Sticky Garden Wall

Raahub Yasar!!!

Today, the plan was to make tricky word dominos (Found here http://www.notimeforflashcards.com/2013/01/sight-word-dominoes-speed-racer-game.html) , which we did, but I the wrong number of dominos and it's kept blocking the game, so we abandoned it and moved onto plan b which was much more fun. 

I got the idea from another page on the No Time For Flashcards Site (find the original post here http://www.notimeforflashcards.com/2013/04/alphabet-flower-garden.html) . It's a great site with lots of simple learning activities, normally based around art and crafts. 

I call is a sticky garden, but you can create any wall mural using the same idea and I'll probably do other variations of this soon as it went down well. But you basically get sticky back plastic (also called contact paper or cover film), stick it to a plain wall with the sticky side facing outwards then let your child stick things to it. 

I cut out flower heads, stems, butterflies and circles, squares and triangles in different colours of paper, but you could let your children cut their own shapes. 

I added the grass at the bottom of the plastic to give it a garden feel :-) 

If you use a good quality paper, they can stick them, then pull them off and stick them somewhere else, just like reusable stickers. I've only just put mine up so I don't know how long it lasts, but I'll probably take it down in a few days or let them create another type of scene on it like an ocean, space or jungle. 

Here are some pictures of them sticking the pieces on then the end of the first stage. They went onto use felt tip pens to draw faces on the people and butterflies they made.

The whole activity, including getting muldud involved in helping me put the plastic up, took about an hour, 20 mins set up and 40 mins of them playing with it before they drifted off to other things, which is pretty good. 

If you do one, let me know how it goes

Hatap yasar

Mut / Leah

A Day In Our Life

Raahub Yasar!!!

A sister asked to see what my scheduled looked like since I homeschool and run a business, so I thought I'd share what my day looks like now. This can and does change depending on what's going on in life, but this is what it looks like now.

8-9am - I wake up to the sound of kharadu asking for mayay, fruit or telling me someone's nappy's been whipped off. I'll get up and go downstairs to get the kharadu a drink

9:15am - By now we're all up, I've dressed and changed the younger ones and we're having a fruit or nut snack or a fruit or nut or seed smoothie before our first class

9:30am - Stretching, breathing, exercising and dance either in our main room or the garden

10am - We normally do 30mins Nuwaupuyee  and 30min Maths now or just Nuwaupuyee then get the room ready to eat

11am - Breakfast is about now which is normally a full meal then we'll tidy the room and prepare for work

11:30 - If we haven't already done Maths, well spend an hour on it now, if we've already done it we move onto language - spelling, reading, reasoning, writing, grammar, phonics etc

12:30 - by now I need a break, so the children go off and play upstair while I regain order of the front room, change nappies, read to my son, feed baby girl and put her to sleep, do some house work, check email, work online or start preparing the next meal

1;30 - Back to work - If we didn't do language before the break we'll do it now, if we have done it, we move on to our projects, usually in a lapbook for the older 2 girls, while younger one play, do an online learning site like Time 4 Learning or do some learning activity or reading with me

2:30 - 3pm - by now we all need a small meal or snack, so I'll whip something up while the kharadu tidy up and play then we eat, we used to do the prayer now but I think we're still in the winter solstice so we only do it at 9am and 9pm

3:30 - if we haven't already done the project work, they work on that for an hour, if we've already finished their projects, Mir is finished for the day, so I'll prepare dinner, tidy the front room, get the children to do their chores with me, I'll clean and tidy around the house, fold laundry, hang it out to dry, load the machine, hoover the house, do dishes, clean the bathroom etc, then check emails, do stuff online, pay bills, make calls, attend to baby girl, squeeze in some work etc

There are about 2- 3 days a week when the children's work takes much longer and we only finish their studies at about 4 - 4:30pm as they are really engrossed in it and I don't want to stop them, or they don't want to play and are asking for activities. If  the weather's good, they go in the garden, we may go for a walk or I'll do another activity with them

5pm - this is normally TV time where they'll go on BBC iPlayer or Netflix for their beloved Octonauts or Avatar Last Air Bender, Horseland, Max & Ruby, Bernstein Bears, Barnyard etc or they'll find a movie. Sometimes they are having so much fun playing they don't come down til later or instead of watching something they'll go on Time 4 Learning in turns

By now i'm getting dinner ready and sorting their night clothers etc

6 - 6:30pm - dinner time

7 - 9pm - this is bath and bed time for all 5 kharadu, if Mr Salmon is back from work, he'll handle this so I can get some alone time to work, but if he works late etc, I'l do this bit

9pm - Now's prayer, story and bed time, where the older 4 will go to bed, leaving us with the baby girl, who'll stay up until about 11pm - 12am.

This is my main work time in the day (The Naturally You Coach, Mir preparation and planning for the next day, other duties etc) unless there's a lot of house work to do. I must admit that it's not easier starting work now as I often want to just chill out after a long day, but with many goals to achieve, I keep going

I'll normally go to bed between 2 - 4am most nights, or if I accidently fall asleep while putting the baby to sleep at 10 - 11pm and wake up at 2  3am, I'll stay up to work until 5 - 6am then sleep until 8-9am


There are many things that change the plan like illness, changing nappies, attending to the occasional tantrum, calming baby girl from crying, appointments outside, receiving grocery deliveries etc and some days very little Mir work gets done and other days loads gets done. It really just depends

So there you have it, a quick glimpse into our life

I hope you found it useful

Hatap Yasar

Mut