OoOh look at us all proper home schooling-like!

It's been a really productive week for us learning-wise. We've all been learning about the Chinese new year, which I didn't really know anything about before, had no idea how long it went on for! Jamie has taken a particular interested in it. We started off making some snakes that I saw were at craft club from my friends blog, which we missed, Jamie decided she wanted to turn hers into a dragon and did a quick bit of research into what Chinese dragons look like.

Jamie researching Chinese dragons

 Amelia's snake on top, then Jamies Dragon (love the flames)

and Alex's snake

The next day, me and Jamie sat in her bedroom and found out what the Chinese traditions were for each of the 15 days of new year celebration. During this research, we discovered that on one day of the celebrations they have a birthday for all dogs and treat them kindly on that day, this made Jamie remember that she'd heard somewhere that some countries eat dogs and asked me to find out which countries eat dogs, and China was one of them, much to Jamies disapproval. She pondered sadly that they get treated nicely on one day of the year and eaten on the other days. We found out that in China, dog has been eaten for thousands of years and was said the be the tastiest meat! poor doggies :( She also found out - because one of the days is for son-in-laws to honour their father-in-laws, we got talking about the traditional role of women in China, which made Jamie a bit annoyed again!

 Jamies research about the 15 day Chinese new year celebrations.

She's going to be making a new lapbook all about it next week

Jamie decided that she'd like to do a mini version of the Chinese celebrations and asked if I could buy her, her own Chinese dress, so we looked on ebay and she chose a red one with dragons on  (they didn't have any with snakes) and we also bought some eco friendly Chinese lanterns to let off on the festival of Lanterns (but we nay do it a bit earlier than wait for 15 days!)

Today, we researched some Chinese art to do a painting of  a snake and we learnt the Chinese symbol of snake and learnt a bit about Chinese stamps and seals and made our own stamp out of a potato!

 Jamie learning how to paint Chinese style

 Amelias snake, but she loved playing with the black paint more!

 Black hands!

 Jamies beautiful blossom trees, snake and chinese symbol

and her personal stamp.

My effort (I'm chuffed with my stamp lol)

All the time Jamie, Amelia and I were painting, Alex was completely absorbed in playing his new game - MINECRAFT! he spent all morning building houses and tunnels and re-building, then when he finally turned the game off, he went upstairs and replicated the house he made on the game with his lego. We haven't even got the proper game yet so he keeps doing the demo over and over again, we'll be getting the new game in the week.

 building his house in the game...

 and with his lego.

Jamie is also working on another project at the moment, last summer, her and her friend acted out a film which I took photos of (as she directed me!) and she's now learning how to use the computer to put all the photos of the film into a book, with her writing a story to go with the photos. When it's all done I'll put it in the blog :)

Jamie making her adventure book.

It's been really good fun doing PROPER home education, and can't wait for what we'll be getting up to next!

We're making egg fried rice and stir fired vegetables with sweet and sour sauce and prawn crackers tonight......mmmm......