Precious Autumn Moments

I have been so busy with school this week I have taken practically no photos 🙁   In fact I wasn’t sure I would even be able to write the post.  On Monday I spilt a whole pint glass of water over my keyboard, after which it began behaving peculiarly and out of character (‘out of character’….geddit?!  Ha, I’m so funny!).  None of the keys typed what they said they should, so I gave up and sent off for another, which arrived today.  Just in time to write a nice long post with very few photos….

Schoolwise, it has been a fairly productive week.

Maths and English

The older children have clocked five hours worth of maths, whilst the little ones have completed one whole lesson each day.

A7 is reading Enid Blyton’s ‘Wishing Chair’ fairly easily; her writing is coming along nicely, with her completing three lessons of her Essential Writing curriculum and she and Granny are working their way through Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories.  B4 is going through the alphabet and her numbers again but this time she is really ‘getting it’ and remembering what she is taught one day to the next, so I am very happy.  I am reading Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.  It is my second time reading this out loud and I am finding it as difficult as I did the first time.  The sentences are so long in places, I forget exactly the content of what I am reading because I am so focused on just getting the words out.  It is a very comical book though, and in general is a hit with the girls.

The older ones have written some great little essays from my Unjournalling book; they have completed two lessons from Cover Story and two lessons from Essential Writing.  I had them write a quick research essay on the difference between rivers, brooks and creeks to go along with the nature study we are doing at the moment.  We also learnt a bit more about writing a formal letter.  I am pleased with the amount of writing we have got done this week.

Books Read

T13 read Book Thief by Markus Zusak

L12 is working her way through the Complete Father Brown Stories by GK Chesterton, a HUGE volume.

C12 has read Year of Impossible Goodbyes by Sook Nyul Choi and The Ghost in the Tokaido by Dorothy Hoobler.  She has also begun Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens.  Non fiction books she has read include Writing and Selling Romantic Comedies by Helen Jacey and Craig Batty and Creative Writing by Adele Ramet.  She also tried out some of Liz Pichon’s Tom Gates books on a friends recommendation, but she really wasn’t keen on these.

Morning Meeting

Morning meetings remain a popular time in the our day, as we all come together to read, listen and chat.  We have listened to twenty chapters of Samuel Pepys diary.  It is very well done, and we are really enjoying it.  We completed Chapter Seven of Who is God? and learnt about the many different ways we can worship God.  We have also completed 1.1 module of AQA’s GCSE Religious Studies.  This has been very good and we have had some great conversations.  We have also watched the Khan Academy videos about the Start of Civilization, The Indus Valley and Mesopotamia.  The children are really enjoying these videos and it is gratifying to realise how much they remember from our past studies.

Nature Walks

We have been for a nature walk three times this week, for over an hour each time.  The focus has been rivers, or brooks as we now understand the local one is called.  Many selfies have been taken, as you can see above, and it is great to see big brothers and sisters helping their younger sisters.

It is astonishing how much we all learn and this is definitely a keeper in our schedule.  Next week we will aim for five times (Gary was off this week so we didn’t go when he was at home).

Independent Studies

This has been fairly positive with T beginning his Latin and maintaining his physics.  He relaxes in between subjects by practicing his guitar.

L has probably been the most productive and has completed all three lessons of her PE/Health course, done some technical drawing which I think frustrated her greatly, and learnt much concerning the respiratory sytem (she even chose to diagram what she had learnt in her free time, following it by writing an essay on how the whole respiratory system worked – I was blown away by her enthusiasm).

We have been ironing out issues all week with C, but hopefully we now are at a place of peace and happiness.  She is loving both her Bible course and Bible journalling, and she is very enthusiastic about her English course which is focused on vocab, spelling and grammar.  She loves words so she is basking in the joy of a course all about them!  We will be adding bits and pieces next week (see yesterday’s post if interested).

A and B have worked together learning about coco beans and chocolate production in South America (post coming next week).  They are also doing extra nature study using the Flower Fairies as their starting points.  This method has worked really well, with the older girls asking to join in as well.

The above photos show T and A enjoying our bean bags which we got to use as seats for the youth group we are running this year.  The youth group is potentially 22 strong, although not all turn up each week.  We obviously didn’t have enough seats for them so we invested in bean bags which they all sit on en masse!  The twins are joking around whilst the little girls do their nature study investigating Bind weed.

L has been doing yoga this week, completing it as part of her PE course.

Gary has also been at work transforming our already expanded table to seat even more people.  Originallly, our table seated six easily, eight at a push.  As our family grew Gary fixed a larger sheet of ply atop the table to enable it to seat more: ten easily, twelve at a push.  This week he increased both the height and the surface area of our blackboard table, so that it matched the height and width or our large table.  This means when we have another large family or two around for dinner we can link the two tables and fit twelve easily, fourteen at a push.  We love having people round, so this will be so useful.  When we don’t need the additional space we will be using the table, covered as a coffee table in our living room:

Last but not least, I found a lovely picture of my little Georgie.  I miss him so very much:

I hope you all have a lovely weekend ahead of you!