Hi all,

I don’t know about you but I seem to get a lot of pesky sales calls during the day. Just because we are at home does not mean we are not busy.

I think I have found a way to stop this.

Most sales and marketing calls are generated by a computer and then, if someone answers, then it is put through to the person in the call centre.

If they think they are reaching you at home, they are not supposed to be calling businesses. So if you give a lengthy message, so you sound like a business, it will often cut off their computer and all you get is “the other person has cleared”.

We have dreamt up a couple of great ones.
My answer is: “Goldston Academy for the Insane, Mrs Goldston speaking, how can I help you?”

My friends think it is hysterically funny. Just for them I add in a bit extra “Yes, we have vacancies, would you like to come and join us in our Academy?”

You can usually tell if it is a call centre because there is a few seconds pause between you saying “Hello” and them replying.

Hope this helps.
With abundant blessings.
Amanda Goldston

Tags: children by Amanda
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Hi

Here we are, back on our favourite subject of Chocolate and what we can do with it. Didn’t really take us very long, did it?

A few weeks ago, Jacqueline was watching a children’s art programme on TV. It was the SMART programme from the BBC. They have some amazing art ideas on there.

The presenters were having a whale of a time making pictures, including a frame, out of chocolate. I could not find the instructions for that particular activity on the site at the time, but I found them on the internet.

How to make a picture out of chocolate.

We followed the instructions, which are really quite simple.

You need a picture of a face, which is in black and white and which has 3 distinct tones to it. My super photographer husband did this in photoshop in minutes for us.

You then trace over that picture, so it is on greaseproof paper. Next outline, the different shaded areas, so you have 3 distinct shades.

Next, is the real fun bit. You need white chocolate, milk chocolate and dark chocolate. Of course, we (or rather I) bought far more than we needed for the pictures. Well, some poor soul would have to eat the surplus!

I had bought some icing syringes and some piping bags with rather big nozzles. These did not work very well at all.

We discovered we needed a piping bag with the smallest possible nozzle we could find and then use a knife to spread the chocolate.

Our first attempt came out very “thick and lumpy”. However, by the time we got to the dark chocolate, we had quite got the hang of it.

Here are the finished results.

I was going to find a way to frame them, as the presenters had done on SMART, but my girls thought that would be a total waste of perfectly good chocolate. So, their masterpieces got EATEN!!

A great source of chocolate ideas is from the badge book of the Girl Guides. They also have a project called “Go For it Chocolate”, which we have been working through. It has all sorts of games and activities.

We designed a chocolate bar, wrapper and a catchy logo for it.

It was a great exercise in Marketing because we thought about who our chocolate was aimed at, what it looked like, tasted like, the texture of it and what type of chocolate it was.

We then thought about the type of packaging, whether it was card or paper or silver foil or a combination of those.

The advertising jingles were great fun and the one that definitely got the most laughs, if nothing else, was “100 years old, and still no mould!”

How much chocolate that would sell, I really don’t know!

By the way, the Guide badge book is a great source of ideas for activities. It is online and it is free.

Jacqueline is working on her Film Lover, Craft and Party Planner at the moment. when we have finished the Chocolate, we will be doing the Science badge.

The great thing with the badges is that they are practical, FUN activities that often teach a useable skill. Not quite sure what the Chocolate badge is teaching us! I’ll work on that!

Until next time.
With abundant blessings.
Amanda Goldston

Tags: children, chocolate by Amanda
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Hi all,

Yesterday was our first day “back at school” after a break of about 3 weeks. Well, we haven’t done a great deal over the last few weeks but having said that, education is an ongoing daily process and we are all learning new things every day.

I suppose it was more about getting ourselves back into some sort of routine. This was helped by Greg (my husband) getting up earlier to go back to work.

At the moment, Jacqueline is busy writing stories. she loves to write and has found a couple of competitions she can enter. Her content is great, but her punctuation is a bit haphazard. We are working on that one!

Stephanie has been busy writing and practising her speeches for her Speech and Drama exam in March.

