Homeschool Log Book {June 2022}

Welcome to our June 2022 edition of the homeschool log book!

Morning Meeting

Each morning we come together for an hour whilst I read aloud. This month, we finished ‘Mystery of History Volume I’, Apologia’s ‘Who is God?’ Apologia’s ‘Anatomy and Physiology’, a ‘Pocketful of Pinecones’ and ‘Soldier Dog’ (I SO recommend this as a go along for a homeschool World War I unit, although make sure the tissues are close by 😢):

I’ve started collecting our books for next week, when we’ll be doing an Ancient Roman study. I love putting together our book baskets.

Rebecca (Age 11)

Language Arts: Night ZooKeeper

Maths: Conquer Maths

Becs does around five lessons a week:

Once Becs has covered faith, history, biology, English and maths, the rest of the day is made up of everything she loves.

Artist Study: Roots

I’ve written about our Roots Artist Study, so head over if you want to learn more. Suffice it to say, we really enjoyed this one:

Textiles (Level 1)

Becs has had a ball this month and learnt so much. I’m not allowed to show her written work because it is part of an ongoing course which will need to be assessed over the next year or so. However, I can show photos of her working. This month she has consolidated her knowledge on different patterns, this time using printing:

She was also required to create a motif based on her Cath Kidston study:

She chose a mushroom and created a stencil from a sheet of plastic and her favourite craft knife 😬. Using the stencil she played around with stencilling mushrooms on different papers, in a variety of patterns. Using a brick pattern, she stencilled the mushrooms onto a blank pillowcase:

The final activity was to learn about tie dying. Becs has done tie dye before when she made her own skirt:

However, she needed to do a bit of experimentation with different tie dying techniques:

She tried out the bullseye, the spiral, the polka dot and the crumple:

In her written work she needed to describe the patterns used with the stamps and stencils. She also needed to describe the different tie dye techniques. Lastly, Becs had to give the meaning of a variety of symbols on the labels found on clothes.

Mixed Media (Level 2)

Last month, Becca learnt about values. We spent a lot of the month drawing shapes over and over again until she really understood. This month she has been sketching a parsnip and a carrot, because of their similarity to the mandrake root:

She also drew a mandrake flower and tried out her first design of a mandrake person:

When Lillie left for America, she left Becca in charge of her iPad Pro and she has enjoyed using the drawing feature. For fun she drew some mandrake flowers and roots:

Abigail (Age 13)

Language Arts

Abigail finished her grammar, spelling and punctuation book and completed a couple of assignments, one of which I have linked below, which she received 97% for:

Maths

Abigail does approximately five lessons per week, although she does sometimes get stuck on something and I have found her doing the same lesson over and over rather than asking for help. Next year I will be focusing much more on helping her, anticipating her needs. She always gets there in the end but next year is the final year before starting GCSE maths, so I want to make sure she definitely understands all the key stage three lesson first.

MEL Science

Abigail made a battery from a lemon which buzzed a buzzer and lit a light. She had to troubleshoot some issues as it did not work to begin with. She looked it up online and realised that the two forks going into the lemon needed to be a bit closer together:

Apologia Science

This was such a fun week for Abigail, which culminated in the creation of a smoke bomb! It was SO cool!

Experiment wise she has been demonstrating the properties of polymers by sticking a kabab stick right through a balloon without it bursting:

Abs also boiled dry some saline solution and compared the left of salt crystals to the salt crystals bought from the shop:

She also exploded a bottle of Diet Coke with some mints, which we videoed but missed photographing. But by far the best activity this month was making her own smoke bomb. It was so dramatic, she made a second one! The photos don’t do it justice because the noise whizzed like a fire work and the smoke was very dramatic!

Environmental Science GCSE

This month the focus was on Water Management. She did a lot of experiments and demonstrations for this chapter. I bought her one of her favourite books to go along with it:

Abs did most of the projects in the water cycle book, although I did not capture them all in photos. However, I did get a few of her setting up a weather vane, testing the pH of different solutions found around the house, and demonstrated the surface tension of water via the capillary action:

We haven’t been super jam-packed this month as it was the month of finishing off things. I’m pleased by where we are at. The next month will be spent on an ancient Roman unit study, which both Ads and Charlotte are joining in with the teaching. Next week I will be looking over the past year at what has gone right, what could have gone better and the ways in which I’d like to go forward in the next academic year.