This week's project was all about preparing for Christmas, starting a day early with an advent wreath, some Christmas wreaths, and some salt-dough decorations for the tree:
The children made some Christmas crackers:
And made gingerbread Christmas trees and 'reindeer bark' for eating with the decorating.
Finally we watched a couple of Christmas films: It's a Wonderful Life (which they thought was a bit long), and The Star, a retelling of the Christmas story from the donkey's perspective:
We started by learning about Kandinsky and his work, looking at a PowerPoint on Twinkl, reading about him in the art books we have, and watching a YouTube video.
After Solomon rediscovered his v-tech camera at the back of the cupboard, we decided it would be a good time to do a project on photography.
The week started with a presentation and videos on photography and the history of photography.
The children then helped making their own pinhole camera, following instructions from the National Geographic's Guide to Photography.
The children were also given three photographic assignments:
Self-portraits with composition and framing (not for the blog!).
Monochrome and shades (following this week's BBC Your Photos theme)
Textures, curves and patterns.
All the children enjoyed getting out and taking photos, although special mention for Sam who won the household photography competition for his monochrome graffiti.
We don't do as much cooking with the children as we would like to, in fact the only project specifically on cooking was over a year ago (see Project 87: Cooking), so we decided to have another project on cooking.
Each of the children were expected to help with a breakfast, lunch and dinner, as well as make a dessert.
Solomon made a pizza, a golden syrup cake, added some scotch pancakes to the lunch, and pineapple with breakfast.
Monica made a korma curry, added some pancakes to the breakfast and cheese straws to the lunch, and made some homemade ice-cream.
Sam wanted to help make a lentil curry, added some melon to the breakfast and chipolata wraps to the lunch, and made some gingerbread men.
The children all enjoyed the project, and we're working on cooking becoming more a part of their regular routine.
We wanted a relaxed project for this week's project as it coincided with Solomon's birthday, so we settled on knights and fantasy, focusing primarily on the tales of King Arthur.
We made use of numerous online videos to explore what it means to be a knight, and some of their literary depictions.
We also read knightly tales in the form of Morpurgo's Arthur: High King of Britain and McCaughrean's George and the Dragon. Morpurgo just about manages to safely skirt some of the more salacious aspects of the King Arthur stories, although as a parent you do find yourself concerned throughout about what might be coming next!
There are obviously also a lot of King Arthur films and we watched two: the classic Sword in the Stone, and the modern interpretation with The Kid Who Would Be King.
Finally, as a craft activity the children designed their own heraldic shields (the elder two had previously designed shields back in Project 100: The Middle Ages).
As it was half-term this week, and the school children were expected to be filling the local parks, we decided to get some exercise a bit further afield with a mushroom hunt.
We started the week with the usual raft of videos exploring the fungi kingdom, and by the time we went on our mushroom hunt the children had a far better idea of what fungi were and the important role they have in the local ecosystem.
We spotted a wide range of fungi in the local woods, and Sam was particularly enthusiastic about the hunting process.
Once they'd seen a few of the wide varieties available, they made some Play-doh models (using pictures from a book) and drew some mushrooms.
We also did three different mushroom science experiments. Using guidance from Twinkl we collected spores from a mushroom:
After the children enjoyed Project 146: A Wrinkle in Timewe thought it would be a good idea to look at some theories about light and space a bit more closely. Although we have done projects on light (see Project 107: Light) and space (see Project 8: Space and the Planets) previously, this was a project more about our understanding of space and light, and the change brought about by Einstein's theory of relativity.
It was a project that made use of a lot of videos and a lot of books, although we did finish with a some practical gravitational experiments at the end of the week.
There were a number of different strands to the week's work.
2) We explored the theory of relativity and some of its unexpected behaviours as you near the speed of light with The Time and Space of Uncle Albert, multiple online videos, and the classic 1980s film The Flight of the Navigator.
3) We explored alternative perspectives on higher dimensions with Edwin Abbott's classic Flatlands.
In the back of The Time and Space of Uncle Albert there was a quiz on the theory of relativity, and the children's combined efforts achieved a score of 15 out of 18, so we can rest assured they picked up something over the week. Obviously with children aged 4, 6, and 7, we don't expect them to remember everything, or come up with a theory of everything, but we do like to put certain ideas and concepts on their radar for future reference.
