SUMMER IS OVER AND THE WORK BEGINS

Hello all you gorgeous and lovely people.  I hope you have all had brilliant, albeit wet, summers...we have.  We didn't do a great deal as we tend to stay nearer to home during school holidays, but we did have a break from work (hence no blogs), but we are now back, so hello again!  We have, however, continued to go to our Faversham meets and Callum has been doing his fortnightly trampolining.  We were going to try and make the park meetings, but never managed it.  Callum spent time on the computer (surprise, surprise), caught up with his school friend Callum D and we've been out and about to some small events.

Most of the schools around us went back last week, but we decided to eek out an extra week before starting again proper today.  Last week was spent reshuffling the timetable, sorting out books and tying up loose ends before the work got too much.

So today!  What was our first day back like?  Well it was a bit chaotic and a bit mishmash, but then home ed is always like that.  Our two lessons today were Computer Studies and Science.  We didn't start until 10am as usual because we sat around and had a chat; talking about the week ahead mainly plus we are looking after my daughter's dog, Merlin, for a couple of days so a play was required.  Then off to the shower Callum went while I did a bit of clearing up and sweeping.

Breakfast of beans on toast was next with another cuppa before finally switching on the computer ready to do some work.  Computer Studies is supposed to be split into 2 sessions; one on Khan Academy and one on Code Academy.  However, Callum didn't feel up to Code Academy today, so he stuck with Khan.  I wanted him to refresh prime numbers, factors and prime factors so he did that; watching a couple of videos before doing some of the test work.

Then we moved onto science.  This month we are going to look at plants; cellular structure, photosynthesis, plants as food, growth, etc.  We had covered a bit about cells last year, so I got him to read over that plus a passage about photosynthesis.  I'd also printed off a few experiments we could do with regard to plants and he read through those too.  As it was the first day back, I wasn't expecting a great deal of written or theory work, so we had a few discussions and then went off to do some experiments.

Number 1 was called Shrivelled Potato.  It is supposed to demonstrate how certain plants need fresh water to develop and survive.  One half of a potato is placed in a saucer full of plain tap water, the other in a saucer full of salt water.  The potato in the salt water should shrivel as the salt draws the moisture from the plant, the other should remain the same as originally placed.  We are going to leave it overnight and see what happens. Will post a picture if experiment works.

The next thing we did was with regard to classification of food plants.  We had to select various fruits and vegetables that we had around the house, cut them and decide if they were truly a vegetable or a fruit (ie tomato), then we sub-classified the fruits into separate groups depending on how their seeds were produced; Berries, which have seeds all the way through (blackberries, strawberries, etc); Drupes, which have one large seed (plums, peaches, etc) and Pomes, which have seeds around a central core (apples, cucumbers, etc).  We had 10 various items and Callum produced a bar chart from our results to show what we had found.

When asked what he had learnt today, he answered that "not all vegetables are vegetables and that there were 3 different types of fruit"  plus "prime numbers are a pain in the bum as there is no pattern to work out which ones there are".   Hmmmm, at least he's honest. haha.

Anyway, we spent the rest of the day in the garden with him doing his trampoline exercises and then playing in his sandpit and me trying to clear the garden of the dead plants and some weeds.  Managed to fill up a brown wheelie bin so far.  Can't do any more until Thursday as need an empty bin and we are out and about for next few days - my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

Cya