Tuesday, 20 August 2019

History


Colonising America and India

The Lost Colony of Roanoke Island
Jamestown

Pilgrims

The East India Company

Making Money


How the British Empire was ruled





Watch Mangal Pandey

Madras famine




Imperial Durbar


The Indian Mutiny


British Colonies in Africa



Dr Livingstone - Victoria Falls


The Boer War - short clip








Art & Design



Tonal Shading Techniques









Artist Study Wassily Kandinsky

Famous Paintings Study


Botticelli - Spring
Da Vinci - Mona Lisa
Velazquez - The Maids of Honour
Vermeer - Girl with a Pearl Earring
Seurat - A Sunday on La Grande Jette
Van Gogh - Sunflowers
Da Vinci - The Last Supper
Degas - Blue Dancers
Munch - The Scream
Klimt - The Kiss


Visit to Museum Art Exhibition


Tuesday, 13 August 2019

Design and Technology



Building designs



Designing for Environments

Planning


J will be in Year 9 in school terms, and this is where we start with a bit of structure. This will of course, involve a lot of planning and organising, especially as I now work part time from home (one office morning a week) and also have other responsibilities including being a Red Box Project coordinator and a Town Councillor.

We will be including the following subjects in our termly planning:

  • English
  • maths
  • science
  • history
  • geography
  • modern foreign languages
  • design and technology
  • art and design
  • music
  • physical education
  • citizenship
  • computing

I will do a separate blog post for each subject and will follow this timetable:

Monday:
Maths
Geography
Design & Technology


Tuesday:
English
Science
Citizenship

Wednesday:
Computing
Maths
History
Languages

Thursday:
English
Art
Music

Friday:
Maths
English 
Science

Physical education will include rugby twice a week, swimming, walking and home gym.





Friday, 8 February 2019

Home Ed Kids are NOT invisible

I am to angry to type on here as it will go on and on and include many many swear words.

So I am going to copy and paste, what to me, sums this whole ridiculousness situation up!

This is from the blog Wild Oak Academy


In response to your suggestion for home educated children to be registered with the local authority and to be monitored at least termly…
If you suggest all home educated children should be monitored at least termly, I would presume that you would also be suggesting they have access to the same funding as school children? Free meals, free milk, free fruit and vegetables and free educational resources and software as well as educational funding, grants, pupil premiums? After all, this is all in the best interest of the child isn’t it? That is the only reason you want them monitored right? No other agenda. Please do be advised that thousands of home educated families have refrained from petitioning for these things for the sake of maintaining freedom of education and privacy and as they have agreed to take on the full responsibilities of educating their own children, however, should the government return this responsibility to themselves, by force through monitoring, we would have our own sets of demands to ensure we match these impositions.
Where will the funding for monitoring thousands of home ed families come from? I presume you’ll put at least an equal amount of extra funding into the school system that failed them? Fix what is broken rather than what is not. Look at correcting the cause before treating the symptoms.
I also assume you’ll want extra monitoring of the schools that failed? Checking on the thousands of children that go to school and are bullying other children to the point they can’t take being in school anymore? The teachers who can’t handle children with additional needs and off roll them?
Can you explain how you will justify breaching our basic human rights under article 3 (t the right to be free from degradation, article 6 (the right to a fair trial which includes innocent until proven guilty), article 8 (the right to enjoyment of private life and family life) article 9 (the right to freedom of religion and belief which includes philosophical beliefs) and article 14 (freedom from discrimination)
Can you explain how the police need a search warrant signed by the court if they wish to enter a known criminals home but thousands of law abiding families will be forced to comply to intrusive unwanted visits from strangers?
Your proposals which you have put forth based on false evidence and misinterpretations of the available data, could not be implemented without a massive breach of our human rights and those of our children.
Who will be monitoring and what will their qualifications be in order to know and understand each child's learning styles, needs and subjects? If my child is gifted and talented and working to a level 4 or equivalent you better make sure that your person is qualified to assess this level of work and in the subjects my child is studying. If my child has additional needs, you must ensure your person understands their specific needs and if my child has chosen to learn a trade as oppose to academic subjects, be sure your person knows all about that trade to ensure their ability to make assessments.
As for invisible children, every child that has been deregistered from school is known to their local authority and has had contact from them, every child signed up to an illegal school is known and is not under the umbrella of home education and those who are genuinely off grid, travelling or world schooling would be impossible to locate for monitoring. So in reality, who will you actually be monitoring? Those guilty of abuse or neglect would easily be able to avoid monitoring by going off grid, no fixed abode, emigrating. If they took such drastic measures as to remove their children from school to avoid notice, they won’t be adhering to your plans.

Monday, 28 January 2019

Good vibrations earthquake experiment

We did maths first this this morning and then I went off to do my volunteer work for an hour and Mike and James played War Hammer, Orcs v Dwarfs.

