This week has been super busy, with appointments with neurologist (which I will be writing about tomorrow) and lunches out each day with a different child/adult child (best idea ever! It is so good to spend time with each child alone, or in Charlotte’s case with Ads as well!).
Despite all this, we did get some homeschool done! The girls spent each morning doing workbooks for the first hour of the day:
We began reading ‘The Trenches’ and finishing off ‘Dear Jelly…’:
We are particularly enjoying ‘Dear Jelly…’ which is basically a compendium of letters sent by two brothers to their sisters throughout World War One.
Becs has been making progress on her ww1 soldier’s trousers, completing making a pattern…
Cutting it out and clipping the pieces together to sew:
And starting to sew them:
She is so intuitive when she is sewing. It’s very interesting to watch. Even if she makes a mistake, she self corrects and then carries on. I’m really enjoying teaching her to sew! ❤️
Meanwhile, Abigail made some trench cake (below) and a chocolate banana cake (no picture – it was eaten too quickly!):
The trench cake was surprisingly good!
On Thursday, she made a chocolate banana cake again, and iced it using the fondant left over from Ads’ birthday:
We also did some work on our map, adding the labels for each country and arrows to show who invaded whom:
And adding the Eastern and Western fronts:
I must say, this map is really helping the girls understand the whole World War One dynamics (which are surprisingly complicated). Honestly, this is a war which should never have started, and definitely should never have gone on for as long as it did.
Becca hasn’t started a new artist study yet, but has opted to go out into the glorious weather to paint some flowers:
The girls have been earning money to put towards their shed hang out. They have recently earned enough to buy a solar powered internal light (a hanging bulb attached to a small solar panel) and an antique ringing bell, pictured below:
They are currently working towards a second solar powered light but this time it will be an exterior one which will have a motion sensor.
Abigail abs been reading Private Peaceful, and was finishing up when she had a spare few minutes. The ending is very sad, and a few tears were shed for the Private who was shot down by his own country:
We have been doing some comprehensive work on the Christmas Truce, writing a letter as a soldier on the frontline to a loved one as well as loads of work on trenches in preparation for making a model of one next week. We’ve also been doing some in-depth work on Peter Pan:
Lillie has been working on the final project for her Foundation Diploma. She has chosen to explore hallucinations. Charlotte has been having occasional night time hallucinations for the past four months. Lillie is often awake during them, whilst Charlotte appears awake but doesn’t always remember them. One of the first visual hallucinations she had was of many, many eyes looking down on her from above, below and all around. This has led to some very weird art… I will have her share her whole project once she’s finished, but here is a little (slightly scary) preview of one of two 3D pieces:
Which she then took to a whole new level:
All three of the older children are pursuing new avenues which are super exciting, and which I will happily share when they give me their permission – probably when their plans are a bit more concrete.
Have a great weekend everyone!