writing

Days 5 – 11 of Project 365

January 11, 2014 by TheBoyAndMe 61 Comments

5-11 of 365

5. Flutter (Of all the toys that The Boy received at Christmas, the £1.99 plastic men with a plastic parachute attached to their back are his favourite by far. He will happily spend an hour floating them down and then going and fetching them to start all over again. And those aren't Christmas lights still up as I took all my decorations down; those are fairy lights that I put back up to brighten the hallway.)

6. Happiness Is… (… was the topic for his Christmas homework and so in true last minute style we sat down to do it on Monday afternoon. The Boy decided that happiness is Christmas because he likes having people over. He wrote all of that independently.)

7. The Weekly Stock Shot #1 (First day back at work and I didn't have time to take a photo other than once The Boy was in bed asleep; my fall back photograph! I was also demonstrating to someone on twitter how to use a torch light angled and no flash on the camera as it creates a softer photograph than with flash light, and doesn't wake your sleeping child!)

8. Concentration (A little sand art was the perfect after school activity, and I love this photograph because of the concentration throughout his body.)

9. Reflecting (I took delivery of the reflector pack that I'd ordered from ebay today (having read A Party Of Seven's post about bouncing light around). It's a cheap pack but I didn't want to spend much when I'm getting used to the technique of using reflectors. The light in our house is so dim and there are so many shadows that I decided we'd try to bounce some light around. In this photograph I've used the black as a backdrop and he's sat on the gold reflector which adds warmth to his face.)

10. The Weekly Stock Shot #2 (Feeding the swans on a Friday after school has become a habit of ours, they were certainly very hungry tonight.)

11. Oh Mummy! (Again another tip from A Party Of Seven is to have something silly on your head or around the camera lens to obtain a natural shot of your child's reaction. The Boy was clambering all over the old dock machinery in Cardiff Bay today and was pulling some ridiculous faces as I tried to get a decent photo of him. I bunged his dinosaur hat on my head and called him; this is what he thought of my new headwear.)

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Gardening Play Table

February 25, 2013 by TheBoyAndMe 27 Comments

Before The Boy was born, I was a keen gardener (albeit slightly lazy on the maintenance side) and I'd achieve good results. Unfortunately I haven't grown any vegetables in three years now, but this is the year to change this as The Boy is so interested in where fruit and vegetables come from and how they grow. Understanding 'the world around us' is a part of the Early Years Foundation Stage framework and I'm keen to give him activities for contextual and experiential learning as much as possible.

With this in mind, and because it was freezing and I didn't want to stand in the garden in 1°C, I set up a gardening play table for him in his seconded water table.

We used:

seeds (carrot and peas)
soil
plastic pots (I've used the degradable compost pots before but they never seem to work very well and these are reusable)
a range of tools (I always provide a range of equipment whatever activity so that he learns which are the best tools for the job)
paper markers and a pencil (writing opportunities)

children's gardening

He was so keen to get to work and plant the seeds; we had a huge discussion about the differences between a carrot and a pea seed, why the carrot seeds didn't look like a carrot when the pea seed looked like a pea, how the plant would grown, where the vegetable would grow and how big they would be. I can't wait to see his face when the pods start to grow on the pea plants. I've always found pea plants quite high maintainence for very little result, but the look on a child's face when they pop open a pod and see the peas nestled inside is worth it.

One of the things that I was very pleased with was seeing him write the labels for the seeds. I wrote one out so he could see how to shape the letters, but as he hasn't practised many letters outside of his name before I wasn't sure he'd manage it. He studied how I wrote the letters, followed my instructions and wrote them really well. This is a great excuse to get some pre-literacy mark-making practise in without him even realising!

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