This week I'm letting my pictures do the talking..... And we also managed a bit of school work: I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend filled with love and laughter!
Month: May 2014
Van Eyck Artist Study
Van Eyck is the first artist we have studied from the renaissance period, albeit the Northern renaissance. I was looking forward to this study because he is often called the father of oil paint, being one of the first to perfect their use, and I haven't had the chance to paint with oils since I…
The Joy of Sleep……
After 40 years of crippling insomnia and averaging about 10 hours of sleep a week, a wonderful new doctor has somehow managed to figure out what was wrong and treated it. I now sleep almost the same in one night as I did in one week. Every night. I can't begin to tell you what a difference…
Looking Back on our Week
This week has been a funny ol' week in so many ways. The weekend started with us discovering bees had taken up residence in our chimney. It was the hottest day of the year and we were advised to smoke them out with a fire and that it could take up to three hours! I'm…
Be Still My Beating Heart…
Incr-Edible Science: Yeast (Micro Fungi – part 2)
After covering mold type fungi in Part 1, we moved onto the unicellular yeast: This is Leeuwenhoek, the man responsible for the discovery of micro-organisms through his very simple 'microscope' A labelled diagram of a yeast cell Yeast as we know it To find out a bit more about yeast we mainly used the same resources as before: We…
You Blutiful
My three-year old sidled up to me today, sticky fingers running through my not yet brushed hair. 'Mummy, you blutiful. So blutiful.' I smiled as I reflected on my girl's words. She looked at her mummy, probably the most precious person to her in her tiny world, and saw beauty. There I was, not yet…
Project Based Learning – Making a Bug Observatory
You remember the Bug Adventure box I made up for the little ones to help with their chosen bug project? There was a reason I put everything in a large plastic box, rather than the customary wooden box I had used for the past few years. I had plans to turn it into a bug…
Project Based Learning: Microbes – Fungus
We've just spent a couple of weeks learning about Fungi. We're not talking macro Fungi (mushrooms and the like) but Micro-fungi. Micro fungi are eukaryotic organisms which have an absence of the large fruiting body of the mushrooms and the like. Fungi such as mould, mildew, yeast and even rust. Both macro and micro fungus are vital…
Geography Nook & Simple European Countries Unit
We are still banging away at our school room, although we have given up setting ourselves 'finish by' dates because they keep coming and going with alarming regularity and yet the school room still isn't finished. The geography area is however and it is being put to great use with my easy peasy European geography…
Project Based Learning : The Black Death
Not the most inviting of titles but a subject which has gripped my children. As we near the end of the second week of a six-week term I thought I would write more specifically about the projects the children have chosen to do. I am so incredibly excited about our new 'project based' status! My school…
Project Based Learning with Young Children: Bugs
When the decision had been made to home school using primarily project based learning, Gary and I had to decide whether we wanted to include the little two. Could they join in, learning the same subject matter as the older children, or should we allow them to choose a project just for themselves? I had…
Plans for this Term
We have a short six-week term ahead of us and are planning to keep ourselves busily ensconced in project work. Our experiment last term was so successful that the children had been begging to start school again last week, with T12 getting quite antsy that he didn't have something to get his teeth into. We…