Precious Moments

This has been a furiously busy week with much work and not a lot of photo opportunities.  We are off next week and I had lots of work I wanted to finish before then.

Over the weekend B4 wrote a letter to A7 and drew a beautiful picture at the bottom.  It was so sweet:

And A7 was over the moon as B told her who was who in the picture, and which one was her:

These two are best buds who so enjoy each other every day:

On Monday the weather was horrible with winds up to 60 mph.  We had fence panels blown down and lots of other damage going on in the garden.  Needless to say we did not have our weekly chore time outside this week 🙂

We did however have a very productive day schooling, finishing 9 maths lessons between us.  During our morning meeting we continued with chapter one of Who am I?; we learnt about John Bunyan and the Pilgrims Progress, and John Newton and Paradise Lost.  C13 found out he had written another book called Paradise Regained and asked for me to get it for her.  They all expressed an interest in reading Pilgrim’s Progress; we also read about physical development in males and females and read the chapter on paper folding in our Japan book.

After morning meeting, T did another maths lesson, L did some work on the circulatory system and then researched mixed media art whilst C began lesson two of Helptolearn’s write a six chapter book and get it published curriculum.  This is an excellent curriculum we are reviewing, so be sure to look out for it in March!

I did some dinosaur work with A and read about Stegasaurus, Triceratops and Compsognathus.  She did some copy work from Dinosaurumpus and drew some dinosaurs dancing.  I am realising that I have done her no favours by holding off her formal education until she is reading and writing fluently.  She has amazing retention and is just soaking up everything I am doing with her.  And she is sleeping much better because she is so tired.

I also worked on some Astronomy with the little two, finishing Chapter 1 of Apologia’s Astronomy.  They both did some copy work and listened to me read from the Magic School Bus Gets Lost in Space.  Afterwards we made some spaceships from bottles and loo rolls which they loved.

Tuesday was a tricky day because everything we touched seemed not to work!  It was most frustrating.  So after lunch we went for a nice long walk to blow away the cobwebs, firmly drawing a line under the irritations of the day.  Long chats ensued between us all which revealed a couple of issues which needed sorting.

The littles watched the dvd of the Magic School Bus Lost in Space.  They then wrote out a narration of the Stegasaurus, which they had learnt about the day before.

That evening after trampolining the children went to the pancake evening at the church, helping to serve and eating their little hearts out afterwards!

On Wednesday we continued storming through our maths with the little ones completing two lessons each.  T was desperate to finish surds as he has not enjoyed learning about them and in fact has found them quite difficult to grasp.  It was not to be, however, as both he and I struggled with remembering and applying all the various rules.

During morning meeting we learnt about William Penn and the founding of Pennsylvania in America, as well as going over the entire chapter on Reproduction in readiness for taking a test, which they did a bit later.  We all tried our hand at origami and soon realised it wasn’t as easy as we had first thought:

The little ones did their first and separate lessons on the rain forest (forest floor), which they loved, after which they did the review questions as well as narrating to me what they had learnt.  I popped that in to Startwrite and they wrote out their narrations.  This is another review product from EdTechLens which we are very excited about reviewing!

A watched lesson four of the Dinosaurs and the Bible course from School house teachers and learnt about classifying the dinosaurs ‘according to their kind’.  She thoroughly enjoyed this.  After she drew a Stegasaurus to go with her writing of the day before.  She and I played some dinosaur naughts and crosses using pictures of Stegosaurus and Triceratops.

Thursday was another very productive day with the older ones learning about the slavery triangle during the 17-1800s.  It was so interesting that we decided to do slavery as our project based learning next term.  We also learned about Japanese Haiku poetry and the well known Basho (who we knew about from our FIAR studies).  In the afternoon the older ones finished off their project based learning with two out of three finishing successfully.

Whilst they were finishing up, the littles and I did lesson two of Rainforests, the little ones filled in the review test at the end and wrote a wonderful narration on the understory of the rain forest.  I read Dr Seuss’ ‘If I Ran a Rainforest’ to consolidate in a fun way their learning about the various levels of the rain forest.

And we ended the week with a very peculiar conversation.  I think maybe home schooling might be adversely affecting my children…..

T14, whilst watching his sister pour herself a cup of hot water (she doesn’t drink tea or coffee):  You are so odd!

C13 retorted back, grinning: Being odd is the very best compliment you could pay me! 

T14 changing his original insult:  Well, you are so normal then!

C13 grin growing: Normal!  I might just have to get off this unicorn and slap you!

Me, completely bemused and utterly confused by the whole conversation: Eh?

I repeat: Eh…….?