Educating Kings: Summary of last two weeks and lots of photos

I seem to have been out of the habit of keeping my phone charged so sadly we have lost quite a bit of the things we have been doing to memory and experience without record. Safe to say we have been keeping ourselves busy though.

Here the boys were playing sleeping logs on the front lawn.

Great photo of them both! Might have to get this framed.

Or this one haha....

Caden has really got into his mini beasts lately. Here he is with a beetle he found. He suddenly has no fear at all in picking them up yet just weeks ago he would run out of the room if there was a spider in it. I have tried to not show any fear around them with spiders, though I don't like them, I don't know if that has had any effect but he will pick up any bug right now....

They have been to the woods a few times with their other home educating friends now the weather is improving...

One of our field trips to Stockgrove woods.

Fishing with the reed stalks...

Role play, pretending to be tigers and lions in the grass, crawling and roaring.

Climbing on the railings.

These are Caden 's tadpoles. We 'rescued' three from the pond (there were literally thousands of them) and brought them back for our little pond to look after.

Beetroot cakes being decorated.

We took a trip to the Oxfam bookshop in Aylesbury as we were passing through from a trip to Wendover woods. We spent £30 on second hand books which was quite a lot of our 'resource money' but we got such amazing books for it. A book about Bugs which went down a treat of course. Lots of natural history books about animals and prehistoric life. Miles got a book about robots and we found an interesting gadgets book. We also got a book about wild edible food and mushrooms which is something I want to help them learn about more over time.

A friend gave us a huge bag of beetroot from his allotment which gave us almost a whole day of projects. What to make with all that beetroot. We made Beetroot, Apple and Carrot juice. Beetroot cakes (as decorated in the earlier photo) and beetroot and potato mash, which Miles adores! Recipe is chopped and boiled beetroot and potato, boil together with salt and then drain, add butter and mash. It makes what Miles called Purple mash (and makes your wee pink).

Completed masterpieces after the kids decorated them.

We took a cycle out to the peace pagoda at Willen lake. We met some of their other friends here and they ran around the pagoda and had a play at the park together.

Miles and Caden jumping on my bed when they ran in to wake me up one morning. They love running in noisily and diving about everywhere. Who needs an alarm clock!

We did plenty of different arts and crafts. Here we did colouring and sticking. Caden has a moshi monsters activity book. It's pretty educational with maths and puzzles and he is always reading constantly these days anyway. They sometimes like to choose a workbook to do and we work on their different books at the same time.

Here is Caden's completed Map after we did this activity together.

This was a 'sword' that miles had cut out using his own safety scissors.

Caden decided to use the moshi monsters stickers to make a poster for both his cousin Joshua and his friend Betsy, both of whom love Moshi Monsters.

Miles wanted balloons so I blew up endless balloons while he tested how much pressure it takes before they pop, over and over again ;)

Another field trip to Stockgrove. It was cooler so the boys wore their new all in one suits that I was very happy to get from Blacks before it closed down! They are brilliant! I dont know how I managed without all in one suits at the woods now! Miles is holding his interesting things tub. Caden brought one too. The intention was to collect anything interesting and observe it at home through the magnifying glass.

Looking for interesting things. We thought it was nice that the rain had made a pattern of circles in the dirt when it fell on the dry soil.

We were with other home educated children and we let them navigate. They seemed to know where they wanted to go so we followed.

Miles found a mouse hole....

and some wood sorrell.... yummm! (you can see it in the left of the photo, bright green, like clover - totally edible)

We found some interesting fungus.

Then the kids wanted to go in different direction so we had a vote through a show of hands and decided which way to go. This went very well with all kids accepting the final choice well.

Arthur and Caden negotiating their way through a tricky climbing obstacle.

Miles running through the mud.

Caden's new found confidence and knowledge of mini beasts really came into its own on this trip. He looked under logs and found creatures to show the other kids and talk about with them.

We took them across a small stream, lots of climbing involved.

Caden and Miles found a large muddy puddle and since they were totally kitted out for it, they had a splashing mud few minutes. They were covered in mud by the end but they had a brilliant time!