A Year in the Life of a Homeschooling Family: Day 22

We are all well bar Becca. Yay!! It is almost February. Boo!! It is well documented that I hate February. I’m not sure what happens, or why it happens which such alarming regularity, or why I could almost set my watch by it – so accurate its time keeping…but February is a no good, horrible month for me. I woke this morning and I did not want to homeschool. That didn’t stop me homeschooling, but honestly?- my heart wasn’t in it. I felt tired, and sluggish, and as if I was walking through tar backwards. These posts are meant to show an accurate portrayal of home school in the trenches, as it were. And that means including the good and the bad. Today we are focusing on the bad!

When the children were younger, I used to frogmarch them down to the local school to see if I could enrol them at the start of the next term. Of course, by the time February was over, I was back to my usual happy, home-schooling-is-the-best-thing-ever mentality. Over the years, I have learnt not to actually visit the schools. I simply put it on my to-do list for March, knowing full well that by March all would be well once more in my home-school utopia, and my need to enrol would have disappeared.

It hadn’t even occurred to me that February was on the horizon, even though last night and this morning I spent time researching sixth form colleges for the girls! Ha! At least I am predictable! As I say, I could set a watch… I didn’t enrol anyone, but I did contact a couple to ask if they would accept home-schooled students for their A Levels…

Anyway, I digress. This February I am going to be energetic-home-school-mum-extraordinaire! This year I am going to get on top of this. I am not going to be dictated by such a little word as February. In fact, the first thing I am going to do is change February to Fabulary (see what I did?!). And this Fabulary, Claire is going to rock! No, really, I am. Rock I tell you.

But first I’m going to take a nap 😉

Well, the little ones did their workbooks first thing this morning. I thought it would be fun to jot down what they are covering in those books so I have some sort of reference. Today, Abigail learnt about Hudson Taylor, pumps and pipes in the house and the anatomy of a ship; Becca learnt about using titles for books, Galileo and his telescope and also learnt about floor plans, drawing her own floor plan of her study area (the dining room).

After quiet time, we began the chapter on the asteroid belt from our Apologia Astronomy text book. The girls did some copywork, and played with one of our solar system models:

Charlotte continued on with her classics reading, looked over chapter one in her text book for me to test her on (Greek and Roman Religion) as well as looking at some primary sources and answering an essay question on it:

She also completed some maths and some Latin.

Lillie was learning all about encoding within the memory in her psychology, and DNA replication in her Biology. She also did an hour of maths and is awaiting the final marking of her art and design to let her know she has completed everything to the satisfaction of her teacher:

I spent the morning playing catch up. I emailed Abigail’s drama teacher to pay her for this term, and did the same for Rebecca’s gymnastics. Becs and I chose and ordered her gymnastics uniform. I also booked Charlotte in to sit her Classics GCSE this summer, answered emails which had piled up last week and generally got caught up with everything. Yay me!

Once school was over, Lillie and Thomas worked out together:

Whilst the little ones played nearby:

Tonight, we made a hot chocolate and Gary drove us to the highest point and least lit area near to us to star gaze and see if we can see some shooting stars:

We didn’t see any shooting stars but we did find mars, and had a really fabulous time star gazing and generally enjoying each other’s company:

Fun times with our gorgeous girls! See, Fabuary is going to be fabulous!