This is all the school work Abigail and Becca have done this month. I will also include the extra-curricular activities they’ve been involved with. It has been a busy three and a half weeks, and it’s good to look back on all we have accomplished. However, one and a half of those three and a half weeks was spent recovering from illness, so the work below more accurately represents two weeks 😬
Morning Meeting
Who Am I? We completed Lesson Three: What’s on Your Mind? which was focussed on one of my favourite passages in the Bible, Philippians 4:8.
Mystery of History Vol 2: The Early Church and the Middle Ages. We completed the following lessons: Mohammed and the Birth of Islam; Wu Zetian, the Empress of China; The Epic of Beowulf; Al-Andalus: “The Ornament of the World” in Medieval Spain.
The Story of Science: Aristotle Leads the Way. We completed chapter 7: ‘Why Do Polestars Take Turns?; Chapter 8: Worshipping Numbers including Chewing on Pi – Or Tasting One of Math’s Mysteries and Chapter 9: Pythagorus Knows it’s Round, which was a fascinating chapter all about Pythagorus and his discoveries.
Vincent’s Starry Night and Other Stories. We have learnt about Pieter Breugel; Basawan and Dharm Das; Caravaggio; Rembrandt, Artemisia Gentileschi, Diego Velazquez and Claude Lorrain.
English
Read Alone Books
Abigail: Four by Veronica Roth; City of Bones and City of Ashes by Cassandra Clare; Scorpia by Anthony Horowitz and is currently reading Hot Zone by Richard Preston, Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzzanne Collins and Why Does E=MC2? by Brian Cox and Jeff Foreshaw
Rebecca: Cress by Marissa Meyer, Book One, Book Two and Book Three
Read Together
We are continuing with our Chronicles of Narnia study. Over the last few weeks we have begun Prince Caspian with lots of accompanying writing assignments. I also read outloud one of C S Lewis’ biographies and The Land of Narnia by Brian Sibley, which we are all thoroughly enjoying. I get the girls to write about Narnia three or four times a week and then I mark it with them sitting next to me. We are working hard to improve Becca’s spelling and sitting next to me whilst I mark is really helpful for her. This month the girls learnt how to write a compare and contrast essay.
Becs also goes over to my mum’s each day to learn different spellings. My mum is wonderfully detail orientated and having her help with things like spelling, reading and grammar has been amazing. And it’s win win because the children love it and she loves it! ❤️
I think I am going to move the C.S Lewis studies into our morning meeting time and over the February half term I will be praying about what I will focus on for the rest of the year. I feel like I need a bit more direction and I think I’d like to follow a specific curriculum.
Maths (Conquer Maths)
The girls use Conquer Maths and it’s all on line. It teaches using a video and then checks understanding using questions.
Abigail (Last year of Key Stage 3)
Rebecca (First Year of Ket Stage 3)
Becs is working her way through the first year of Key Stage 3 and completed the following lessons:
Abigail (Aged 13-14, Year 9)
Abigail’s main school outside of maths and English is mostly science based.
Abs has completed the whole Environmental Management GCSE. We’ve decided not to put her in for the exam this summer, but instead to focus on learning the material well. I’ve found a video series which covers the whole Environmental Management syllabus. The plan is for Abs to redo the whole course, but this time focusing on the videos and her revision text book. Mum has offered to begin testing her on the basic knowledge each day. I just feel so blessed by her ❤️
The GCSEs in Psychology and Sociology are going slow and steady which is fine as she is doing them over two years. She is still ploughing her way through the Research chapters of both subjects. It feels very slow going, yet she is putting in hours of work each day.
Lastly, Abigail is working her way through the Apologia text book and Key Stage Three Science book two. She works at these at her own speed and we do the end of unit questions together verbally. This month she completed the Key Stage Three Science and will move on to book three in February.
Rebecca (Aged 10-11, Year 7)
Rebecca’s main school apart from the English and Maths is 100% creative. She is currently studying towards a Level One qualification in Mixed Media and another Level One in Textiles.
