Precious Memories

This is the post I usually use to document all the stuff that went on outside of school learning, only this week I took absolutely no photos.  Can you believe it?  I’m not sure that has ever happened before.  I think I’ve been a bit preoccupied by my follow up post to Saturday’s post ‘Addicted, but no Cold Turkey’.  Thank you to everyone who left a message.  I always okay any personal post with Gary, and after he had read it I shared my fears over what people might think.  His reply was that he thought I had some really lovely readers and the last thing they would be doing is judging me.  He knew you would all be supportive and you really were.  Between comments on my blog and emails I have been very blessed by you all this week.  So thank you for that.

School has been really good this week.  I am seeing fruit to the regular training I have given the children over their lifetimes.  They all do their chores without being asked and always begin their maths without me having to remind them.  Do you know what a blessing this is?  They have a heavy chore list each morning yet they are done without complaint and generally to a high standard (although I must insert here that my high standard is probably considerably lower than yours!).

Schoolwise, the children have been working through their Conquer Maths each day without any worry and are slowly making progress.  Once again I am so grateful to Conquer Maths for helping my girls get to grade level.  A6 has begun Conquer Maths with Gary at night time.  I still use a couple of different curriculums during the day with her but Conquer Maths is the one I want her to learn to use independently.  We have started her on Reception age level knowing that she will work her way through this very quickly.  I am hoping by September she will be completely independent, only needing help when she doesn’t understand.  I am still working through grade level maths with a couple of other curriculums.  B4 has begun reception age maths using Heinnemann maths which she is really enjoying.  So all in all maths is good!

During our morning meeting we are working our way slowly through chapter five of Who is God? as well as reading through the Mystery of History Volume three each day.  We are also currently doing an explorer study on Christopher Columbus and so I read out of our main biographical book about him.  I have plans to extend the morning meeting to include the younger children.  At the moment they listen and play with play dough but I am thinking of starting the meeting with more books geared towards the little ones.  We have our morning meeting for an hour each day so I think we could fit in some littles’ time as well.

Mum is still listening to A6 read everyday as well as reading aloud her current read aloud chapter book, vaguely following the Sonlight curriculum, just using the books they recommend.  She is doing really well, although even in the quiet of mum’s house her biggest hurdle is still her concentration.  Mum has started her writing too, which she also struggles with due to concentration issues.  She writes just a few words each day but mum makes sure she does those few words really well.

The older ones are still using Cover Story and still LOVE it.  Writing is something they all enjoy now and I never hear moans of complaint from them.  Whilst the older ones do Cover Story independently I focus on the littles.  I try to do FIAR with them each day as well as some read aloud of the Dr Seuss science books.  A6 in particular likes them so I think we will be doing more with them over the next few months.

We are still ploughing away with IGCSE  Biology, covering DNA replication, Mitosis and Meiosis.  It has been very hands on and the children seem to understand it well, even the child who likes science the least.

In our history we have been focusing on Michaelangelo as our artist study.  I will be posting next week but we have all had a ball and the work the girls have produced has been really lovely.

C12 began back at her singing lessons and has almost finished the song she has written to Gary.  L12 also began back at trampolining and immediately completed her level seven badge.  She is now on level eight which once she has finished that she will move up a class with older children, which she is very excited about.  T13 has decided to stop fencing as he had gone as far as he could without competing, which we were reluctant to have him do due to the time required taking him to and from competitions.  He understood completely, thankfully, and has decided to focus on his biking.  He is currently trying to find a mountain bike club he could join and is going on a long bike ride with just his daddy once a week in lieu of a fencing class.  They went yesterday and really enjoyed themselves.

Apologies for this being rather heavy on the writing but low on photos.  I shall try to do better next week!  Enjoy your weekend everyone!