Life Cycles and some simple homeed science

This week and next week our learning theme is 'Life Cycles'; in order to cover all that we want to get through, I have made this week far more structured.  How has this worked, I hear you ask?  Well, firstly I am now totally knackered (as normally I do put things off a bit so I can go sit down and knit) but this week I have focused 100% on the children and it's taken a lot of energy! Secondly, I am totally behind on my own work as that also often gets priority, BUT we have done loads, and I've enjoyed it - I think the children have too!

As the girls are older I wanted to get them to create thier own projects; and what is the best way to engage with teenage girls?  EMAIL.  I emailed them links to websites and asked them to complete their projects!  Excellent use of technology, and Sophie has now created an excellent Power Point presentation (it sings and dances and speaks too!) and Lily is still mulling over hers.

I found some great websites for KS2, including this interactive one about plant reproduction (a little young for the girls but they liked playing the games!) and then I very kindly let them take apart one of my daffodils.

Following the book....

We are working on three projects; Seed Sowing, Seed Sprouting and Growing Bacteria.  The children were asked to divide a piece of paper into three and to predict what they think the outcomes will be; what I loved most was the they all chose a different way to divide their sheets (just a small thing but interesting I thought).  The girls were totally freaked out about growing Bacteria (which is currently cultivating in a warm cupboard!)

Making their predictions

Noah choose a 'Mercedes' design to split his page!

Sowing Seeds

Seeds ready!

Preparing the shoots

Petri dishes to cultivate bacteria.... yum!

 We will be keeping a diary and will update the blog on our findings!  If you want to copy what we did, these are the books we used:



I pre-ordered the resources from Amazon and have a few other things lined up to; great books and very easy to use!

angela xx

My perfect home ed day

Last Monday we had the most perfect home-ed day; I wanted to share it with you as I feel I normally moan about the bad bits of home-ed.  It's not all bad - just hard sometimes - but last week we had a brilliant day and if I could have 3 days out of 7 like that then I would be a very, very content and happy mama.  Something to aim for.....

So we woke up to a thin blanket of snow on the ground - yay!  After breakfast the children headed off to do some reading - our theme for two weeks is 'Africa', inspired by the new BBC documentary, so we raided the book shelf and found lots of different books to support the general theme.  My favourite book is 'The Illustrated Atlas of Wildlife' which is full of amazing photos and facts about Wildlife and is just beautiful.

Before we headed out to do our Supermarket Challenge Noah and I made some paper aeroplanes from this awesome kit he got for a Christmas pressie (How to Make Paper Planes); we measured how far the planes flew, converted the measurement from cm's into decimals and then back to imperial - Math's in action!

The nicest thing about home ed is we are on our own time-table (mostly), so we headed outside to introduce Chester to his first snow:

After lunch we watched the Africa documentary on catch up, and then the children did some 'Copy Writing'.  This term I want to focus on writing, grammar and punctuation and to try and encourage the children to develop a love for creative writing.  Several homeed families I know recommended Brave Writer to support these aims; I love the website and the ideas that are shared and we are slowly introducing some of the concepts into our weekly work - it's really inspiring.

Late in the afternoon I headed off to visit a client, leaving Sophie in charge; I came home to find a tin full of delicious rice-crispie cakes made by Sophie, and that Lily had created some home-made beauty products; the best part was they had left the kitchen clean and tidy!!

Honey scrub

Honey and Milk bath foam

Home made lovelies!

Finally, I finished off my day with some crafting to complement the cold weather - a lovely winter headband; I took the pattern from my friends website 'Craft Snob', made a slight alteration and embellished it with a flower.

Perfect.

A really lovely day......now, if only I could repeat that!

angela xx

I figure that if the children are alive when I get home, I've done my job. 

Roseanne Barr 

Joy

I have put 2012 behind me and am looking to start 2013 with a new sense of energy.....something I have done to help me do this is use a great workbook that is a gift from the blogger and author Susannah Conway.  It was a really powerful little book that has helped me immensely and I want to share it with you too..... so go ahead, download it and spend an hour (or two) looking to the future.

Last night I also created an 'inspiration board' for my 2013 in the 'Wombyns Circle' I am part of; I have never made an inspiration board but had seen my lovely friend Keeley use them.  Keeley (a celebrant and soulful doula) helped us settle into our thoughts as we created our boards and it was an energising evening.  Again, something I really wanted to share and perhaps inspire you to do to!

My word for the year is JOY and I am working mindfully to bring that into my every-day; I do have to work hard at this: as I pointed out to Sophie who was moaning about our first back to school session (see below) that no, I do not wake up every day going 'yay' - a full day with my children today; no, I do not skip around the house thinking 'yippee' - I am responsible for my children's education, and no, I do not relish justifying our choices to new people we meet, and if I can put the f****** effort in, so can she.  And of course, all said with complete JOY.


This week we are 'back to school!'  We sat down on Tuesday and brainstormed ideas for this half term, which I am now putting into plans and actions; one of our projects for this half-term is to review the local super-markets.  After feeling fed up with the children moaning about putting away the shopping (delivered in colour coded bags in a one hour slot I might add) Ben suggested they should undertake the challenge of experiencing a weekly shop in full.  The three of them had to list all the major supermarkets they could think of, and then narrow those to 6 shops; next they had to decided what we would be reviewing / looking at as part of the trip and how they would rate each shop and finally put these into a table format.  At the end of the 6 weeks they will then use Excel to produce and publish the results of their findings.  It was so great to see them debate what and how and who, and to take our first shopping trip with a real degree of interest; they have used / will use so many skills with this project , so thanks Ben for the idea...... watch this space!

Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself. John Dewey 

angela x

New Year...... New school term!

