Precious Moments

I love starting a new topic! We are learning about World War One which is new to me and so very interesting. I have so many plans for making this as fun as possible.

Each morning after devotions the girls and I have read aloud together. I am still reading the Edwardian Mysteries (there are four of them and the girls enjoy them so much) and we have added Peter Pan and J.M. Barrie biography (which is so well written and so interesting):

I postponed the girls’ presentation for a week because we just weren’t quite ready to do it justice. So this week I have decided to hold off on their workbook schooling giving us about an hour of extra time to focus on the presentations. Each morning they are practicing the whole thing so that by Saturday they will be word perfect:

We have also been doing bits and pieces to finish off prepping. This included cutting out fish so we can throw them at our speakers and a rather fun feeding tube to demonstrate the force feeding that happened to the suffragettes in prison. The balloon is meant to represent a human stomach:

Delight learning was as you would expect – Abigail in the kitchen and Becca at her newly acquired sewing machine. Abigail spent Monday practising making Ration Scones for their poetry tea party on Friday:

Tuesday she made a very lemony and delicious lemon cake. She was disappointed because it fell apart as she put them onto the cooling shelf. It didn’t affect the taste though and we all thoroughly enjoyed a slice at teatime.

Wednesday, she focused on her Baking and Cake Decorating Diploma, and learnt some useful tips to make her own fondant:

On her course she learnt about making her own fondant from scratch, so decided that was what she wanted to do on Thursday. She baked a chocolate cake with mint flavoured buttercream inside. She also put a thin layer on the outside of the cake to stick down the white mint fondant she had made. She dyed some of the fondant and decorated her cake with it. Its minty chocolate tasted so good!

Becca, bless her, was so so excited to be sewing again. First she needed to familiarise herself with the new to her machine:

She is so competent and confident – she set the machine up, threaded it and altered the tension – all by herself! Maybe I’m easily impressed but I don’t remember teaching sewing to the older girls being quite so easy. Becs just loves it so much. She decided that she wanted to finish the hearts she had started before her last machine died:

Wednesday she sewed some curtains up for her brother. This was the first time she had worked with anything other than cotton or felt, and the curtain was made of a really slippy material. She struggled a little to keep the sewing straight, but she didn’t give up:

Her brother was happy with them, and that’s all that mattered to her:

The rest of the week she spent making a couple more hearts:

The afternoons are spent on their World War One projects. We start with read aloud again:

We are enjoying all three books, although ‘What Tommy Took to War’ was not what I thought it would be. I didn’t know that the term ‘Tommy’ is a word for a soldier in the British army, I thought Tommy was a man! Anyway, it is a book about all the paraphernalia a soldier might take to the front line. The first item, believe it or not was a good luck charm which was a man with his thumbs up called ‘Fums Up Lucky Silver Charm’. We didn’t have any silver so made ours out of air dry clay:

The second item was sweetheart jewellery. There are lots of different types, but we made an army ribbon brooch which displays the soldier’s regimental colours:

We are also doing some poetry study on war poetry written during World War One. We are reading out lots of different poetry but focusing our studies on Wilfred Owen:

Each week we will be studying one specific poem of his. This week we have been focusing on ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’. Becca has surprised me by her enthusiasm. I am going into huge depth with each poem, and each time she learns something new she squeals with excitement! Who knew?!

The girls have been adding to their literary devices books each time we come across personification, alliteration, metaphor and similes. I have a feeling we will be using these a heap over the next few weeks of war poetry.

I also read about what events led to the start of World War One. I have two text books, one of which has many pictures and one of which is a little heavier for the girls:

The first week of our World War One unit is all about the geography and countries involved, as well as learning why there was a war in the first place. To do this we are making a HUGE map of Europe with our trusty paper mache:

I hand drew this map! Ads pointed out a heap of mistakes, but once again I find myself ever so thankful for not being created a perfectionist. So long as the map is accurate enough to do its job well and fairly accurately, I’m okay if it’s not perfect 👌

The plan is to let it dry and then paint it accordingly with different colours for the Central Powers (Austria-Hungary, Germany and Turkey) and the Allies (Serbia, France, Russia, Britain). Countries who were neutral to begin with or who joined in the war later on will be painted another colour. But this week we managed to get the oceans and seas painted:

My goal this week was to make sure the girls knew and understood how and why the First World War started. I had a couple of activities for them to do to check:

Whilst Abigail was baking, I asked her to tell me all about the beginning of the war, how it started, who the Central Powers and the Allied Powers were…she remembered it all!

Along side learning about World War One, I am doing country studies. This week we learnt about Austria-Hungary which culminated in the making of some Hungarian Goulash:

At the end of each day, we all went for a lovely walk, sometimes in the mud in the woods, other times around the houses:

Weird walking, poo sticks and snuggles. Sums up our week perfectly!