A Year in the Life of a Homeschooling Family: Day 2

Y’know that shampoo ad which says repeat and rinse? Well, that pretty much describes my early morning fumblings. My phone read ‘3 missed alarms’. Really, I need say no more. Yesterday I did at least know that I missed them. I mean, I actually heard them. Today, not so much.

Thankfully, Abs and Becs were on the job as much as I was on the bed (snoring). I woke at eight (a whole half an hour earlier than yesterday – get me!) to two little girls busily finishing their school work for the day. I had to recheck my watch just to make sure I hadn’t misread my phone and it was actually coming up lunchtime rather than breakfast. But no, the watch read eight. The girls excitedly informed me that they had done their chores, and almost finished their workbooks. I was barely functioning, and their day was coming to an end. I needed a coffee and quick!

Once I had finished my morning ablutions, I found myself to be delighted at the prospect of a day without workbooks. Think of the fun we could have! I quickly rewrote the list I had in my head and applied it to paper. This was going to be a great day!

Whilst Lillie dyed her batik scarf:

and Charlotte began her day reading Homer’s Iliad:

the girls and I got on with the job of prepping lots of activities which we would be completing over the coming week. We popped down to the butchers for a few polystyrene trays, which we filled with some plaster. These would be used to create some Minoan frescos:

The girls and I then tried our hand at creating some Mars rovers out of all things sugar and spice:

The end result was three veritable masterpieces. Watch out NASA, here we come!

Once Lillie had finished her scarf she started on soup for lunch. She would be leaving for work soon, so she made a quick job of chopping up the squash and carrots:

Meanwhile, suspicious that more sweets went into the girls’ mouths than into making their rovers, I sent them outside to play ‘running around the garden’ for ten minutes to burn some off the sugar:

Whilst they were outside, Charlotte took the opportunity to narrate some of the reading she had just done on Homer, Mycenaean cities and the ancient languages of the Greeks (apparently there were three). I then tested her on her male Greek gods before she went off to complete her Latin.

Lil was walking to work today, so she left at elevenish. She works in a children’s nursery in the next village:

The girls and I then squeezed in a bit more schoolwork before lunch. They wrote up some details about Mars:

Started growing some cress for our Mars’ model ecosystem (picture here with yesterday’s rocks, sand and some clingfilm for our model):

And began an experiment to investigate the best environment for iron to rust. We used wet sand, dry sand and shredded steel wool:

Hopefully, if all goes to plan, we will be using the rusty sand in our Mars ecosystem model.

The girls were having a friend round in the afternoon so they had a quick lunch and an early quiet time. I have set all the girls a challenge to read 100 books by next September. As they read them, they then write down the book on their book list, Becca is up to 97 and it’s only January (they began the challenge last September):

The girls then spent a fun afternoon playing with their lovely friend Evie-Mae, whilst I chatted with my lovely friend (Evie-Mae’s mum!):

My son also turned seventeen today. We celebrated it officially on Saturday, but I cooked a special meal today for him:

To end this post, I will leave you with a lovely photo of my off-spring. It just makes me very happy looking at it:

The children are currently in the kitchen doing tea-time chores singing loudly, if not altogether tunefully, giggling together and having fun, even whilst washing up. Once they have finished we will be having some of Thomas’ birthday cake with ice-cream. What a fab finish to the day 🙂