I have been trying to write this blog for a week; not sure if I am procrastinating or if life genuinely is getting in the way.  Either way, I am here now as I start to think about our new term.....

We've had a lovely break over the holidays and I have enjoyed not being responsible for the children's learning and education over the past few weeks; perhaps that is why I am now looking at local schools on-line, as I get the wobbles (again)!!  I really don't know what the next year holds as my way of working will change from October (read here) and the flexibility I have may well be lost.

I have some activities lined up and booked for this term (and have not had to organise any myself this time which is nice)!  It is going to be harder this term as I am busy with work, but our loose plan is mornings at home learning, a lunch time walk with the dog, afternoons trips out (or me working).  Sophie turns 14 tomorrow so can officially be in charge of 'baby-sitting' - hurrah (although I have a feeling this may cost me)!!

I will be back to blogging again, but as this is just a 'quick' update, I thought I would leave you with some pictures from the last day of the world - at least in Mayan terms - from a blog I had planned about our day but never got round to doing!

 happy new year!

angela x

Santa can I have a little more time please?

Ok, so just exactly WHERE does time go?  You think you have all the time you need; I planned lovely craft mornings, afternoons by the fire, movies, hot chocolates, and enjoying the excitement in the build up to Christmas.  For one reason or another, we haven't achieved that, and my little plans haven't evolved. Still, with 7 more sleeps to go, there might still be time.............

Finally finished! 

We have got quite a few things done however, including the letters for my fire place; I started these last year as a gift for someone, but they were so time consuming and fiddly (and ok I did procrastinate a little) that there is NO way I am giving these away!  I am feeling quite relaxed about Christmas, however I would just like a little more time to enjoy the season as its totally our favourite time of the year, and it's all passing just too fast!  Here's what we've been up to.....

Enjoying Crispy Creme (yum)

Finishing Christmas Pressies

Amazing photos by Lily

Frosty mornings!

Knitted a coffee cosy for a friend 

Tucked up my new baby

Have eaten LOTS of mince pies!

All that glitters

The past three weeks have seen some new challenges come into my life - they're not really for sharing on this blog, but let's just say that events and surrounding emotions could easily have been from an EastEnders episode.

A couple of the things I have learnt from these experiences however, are firstly, facebook, blogs, twitter and such only allow people to see a tiny part of what is really happening in our lives - and only the bits we want them to see, and secondly, it really is the little things that matter: laughter, sharing, wine, good coffee, cuddles, saying sorry and most importantly - time with friends and family.

The past 18 months has been a real journey for my family and it's not always been easy.  Homeed is the road that we are currently on, and I am having to learn (and un-learn) so much; using the blog helps me to see not only what we have done, but to formally process (lots of) the thoughts in my mind.  When you choose to step outside of 'mainstream' choices, it can be a lonely and scary place; I still have the same concerns as parents with children in main stream education (will they be ok? am I doing the right thing? am I a good parent?), but I am certainly not questioning the choices of others - I am too busy worrying about my own choices for that!  This blog gives you a snippet into my daily life; I don't tell you every-time I cry (well sometimes) or when my wobbles have me googling local schools, or when I actually miss the school run.  I tell you what's going well, what we are up to, how we have reflected on things, or changed things, or learnt something amazing together.  Those are the bits I want to share as that is what keeps me going: even on the really bad days, sending them back to school is not necessarily the answer (we've tried that one).

This time last year, I was not in a good place with homeed and I have realised that whilst we have had some tough times of late, actually we (I) am in a much better place; we still explore the option of school, and we still change regularly how we work our weeks.  Homeed is not perfect - but then again, neither is school.

So in-between the tears, angst and working things out, today we officially 'started' our Christmas holidays with a trip to see Peter Pan on Ice followed by hot chocolates and cake.  We have also started on those Christmas Crafts............

Snowmen Nails!

Glittering snow flakes

Tree hearts

A festive robin

 angela x

“All our knowledge has its origin in our perceptions” 

Leonardo da Vinci

How to make unique/vintage shorts.

First of all you need a pair off shorts what ever kind of style you want but it looks good with denim,I choose some old high waisted shorts. Then you need to pin the shorts of how high you would like to cut them, I also then ironed along the bottom to create a clear crease to cut along!

 Next I sketched a quick design of how I sort of wanted them to look (this is a very bad sketch but its just to give a quick idea!!). My design is a bit of a twist on the american flag!



Thirdly I cut just under the creased line , then using  the sewing machine we sewed a line a bit above the crease all the way around the leg so that when we frayed the bottom it doesn't fray all the way up the leg! (if you don't have a sewing machine you can hand sew all these steps).

Fourthly I cut a square shape out of material that would fit in the pocket then after pushing it in  I sewed a lose running stitch to hold the material in place ready for sewing it with the sewing machine! (if you are sewing by hand you do not need to do the lose running stitch!) Then we sewed it on the sewing machine.

Then I cut out another piece of material that would fit in the main section of the leg, we then again sewed a lose running stitch and sewed it on the sewing machine.



After the step above its fraying time!! To do this you make small slits as close or a far apart a you would like at the edge of the shorts below the crease and stitched line. then using your finger just pull where the slits are to make the strings become loss they should become frayed after a while. If you want to shorten the frayed strings  you can just trim them with some scissors.

 Finally I put them in the wash on a quick wash and they came out like this! They will be fine being washed agian and agian! if you would like the back pocket detail to please scroll down!

First the back pocket look first you need to cut a line along the side you would like to be open as you can see I have cut along the left hand side. Next I chose a piece of material and cut a square then tucked it into the pocket! I then sewed along the sides of the square on show and sewed back the flap. 

Thats all the steps thanks for reading and enjoy making them!!!!! If you would like the fabrics they are from tatters in staines. 

Lily xxx