Finishing Strong Month Three

Helloooo and welcome to month three of Finishing Strong, my attempt at finishing everything I’ve started before moving on to the next stage of my life. If you read my first post (A Homeschool Journey Coming to an End), you’ll know I am attempting to complete the following ten things:

• Finish homeschool well
• Finish my master’s degree in childhood and youth studies
• Finish my romance novel
• Finish my Mesopotamia Unit Study
• Finish my Mesopotamia Picture Book
• Update all of the 2000 blog posts on my website
• Add all of these updated blog posts to my Instagram
• Add all these updated blog posts to my Pinterest account
• Create a product to sell each month and open a shop on my website
• Declutter our cottage

Month two’s update can be found here.

Finishing Strong Month Three YouTube Video

Finishing Strong Week Three: Notes

Homeschooling Teens: GCSEs, Creativity, and Independence

Once a week we head off to the cafe in the town that Charlotte lives and works. She joins us during her lunch break and then heads back to work whilst we stay and study for a couple of hours:

Most of Abigail’s school right now is taking past papers for English, maths and biology IGCSE…not terribly interesting to talk about or photograph. However, she is currently taking an evening class in British sign language, and this week she had an exam. So, Monday, the day of the exam, I got her to do a little practice:

Meanwhile, Becca has sorted the problem of her dragon wings for her corset dragon top:

For more info on either of these things, watch the video above!

Learning as a Homeschool Mum: Study, Research, and Focus

Master’s Degree in Childhood and Youth Studies

I handed in my second and last assignment before my 12000 word dissertation due in September. It’s funny, I got 78%, which is a great mark, especially at master’s level. I felt elated…for all of about five minutes. Then I read the feedback! When feedback contains words like atrocious, ugly and awkward, one wonders how on earth one managed to get the 78%. Needless to say, I shan’t be getting too big-headed any time soon!

Mesopotamia Unit Study

Leadership Study

I’m doing so well with my unit study! This month I have been focused on the Akkadians. So far, I have created a leader study based on primary evidence of inscriptions written about two leaders (Lugalzagesi, Sumerian king and Sargon, the first Akkadian king). This includes a debate about which was the strongest leader:

Pizza Box Presentation

The leadership lesson finishes with a pizza box presentation on one of the kings. I made a whole load of printables to help and did a quick video to demonstrate how to use them:

Mesopotamia Escape Room

Lastly, I’ve made an escape room, Mesopotamia themed! I am so excited about this. Once I get it up in my shop, I’ll record a video (and write a post) about how to set it up and how to use escape rooms in your homeschool. I had SO much fun making this!

These products kill two birds with one stone as that is at least two products I am hoping to add to my shop today.

Mesopotamia Picture Book

I attempted to create some simple people figures to represent my five children. Below is my effort creating my youngest daughter, Becca:

I have decided that drawing people is not my forte. I kinda already knew that but…well I think I’d convinced myself that anything is possible. And you know what? Anything is possible but not everything is probable. I believe I fall into the latter category regarding my (in)ability to draw humans!

It’s embarrassingly bad and the less said about this the better! I’ve decided to go down the personified animal route which I seem to be a bit better at.

It’s funny, it took me almost all month to create a mini Rebecca, but it has taken me less than 24 hour to create a mini Thomas mouse and a mini Abigail mouse!

Romance Novel

I finished last month’s chapter…slowly, slowly getting there.

Decluttering our Cottage

I did declutter but not any books this month. Gary built me my perfect studio and I spent a lot of time going through and decluttering anything and everything that belonged to me and my art studio.

Blog/Instagram and Pinterest

I updated 31 posts and finished the 50 plus posts about the ten week summer unit study we did on the Little House on the Prairie (yay me!). Unfortunately, I did not add any posts to Instagram or Pinterest. However, I am going to give all day tomorrow to updating both my Pinterest and Instagram, so theoretically I will have done all I had planned in March 🙂

Finishing Strong Week Three: Conclusion

On reflection, I feel like my blog, Insta and Pinterest stuff, which I was so on a role with January and February, got put on the back burner whilst I completed my master’s assignment, and I never really got back into it afterwards. So, this coming month, my plan is to use my evenings to update a post, add it to Instagram and also to Pinterest. I will attempt to do one each night, amounting to 30 posts over the month of April.

I also feel like my romance novel is being relegated to the bottom of the pile. I only managed what I did because I had already written most of the chapter in February. This coming month, I want to give it some regular and planned for time. With this in mind, I am going to transfer a copy of the book to my Ipad and work on it after swimming on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday and also for a couple of hours during my coffee shop date with Abigail. I’m hoping that by putting aside specific times I will be more invested to write a bit more than I have this month.

I’m pretty happy with how everything else has gone, and am looking forward to taking that into next month.