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.

Let it snow some more.

Iona and I have been continuing our unit study on snow. I found some resources on the net yesterday, such as video of polar bears and photos of arctic animals. Some very helpful sites were: http://webtech.kennesaw.edu/jcheek3/snow.htm and http://123child.com/UBB/showthread.php?t=3092. The second of these reminded me of a technique I learned at Sunshine Club last year - mixing shaving foam and PVA glue (with paint, too, if wished) produces home-made puffy paint. I printed a photo of Daddy outside our house, then helped Iona paint on the white puffy paint to make a snowscene. To be honest, it didn't much resemble a snowscene when she'd finished with it, as she preferred rubbing the paint off the picture and around her hands, but she enjoyed it!

Next, I decided to do some combined craft and numeracy work. I gave Iona a roll of cotton wool, and put glue in 1-5 snowman shapes on 5 sheets of paper. I then encouraged her to stick bits of cotton wool on them, all the while reinforcing the words "snowman" and "1" to "5". I drew faces on all of them and labelled them, then at bedtime stuck them up on her wall. Later, this afternoon, we went to story time at the library. In the children's area the wall is painted with a mural of a snowscene with a snowman, and during the session Iona suddenly pointed at it and said "snowman"!

While Iona was asleep this afternoon I made a flip book on "Animals that live in the snow", with photos from the computer and names written by me, which I showed her when she woke up. I also gave her a printed snowflake with the words "If we say "I'm sorry" to God he will make us as clean as snow", for her to colour. Finally, I printed out a photo of a 4-inch snowflake and wrote on it "A snowflake has 6 points". I labelled the points 1-6, reading the numbers out loud as I did so. Iona stunned me by saying each number, right up to 6 before I did each time, proving that she now knows the order of numbers 1-6!

Mirror, Mirror, on the wall...

... who's the fairest one of all? Well, Iona knows it's her, and adores looking at that baby in the mirror, so when I saw that our local library was having a "Decorate a mirror" session today, I just had to take Iona along. She absolutely loved it.

The library gave out circles or squares of silver or gold card, and large card pieces to stick them on, then there were plenty of ways available to decorate them. First I put some sticky jewel stars around the edge of the mirror. Then Iona chose some pictures for Mummy to stick on (a cat, a dog, a tree frog, an elephant, and a dragon that Mummy persuaded her to use in honour of her old family name). I tried to help her to stick them on herself, but she tends to prefer to eat pictures at the moment. I also helped her stick a couple of silver hearts on, as she's been fascinated by the heart shape in a shapes book we've just returned to the library. Finally, she chose between a pink and a purple pen, and drew a few scribbles with only a little help from Mummy. To top it off, I used some glitter glue to write her name, and "pretty baby", as that's what I usually end up saying to her when she's looking in the mirror. I've left a little space to print out some pictures of Dora and Diego and stick them on when I can.

The mirror is a great success. She loves sitting with it on the floor, staring into it, and hugging and chatting to the baby she can see! It's great, as it's nice and big, and unbreakable. Best of all, it was absolutely free. Three cheers for our libraries and the activities they run!