Making my first skirt

On Friday we got some old jeans for free and Mum had an idea of making a denim skirt from them.

I had to cut along the seams so that we had strips to use. Mum helped me design the skirt but I did the sewing myself.

There was quite a bit of fraying to do.

I was so excited to get it done so quickly.

There was enough denim for Mum to make skirts for Ruth and Hannah too. It's fun to have matching clothes. :-)

x 6

I've been learning to skip count in six and I was having a bit of trouble so I worked with the blocks and made the numbers.
I made it in a two rows so that the pattern was easy to see.
6,12,18,24,30
36,42,48,54,60
Once you get to 30 you just start over again but adding 30.
I redid the blocks so that I only used 2, 6 and 10 blocks. This helps me to see the 6+2=8 (on 6x3=18 because 6x2=12 is very easy for me). And when you look at 6x4=24, it's just double 6x2=12.

I then learnt the 6 times table. There is an easy way to times the even numbers. You half the number for the ten and then use the number for the unit. Mum wrote it on the board for me and wrote Even = Easy and it sure is. She says this has even helped her to learn her 6 times table because she never knew it.

This is also how I find the 5 times table easy for even numbers. All you do is half the number and add a zero.

5x8=40 (because 10x8=80 but 5 is half of 10 so you just half the answer).

Swiss Family Robinson

by Johann Wyss

A family gets stranded on an island. They get all the useful things off the ship and then they blow it up so that they can get all the wood. They found a big tree and make a house in its branches and a staircase going round inside the trunk (it was called Falconhurst). They also found a salt cave and made that into another house. Falconhurst was a summer home and the salt cave a winter one.

There were four boys. Fritz, Ernest, Jack and Franz. They had lots of animals, they even had an ostrich and buffalo. They even got to ride on them. Once they had a race and suddenly the mum and dad heard hooves and Franz came riding on his buffalo.

When the boys were older, Fritz went exploring on his own. When he got back he told them he wanted to show them something. So they follow him to a smaller island and he introduced them to a girl called Jenny. She stayed with them until one day a ship came. They were looking for Jenny to take her home. Fritz and Franz went with her. Fritz and Jenny got engaged. The rest of the family stayed on the island. They had named it New Switzerland.

Beta finished

Today I finished Beta. It only took me 6 weeks to do the whole year's work. I got "The Last Battle" - the last Narnia cd for finishing the work. I was so excited about being close to finished that I did 9 tests today (and two of them were really long ones).
I am excited to start on Gamma but know that it will be harder because my multiplication is not quick. Alpha helped my addition and subtraction to get really quick and so I am sure Gamma will help me a lot.