Last week was all about purposefully encouraging my younger daughters to have a beautiful girlhood. Of course, we try to do that all the time, but last week I had time to actually focus on it. And can I just say, it ended up blessing me far more than my little ones 🙂
Beautiful Girlhood
I already had the first two books, Beautiful Girlhood and its accompanying study guide:
We used these books with our older girls when they were younger and enjoyed our special times together. Beautiful Girlhood is revised by Karen Andreola from a nineteenth century book. It is gentle and remarkably effective, if a little old-fashioned. Our goal was to read the first chapter about cheerfulness, using the study guide to make sure the girls understood what had been read out to them.
- Cheerfully serving others
We then brainstormed some ideas for cheerfully serving others. One way I try to serve my husband is by running him a bath on his return from work. His job is hard and heavy labour, and a long soak in the bath is a perfect opportunity to relax away the grubbiness of the day and an excellent middle point to transition from work to home. The girls decided it would be lovely to choose some clean clothes for him, and along with his slippers, pop them in the bathroom before he got home from work. It was very cute to see how seriously they took this ‘responsibility’ and Gary was very kind in accepting whatever clothes they chose 🙂
- Pin-board Scripture Art
As it was my goal for each child to come away with some scripture to hang in their room, using Ribbet I made them some cards to pin up on their notice board, containing a scripture verse reminding them to greet each day with a cheerful attitude:
A Little Princess in the Making
The next book (above) I had bought a few years ago to use with the littles and this was the perfect opportunity. Again, we only read chapter one which talks about how princesses always say please, thank you, and sorry.
- Princess tea-party
I wanted this to be a bit special, so I asked the girls to dress up in their best princess dresses:
Whilst they were sprucing themselves up, I brought out their Great-Granny’s tea set and laid an impromptu inside picnic. with strawberry milk and watermelon:
I had bought a princess sticker book which kept my little princesses busy whilst I was reading out the first chapter:
- Card Making to Say Thank You
We chatted about who we could say thank you to. Bearing in mind I had already planned all the activities, I steered them towards thanking their Granny for helping with their schooling 😉 and they began making some simple thank you cards:
I then suggested to the four girls that we make some simple melt and pour soap using the last batch of home-made-from-scratch-and-almost-killed-us soap. They tentatively agreed 🙂
We gathered grated soap in plain and green, lemon essential oil and melted it all in a double burner, adding the lemon essential oil at the end. We poured it into some heart-shaped muffin molds:
I chucked them in the freezer to harden after which the girls stamped a ‘hand made’ stamp on the top of each soap:
We packaged them up, adding some freshly picked bluebells from the garden:
Here are the two bags, each containing one lemon heart-shaped soap:
Each girl took their card and a soap over to Granny’s next door.
A7’s
and B5’s:
Granny was over the moon:
Easy-Peasy Recipe
As Daddy was ill, the bathroom falling to bits at the seams and our lovely week of fun learning unraveling before my very eyes, we chose a really, really easy-peasy recipe ‘Cinnamon tortilla crisps’
Mix together brown sugar and cinnamon in equal measures, sprinkle over a buttered tortilla and cut using a pizza wheel. Chuck in a hot oven for a few minutes and, voila!, cinnamon tortilla crisps. Really easy-peasy!
And so ended our fun but fraught-with-difficulties week. We didn’t manage everything on my to-do list, but, really, when do we ever? We did, however, create something beautiful during a tricky week, which ended with me flooding the kitchen. I am such a doofus 🙂
You are not a doofus! What a beautiful way to bring out the best in your girls!
Thanks Phyllis!
How sweet! My older daughter read Beautiful Girlhood. She also read another one called Before You Meet Prince Charming, which has a Medieval theme, and concentrates on a young woman’s heart and manners regarding courtship.
My older girls have read that book and both thoroughly enjoyed it!
*wonders if we will hear what happened to the kitchen 😉 Btw this was so cute! Oh my word I really want to come play at your house. I have never made soap but I really want to. I love this idea of teaching thankfulness. You really must link these amazing resources-you are soo very good at this Claire! Thank you for being so inspiring!
I love your comments, Jen, they are always so enthusiastic and encouraging 🙂 Thank you x
Oh Claire!!! I LOVE everything about this!!!! Keilee would have loved to have dressed up and joined them. 🙂 Her Bringing Smart Back video a couple of weeks ago was how to have a Poetry Tea Party!!! This reminds me so much of the tea parties we have had over the years!!!! Just adore it all.
Hi Karen, how lovely to see a message from you!
I could just see your Keelie at this tea party – she would have fit right in and the girls would have loved her being there 🙂
Your little girls are Princesses, they are gorgeous and of course, so are your bigger girls. xxxx
Thanks Carolyn 🙂
Hi there. I have only just begun homeschooling my children and your website has been such a blessing to be. Thank you so, so much. Your dedication to homeschool and commitment to your children is truly humbling and really shines out of your blog. You have absolutely lovely ideas. Re the soap…do you just melt normal soap in a normal pan?! Praying for your husband’s safe recovery and hope that you are able ro enjoy some more precious time with your family this week. Carla x
Hi Carla, thanks so much for commenting, I love to ‘meet’ new readers! Re your question about the soap – the green soap which we used to add colour is a very inexpensive soap which we just grated, and the plain soap is our own home made from scratch soap which we grated a few years ago and are just using up now.
I have tried melting it in a normal pan, and whilst it does work to some extent, I have found a double boiler works much better. I just boil water in the pan below add a little water and all the gratings to the pan above and it melts beautifully.
Thank you for your prayers x
Thank you so very much for that advice. It is really appreciated. I have just ordered the ‘hand made with love’ stamp so hopefully we will be merrily making our own soap hearts by next week. My girls 8 and 6 will absolutely love it. In fact my 3 year old boy will too! I have been so blessed by yoir writing already. I love the idea of a pond study. You have such creative ideas. I pray that over the years I will become more creative too! I hope your husband is still on the mend. Again, thank you so much for writing about your family’s homeschool adventure. Its so encouraging to me! Have a wonderful day xx
And yummy, don’t forget super duper yummy!
What lovely activities, Claire, and I am impressed that you managed all this with Gary I’ll, and problems with your bathroom! We have the same books, although not the companion one. Thank you for sharing about the soap too.
Sorry, I meant ‘ill’!