Carsington, Halloween, maths, letters, drawing and food from other countries

Setting forth..our first day out in the nearly finished 'Camper bus' as Sam calls it.

Vibrating dog, he did decide it was a good idea eventually.

We have been highly amused by people at bus stops trying to flag us down..the boys laughed hysterically as they gesticulated at us for not stopping.

On arrival at Carsington the boys played in the park.

Then we went for a walk round the water.

Owen walking Pigsy.

Climbing up to the viewing stones.

The holes in the stone focus on different parts of the vista.

Skimming stones

Enjoying a paddle and yowling at the Malamute sled dogs as they walked past.

Is it wrong I was hoping Blokey would get pulled in?

Lovely views.

Even the old girl had a little dip.

Back home for our evening meal, a quick change and off out for Halloween fun. Owen had been trying to let me send him and Sam out on their own with a group of older children. He hadn't liked the fact that I had still insisted an adult accompany them and we had some difficult meltdowns to deal with.

However, this was all forgotten on the night and he realised everyone pretty much had parents with them. Many of our neighbours had really put on great shows and the boys decided we needed to up our decorating ideas for next year.

Owen as a scary clown.

Sam as some devil/demon thingy...

After calling on the neighbours and their friends houses. The children lay in wait with candy at our house. They had a great time scaring people and handing out sweets, things pretty much wind down here by 7:30/8pm, so we could still get the children to bed , in a giddy state, at a reasonable time.

The next morning there was a lot of resistance to their activities. We managed to watch science videos about light. The sun and Earth, how eyes respond to light and a demonstration of a water prism.

Afterwards Sam and Owen worked on maths using RM. it was really difficult to get them to do anymore and since they have ju jitsu later , I decided a better use of my time would be to plan our next lot of activities, do the shopping and catch up on chores.

Oh my gosh, I cannot tell you how hard this morning was. We had planned to visit friends in the afternoon but I had to cry off . Owen was really struggling and sabotaged quite a bit of the day's planning with his need to control everything. This upset Sam and  both of us got tired of being shouted at. After a sit down and talk with Owen I managed to get him properly started ...I really felt like walking away but despite appearances at the beginning , we ended up having a good day.

Owen has asked me to buy a sea creatures drawing journal. However, when it came he had a complete panic about starting it. Owen having a panic means him yelling and slamming doors. Eventually, I managed to persuade him to give it a try...because he did way better than he expected ( especially when he read the directions instead of assuming *long suffering sigh*) ..he started to enjoy it.

He loved smudging the softer graphite pencils and I showed him how to use an eraser as a tool.

Firstly he traced the illustrators drawing...getting a feel for the different strokes and pressures.

Then he filled in the spaces left out on the next pages.

Again he panicked initially, but I showed him how to get started and he was off.

His finished page with completed dolphin. I have explained about different pencils and what 2B etc means. He found the pencils easier to use than the graphite , so I will sort a selection of drawing pencils out for him next time. 

We also played DObble..which helps improve concentration..and is good fun.

Sam chose to do some Brain Games ..here he is making all lines add to 15. He took some time to finish it and then looked very happy to manage to complete it.

We used cards from this selection to work on.

Previously the children couldn't follow the instructions, Sam still needed a little prompting but once he knew what was expected he was off.

He is always good at the spot the difference quizzes.

Owen decided he wanted to make vegetable sushi.

So I prepped the ingredients for him and we watched a tutorial.

He laid out cucumber, avocado, red peppers and raw carrots on his Nori sheet...all things he has never eaten before.

 We didn't have sushi rice so used some leftover brown rice..this made rolling difficult as it didn't stick together as well. Our rolls weren't the neatest but we were happy as it was our first try.

He scoffed the lot and afterwards asked if we could order more supplies from the Chinese supermarket. We placed an order online for more seaweed sheets, sushi rice, pickled ginger, black sesame seeds and wasabi ( should be interesting lol).

In the evening Blokeys parents came over as we needed to go out. Whilst we were gone they played many board games, including Timeline, UNO and Dobble. They also said to the children that if they hand wrote a letter each week, they would send extra pocket money. The children seemed keen but I explained it could go either way, as both struggle to write and prefer typing...we shall see. Owen is already stressing out about it.

The next day we played Wordfued together.

Sam and I 

Owen and I.

Sam worked on his maths.

And so did Owen.

Sam and Owen wrote their first letters to their Grand parents. I did find it upsetting watching Owen struggle through it..he wants to please them so much but his dyspraxia makes writing incredibly hard.

We started looking at this book.

Owen completed some of the work laid out.

 

He wrote a list of things he wants to learn and I helped him write out a list of books to look for in the library . He found being specific about subjects hard to understand , so I explained how we could narrow things down more.

Sam did a similar exercise ( as we are planning on visiting the library tomorrow) and had similar confusion over how to phrase his requirements but we got there together .

We discussed and made note of some books to look for.

He wrote a list of his interests and chatted as he did a spot of colouring.

They worked really hard today despite some of the new things being a little challenging.

Sam started with his maths today.

Then Owen did his after his breakfast.

Owen then decided to try some more sea creature drawings, I found my artist pencils and he much preferred working with these. He has to fill more gaps in the drawings on the right hand page.

His confidence is still low but with some positive prompts he was much more relaxed about it..although he still finds praise hard to take, he felt special for having my old pencil kit and he's beginning to understand shading and how different strokes can alter how his drawing takes shape.

Owens completed dolphin.

Sam decided to choose this page from his journal and set about spelling words with 4 or more words.

He enjoyed it so much, he looked for a similar page that asked for 6 letter words.

We then played Wii brain games.

Owen is researching his Christmas list..he's checking twice...

Later on in the day we received our Royal Microscopic Society activity kit.

It's really well laid out and we can't wait to get started next week.

Owen also played online building in competitions with his friend .

The concentration!

At the weekend we went looking for parts for the camper van....when this photo was taken, we hadn't used up all the children's good will yet! As some of the parts were out of stock, or difficult to source , we ended up being out most of the day....the menfolk were NOT happy..even Blokey had a little strop in the carpark. 

Back home some moods improved greatly when a pizza making session was suggested. I made up a quick bread recipe..this one is perfect if you are pushed for time to feed the hungry hoards .

http://www.mymundaneandmiraculouslife.com/foodie-fridays-easy-peesy-french-bread/

The next day Blokey and I needed to really crack on with the work on the camper , as his holiday is rapidly approaching and we would really like to go away in it that week.

Whilst we were doing this, the boys played outside until it rained..then challenged each other and a friend to online games.