A Year in the Life of a Home-Schooling Family: Day 79

I woke up this morning to the littles almost done with their workbooks for the day. Apparently they’d been up early and organised their day. Hmmm. I’m fairly certain that was my job to do? Actually, they’d only planned up to the end of their work books. Y’know, dress, teeth, hair, breakfast, workbooks… Not sure where they get the organisational enthusiasm from. Certainly not me. I have scraps of paper onto which I jot down ideas for the day. Hey ho. I have other skills…

Abigail is really enjoying learning about Jim Elliot, missionary to Ecuador. We learnt about him years ago, but I don’t think she remembers. She looked up Ecuador, excitedly on the map, exclaiming that she now had three role models, ‘David Livingston, Pandita Ramabai, and you, Mummy!’ Phew, I slipped in by the skin of my teeth!

Becca has also been enjoying learning about shadows and ran to tell me all about light and the fact that it doesn’t go through solid matter like her hand. She then demonstrated using a white piece of paper and Ab’s light:

She was excited to see that the nearer her hand was to the paper, the more defined the shadow, and the nearer her hand was to the light, the less defined the shadow:

Once they had finished their workbooks, they had a bit of time to spare. So they decided to dress some paper dolls:

and have a half an hour quiet time reading (my mum was ill with a cold so Becca didn’t go round this morning):

Mum being ill also stopped Charlotte from heading over there today. Instead she schooled at our table:

I grabbed a photo of Lillie doing her laundry:

Both older girls do their own laundry: Charlotte on a Monday and Lillie towards the end of each week. Thomas, who is on bathroom chores each morning, does the rest of the family’s laundry, washing, drying and putting away one load each day before college (not the same load!).

I then read aloud to the girls, starting with one lesson of Life of Fred: Farms and moving on to ‘Wonders and Miracles’, the book we are using to learn about the Passover:

I read a midrash (a rabbinic legend that expands or explains a Bible story) about the Hebrew midwives and a story about Moses and Pharaoh.

We then moved on to Latin. Yes, you read that correctly. I have decided to teach the little ones Latin. In fact, I have decided to do a unit study on Rome for the next 7 months and teach them Latin at the same time. I know, I’m a sucker for punishment! I’m using Minimus and the Cambridge project:

I read out some simple sentences, learning about the family, and the girls learnt to introduce themselves and ask each other who they were:

They also used some photocopies to read out a short play in Latin, reinforcing all they had learnt about the Roman family:

I had also made some vocab cards:

The girls used these twice during the day to test each other on the vocab:

We had lunch and a relax, after which I read some more about the passover: A story written by Grandma Tirzah ‘When I went out of Egypt’. Grandma Tirzah is not a grandma at all. In fact, she is very much a he, and known as Rabbi David Schaps. Grandma Tirzah is his pen name. He rewrites Bible stories with more detail, basing them on commentaries and traditions from the time. The final bit I read was about the ten plagues and how they relate to the way the Egyptians treated the Israelites.

Once completed, we did an artist study on Anne O Smith using a piece of work she did called Bird Walk using scribble art. The girls had practiced some scribble art yesterday. Today they attempted one in the style of Smith. They scribbled and then tried to pick out an outline of an owl:

They outlined them in black, rubbed out the scribbled inside and outside of the black line and coloured them in. Becs used felt-tips whilst Abs used water colour paints:

Tomorrow they will finish them off by making some back ground on a separate larger sheet of paper, cutting out the owl and sticking it on the background.

I finished off the day by showing them some Roman coins and flashing some maths table flash cards at them:

I found this banana on the table today. Yesterday, Lillie had been tearful and Becca had drawn on a banana to cheer her up!

Lillie did some edits on her photos, four of which are below:

I thought she did a lovely job. I think I will get some of these printed and up on our walls!

Well, that’s all for now folks! Have a wonder-filled evening!