Much excitement it's Birthday week

Sam and  I started with our Wildcraft board game, then moved on to Speedy Match.

The boys watched wildlife programmes whilst I tidied the breakfast things away.

Owen watched a history programme about Winston Churchill and had a few games of Speedy match. Next we all did some maths using the Khan Academy app.  

We did some of the Google Camp activities and took the microscope out to see what we could discover in the garden. 

We looked at leaves, creatures, wood and stones.

Whilst Owen watched a history programme about Queen Victoria Sam and I did some maths work on Khan Academy. After that we swapped over and between us we covered multiplication , division, number lines, bar charts, fractions and data reading.

Over lunch we talked about economies. The boys have found a way to gain 'money' on the Fadecloud server. This involves buying items cheaper than they can sell them to others. They explained how it worked and I explained what 'supply and demand' was.

The enjoyed free play in the afternoon and dashed off to jujitsu after their dinner.

It's the boys birthdays tomorrow and they are VERY excited...think moondust mixed with lemonade fizzy popping.When we had finished breakfast my ears were numb from the excited chatter.

As we will be out all day tomorrow, we decided to make the party bags up in readiness for meeting our friends on Friday. We checked the list of names , wrote and filled the bag with fun things and made a few spares 'just incase'.

Then we checked again, as the boys were convinced I had missed someone...I hadn't thankfully.

I had some old documents I needed destroying. We talked about why this was necessary and decided to build a fire. The boys took turns at lighting one each using their steels and cotton wool to catch the spark. They were delighted to be totally successful but as usual weren't so keen on the smoke lol.

Owen watched Wildkratts wildlife programme whilst Sam and I worked on Khan academy. Sam has mastered and brushed up on lots of maths skills this week. When he had finished we swapped over. Sam went to watch Wildkratts whilst Owen and I worked on his maths.

Both boys have great aptitude for maths ( definitely not my genes there) but lack confidence at learning new skills. We seemed to have gone a long way to overcome their fears this week, covering fractions, multiplication, division, bar charts and data analysis. It's good to see their faces light up when they learn to grasp a new concept. It's good for me too, as I am learning along with them and can be on hand to offer help and further explanations if they get stuck.

Today is a big day..the children's birthdays. It was a VERY early start and they happily opened all their presents before we left for the seaside. We visited Southport and had a ball at Pleasureland.

They went on lots of rides...

Walked on the beach

And on the way home visited the Anthony Gormley installation at Crosby..eating chips and cake on the sand dunes.

Finding 'Brickie' and sea glass was fun..we even spied a jelly fish in a rock pool.

I truly fabulous day!

We also spent and afternoon with friends in the park and had a great time playing and celebration the children's birthdays. There was more excitement as the children had very kindly been given a present by all their friends to open.

The next day the children rode their new bikes and caught up with their online friends.

Sunday saw us baking, swimming and playing games at home in the afternoon.