Gary had the day off today. I find having my gorgeous husband at home very distracting! I had to force my way out of bed this morning, and leave him be so I could start breakfast. I have been waking the girls each morning at seven as well. They are less than impressed but it has given a good structure to our day. I gave Charlotte a week or so off with lie-ins and noticed that our days were starting later and later…hmm, it is so easy to slip into bad habits!
Now we are up each day at a reasonable time we are getting so much more done. Having been behind a computer for the past four months, sat on my bottom all day long, it has been glorious to have the freedom to be up and about. I enjoy pottering around my cottage, home making a little here and a little there. Since I enlisted the help of the children, the speed with which stuff is getting done has increased exponentially.
Today, as Gary was home, we decided that this afternoon we would spend some time decluttering our shed and creating a proper den for the teens. It has been used as a hang out, but the amount of stuff (all our homeschool stuff from the earlier years which I have been saving for the littles to use) has limited the space and use of it. So this summer we are going to empty it! I homeschool the littles very differently from the older ones, so I don’t really need to keep all these books, DVDs, dress up and activities for them. With the older one, history was the spine of our homeschool; with the littles we are using science as our spine, along with ACE workbooks. Soooo, out with the old, in with the new!
This morning I focused on Botany with the littles, just to finish off what we started yesterday. They wrote some notes in their journals about flowers:
And then drew six floral specimens and coloured them in:
Lillie worked at her GCSEs subjects at her computer:
whilst Charlotte was working on the latest module in her mà ths:
Once half an hour was up, we all gathered in the kitchen to finish off some of the work we had not got to yesterday:
Poor Lillie had the worst job of cleaning under the sink, where all the dog food is kept. The sink had obviously over flowed because it was very wet under there. But Lil did a great job cleaning it out, and we have left the doors open to try to dry it out. Gary and Lillie also packed up the car with a very old recliner chair. It has springs which have sprung through the material!
I am so blessed with girls who in general (not always!) enjoy working, and work with such a happy attitude with lots of jokes and laughter…
Once the half hour was up, I did the tables flash cards and the Latin vocab flash cards. I had planned to do some Latin reading but I couldn’t find the reading book! I must have tidied it away somewhere… I swear I know more where things are when the house is messy than when it is tidy!
So we moved on to Mystery History and I read the lesson about the Phoenicians, in addition to three Life of Fred lessons and a couple of chapters out of the Secrets of Vesuvius. Then I gave Lillie a lift to work, picking up some supplies for a roast chicken tonight. Lunch was egg mayo and tomato sandwiches.
The afternoon was spent in the shed, and we cleared out about five black bags of books and DVDs to go to the charity shop. I didn’t get any photos, but we were all really happy with how much we actually got done.