A Year in the Life of a Homeschooling Family: Day 3

Having been awake for most of the night with a nasty migraine I was very grateful that Gary had a day off today. He works six days on and two days off, which is wonderful because he does actually get days off now, unlike at his last work where he seemed to work seven days a week, 52 weeks of the year.

The littles had got up early and managed to do chores and all their workbook schoolwork before the rest of us mere mortals arose. Well, actually, Lillie had to get up early to go to work. Whilst Lil was at work, Gary took the opportunity to spend some time with his youngest two and ran a few errands with them:

Charlotte got on with all her Classics, finishing off an essay on Homer and getting her vast amount of reading done. Here she is beginning Ovid’s Metamorphosis:

And I helped Lil by uploading some of her work for the teacher to mark. The race is on because she only has until Friday to finish this course. I uploaded her health and safety work, which included this rather cool poster inspired by the war posters which say ‘Your country needs you..’

I also uploaded the photographs of all the test work she was doing with regards to different batiking techniques. So far her final art project is 40 pages long! We are both very much looking forward to this being over and done with.

Meanwhile, Gary returned with some very hungry daughters and a huge clothes hamper he had been offered for free! Yay! We were in need of one and this fit the bill perfectly:

We had a quick lunch of yesterday’s soup and fresh bread and then headed off for quiet time.

The afternoon brought with it lots of fun activities, as the girls and I checked on and watered our cress and checked up on the steel wool sand to see if there had been any rusting:

There was! I thought we would have to wait for a week or so but it only took twelve hours! I was chuffed because I want to use it for the model of the surface of Mars:

We then painted our Minoan dolphin frescoes. This was harder than I remembered….maybe things get harder with age?

We were all, nonetheless, pleased with the results. Before painting, we had studied the original really hard so that the girls knew exactly what needed to be done to create great replicas. Art is 75% observation (I think I remember Lil’s art teacher saying that).

We had allowed the Stone-Age Beaker pots we made on Monday to dry out and so today we painted them! The girls attempted to only use colours they would have had back then, but I’m thinking quite a lot of artistic licence is being used 🙂 :

Lillie spent the afternoon ironing the wax off her batiked scarf, which caused so much smoke in the house, I’m surprised any of my photos turned out as well as they did:

Whilst painting, I was also testing Charlotte on her nominative nouns, her present tense verbs and all of her vocab. I expected her to know the declensions of each noun and the conjugations of each verb. She did really well!

Meanwhile Gary was in the upstairs bathroom putting up the new curtains:

It’s silly really. Last week he did the floor and put in the new sink which was desperately needed. I then popped in all the bits and pieces I’d been collecting over the past year: photos, tiles, baskets, towels… and tomorrow he will be filling all the holes in the wall so I can paint. Do you see the issue? Really, I should have painted first. Oh well. I’m sure it will look just as good when I do finally get round to putting some paint on the walls.

And that is it for today. The older girls are upstairs with one of their friends:

Becca is up in her room crafting:

Abigail has received her second science box from Curiosity Box on cracking codes, and is doing the first activity on cipher wheels:

Thomas is walking up from the train station just in time for dinner.

A busy but satisfying day all round 🙂