Becs began the fourth booklet in mixed media which is based on special effects make up. She has almost finished the booklet, which has been focusing on planning a folder filled with special effect wounds which can be used as a teaching tool for medical professionals. These are her practice wounds:
She also began and finished her fourth Textiles booklet, which was all about planning and designing an ocean themed product. She has chosen to upcycle a blue dress using jelly fish as her inspirations. We are hoping to send off her completed booklet for marking by the end of this week. The designs below are ones she has done digitally using the reference photos of jellyfish for inspiration:
Extra-Curricular Activities
This has been a much busier month for both girls. Each Sunday morning, they have both been volunteering at church by working in the creche. They are learning a lot, serving the church and thoroughly enjoying themselves in the process! Sunday evening they have their church youth group after the church service.
Monday afternoons are spent doing some physical activities with other homeschoolers, which they both love. Monday evenings is another youth group which meets in a church nearby.
Tuesday evenings both girls attend children’s choir, after which Becca spends the rest of the evening with a precious homeschooled friend whilst Abigail attends Army Cadets. The photo below shows her trying on her uniform for the first time:
Wednesday, Abigail goes to Explorers with one of her friends from church. She has spent fun times making dressing up out of newspapers and last week she went bowling.
Thursday, Abigail attends Army Cadets again. She is learning lots of things, although feels a little out of her depth sometimes. Her big brother, Thomas (who is an officer in the reserve army), came and spent a morning with her on Friday to teach her how to hold her beret, iron her uniform and polish her boots. He was also very reassuring regarding her worries, saying it took him a while before he felt settled in the reserve army.
Friday’s are spent with friends or with their sisters. Becca has lunch with Lillie at least once a week, and the four sisters often go shopping together to the nearby town and have video nights together, snuggled up on the sofa ❤️
Each Saturday we have Girls’ Club, something I got from reading Sally Clarkson’s book of the same name. My four girls and I gather together and spend a few hours chatting, drinking coffee and wandering around the charity shops, something that we have all enjoyed since they were little. It is a fun time, without phones, to focus on each other, to decompress and to enjoy being together. I began it as a way to spend more time with my younger daughters before they grow up too. I invited the older girls to join us and it has definitely become a ‘thing’ now. Girl Club. Every Saturday.
This month, the girls have also spent a weekend away from home at a youth weekend away. It was Becs’ first weekend away but as she was going with Abs and Lillie was one of the leaders, it didn’t really faze her.
Claire (Mother, Me)
I don’t usually include a part about me in these posts, however, I am not really writing personal posts in my blog anymore and would love to share with you what I have been up to also…
The biggest change has been to this blog. I have reduced my postings to once per week. These posts are solely about homeschooling. Apart from my monthly Homeschool Log Book entries, I will no longer be including anything personal, these will instead be included in my new separate blog, Seasons of Joy .
At the beginning of the year, I began posting videos to my YouTube channel. Although my goal was to make mainly ‘How to…’ videos about hands on activities for history unit studies, I have made seven videos of me talking. I never in a million years thought I would have the courage to post anything which included my face, but I seem to have become quite blasé about it! However, last week I made my first activity based one which I really enjoyed making:
And another on painting it!
I shall probably continue with these going into the future.
They say that the first hundred videos made on each channel are you learning the ropes, and that is very much what I am doing. I don’t have much skill as yet and it is a huge learning experience, but I shall keep at it. I very much enjoy the creative part of the videos and each week I am trying to teach myself one thing new. Last week I learnt to record a voice over and add it to the video. The week before, I learnt how to add photos to the video and this week I taught myself how to add text! I love to learn new things so am finding the whole process very satisfying.
I began my new blog Seasons of Joy at the beginning of January. I aim to write weekly but am not too worried if I fail in that. This is not meant to be a commercial blog at all, and I intend to simply write about whatever takes my fancy in that moment! I also film videos for my other YouTube channel. These are silent videos of me crafting. They capture some slow quiet moments of my life, crafting seasonal items such as beeswax candles, apple and cinnamon radiator hearts and wood burning. My crafting nights are fast becoming my favourite evening of the week ❤️
I am also doing well with my Mesopotamia Unit Study I am writing. The accompanying book is slow going but moving in the right direction. I am also making my own notepages, travel passports, activity books and project books to go along with them. I am using my own drawings in creating these and am so enjoying the process. I have no clue how I am going to gather it all together to create a comprehensive unit study but I’ll worry about that later! For now, just creating is enough for me 😊
I hope you all have had a wonderful January! Here’s to an equally fabulous February ❤️