Speech and Drama was one very good thing that came from their last school and we have continued it because it gives the girls some very useful skills in spoken English.

We spent yesterday afternoon picking out some places to go on trips in the next few weeks. Our first one is on Monday to the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester.

Stephanie is starting playing hockey at a local club next week and both girls are keen to get back into horse riding. Stephanie is also going to be starting her Duke of Edinburgh Award and wants me to find her somewhere to play Netball.

Jacqueline is back at Guides this week. Her drumming lessons started again yesterday and both are starting swimming again, now that the local pool has re-opened. Stagecoach started last week, so we are back into Mum’s taxi service!

This is probably as well that we are now focusing on getting them their own businesses up and running and profitable, so they can generate their own income!

Back soon.
With abundant blessings.
Amanda Goldston
Goldston Academy for the Insane

Tags: children by Amanda
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Hi

Just before Christmas, the Daily Mail Newspaper ran a series called the “30 second challenge”. The idea was that you had a series of sums to do which all followed on each other. The ideas was to do them in 30 seconds- mentally!

e.g 3 x 3 = x 3 = double it = + 9 = divide by 9 = + 8 = divide by 5 = x 4 = x 4 =

There is also a website where you can get some more of these. There are some free sample sheets for all levels that you can download and then there are books you can buy.

www.30secondchallenge.com

Some of the intermediate and advanced ones are quite challenging.

We use the www.bbc.co.uk especially the Bitesize section under the schools because it gives loads of resources, quizes, activities and games. It also gives you a great idea of what should have been covered in the National Curriculum for that age group.

There are resources under every subject

One of our favourites for Maths is a project which is part of Plymouth University. It has heaps of resources and activities. It also gives great explanations on all the Maths topics right up to A-level standard. It is also broken down into units for ease of working with.

If you are struggling with a Maths concept, it also gives you detailed lesson plans and interactive online games and tests.

CIMT Plymouth

Highly recommneded.

Have a great day.
With abundant blessings.
Amanda Goldston
Goldston Academy for the Insane

Tags: children by Amanda
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Hi all,

Yes, we are back with the Goldston family’s obsession with Chocolate. We have found a few more ways to bring our favourite substance into our curriculum.

I found a terrific resource for working with RATIO in MATHS. This was geared towards Year 6, but it was a terrific way to work with the numbers for all ages.

RECIPES and COOKING are a great way to work with concepts such as weight, ratio and proportion. Especially if you then get your kids to make the recipe and you, as the “responsible, supervising adult” get to have first taste!

Ratio Recipes

The recipes are for a calculator and Harriet Hedgehog. She was delicious!!

Making, Mixing and Tasting

 

Yummy, finished result!

 

A great exercise you can do with chocolate is to compare the prices per 100g of bars of chocolate. This is good because chocolate bars come in all sizes, ranging from the really tiny ones at 35g, through 100g, 200g, 250g, 400g and 1kg.

The tiniest ones are by far the MOST EXPENSIVE per gram, never mind per 100g!

Cadburys also do a good old fashioned “Yard of Chocolate” and just before Christmas, I saw a metre of Toblerone chocolate. Yum!!

As I am of the era when we we still used pounds and ounces, and my girls have been taught with grams and kilograms, this creates some very interesting comparison exercises!

My girls have become very skilled in being able to exactly divide up a bar or box (or any shape or size imaginable) of chocolate! Arguments only arise when the bar does not divide exactly between 4 or 3 (if their dad is at work) and we have to have a democratic decision as to who gets the remainder!

We have had a few other chocolate activities including chocolate portraits and designing our own chocolate bar packaging and advertising jingle.
More soon.
With abundant blessings.
Amanda Goldston

Tags: children, chocolate by Amanda
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Hi

Thanks very much to Deb, www.notsheep.net who kindly sent me a spam filter for this blog, so I have switched comments back on. So far I have have over 800!!! spam comments.

Hopefully that should now stop. I have switched  comments back on.

With abundant blessings.

Amanda

Tags: home education by Amanda
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