have an amazing knowledge of Greeks because of this and the Greek history books they enjoy reading.
Other history Podcasts the kids enjoy listening to are Who, When, Wow!, Homeschool History and History Storytime. None of these podcasts have any new episodes out, but the kids like to listen again anyway.
We have lots of history books that the kids love. Including some new books about the history of death and funeral practices from ancient times and various gods and goddesses.
Of course we’ve also visited more castles this month. Both Stirling and Doune castles are regular haunts of ours, but fun to visit again and again.
Geography
We have lot of maps around the house that bring up various discussions on geography topics. From where different countries are located to where the tectonic plates move and different earthquake zones. The eldest is also fairly good at his flag knowledge from looking at different images on one of our table mats too!
We have a kids smart globe which both children have been playing with again recently. Finding different countries and testing themselves with the timed game.
The youngest also learnt about the Nations of the world song by Animaniacs from the 1990’s. This was for his panto rehearsals! The song brought up a few discussions about different countries that he knows and those that don’t exist!
Maths
The kids have both started playing Prodigy maths again. We use the free version where you simply answer maths questions to perform spells. This helps you collect animals, evolve and try to defeat the baddies. I’m not clear on the whole story, but it’s about magicians! I highly recommend trying it if you are looking for a fun way to maths with your primary aged kids.
Board games are always good for math skills. Both our children now attend a local chess club, which is great. My eldest can already play chess quite well, but this helps him get more practice against a range of abilities. The youngest knows how everything moves, but needs to practice more strategies. So this is a great way for him to learn about this. We also play chess at home too, great for kids logic part of the brain!
Other board games have include Ticket To Ride (useful for addition, logic and subtraction), Uno Flip (mostly logic) and Carcassonne (logic again).
Baking is another important life skill and way to learn maths. The eldest has baked a couple of things on his own. So that involves reading all the instructions and making the measurements, setting oven temperature and timing bakes himself. The youngest made his biggest ever bake, a Black Forest gateaux with a little help from me (mostly the whisking and reading!). He’s beginning to understand a lot more about measuring and just needs to practice reading more so he can do it himself.
Finally both kids have been building Lego this month, a great way to learn about addition, mirroring and logic.
English – Home Education Diary
The eldest is a great reader and has now finished reading the Harry Potter series and is reading other books. He also love to read books to his brother, particularly funny ones! He occasionally pronounces a word wrong as it’s something he’s seen written rather than heard. But aside that he’s surprisingly quick at reading aloud!
I also read to the kids a lot in the day and evenings, plus both kids still love getting a story in bed. Just because you can read it doesn’t mean you don’t still like others reading to you too! Littlest is definitely used to people reading to him all the time, which feels like he doesn’t bother to learn to read for this reason. But, I have noticed that he can read more words when he tries to.
We’ve also encouraged the 8 year old to continue with Reading Eggs app to learn to read. However he’s been more interested in playing Prodigy at the moment. So there hasn’t been much practice.
Art and Crafts
Both children have been taking a 4 week art class up in Perth this month. It’s been great to watch them experiment with different designs and types of art. They tried a variety of activities from lion printing, to collages and making their own mini exhibition!
We also had a lovely evening out to visit Edinburgh Castle of Light. When Edinburgh Castle is lit up with beautiful lights and different shows, including many about the castles history. It’s always fun and informative and one of my favourite light shows!
Clubs and Groups – Home Education Diary
Both children have continued with their different clubs and groups throughout the year. The 8 year old has spent a lot of time rehearsing for different shows. His local drama class put on a small end of term show called ‘Brian the Christmas Tree’. It was just a little production, but the kids all seemed to love it!
He also had rehearsals for Grease with a different drama group he’s in. His class had one scene and several songs to sing and dance to. Lucky for him he got chosen to be Danny in his scene and has quite a few lines to say.
The final drama activity has been rehearsals for the local pantomime he’s in. They are putting on Sleeping beauty and have lots of different songs and dances to learn. Littlest also has a few lines to learn as a courtier.
The kids completed their level 2 NICAS this month. Which is great, both are getting to be very good climbers and belayers. Though they still do like to mess about with their friends a little too. So they are now onto level 3, but have a lot more to practice and learn on this level.
Littlest has also been taking part in dancing classes, swimming and gymnastics. Whilst both also have dodgeball and Cubs/Scouts. So we’re kept fairly busy.
1000 Hours Outside
it doesn’t look like we’re going to finish our 1000 hours outside this year. We had a lot of October inside due to torrential rain here. So it looks like we’ll not quite make it.
However, we did spend quite a bit more time outdoors in November. Including visiting parks with friends, castles with friends, walking on the Isle of Gigha and just walking outside to shops and parks.
All Our Monthly Home Education Blog Diaries 2022
- January 2022
- February 2022
- March 2022
- April & May 2022
- June 2022
- July 2022
- August 2022
- September 2022
- October 2022
- November 2022
- December 2022
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