New Laptop

Cameron's new laptop arrived last week and he's been having a great time exploring it. We got an ICT workbook with the curriculum box, which I thought might help him find his way around, but it's quite dull and so instead we've been working on skills that are relevant to what he wants to do with the new technology at his fingertips.



At first Cameron just wanted to search shopping sites for Ben 10 figures and tell me all about them. I set him up with Windows Live Messenger so that we could communicate online and improve his typing - we've had a lot of fun with that and Cameron has caught on really quickly to features like emoticons and winks as well as learning some netiquette. This quickly led to learning to copy and paste and me being bombarded with links to Ben 10 figures! He has plans to make an online list of things he thinks are cool, with links, for Christmas presents etc. Of course his tastes will change by then but it's all good practice at navigating his way around programmes and learning new skills.
He has found the UK and US Ben 10 websites and has been hooked by a game creator activity which he worked out himself and has made some pretty good ones. It gives you the option to send your game to Cartoon Network when you make one you're really pleased with which can be added to a gallery (I think other people can then play the game you've created), this required him to sign up as a member to the site which was a lot of fun because you have to pick yourself a silly name from a set of lists. I'd been resisting giving Cameron a lot of access to the internet and technology in general as I had thought it would stop him doing other things but actually it's been sparking his imagination and creativity. I came to realise over the last few months that technology and internet savvy-ness are pretty important skills for living in our modern world and I had to let go of some of my hang ups about it and let Cameron have a proper go. He has taken to it like a duck to water and I have no doubts that before too long he will know more than me.

Offline - Cameron has been continuing with his national curriculum work and progressing well. The weather has been extremely wet so we haven't had much chance for allotment work and when it was sunny we had some family trouble that meant we missed the opportunity to celebrate the solstice/midsummer in the way that we had wanted. We are planning to have a late celebration sometime this week and are looking forward to that.
Cameron spent his pocket money this week on some old Pokemon magazines, the first and second issues which explain the start of the whole story. He's becoming interested in manga and Pokemon seems like a good place to start. I had a flick through the magazine and it looks like something that would appeal to him, lots of numbers and categories and facts to remember.
The interest in money has continued and Cameron emptied our piggy bank to see how much we had and enjoyed counting the coins and putting them into piles etc. Inspired by the Gala we visited a few weeks ago, Cameron has been making fairground games for his own Camix theme park. Games such as knocking down a cut out of Evil Guy with tennis balls to win Camix prizes. He plans to charge people to enter the theme park (aka the living room!).



We have been to a few home ed groups recently which are still a bit hit and miss as to whether they are successful visits for Cameron. There seems to be an abundance of home educated boys around his age at the moment though which is great. Tomorrow we have another visit from his friend D and D's Mum who we meet up with regularly and Cameron does a little bit better on a one to one basis on his own turf.
Later on today we are going to make some changes to the nature table/plate/area to reflect the change of season which is always fun.