Out of Africa, via Leonardo (with some home ed resources on the way)

 I'd been trying to think of something to do with dd, who, for a while hadn't really been engaging with the home ed I'd been doing with the boys. I had a vague idea of doing something about continents or countries, Montessori-style, but not (IYKWIM). We started with a giant map of Africa, which I printed out from Owl and Mouse Megamaps here

The flags came from an Discovering the Continents: Animals of Africa lapbook thingimajig that somehow I'd already downloaded from currclick here (my guess is that it was freebie). The landmarks cards were from Montessori Print Shop here . The flags and landmark cards were probably a bit unnecessary as I can't imagine my bunch will get joy out of memorising this sort of stuff and unless you have a montessori classroom I can't see how they'd get a lot of use. But the kids had fun laminating all the little things and then sellotaping them onto long embroidery/patchwork pins (from Ebay).

I remember doing Jigmaps when I was a child and loving them. I'd ordered one from Ebay and coincidentally as it arrived I was imobilised for a week with an excrutiatingly bad back for a week, so it was an ideal opportunity to put the jigsaw together with dd. I thought it might be too difficult for her, or that she would get bored, or find it rather old fashioned, but she thoroughly enjoyed it. (We now have another one of India on order :) )

The project that must not be named (think Leonardo) is still trickling along. Ds2 had a go at a perspectograph from the Amazing Leonardo Inventions book which wasn't terribly successful, but I think was due to poor choice of materials and impatience rather than lousy instructions.

I'm continuing to read Leonardo's Shadow out loud to dd and ds2. It's pitched a little bit older than they are, but the story is fast paced enough and thankfully references to anything 'unsavoury' have gone over their head. After all, Leonardo was no saint. My only complaint would be that in some chapters there is a rather a lot of internal thought of the main character that is interspersed with dialogue and when you read this aloud it's difficult for the listener to discern what is being said and what is being thought. But, hark at me, I'm starting to sound like a literature student...