Sometimes the day starts skewered, and today was that day. I woke at the fairly respectable time of seven. Within minutes I had Lillie telling me she was leaving for work, Charlotte bathed and fully dressed with chores completed joking about with an also fully dressed Thomas asking me which weekly chores I wanted him to do as he didn’t have a driving lesson today and had some time to do them. Oh, and then Becca came into me asking me to mark her Literature and Creative writing test.
It was seven o’clock people! Seven! Thomas sensibly made me a cup of coffee to help with the whole making sense of the day, and gradually the world slipped back onto its normal axis. By the time I was dressed, the littles had all but finished their school work (Abigail just needed to finish maths):
Becca was reading a Bible:
And Charlotte and Thomas were chatting in the kitchen, whilst Thomas completed his chores for the day:
Bearing in mind it was only about 730, and I only had one coffee in me, all hell broke out as Charlotte started tickling Thomas:
And Thomas started tickling Charlotte:
As he was otherwise engaged, Becca managed to sneak Thomas’ phone away, and hid it, which meant that Thomas started tickling Becca:
And some how Becca managed to turn it around to her advantage and began to tickle Thomas:
I stood there bemused. And then went to get myself another coffee. Maybe life’s volume would decrease with another coffee inside me.
That’s better. Cuddling is much quieter!
But not for long! Abigail rushed into me in a flap saying very loudly that being a band manager is very difficult! Eh?! Apparently, she is the manager of the girls’ latest band called ‘Shooting Stars’. So, more noise then? Are you seeing a theme running through my morning?
Soon it was 930 and the littles’ quiet time. Usually Becca goes over to mum’s but she still doesn’t feel too good, so the littles had their quiet time together:
Mum being ill meant that Charlotte also worked here today. Poor thing, she does ever so well considering how noisy it is:
Once quiet (a misnomer if I ever heard one!) time was over, we finished off some art and science from earlier in the week. Yesterday, we did an artist study on Anne O Smith and her scribble drawing ‘Bird Walk’. Today, the girls finished up by pasting a print of ‘Bird Walk’ into their sketch books, and adding a signature to their own interpretation of it:
I then added it to our art gallery:
We were all very pleased with the end result.
Next, we rescued the crystals the girls had left growing in the fridge, by the radiator and at room temperature. The girls taped the lid on each petri dish, added some hanging string and labelled them:
The girls hung them up at the window and looked at each dish’s crystals with the hand lens, noting the difference between the conditions in which they were made:
and how they looked under a light:
It was fascinating to see the differences in crystal formation (post to come soon)
Meanwhile Thomas was out in the shed weight lifting, after which he came in and made himself a protein shake before heading off to college:
I then read out a maths lesson from Life of Fred: Farm, and continued with our book on the Passover. Today, we read through a play by Eric A Kimmel called ‘How Many Plagues?’ and Abigail sung the song ‘Dayenu’. Lastly I read out a fascinating story called ‘And You Shall Teach Your Children’ by Gershon Levine. This was a story about his own experience fighting for the Soviet Jews in the 1960’s. It was so rich in history and truth. The girls were fascinated!
I took a quick break to get Latin ready for the littles whilst they completed a couple of lapbooks about the Exodus:
Lastly, before lunch, I went over some times tables with the girls, revised the Latin vocab from yesterday and together we introduced ourselves to each other in Latin, and then translated some Latin phrases which I had introduced them to the day before.
Lunchtime arrived and we were all more than ready. We always relax over lunch. The girls watched a video, Charlotte caught up with friends online and I did a bit of school planning for the afternoon. Here is my youngest watching tv up side down!
Just before we started up for the afternoon, Lillie returned home from work all happy. She’d had a lovely time and had been picking flowers on the walk home:
My gorgeous girl <3
After lunch, we made a paper mache map of Italy:
We’ll leave this to dry over the weekend and paint it on Monday:
I then went through the times tables with them, used the flash cards for Latin vocab and read to almost the end of our Passover book. Tomorrow we will start planning our own Passover meal. I also read some more about Roman houses, in preparation for perhaps making a model of one next week (I haven’t quite decided yet!), and the first chapter of The Thieves of Ostia by Caroline Lawrence. We own the whole set of the Roman Mysteries as the older children really enjoyed them. I thought they would be a great go along for our Roman Unit Studies.
The last thing I wanted to do before the end of the day was to teach the girls how to make chilli con carne. We host our church’s youth group each Thursday and I always cook up a huge chilli for anyone who fancies it. I figured it would be helpful for the littles to know how to do it just in case one week I am not around to do it 😉
Well, that’s it for today. A good job all round I think.
Tomorrow I shall try to do all my school planning for next week so I can have the weekend off. The girls are singing in a Mother’s Day concert on Saturday and they will be serving us mums afternoon tea, and then on Sunday our family will be going to a garden centre after church, which is what I always choose to do on Mother’s Day. Can’t wait!
Last photo, I promise. Lil just came back from a walk with her twin and she’d made a daisy chain head dress and was exclaiming ‘I’m so happy!’ to all and sundry. Bless:
Have a great evening everyone!