We’ve just finished the third week of a ten week summer unit ‘A Summer of Little House Living’. Click on link for a peek at week one and two. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to come close to replicating the success of this summer. Everybody is enjoying it so much and we all feel like we are learning new skills. It is not only gratifying seeing the products of our hard work, it is also really exciting each week sitting down as a family discussing what our goals will be for the following week.
This week has felt a bit lazy because it has been so hot here, and with no air conditioning or means of bringing the temperature down we have flaked a little. Poor Gary has to work outside in the blazing sun all day and he has come home and just flolopped on the bed each afternoon! That said, as I look back I can see we achieved everything we set out to do, with the exception of painting the floor. No one is volunteering for that job surprisingly enough! Oh, and our yogurt didn’t take. It’s funny I can find a beaker with some milk in from the night before which has found its way under a chair and it has turned readily to yogurt, but when I leave some out on purpose to do just that, nothing happens. Isn’t that always the way?
Anyway without further ado here is our Little House week in pictures…
The house as it was in the beginning:
Here it is this week:
Here is the inside as it was in the beginning:
And here it is now, only from a different aspect:
We all got to planting the vegetable patch and everyone has been very good at watering as the weather is unbearably hot here in the uk at the moment. The beans are struggling a bit but the rest of the veg look to be growing well. The planter that Gary made looks fantastic since A4 painted it and is just the right size for a kitchen garden. We have beans, carrots, cabbage and radishes:
Our neighbours kindly gifted us with some pottery containers. Their plainness immediately led one of the twins to say how perfect they would be for the Little House. I tended to agree and whilst I don’t think they would stand up to very rough handling, they do seem fairly robust. Maybe I’ll get T11 and his Daddy to put up a shelf for us in the next couple of weeks so we have somewhere to store them:
T11 has been net making, which he has really enjoyed. He had learnt the knots needed the week before so when it came to actually making the net he found it very easy:
He turned the net into a hammock for Baby Carries rag doll and hung it in the Little House:
He also made the curtain pole for the top floor window. He did this by painting a plain pine dowel with brown wood preservative. He then screwed simple cup hooks into the area above the windows to hold the dowel:
The girls made one curtain each by hand:
Here are the curtains before being hung:
And hung up at the window. How great are they?
A4 kept herself busy making hay sticks with her Daddy, twisting raffia:
and twisting some more:
Until a hay stick was created:
And then she made even more:
We’ve not done much baking this week as it has been too hot. L10 managed some soda biscuits:
And we did attempt, but failed miserably, to make yogurt the old-fashioned way. We’ll try again though. I’m not one to give up easily!
Next week will be full of wood chopping, stacking, embroidery and basket weaving. And we can’t wait!