Precious Moments

Each Saturday night we have family night. Sometimes one of the teens cook or maybe Gary cooks with the help of the younger ones… this week, Lillie cooked a lovely chicken tikka. She was the one organising family night, and as such had commandeered the dining room table. So we ate on our laps wondering what on earth she was going to subject us to later on…

I’m not sure what this is called, but basically we took it in turns to roll a many sided die and whatever it landed on we would have to take the forfeit or rewards. Rewards included orange, a shot of chocolate milk, cream eggs and sweets. The forfeits included silly string, a plate full of squeeze cream, a shot of lemon juice, a pickled cucumber and having to sell something for a whole minute. We went alphabetically:

Lillie took great delight in Gary’s many forfeits. He especially did not like the shots of lemon (which he got many, many times) but Lil’s favourite was the squirts cream, which she enjoyed so much she fell on the floor laughing:

We set a time to end, and then all decided that Lil needed to take a shot of everything that was left, be it squirts cream, lemon juice or pickles…all mixed up together:

Ha! Revenge!

The next day it snowed. We get snow so infrequently in the south of England. The younger ones (including Lillie!) played for most of the day in it:

They had a competition on with their Uncle Adrian and his daughters in Northern Ireland to build the best snowman:

Meanwhile, I was inside cooking up a heap of steaming waffles (which I am finally getting the hang of), fresh fruit and yogurt. Sooo good:

This week the girls have been finishing off this month’s work books. They aim to finish one set (maths, English, spelling, science and social studies) each month, with the goal of finishing twelve books per subject per year. They completed them all and took a test for each work book:

During their delight-learning Becca continued with her project on Vincent Van Gogh, choosing a lesser known painting of flowers called ‘Daisies and Poppies’. She started strong. So strong. The vase was painted beautifully. Her copying skills are really developing. But this week, her perfectionist nature, which she really battles against, got the better of her. Two days in and I could see she was becoming more anxious about the final painting. Sure enough, she began crying… she tearfully explained to me that she couldn’t do it – the picture was too hard to copy – that she was only nine and this was impossible! I encouraged her to just focus on one part of the painting at a time, and not to even look at the rest of the painting. I helped her in this way to finish off the vase, the back ground and showed her how to make a paint wash to paint the table. One step at a time.

She’ll finish up next week, but I do think this has been her least favourite picture to copy. She has two weeks left, and then we’ll choose another painter for her to copy.

Meanwhile Abs baked some chocolate orange brownies. Oh. My. Goodness. They were so good. Even though they had orange and chocolate in them, they tasted exactly like the chocolate orange you can buy in the shops:

She cut them into a gazillion tiny pieces, so when I tell you that I had six pieces, they were very small pieces, hopefully you won’t be too disgusted with me 🙈

Abs also began her newest course in Baking and Cake Decorating:

Monday afternoon we learnt all about bats in our zoology I. Did you know bats fly with their hands not with their arms? I didn’t! I love learning alongside my children.

Tuesday afternoon we focused on the explorers. I read the girls ‘The Last March’ from Robert Scott’s diaries. These are the few entries he made before dying on his way back from the South Pole. The girls were so sad, until I pointed out that they died doing what they loved. They knew the risks and dangers of trying to get to the South Pole, and went anyway.

The main activity I wanted the girls to do was to begin planning an Antarctic midwinter party for a family night in a couple of weeks. Robert Scott began the tradition of Antarctic Midwinter parties, so we thought we’d follow suit and have one ourselves. Today we made some notes and the girls made some invitations out of supplies that they would have had back in the early 1900s in Antarctica (newsprint paper, colouring pens/pencils):

Wednesday we did a little more on the suffragettes. Mostly we have finished learning about them, and now the girls are just preparing for their presentation in a couple of weeks. Today they ran through the actually talking part of their presentation, and practiced the song they will be performing with Lillie, ‘Sister Suffragettes’ from Mary Poppins. So, so funny watching them:

Thursday was meant to be on the Titanic. February is soon to be upon us, and you all know what that means. I am feeling terrible, as usual. Thursday was particularly bad and we really managed very little, just some read aloud and chatting about their presentation (Abs is doing the suffragettes whilst Becca is doing the Titanic). I asked Abs to read the comic biography about Samuel Morse (of the infamous Morse code used to call SOS aboard the Titanic as it sunk). Thomas, bless his heart, is making a morse code key today with the girls so Becca can utilise it in her presentation. He also helped the girls to build a Lego Titanic ship which we will be using for the stop animation we are hoping to create next week:

Today, I am school planning whilst the girls take it easy. I have read aloud to them from Robert Scott’s biography and also from the Edwardian mystery we are currently enjoying.

Over the past few weeks LIllie has been working to a professional brief. Her art was not the one chosen to go forward with but she was told her art work looked like that of a third year degree student or a masters student. So needless to say she was very happy. The brief was for a medical instrument company, and they wanted a piece which would be put on the sides of their van and on the wall of their conference room. Lillie drew lots of happy pictures of her younger sisters:

I am so enjoying watching her develop as an artist. I’m not sure if I mentioned, but she has a place for next September at the University of Creative Arts to do her Batchelor’s Degree in Graphic Design. Things are falling nicely into place for her.

We have just two more weeks of term before half term holiday, and lots to cram into it, before starting World War I. Fun times ahead!

Have a great weekend everyone x