Last year I had very little time to write, and as a result we have no record of all the wonderful things we did either in our homeschool or just together having fun. Sooooo, with that in mind I have decided that the easiest way for me is to blog about the day at night when Gary is asleep! So you will all see the goings on in our homeschool and the ins and outs of our days. This may or may not be very interesting, but it will at least be some sort of record, which is important to me.
So this is our first day back at school. It started well, as I, having been used to lie-ins ’til nine, slept through both my first then my second and finally my third alarm! Yes. Ahem. Nothing like starting the day as you mean to go on. At precisely 8.30 I managed to kick my very lazy ass into gear and get myself out of bed. Brrr. It was a bit nippy! So I got back in again. This happened a few more times before finally I found myself in the kitchen, dressed, and I supposed ready to do breakfast. I’m not good in the morning, so am unsure of how I got there, only that I was there and there were oats which needed to be ground. If you ever have the chance to try newly rolled oats, you must! They are delicious, nutty and worlds away from the stuff you buy in the shop. The grinder is loud, so if I happen to grind before I coffee, it is just as effective at waking me up!
Fast forward through breakfast and chores, and finally we get to actually doing some school work. Lillie is racing through her final piece for her art GCSE equivalent which needs to be completed by Friday:
She has designed her own pattern, Morris style, to create a silk scarf. Above she is batiking, and below she is hand painting some of the design:
Charlotte is in Charlotte heaven as she received her book box today which contain a stack of ancient history books. She will be taking her classical civilisation GCSE in the summer:
Coincidently, I am teaching the younger ones about the Greeks and the Romans and so spent some of the morning sourcing all our books on the subject. We seem to have quite a few:
There I was chucking them from the book case onto the floor when suddenly there was a child in the middle of them. Not content with her own stack, Charlotte had decided to peruse the Littles hoard as well! Some things never change:
The littles were quietly getting on with there own work. Poor Becca had been up three times in the night (I like to think that was the reason I found it so hard to get out of bed this morning. It wasn’t but y’know, it sounds more motherly than laziness). She was really tired, and was not terribly enthused at the idea of work. That said, she completed everything to a high standard. You go Becs!
Abigail finished off her reading of Charlotte’s Web and completed the corresponding work on it, and sloooowly got on with the job of concentrating long enough to finish her workbooks:
Morning meeting snuck up on me this morning (are you seeing a pattern?), so I quickly boiled the kettle, rueing the day I ever bought a boil on the stove kettle which takes f-o-r-e-v-e-r! Meanwhile Charlotte caught up on her angelicscalliwags reading, exclaiming in surprise about how well I wrote (LOL!!):
She is learning Latin via the Latin lessons I am posting on my blog. Good ya? There were exclaims of ‘Ahhhh, I get it now!’ Yay me!
With the long awaited tea came our first morning meeting of the year. We are going to attempt to read through the New Testament as a family and discuss at dinner time. Given how much hilarity usually accompanies our dinner, I’m not sure if any of it will be sensible. We can but try 🙂
The older girls went upstairs to have their own personal Bible time whilst I read about Mars planet and the Minoans, with promises for some hands on activities this afternoon.
I spent my quiet time writing this and supping on a lovely hot cup of tea, after which I organised all the bits I needed for an afternoon of crafts. We are finishing off our study of Stonehenge. This afternoon’s tasks included creating some stone-age Beaker pottery:
And setting the stage for a mini Stonehenge:
We are also finishing off our learning about planet Mars. I want the girls to create a model for a possible martian environment. Abigail is busy here (in the above photo) creating some rocks from some red clay which will make up some of the surface of our model of Mars.
The last thing we did before calling it a day was eating some fruit and nuts that the Stone Age people would have eaten back in the day:
We did some experimentation as to the best way to crack a nut, and that was it. School was over for the day. As Lillie exclaimed – it’s good to be back working with some structure to our days 🙂