Autonomous education begins

We haven't really been doing any formal learning for a couple of weeks now, as Iona seemed to have tired of it and wasn't up for any of my suggestions. Every time I tried to read her a polar bear book from the library (as she had previously agreed to a unit study on them) she point blank refused to let me! However, her autonomous learning has been going quite well. She has very quickly picked up a lot of computer skills, especially after I downloaded a free children's browser for her called Zoodles. She is now quite competent with moving and left-clicking the mouse, and has some knowledge of where the "Return" key is on the keyboard. These are too of her most recent drawings with the simple art application within the browser:

Smiley face, I think

Octopus

The games section links to various children's TV websites with games, which are mostly (but not entirely) American, and Iona was thrilled to discover Dora and Diego available on it. She also very much enjoys playing Counting with Elmo, on the Sesame Street site, which has reinforced her number knowledge, and has discovered a game on the Curious George site where she has to share out bones between 2, then 3, dogs. She still struggles with the idea of the latter, but can share fairly well 4 or even 6 bones between 2. At the moment I am unable to find CBeebies through Zoodles, so I have been allowing Iona to look at that using Internet Explorer. Yesterday she was playing on it, and I agreed to print her a colouring page, explaining as I did so what I was doing. No sooner had I returned to my place on the settee than I found she had managed to call up a different colouring page and was printing that out for herself! At this rate, I think I'll have to keep an eye on my eBay account!!

Unfortunately, a week ago our car failed its MOT quite spectacularly - it would have cost £1000 for the necessary repairs (and the car cost less than that 3 years ago)! Consequently, we are now a carless family, so are having to get used to walking everywhere. Iona is taking the opportunity to fit some more learning in. On Tuesday we had a half hour walk back from the library, and she spotted some moss growing on a wall as we walked. She was fascinated by the look and feel of it, so I explained a bit about it. On the walk there, as well, she asked me what the clouds up in the sky at the time were called (I think her Daddy calls them mackerel clouds), so we looked them up when we got there (altocumulus, as it turned out). Similarly, on today's dog walk in a very nearby park I was able to show her some huge brown toadstools I'd noticed. She asked me what the stripes were, which led to a discussion about their spores.