Bubble wands

This week, (as well as the usual puzzles, toys and games on offer) we made bubble wands.  Between us we made lots of different kinds of bubble wands.  Ones made of garden wire and beads, string and straws, wooden sticks and pipe cleaners and straws taped together!  After lunch, we took them all outside, with some bubble solution (homemade with water and washing-up liquid) and made lots of bubbles.  You can see some of them in the pictures below!  If you want to make better bubbles, add a bit of glycerin to your solution (recipes here: http://bubbleblowers.com/homemade.html).

Have a look at this wonderful giant bubbles video: http://lifehacker.com/5618447/create-enormous-bubbles-with-a-super+size-diy-bubble-wand

A couple of us went for an incredibly foggy walk at Fyne Court afterwards, it was quite spooky, as you could hardly see anything!

This week, we welcomed some more new families to our group - it's always lovely to meet other home-educating families, so please do get in touch with us if you would like any more information about our group - tauntonhomeeducation@yahoo.com

Dens, daffodils and discussing guidelines

Today was a beautiful spring day, so we spent the first part of the group in the lovely little park next door to the hall.  When we went into the hall, the children made dens using the chairs, and sheets, which they had great fun playing and hiding in.

We also spent time sitting down with the children, to get them to come up with some guidelines for our group, now that we are starting to grow a little.  The children had some good ideas about what they would like, to make the group safe and welcoming for everybody - biggest to smallest, and we will be able to publish them on our blog when they have been typed up.

It was a very busy week, as we finished off by making some lovely paper daffodils (inspired by the ones blooming all around!), using green straws, crepe paper and tissue paper.

World Book Day

This week was World Book Day, so we decided to make books.  They were very simple to make, but very effective.  You take a piece of card - whatever size you would like your book to be and fold it in half.  You then take some paper (depending on how thick you want your book to be) fold in half and put inside your card.  We then sewed the spine, using needles and a thick thread.  You could also staple the spine if you preferred.  Some of us drew pictures in our books, some of us wrote in our books, and some of us just took them home to fill in another time.

Some of us brought in our favourite books to share.  We were also able to have a World Book Day token each, to get a free £1 book from participating stores.  Happy Reading Everyone!

Pancake Day

To celebrate Pancake Day (or Shrove Tuesday) we made fabric pancakes.  You can make them out of felt or cotton (we used felt cleaning cloths & yellow dusters!)  You cut out 2 circles, and a piece of cardboard slightly smaller.  Place the cardboard in between the fabric and then either sew them, or glue them, together.  We then drew a face, or a picture on one side, so that we would know if we had been able to flip them properly.

Then, armed with frying pans and plates, we attempted to flip them.  It was great fun, and thankfully nowhere near as messy as real pancakes would have been....

Valentine's day

This week was Valentine's day, so we celebrated with heart and love-related activities.  We made cards and decorated them with tiny hearts from a heart-shaped paper cutter, we shared heart-shaped biscuits and chocolates - yum!  And one of the mum's - Louise Woodcock - very kindly shared a special Valentine's song & movement activity with us, involving lots of love related songs.  It was finished with a parachute game and lots of fabric hearts, which the children all found great fun.

Unfortunately, there are no photos from this week :( but we all had a LOVEly time!!