This week was all about the last few months coming to fruition as we finished up all things Edwardian (and slightly beyond). It feels so good to add ticks to my list of things needed to finish off each topic. Explorers? Tick. Titanic? Tick. Suffragettes? Tick. Ships and Boats? Tick. Presentations? Tick. Tick. Tick. Finishing something feels so good. And I love the excitement that beginning another topic creates.
First, we focused on the explorers. All I needed to finish for the explorers unit study was to get to the end of Scott’s biography. It was so sad. I mean we knew how it ended because we have read Scott’s diary that he wrote right up until his death. But hearing it all within the context of the biographical storytelling was much sadder.
Later on in the morning Abigail baked some of her lovely chocolate cup cakes:
Whilst Becca finished off copying her final Van Gogh painting. She has found this one really hard but once she finished she stood back and declared how pleased she was that she had carried on and completed it, even though she hadn’t wanted to. Yay!
I am so proud that she finished it, even though it took her twice as long as the others and she dragged her heals at every turn. But she did it, and she appreciated that she had finished.
Next, we tackled the ship and boat study. I was so chuffed with myself – I made three boats with different hulls! I made them at almost midnight over the weekend. I really need to get out more often, when making cardboard boats floats my boat (so to speak…). How cool are they?!
We finished off testing which hull shapes travel the fastest through water.
Next, was finishing off our study on women’s suffrage. This has been so interesting and we have had such fun learning about all the escapades the suffragettes found themselves. This week we did a study looking at the primary evidence to decide whether Emily Davison’s death (she threw herself under a horse during a race at Epsom Derby) was suicide or accident.
Our last topic was the sinking of the Titanic. I had been putting off our final activity because, to be honest I thought it might be beyond my skill base. I wanted the girls and I to create a stop motion movie of the Titanic sinking. Hmm. Fortunately, Gary had bought me an IPad a couple of years ago, and things are so easy and there is literally an app for everything. So I looked for one for shooting a stop motion movie, found one, read up all about it and made one! I’ll be posting all about it next week. I am ridiculously proud of myself!! AND, I then taught the girls how to do it and they spent the afternoon playing about with it and making many many stop motion movies…I may have started a craze!
Our final bit of work this week was to prepare a little for the girls presentation on all things Edwardian. Thursday we spent some fun times putting together a couple of potential ‘Suffragette’ outfits for Abigail:
The clothes need a good iron, but I think we know which one she is going with…
Charlotte hasn’t been feeling great this week, so I encouraged her to take it easy. Her twin jumped at the chance to spend some time with her. As all of Lil’s work is online at the moment, she was able to do some of her clay modelling at the same time as keeping her sister company:
Lillie has been doing a very lovely project called ‘The Untold Story’. She had to take a story that has not been told or published before (she chose my mum’s story when she was a little girl and thought she saw a fairy), and explore it in a multiple of ways and come up with a final piece. I think I might post about the project as a whole, because it was so very interesting. But for now here is a picture of the diorama she created. It is meant to represent my grand father, who after the war came home with PTSD and began drinking – he is sitting at the table with a bottle. My mum is the little girl peeking around the corner, watching her dad and the little fairies playing:
She explored the fantasy element of the story coming from a need to escape the realities of living with a war hero. Thomas is half working at home, but is needing to go to work (he works for a church) for the funerals. Ads is working looong hours for his A Levels. We are all looking forward to half term next week 🙂
Oh, and I will finish with cutie photo of Thomas and his littlest sister, my two ginger nuts. Be still my beating heart:
Have a great weekend everyone, and a wonderfully relaxing half term holiday!