Project 111: Geometry

Both Solomon and Monica have been speeding ahead with their maths work, but as there isn't a lot of geometry included in the workbooks we use (Schofield and Sims), we decided to make geometry this week's project.

In addition to the daily ration of maths, we've done one previous maths project: Project 86: What is Maths? And we revisited some of those general maths videos - rewatching Donald Duck in Mathmagic Land and finishing the mathXplosion series. We also watched a range of geometry videos from an Introduction to Geometry, through Pythagorean theorem, to  Euclid's postulates:

One of the biggest challenges with geometry as a topic is the disparity in maths ability caused by the 18 month age difference between the two children. So we bought a geometry build kit and some activity books they could both make use of.

Some 3D Geometry Shapes

"Dive into Shapes" was £30 on Amazon, and although it says 6+, it's definitely more suited for Monica (5) than Solomon (7). Nonetheless they both enjoyed building the models.

Geometry activity

The geometry activity books, however, were great. They included a wide range of activities, from drawing golden spirals through to parabola with straight lines.

Freehand & Compass Circles

While we only managed to cover half-a-dozen of the activities, we will definitely return to the books again. Surprisingly, geometry turned out to be one of the projects the children have found most interesting!

Next project: Refugees.

Project 110: Christmas Crafts

Christmas crafts was chosen as this week's project as we had a busy week of groups and meetups, so we didn't want a huge project, and one of the home ed groups had suggested giving the children an opportunity to sell some Christmas crafts at one of the meetups.

We got ourselves in the Christmas spirit with some Christmas films, and then focused on making some Christmas tree decorations. We took inspiration from itallstartedwithpaint.com for our 3D Christmas trees, and did some laced-trees following some examples on Pinterest.

Christmas tree decorations

Next week's project: Geometry.

Project 109: World War 1

World War 1 was chosen to coincide with Remembrance Sunday. We last touched on World War 1 in Project 52: Battles, unsurprisingly this project was a bit less Fortnite centred!

World War 1 is one of the few subjects that the local library actually has books on, so there was plenty of reading material for this week's project.

Reading material from the library

We watched Sgt Stubby (the most decorated dog of WW1), which the whole family enjoyed, and the Horrible Histories Frightful First World War Special.

We visited the Imperial War Museum, which had an extensive WW1 exhibition,
including a tank and a bi-plane. The children particularly liked the computer game where you had to protect the cargo ships, and the trench with the periscopes.

First World War at the Imperial War Museum

We looked more closely at some WW1 war poetry, with particular attention to In Flanders Field using a Twinkl worksheet, and the children created their own poppy pictures with pastels and their own poppies with another Twinkl worksheet. 

Poppy Crafts

Next week's project: Christmas Crafts.

Project 108: Great Fire of London

This project was chosen because we had both a children's book on the Great Fire of London and an opportunity to visit The Monument.

As well as reading non-fiction books on the Great Fire we also read Fire! Fire! by Stuart Hill, a short historical fiction story about Samuel Pepys servant boy during the fire.

This Week's Reading

We also watched a classic time-travelling episode of Magic Grandad where they travel back to 1666.

Of course the advantage of home education is that you are not restricted to books and videos, but can go out and about. We climbed to the top of the Monument (all 311 steps), built to both commemorate the event and act as a science lab, and were pleased that even the 3 year old managed the climb without making a fuss (which is more than can be said for some of the other puffing and wheezing tourists!).

The Monument

We also visited the Museum of London which has an exhibition on the Great Fire (although the diorama accompanying the video didn't seem to be working properly on this visit).

Museum of London

Finally we got them to create their great fire pictures with black paper and coloured tissue paper.

Solomon (top) and Monica's Great Fire scenes

Next week's project: World War 1.