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I had the boys do their spelling words with a stick in a tray of sugar, and although I had my doubts about the feasibility of this little exercise, it actually worked very well. They loved the activity and did it properly. Aaron kept leaning forward with his nose almost touching the sugar, as he wanted to smell it. I was fairly certain that his tongue was actually finding its way into the tray, which would not have been very good as I had to pour the sugar back into the canister when we were finished. Maths was good today. We’ve done our first new concept now, which is the greater than / less than symbols (<>). I thought the boys might struggle a little as I remember finding this confusing in school, but either they are very bright or I explained it very well, because they got it the first time. Aaron kept getting confused how to write it though – I could see he understood it but couldn’t work out which side to start it on to get it facing the right direction, so I worked out that if he starts writing on the greater side, then it will automatically face the right way (that’s a tip for any homeschoolers reading the blog!). The boys wanted to make a mask after school, that they had seen in the “Peoples of the World” book we are working through, so I cut out mask templates which they decorated with feathers, pompoms and bits of foam. While supervising and assisting with that, I also had to prepare for the craft class at Pillings. They’ve shuffled the time of the class so it’s 1.30 to 2.30 now instead of 2 to 3, which really suits me very well – more time between getting home and Nick leaving for bible study. Anyway, I waited until about 1.50 for my kids to arrive, as they were having some or other meeting sort of thing, but the class still only ran until 2.30. Fortunately it was an origami craft and we didn’t really need the full hour. The kids were very good and mostly got the hang of what I was showing them.