After lunch James and I went for our daily walk and then when we got back we started on an Earthquake experiment.

We needed a brownie, thankfully we had made some earlier





We also needed cocktail sticks and and Jelly Tots (I could NOT find a packet of jelly tots anywhere in my area, so I phoned my local sweet shop Candimama and found that she had a similar sweet to jelly tots 


Then James built this




We tested the  tower on it’s own and then in the jelly and brownie by counting the number of shakes needed to make it fall over and recorded our observations.

We finished off the afternoon by watching a documentary on earthquakes, which included information on the Mega Quake strike zone and subduction earthquakes.

Friday, 25 January 2019

Plate Choctonics

As well as the usual math, English and science workbooks and worksheets, we have been continuing with our USA unit study - going really well I have to say  (it always helps when you yourself have an interest in the subject).


American states - used this printable -



We looked at the climate in the US compared to the UK  and the various extreme weather areas of the USA, which included Earthquakes.

From this we looked at Power Points about tectonic plates and earthquakes.






Later we used a mars bar to observe converging and diverging tectonic plates (when two tectonic plates are pushed together or pulled apart).




Then we ate it of course.


Using a creme egg to show the earths structure - the crust, the mantle and the core





The egg-sternal and internal structure of the Earth 😀

We also, of course, ate this too.

(there are a few more chocolate geology examples I know of, which will follow soon)

Back to the USA


  • 1492 Christopher Columbus -  Looking at the USA timeline of when he "discovered" America  (he did not discover the Americas, there were already millions of people living there). (also found a great book about him in the charity shop for 25p with some great images).
  • 1500 Europeans bought disease to the native people and a lot of them died from yellow fever, typhoid, small pox, measles and influenza
  • 1524 the first native child was kidnapped and taken to France
  • 1540 Tiguex War
  • 1539 Napituca massacre
  • 1585 Sir Walter Raleigh establishes the Roanoke Colony


Back to Britain

We then looked at Great Britain's timeline for the same year (or thereabouts) and what was going on over here:

1485 to 1603

The Tudors - starting with King Henry VII.  He sent John Cabot, an Italian navigator, to find a route to Asia.  He set sail from Bristol in 1497 and ended up in North America.

Henry VIII follows next with all of his shenanigans and he wasn't so keen on sending men out to find new land as he did not want to upset the Spanish by interfering with their overseas exploration because his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, was a Spanish princess.

When Elizabeth I reigned, English merchants were keen to trade their goods around the world and they needed money from the Queen to fund their trips.

Sir John Hawkins,  Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh (all Devon boys) were all Elizabethan privateers (lawful pirates) around this time.

After we had looked at the timelines, James then completed a compass activity worksheet, this led on to discussing the magnetic poles.

Next we will look at the rest of the timelines, and also continue studying a bit more about earthquakes (which involves an experiment using sweets).













Monday, 14 January 2019

New Year New Term

First day back today, having had a lengthy break because of Christmas and also because of  most of our family having the flu over the holidays - and still trying to get back to normal even now! 😩

This term we are looking at USA!!!


We are starting with Native Americans and their various tribes.   


Today, we looked at Aztecs:


What they ate:


Maize -  the staple grain of the Aztec empire. Maize has been domesticated for thousands of years, and it likely first came into common use in Mexico, spreading to the rest of the world from there. Mexico is still one of the world's top maize growing countries. Corn could be ground into flour and used to make tortillas 


Maize farming -      Aztec farmer used a chinampas systems ( a type of Mesoamerican agriculture which used small, rectangular areas of fertile arable land to grow crops on the shallow lake beds) 

Aztec food also included beans and squash as well as chillies, tomatoes, limes, cashews, potatoes, sweet potatoes, peanuts, and of course chocolate.  They also domesticated bees for honey, and turkeys for meat and eggs, also dogs and duck.  They hunted and fished as well, and used animals such as deer, rabbits, iguana, fish and shrimp for food.  Even insects, such as grasshoppers and worms were harvested.  😦
We were a bit more civilized and had enchiladas for our lunch (not dog or grasshoppers).
Aztec gods - Printed out the gods to colour in and decorate using twinkl resources.
Other plans, which will also include historical events in the UK around the same time:
  • We will be studying the Maya - also in the mesoamerica region and looking at their numerical system.
  • Columbus
  • States
  • USA and UK comparison, including language and climate
  • USA time zones
  • USA extreme weather and natural disasters
  • The Tudors
  • The Plague
  • The Great Fire of London
  • Georgians
Resources















Also James wanted to include The Wild West - of course - so will include that in all of the above.  Started by watching a western movie which starred John Wayne!

History

Colonising America and India The Lost Colony of Roanoke Island Jamestown Pilgrims The East India Company Making Money ...