Making the TV work for us

This morning we carried on with our work on Europe, for the Spring Day Europe project. J identified and labelled the major towns and rivers on blank maps of Hungary, Germany and Great Britain. He also then had to use Gesource and the CIA World Fact Book to research 10 interesting facts about Germany, Hungary and Great Britain.

S coloured in, and answered questions on the flags of Germany, Hungary and Great Britain. I also printed out a blank map of each for W to colour in too.

Also today, J watched "Rooted" on Discovery Kids, all about a lad travelling from his home town of Leeds to Grenada to discover his rasta roots. It covered a lot about the country and the life for lads of J's age there, as well as explaining all about the coco bean and how it is harvested and ends up as chocolate.

Whilst he watched that, S and W went out into the garden again for more digging, and then set up a "club" house at the bottom of the garden.

They all then sat down after lunch and watched Science Investigations on BBC2 which link to the Science Clips from the BBC. After that, it was Trailblazers on Discovery Kids.

During the afternoon, J also watched the Tony Robinson program on the Romans being repeated on Discovery Civilisation.

It might seem like a lot of tv today - but it was all educational and they all took it in and asked quite interesting questions afterwards. I have been glad of it, as it has drive home the point that there is so much more to the tv than their cartoons. Especially for S with all his hangups and concentration issues, it is useful to take advantage of his aspie ability to be transfixed by the tv and actually use it to teach him something.

Finally, over dinner, J and S both started reading through the German books we borrowed from the library yesterday, and were quizzing me and each other across the table. All in all, a very educational day with lots of subjects covered - even now they are still watching Discovery Civilisation whilst eating their supper!

Our first organic box came today. We were very pleased with it, and would recomend them if they deliver in your area.

I'm now off to sort out my hand, as I burnt it in the steam from the vegetables earlier on :-(