Monday: sick.  Fortunately there was Josh to help with maths.  Josh was making noises about wanting to do modular arithmetic.  When I passed the kids were doing basic arithmetic on the whiteboard.  Josh wasn't quite sure who was where and thought Tao knew how to carry 10s.  I said we were working on carrying 10s, he hadn't quite got it yet but could so multiple digit addition and subtraction in his head as long as the numbers were under 10.

Been a bit of a lazy week this week.

Ruan made a (very) short story book with illustrations and a shape book to help Cub learn his shapes.  Bigs did their 10-12yo maths books and were either horribly distracted, not in the mood or they are starting to find the work harder as both only managed to get through one section before the endless fidgeting and recalcitration set in.  As I watched Tao prowling up and down the house while he worked out multiplication problems in his head I thought perhaps it was a good thing that he wasn't going to school at this stage as he'd drive a teacher batty with his shark-like need to be always moving.

Now with more detail and split into National Curriculum subject areas as best I can manage (because I fail at reductionism and bureaucracy seems to fail at holism; with some luck perhaps we shall collide in a catalystic rather than confrontational manner somewhere in the middle, and bonus if this helps someone somewhere in some way).

The players are an 8 year old boy, a 6 year old girl and a 4 year old boy.  Bookwork (which includes using the computer programs) is officially done weekly and is tied to their pocket money, they can do extra for fun and profit, and they don't get paid if they don't do the work.  The 4yo doesn't get pocket money and isn't required to do the bookwork though he will usually do some if everyone else is.

English

Tao

Mostly reading, writing and spelling practice, and making sure he understands and uses grammar rules.

Last week and a bit have been slack and uncoordinated partially due to Easter and mostly due to the sleeping pattern going seriously out of whack resulting in myself and the kids going to bed way too late (me because I was staying up late to finish stuff off and also to make sure the bigs were asleep before turning out their light, and them because I have no idea).

The slogan is from an xkcd shirt.

And that was pretty much what happened today.  I managed to convince the kids to go play outside.  Even Ru who "hates going outside" (or so she claimed today) decided to go out after her little brother (who had been playing inside with her) decided he was going to go outside.  She found her "dinosaur stomach" and started making energon stew for the Autobots.  I had a flash of "why the hell not" and started bringing out stuff.

Additional usage for Minecraft: bribery.

Big kids watched several episodes of Backyard Science and consolidated some stuff from previous Scitech lessons and conversational learning.  Ru has started adding bicarb to her cordial to make it fizzy.

Week started off pretty slow, with the kids already counting down the days to the next science lesson at Scitech.  Tao drew a 9x9 chart and then added an extra row to make 90, and titled it "Christmas Island chart" as it's supposed to be to count down the days til we go to Christmas Island, or at least til Aunty Loz gets here on holiday as we're supposed to be going back with her (and I can say that now as it's no longer a surprise and the parents know we're coming).  Cub of course tore it accidentally.

Update 0000D3r: added screenies.

Yesterday, I made a rather irriated G+ post about wasting the entirety of yesterday fighting with Minecraft.  I only call it a "waste" because Minecraft is a game I enjoy with other people, or more specifically with my kids.  I have yet to play it with adults as I'm not into it enough to go finding a server.

Bit of a short week this week due to Labour Day public holiday, and also (or perhaps because of that) a little bit disorganised.  We did the zoo on the weekend, spent Monday cleaning the house which was rather festy.  We didn't get around to doing maths bookwork but did some Minecraft related spatial stuff.  Tao's writing is getting neater and he is growing in confidence writing lowercase.  We're getting less freakouts about inability to form letters and other such things.  He's been having nightmares again so I've suggested he turn them into stories.  He's not so sure about writing horror but he has started thinking about stories he might like to write, including a self-insert Pokemon fanfic.  I'm hoping to develop him out of the Mary Sue stage while he's still young, he seems to be starting to grasp the concept of balancing characters.