This is all the work that the girls have completed over the last four weeks. In general things went really well. Becca in particular feels that the balance of academic with less academic is good. Abigail’s workload has been a little too high for my liking so next month I hope to reduce it somewhat and leave enough time for less academic work.
Morning Meeting
Who Am I? We have almost finished Lesson One – What Are We Doing Here? There are eight lessons in total so we are right on target to finish it by next summer.
Mystery of History Volume Two: Pentecost and the first followers of Jesus; Saul, who is also called Paul; Paul’s Missionary Journeys; Nero; Martyrs of the Early Church; Josephus; Masada; The Dead Sea Scrolls; The Buried City of Pompeii; Bar-Kokba; The Apostles Creed; St Valentine; Diocletian Divides the Roman Empire
Depending how long each lesson is, I sometimes divide a lesson between two or sometimes three days. We’re a quarter the way through the book so are doing great!
The Way We Work: Explore the Human Body Head to Head – I read a double page of this each day. I have a degree in Nursing which necessarily includes lots of anatomy and physiology, but I have to say that half this stuff I either don’t remember ever learning or didn’t ever learn! I love David Macaulay’s book but this one confuses me occasionally 😬. I read this particularly for Abigail, and she seems to understand it fine, so I am going to continue for now.
The Story of Science: Aristotle Leads the Way – This has to be our favourite resource this year! I bought this for Thomas years ago but I have never read it. Even Becca loves listening to it and she hates all things science! We’ve covered the Birthing of the Universe; Ancient Civilisations of Mesopotamia; Early Astronomy and Astrology; The Myths of Creation; The Birth of Geometry; Calendar Makers; The Phases of the Moon; The Astronomical Observatory of the Mayan City of Palenque; Stone Henge; The Ancient Gods; The Birth of Numbers and Letters; Ancient Writing; Thales; Agamemnon.
Science of the Ancient World – We finished learning about Aristarchus and his sun centred universe; Euclid and his laws of Reflection; Archimedes and his principle of displacement as well as his work on levers and pulleys.
Vincent’s Starry Night and Other Stories – This one is especially for my artist, although my scientist really enjoys listening as well 😊. This term we have learnt about Lion Man: The First Artist; Animal Magic: The Cave Painters; Picture Stories: Ancient Painters, Carvers and Scribes; Seeing it my Way: Akhenaten’s Artists; Life Goes On: Tutankhamen’s Tomb; Traveller’s Tales: Kleitias the Vase Painter; Big Ideas: Phidias and the Parthenon; The Warrior Factory: Qin She Huang’s Craftsmen; A Tall Order: The Sculptor and the Emperor; Enjoy the View: A Roman Painter; Eye to Eye: Mosaic Maker in Saint Sophia; The Calligrapher’s Dream: Ibn al-Bawwab; Mountain Man: Fan Kuan; Floating City: The Builders of Angkor Wat.
Lessons of Blackberry Farm – I’m reading this for Becca who particular enjoys Karen Andreola’s writing. We’re about half way through.
English
Read Alone Books
Abigail is still reading The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Becca has caught the reading bug!! At Last! They are maybe not the books I would prefer her to be reading but Charlotte has preread them and says they are fine. So this month she has read the whole of ‘Cinders’ by Merissa Meyer and is half way through the second ‘Scarlet’. As you may have guessed they are (thick) fairytale rewrites. I am seriously over the moon that she can’t seem to put the book down and reads it standing up, sitting down and everywhere in between!
We have begun our Chronicles of Narnia study. Over the four weeks we have completed The Magician’s Nephew with lots of accompanying writing assignments (I am going to write a separate post on these next week which I will link here). I also read outloud one of C S Lewis’ biographies and we are about a quarter the way through 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.
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! ❤️
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)
Completed Topic Test for Ratios (received 78% first go and 100% second go)
Began Algebra I and completed the following lessons:
- Simplifying (95%)
- Problems I (100%) and Problems II (87%)
- Identifying Number Patterns I (87%), Identifying Number Patterns II (87%) and Identifying Number Patterns III (100%)
- The nth Term of a Sequence (100%)
- Like Terms (90%)
- Addition and Subtraction I (100%) and Addition and Subtraction II (80%)
Rebecca (First Year of Ket Stage 3)
Becs needed to finish the following Year 6 lessons:
- Area of Composite Shapes (96%)
- Volume of Cubes and Rectangular Prisms (100%)
- Measuring angles (71% on first test, 100% on second)
- Shapes (83%)
- Rotational Symmetry (100%)
- Parts of a circle (88%)
- Types of a Triangle (86%)
- Angle Sum of a Triangle (90%)
Then she began her first year of Key Stage 3 and completed the following lessons:
- Place Value (100%)
- Expanded Notation (90%)
- Expanded Notation using Powers (100%)
- Expanded Notation as a Numeral (100%)
- Order of Operations I (60% then 90%) and Order of Operations II (100%) and Order of Operations III (100%)
- Number properties (90%)
- Primes and Composites (75%, 78% and then 100%)
Abigail (Aged 13-14, Year 9)
Abigail’s main school outside of maths and English is mostly science based.
This month’s Environmental Management has been all about fisheries, which she has finished, and managing environmental hazards (which she has really been looking forward to).
This month she has also started a GCSE in Psychology and a GCSE in Sociology. She is loving both and is happily applying everything she is learning to herself…
Psychology has been all about sleep and dreaming and she has had many, many discussions about what we all think dreams mean 😂
I’ve not heard as much about sociology, which I think is down to the early topics which aren’t as interesting. She learning about the sociological approach and research methods…so not super super interesting 🤔
She is studying with Home Made Education and has a really wonderful tutor called Katherine. Katherine not only teaches the live lessons but also marks her work. Abigail has been stoked by her grades and happily tells us all the answers she got right! However, I was a bit concerned by the level of pressure she was under to complete this course in a year. She’s not quite GCSE age yet and was struggling to get all the extra work done. I asked Katherine if she could do it over two years instead and she was happy to facilitate that.
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.
I didn’t manage to get any photos of experiments or fun stuff because Abigail was so focused on her GCSE work. Now we’ve changed them from one to two years, the work load will be much less and hopefully she will have some time for the more hands on science she loves.
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. We have really got our teeth into these this year compared to last. I wanted to up the ante with Becs and she has responded brilliantly.
Becs began her textiles work before her mixed media so we have been focusing on mixed media to get her to the same level. She began with booklet one where she needed to make some Mokume Gane beads and use them to make a bracelet and an adjustable necklace. This was a nice little project to get her started:
She also made a safety poster for using polymer clay (you can that above right). Her second project was a pyrography Advent Calendar which she designed and then burnt on her design. This was a large wooden Advent calendar for the whole family to use. The top photos show her making it and the bottom photos show her mood/design board:
Here is the Advent calendar:
And getting ready for the presentation:
And just after filming:
We have made a start on her ocean themed up cycled dress, but not enough to write about!
Extra Curricula Stuff
The girl attend church and are active in the church youth group. They sing in a children’s choir once a week and give concerts three times a year. They both visit a friend’s house once a week and Abs also sees her best friend once a week if they are both free. Abs doesn’t feel like she is getting out enough so I suggested she go back to her drama class, which she is contemplating. Being such an introvert, organising anything which takes me out amongst the people (😬😂) is difficult for me. I must improve!
It’s been a good start to the year, even though Charlotte had a trip to A and E last week and we needed to take a few days off to take care of her. In general though, it’s been great!