A Year in the Life of a Homeschooling Family: Day 5

I woke in a really bad mood today. It’s rare but when it happens it’s not a pretty sight. I had been up until one sewing some Minoan doll costumes for the girls to dye today, so I was tired and stiff. I made a coffee and went back to bed for five minutes to give myself a good talking to. It didn’t work and I emerged just as grumpy. It happens so infrequently that my children find it very funny. Which frankly make it worse! After lots of hugs the children popped to the shops to get some supplies for the day and I had half an hour to myself. That did the trick nicely and I could feel myself returning to normal. Still tired, but not so grumpy 🙂

The first job of the day was to dye the dolls clothes I had made during the early hours of the morning. The girls did this with alacrity, thoroughly enjoying the messiness of it:

Whilst the girls dyed I created some bands for the dolls arms from masking tapes. The girls decorated them using Sharpies:

Whilst they did that, I fashioned an unusual woman’s hat from a loo roll and some masking tape. This was painted red. Abigail made a quick necklace for the boy doll from masking tape, whilst Becca used some hessian thread and Hamma beads to create a necklace for the girl doll:

Whilst we waited on the dyed clothes to dry on the radiator, I had the girls read to each other from a book about the Minoans:

After which they finished cutting out the clothes for their paper dolls and dressed them:

Once the paper dolls were dressed, the girls started an impromptu ‘paper doll’ show with Cleopatra and Mark Antony… it made me smile. There was flirting, drinking…I don’t know where they get it all from!

Lillie took some photos of her sister wearing her scarf, to send off with her final project:

Today we all had a lie down quiet time. Abigail hadn’t been feeling 100% and Becca was tired, as was I. It did us all the world of good! The older girls took the afternoon off and the littles and I finished off bits and pieces, such as the dress for the Minoan dolls:

Then the girls had fun in the kitchen with three ingredients. We got the idea from a tv show, although I can’t remember what it’s called. The girls have three ingredients and have to do whatever they want to create something edible. Usually we buy sweet stuff, but this time I went for savoury. The girls had ready made pastry, thin sausages and tomato ketchup. Here they are starting out:

Becca has blue hands due to the dyeing we did early on! They were quite inventive. They made sausage rolls, pigs in blankets, they injected tomato ketchup into the sausage, they deconstructed the sausage and cook little tartlets with sausage meat in a tomato sauce…I could go on. Here are a few of them at the beginning:

The girls then did some research online, looking at different megaliths around the world:

We also did some written work on mummification. The older girls brought their friends back so that the littles could help them decorate the ginger bread house. Isn’t that thoughtful?

And here is a very close up phone photo of the final house:

Gary was soon back from work, and off we went to the shops…but I’m fairly certain you don’t want to know about that!