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I am wondering how my 7 year old twins will actually manage to learn anything at all whilst their two year old sisters (also twins) are behaving impossibly at the moment.  It doesn’t seem to matter whether they are being entertained with full attention or left to play freely they are arguing and fighting with one another.  The competitiveness seems to be very strong between them and I am constantly dealing with crying and screaming.  It wasn’t like this with our fraternal twins so do wonder if it’s an identical twin trait.  Perhaps the natural competition is very strong and is part of the problem.  I hope this is just a very short lived phase and maybe its part of adjusting to our new lifestyle.

Despite the nonsense, both L & S have been using the BBC Bitesize website to learn Maths and English.  They have both worked a little more on their projects with L using a web quest programme to study the Tudors and S colouring some pictures of Siberian Tigers and writing some facts about them.

The weather has stayed dry so the children have enjoyed plenty of outside play in our large garden and we have completed our large Autumn Tree (the size of one of the children) using paints, leaves from the garden and plenty of glue and glitter.  All four children participated in this so it was a good team building exercise.

Horrible Histories has proved a firm favourite over the past few days with all age groups. I can thoroughly recommend it.  It’s factual yet amusing too and really engages the children probably because of its comedy element and disgusting and gruesome facts.

We have tackled some literacy, spelling, phonic and maths worksheets more for my benefit rather than anything else.  Even my son who is studious by nature makes it obvious that workbooks are not a particularly exciting route to learning.  Although I am keen not to make our home into anything resembling school life I still feel the need for the children to do something that we associate with school.  Maybe once I have relaxed in the knowledge that they will learn just as easily and if not more purely from discussion and hands on education we can dispose of the workbooks.

They are certainly getting plenty of IT practice at home with the use of our computers.  Another favourite website is starfall.com which helps my daughter with her phonics and reading skills.

The past two days have been spent socialising with friends.  We have been to an indoor activity centre full of climbing apparatus and slides.  The kids have been trampolining with friends on our own trampoline and our friends’ trampoline.  We have taken some of our “town” friends for walks in the countryside.  We even managed a game of Monopoly.

The greatest part of all was whilst our friends were becoming anxious to call time on a fun Sunday because of getting prepared for Monday morning at school we didn’t have to worry.  We stayed up late and enjoyed the X Factor Results show and when we slept in until 8am this morning and had breakfast at 10am it didn’t matter.  Even though I felt it was a non productive day today they still managed some worksheets, a go on BBC Bitesize, a discussion about King Henry VIII, found out what Tuberculosis is, created a painting on the Tate Modern website and managed a fun Tudor Spelling Test.  They are now in bed reading whilst I write this blog which is not only for sharing with anyone who is interested but just in case the LEA decides to ask for a visit.