A Year in the Life of a Home-Schooling Family: Day 107

From the moment I got out of bed, and Lillie greeted me at my door with a loving hug, I knew today was going to be a better day than the day before. Lillie is a very special child, because she notices what is going on with everyone around her and seeks to fix it, or at least make it better somehow. I was not the only one feeling anxious yesterday, Charlotte was too. Lillie noticed it all, and even though she’d been at work for most of the day, she came home, had dinner and then ran in a bath for Charlotte (complete with lovely smelling bath bombs) and blessed her by doing her chores whilst she bathed. She also told Gary and I to hole up in our room for a date night and that she would put the littles to bed whilst we relaxed. We are all very blessed to have a Lillie in our lives.

Gary’s home today, and he and Thomas spent the morning putting up their tent for the Big Church Day Out:

This morning, Charlotte went over to Mum’s to be tested on her Latin. She knows nine out of ten chapters of the vocab so far, and I think she will be fairly confident when she sits her language exam in 2 1/2 weeks (gasp!!). She then revised the first Aeneid passage, in readiness for me testing her before breaking for a quick walk and a snack. She will be starting her second passage tomorrow, and the race is on to memorize and critically analyse the six prescribed passages needed for her exam. Oh, and that’s a sheet of paper on my lap, not my belly creeping out of my trousers!!

Lillie got another maths lesson out of the way, and following some feed-back from her tutor, worked steadily on improving the portrait photography part of her A Level. In the time before break, she taught the littles their next Art Lab that they’d prepared for yesterday. It is scratch art, and the girls did their first try out in their sketch books:

I read aloud to the littles the next lesson on Pythagoras and his musical accomplishments, we translated all the Latin cartoons in the first lesson of Minimus and I tested the girls on their Latin vocab and their tables. They then worked on their ACE work books, before doing some scratch art with Lillie:

During their 1030 break, the older girls went for a walk, whilst the littles helped their Daddy in the garden and finished off their devotions in the tent:

After break, Lillie did some more work on her photography bibliography as well as some critical analysis for her portrait photography, whilst Charlotte verbally translated a passage of Latin to me before answering some comprehension questions on it. Lastly, she revised ‘Journeying to the Underworld’ for her Classical Civilisation, learning thoroughly the Hymn of the Demeter and the Myth of Orpheus. I then tested her, also reviewing the tasks of Heracles from yesterday.

The Littles completed their ACE work books, and then I did some activities with them about sound waves and how we hear them from this morning’s reading from Science in the Ancient World:

You can see from the photo above the highest point of the arch of the elastic band and the lowest point. The girls experimented with how they heard sound based on the depth of the vibrating band. They pung (spell check doesn’t like that word – past tense of ping…maybe it should be pinged? Yup!) pinged it hard which created a loud sound and a corresponding deep vibration. They pinged it softly which created a soft sound and a corresponding shallow vibration:

Next, they held the rubber band against the chair, and pinged it again, hard and soft. They noticed that the sound was much higher than when they didn’t hold it:

I must say, I’m loving ‘Science in the Ancient World’ as a text book. The lessons are clear, simple, short and yet explain fairly hard concepts in an easy to understand format. And the experiments are so simple to do. Love it!

We have completed Stage I of the Cambridge Latin Course. As part of the cultural section, we learnt about Caecillius and his villa in Pompeii. We have already made a map of Italy, with the goal of covering it with different projects we will be doing along the way. On Monday, we created a stuck on a floor plan of the villa. Today we stuck on some of the Roman coins which were found there:

I also read the next lesson of Mystery of History on Tutankhamen and a chapter of the Thieves of Ostia.

Lillie and the littles made a lunch of salad and scotch egg from the butchers (so good!):

Charlotte came in at the end brandishing a knife. I think maybe the exams are going to her head…

This afternoon, Lillie continued with Photography, Charlotte learnt how the Hymn of Demeter and the Myth of Orpheus demonstrated that the Greeks and Romans did not feel like the underworld was a great place to go…and she wrote an essay on just that. We also went over some Latin grammar together. The girl’s doin’ good!

Gary took the littles into town, along with their brother who sat his driving theory test (and passed!). I spent the afternoon planning more Latin lessons for the younger two and also some more work with Pythagoras.

A good relaxed day today, with far less anxiety than yesterday.