Precious Memories Week Three

Remember how we were going to do one week of schooling, followed by one week of unschooling?  This was our first week back and boy have we been busy!  My goal is to work the children really hard for one week, and then follow it by a week of pure, adult free, hands off interest led unschooling.

I have to admit, I love being in a routine again and I love the behaviour and joy I see from the children when they are in a routine.  It has been an almost blissfully busy but happy week.

Monday the children started their new devotional books to use just after getting up in the morning.  Being the incredible mother I am, I had promised them all fresh coffee in bed whilst they did their devotions.  Being the absolute failure as a getter upper in the morning I wasn’t able to keep that promise.  At least, I did make them a latte but they were definitely down stairs, fully dressed and out of bed by the time I finally got round to it.

I don’t feel too guilty though, because I am seeing an improvement as I have been up and about by 7.30 most mornings (it got harder as the week went on).  But still the earliest since the operation!  Yay me!

Another rather special addition to our day has been to go for a walk each morning.  I leave the house looking half asleep, clothes barely decent (by that I mean rumpled and pulled on hurriedly in order to make the coffees….I don’t mean with everything on show!), hair sometimes brushed but hat always worn.  Within 10 minutes I am bounding along, thoroughly enjoying the teasing I get from my older children and the wet slippery hand holding I am blessed to have from my littlest two:

We visit our old friends at the pond:

Climb trees.  I don’t climb trees you understand.  No that wouldn’t do at all.  The children have fun up them though.  By the time we return home we are a merry party of six, ready to hunker down and begin maths:

A6 has been working very hard this week, and as usual I can hardly keep up!  She has at last finished level one of All About Reading and is very excited to be beginning level two.  She has been reading at least three books with Granny each day as well as with me during her curriculum time.  We are definitely moving in the right direction.  She now has a sticker chart which she has a lot of fun choosing Frozen stickers to stick on for each book she reads.

B3 has spent a lot of the time cuddling in my arms.  She seems tired and lethargic but without any other symptoms.  Teeth maybe?  Anyway, I’m enjoying the cuddles time as much as she is.  She has joined in with any school as she has felt able and I have postponed proper 1-2-1 school for her until she is feeling more herself.

Schoolwise the older children have completed four hours of maths curriculum, three hours of writing curriculum and finished Chapter one of their bible curriculum ‘Who is God?’.  I have read five ‘Body Works’ magazines, am half way through reading about the explorers of the Antarctica and have had many chats about their unschooling week next week during our morning meeting time.

Quiet time has led to much reading by the older ones of all their Tudor reading books, as well as some wonderful (but quiet) imaginative play by the littles in their new room.  Speaking of which, one of the biggest benefits to my little ones having their new bedroom ajoining ours, apart from the warmest of snuggles from my littlest every morning and being woken up by the butterfly kisses of my six year old (honestly, I can not think of a more pleasant way to be roused from ones sleep each morning), is watching the two younger ones play together with their toys:

In general we have never had toys in bedrooms, mainly due to a lack of space, but now they have all been separated out the little ones have a small amount of room under their desk to house three plastic boxes with their big Lego, Thomas the Tank and their dollies and plastic animals.  Quiet time in their room now just consists of two little girls playing quietly together simply enjoying each other’s company.  What more could I ask for?

Afternoons have been all about fun school.  The little ones have been working their way through Owl Moon from the excellent FIAR curriculum.  They have completed an owl lap book as well as a huge variety of activities all linked to the Owl Moon book:

The older ones spent Monday learning about the renaissance and what it means and how it came about.  They also spent over an hour plotting and planning their project based work, writing an elementary curriculum and we all made an Antarctica cookie map:

On Tuesday we talked about where we would like to take our anatomy and physiology studies.  We have decided to continue with them slowly as we had last year, using project based learning and the biology IGCSE curriculum concurrently, along with the Body Works magazines.  We did a quick demonstration from the magazine that showed how strong something can be even when it is light and full of air, thus demonstrating just how light yet strong bones are:

We learnt about the different types of joints and I had the children create examples of each.  So long as they could explain their models I wasn’t too worried what they looked like.  Here they are with a saddle joint, a hinge joint and a ball and socket joint:

On Wednesday we focused on Tudor Explorers, made a huge paper mache map of the world and created our first explorer’s journal page:

C12 had her singing lesson whilst T13 fenced for a couple of hours in the evening and came home very pleased with himself for beating every opponent!  Wednesday night I spent a happy couple of hours with my older girls journalling our way through the Bible:

Thursday brought about a dentist appointment for T13 and an early day for Gary.  We had thought T would be getting his braces fitted but that wasn’t the case.  They just wanted more x-rays and a he had to bite into some disgusting green stuff.  He was disappointed because he had been a little nervous for nothing.

Friday the older ones will be spending most of the day ice skating.  I hope to get both maths, writing and Bible done before they are picked up to go.  When they return we will all be going over to Lorna’s for our weekly ‘Keepers of the Faith’ club and a bit of dolls house making from the girls and bird house making from the boys.

We have also been out in the garden this week.  Gary is slowly sawing our laurel tree down to make way for T’s greenhouse.  This week we were chipping the branches into wood chips for the hens:

Because of the orthadontist appointment and the party I feel like we haven’t got done as much as I would have liked, given that next week is their unschooling week.  Speaking of which the children have a vast number of plans which include sending off a cover song to Capital Radio, writing to the BBC about radio-active bananas, creating a video to send to my brother and starting a blog about first aid.  I shall be school planning for the following week and I am looking forward to seeing how much I am able to get done in that week.

I have also managed to give away six books this week in the great book bonanza:

Keep your eyes on my book page next week when I will be giving away another five or so books!  These are the books that will be posted to new homes tomorrow:

I hope you all have a lovely weekend filled with love and laughter.

linking up:

Weird unsocialized homeschoolers

Homegrown learners

Faith, hope and Love