What’s in a name?

This week our company (which has changed it’s name to solutions 4 U), was asked to help out a land developer in finding out about the Doomsday book, the meanings of place names and some geographical term meanings.  A tricky week in some ways as I have been in 2 days but E has done a great job of keeping them on track. 

Tig enjoyed the team meeting and really enjoyed the team meeting and really wants to chair one and by Weds. they had started to grasp the idea of meanings behind the names.  They have used Google maps, added notes using some c=good connectives about place names they found in different post code areas, created imaginary landscapes with place names based on the geographical features.  They have created a simple glossary and begun to look at some different geographical terms. 

Ot’s  imaginary landscape with labels.

We went swimming on Thursday after walking M and then did a heap of baking.  M has been great fun this week, taking him fro long walks and playing football has been good.  Tig has been feeding him every morning and Ben now likes dogs which is great as he was pretty nervous and didn’t like them before M came.  I think because M did exactly what he was told, was super gentle, didn’t jump up and generally was a lovely dog.  He went back today and it was odd not to have him following me around.

The guys were really pleased to see M and A when N came to pick up M before heading to the hospital.

My day in school was good, mantle went well-such a lot of potential but so much easier if it was happening all the time across all subjects.

Autumn Term Week 1

My cousins little girl is back in and out of hospital so we are dog sitting their dog some weeks, M, much to the excitement of the boys as I have adamantly said no to a dog for ages!

This week we continued with the idea of being a company but focused on what our offices might need.  We were contacted by an inspector offering us the chance to be inspected for an award on Wednesday and had certain things we needed.  The boys continued to develop their skills in using word, tables, altering text, borders etc. and during the week created desk labels, door labels, posters advertising the company, a company sign (using a banner program), letterheads, business cards (laminated), created imaginary certificates, a CV and a letter from a satisfied customer.  They were confident in the features of letter writing and had some great ideas for the persuasive poster too. Ot took on the role of the inspector and really enjoyed that.  Tig has learned to send emails with attachments to print his work as his computer des not like to be moved so he emails it to mine.  They both seemed to enjoy it and we managed to just about keep on top of the  morning t=jobs although this is dragging.  We went swimming on Tuesday and visited Dad briefly too.

Week 6

Safari Park in Space! 

We visited the Safari park, had fun seeing the animals and taking pictures then going on lots of rides.

During the week we revisited longitude and latitude, creating an imaginary map of a piece of land in space where Nasa wanted to open the first  Space Safari park.  We did some more work on using word to create tables, add word art and created lists of animals, animal fact cards and worked out how many ships were needed to carry animals and their food (a great little maths investigation.).  It was good fun and they seemed to enjoy the approach of a company which was good at solving problems which they called Problems R Us.

 

We also visited conkers to create a shelter building instruction video for the crew of the space ship who had forgotten their tents and worked out how to clean up some rather dirty water.

The boys enjoyed using movie maker to create the instruction videos.

Week 5

Well as I said, so far a bit of Victorians and on Thursday we’ve got a taster session for Woodcraft Folk which I am hoping goes well, after organising for them to put it on for home Eders. 

On another note Ot has been trying lots of different foods-perhaps the food week did have an impact…he has discovered he likes pasta and sauce, and bolognaise (enough to eat them), key lime pie, chicken drumsticks, paprika new potatoes.  plum crumble- Plus the plums on the tree are ripe so at long last he can have plum crumble-delish.

We’re hoping to get the caches finished, some descriptive writing about Victorians, a bit more times table and a couple of days out done before Sunday and week 6!

We has some fun making some comics using a comic book app on the iphone, using statements taken during Victorian times about life for children in coal mines and factories.  The boys worked together to create still frames, then edited the photos, added speech bubbles etc to them.

The WcF meet up seemed to go well but it raised more questions and more things to do.  Sometimes it’s hard working on things with people you don’t know well at all, or at least it is for me as I worry about offending and pleasing-if this is going to work I am going to have to overcome my natural ‘people pleaser’ personality.  On the plus side we got CRB’s, membership, group registering done.  Next is sorting out a bank account.  Got the caches finished and in place, set in to be registered but there are a couple of issues with 2 of them so we need to sort those out before they can be official.

Ot was trying really hard at the WcF meet up but gets so excited and just can’t cope with me asking him not to join in with kids when they are racing round (not playing an organised game), I know that for his this makes it so much harder to re-focus sometimes and he is so prone to crashing and not getting personal space-anyway we chatted a little about it.  For an hour after lunch Ot went with Rich to the museum and had a fab time.