De-cluttering...

I have got rid of bin bags (several) full of rubbish and tomorrow is another day! But I feel much better for it. I have left the deccies - though could do with packing them away now for another year. I relaxed with my beeswax block crayons and did some Old Testament prep this evening, as Hettie goes to grandad for one day a week and not sure if my parents would be happy if I turned up with a blackboard. So I decided to put the work in a sketch book, then grandad can read the stories and the work is ready for Hettie to copy into her main book. I need to practice faces, but fairly pleased with results as I'm no artist.

But I do love the block crayons!

All that rush........

........ and it was all over! But we had a lovely day with all our family. Father Christmas bought a wide variety of gifts, Ok so a keyboard was a great idea initially but now its wearing a bit. We have lots of headphones but none with the correct adaptor.

Still, hopefully with lessons and practice, at least one of us should be able to play a carol by next Christmas.

My thoughts are turning back to next years lesson plans. I need to have a good tidy so after New Year we are uncluttered and ready to go. Both girls got some nice art materials for Christmas and weaving looms so lots of art & craft to be done.

Here's to a Happy Christmas!

It's been mad, shopping, wrapping and all the usual Christmas rush. School for Issy and home school for Hettie is over. Both girls are extremely over excited, but have been warned not to get up at 4.30am this year! But I believe myself and Father Christmas are ready, just some mince pies to make tomorrow and turkey to stuff! Happy Christmas.

Busy, busy, busy ......

I'm busy Christmas shopping and with all that goes with it. I'm busy reading my Christopherus books and I'm busy rushing to see plays, get Hettie to Brownie Camp and anything else that crops up. I really want some sort of plan made so we can be ready to go in the new year. I haven't written any cards yet, let alone got them in the post!
We've carried on with our Winter Tales. Here's a sample of my blackboard, ready for the next day and Hettie's work.

Hettie added the pig!

She managed to re-tell the story well. I need to work on my summaries!

Reading.........

Lots of reading from Donna Simmons' books. Lots of new ideas and directions to take. Well worth the expense. So I have been busy drawing on the chalk board tonight, ready for tomorrows main lesson. We had a little look at word families today, and then the dog groomer turned up to give the dog his Christmas bath....one miserable dog!

We both tried our hands at watercolour wet on wet painting this afternoon. First try for both of us and I think we needed to soak the paper for longer, but in all quite good fun and lots of discussion about colours - we only used red and yellow.

Issy is rehearsing hard for her school play this week and her reading and spelling has gone a bit out of the window this week.

Hooray!

My books finally arrived from Christopherus Home School. Reasonably quickly seeing as they had to battle through the American and British postal systems. But well worth the wait.

What did we do today. We continued with Winter tales & traditions, looking at St Nicholas.

We spent some time on Form Drawing and actually walked the forms around the lounge, practised lots on our chalk boards before using the block crayons.

Pretty good, we're improving!

Christmas Deccies ... and ....Christingle

It finally arrived, the Christmas deccie day! We pulled out lots of dusty bags from the loft and played 'Nat and Deans Christmas' and decorated!

Not regular church goers by any means, we went off to the Christingle Service at our local church, with some friends and Brownies. It was very lovely and Christmassy, we all lit our candles and sung Away in a Manger.

Housework...........

I have cleaned and tidied, and cleaned and tidied some more. Our 'school room' needs to be transported upstairs for Christmas, so I took the opportunity to keep out just our Waldorfy type stuff, and put our Montessori cards in little boxes all tidy. We made room for our nature table as well. So hopefully we can start that next week.

Yesterday we went with our local Home Ed group to the Sea Life Center, which was a nice chance to chat and meet some new faces. The kids all loved the play area and had a good time.

Christmas tree buying and decorating planned for tomorrow.

Busy day ...........

Rush to work this morning. Hettie actually brought along her main lesson book and finished off her Roman Numerals page today without me nagging. It seems to be going almost too well...... This afternoon we managed to get home for an hour before collecting Issy from school, and started making some little pipe cleaner dolls. Raining hard, so cars everywhere outside school and parking a nightmare. Rushed back and Hettie off to fencing lessons. Issy struggled to get her Christmas cards finished off. Girls in bed at last, they have been alternatively fighting and running round screaming with laughter. Off for a glass of wine and to ring some friends!

Relaxing day .............

Well we did a sort of short main lesson, continuing with Roman Numerals, and looked at C and cent meaning 100, and words that show this, century etc etc. Then it was off to our weekly local home ed group meeting. We had combined this with popping in to the museum to borrow the microscopes to look at water samples. The elusive plankton were still absent. The mums are working on it. But all the children who took part in the book making produced some great work.

We had a dash round the shops for pressies (in the pouring rain) and Hettie started writing her Christmas cards, before we picked up Issy from her friends. Issy has two wobbly teeth at last, but annoyingly another of Hetties fell out today ......... :0)

A Good Morning's Work...........

Today we continued with our geography block, Australia, looking at cities and famous places. We concentrated on Sydney and looked at the Opera House and the bridge. She used the bridge for her main book page, as she decided she couldn't draw the opera house!

All was going swimmingly so after a short break we re-capped Roman Numerals and read some
Roman Numerals I to Mm =: Numerabilia Romana UNO AD Duo Mila : Liber De Difficillimo Computando Numerum by Arthur Geisert (available from amazon). I thought when the book arrived she wouldn't enjoy it at all but she loved it - its in English and easy to read, not as the title seems. We spent some time on this and she happily made another page in her maths main book. Wow - she was so busy I actually found time to do some washing, load the dishwasher etc....

This afternoon back to the grind, work (mine) and the Brownie nativity play. What a great Brownie pack we have, all the children had a part to play and were made to feel equally important. Of course it was lovely :0)

Home Ed Friends......

Today we had some home ed friends over for lunch and a walk through the woods. It was really nice and relaxed, hope they enjoyed it as much as we did!!

We've sort of started our Waldorf (adapted) curriculum over the past couple of weeks. The gnome maths is working out well and I'm amazed how quickly Hettie has picked it up. We used some Montessori cards and books from the library to study Australia and then used them in our main lesson book. Some great work produced! Copying certainly took the pain out of struggling for half an hour over one sentence.

Another home ed mum recommended a lovely book called While The Bear Sleeps all about Winter tales and traditions which lent itself well to a main lesson, and we're planning to continue to read this over the next couple of weeks in the run up to Christmas.

I've ordered lots of Waldorf books and curriculum plans, so I'm waiting in anticipation :0)