Half Term Holiday

The week started sooo well. I'd arranged for Granny and Granpa to deliver my youngest to art class whilst I stayed home and got on with the house work and packing for our short break. It would be so much fun taking a leisurely drive to my mam's and then staying over in our caravan for a few nights. Ironing done, packing almost done, tea cooked, everything still going well :o)

The family had got together and set off to collect the caravan. Once hooked up and ready for the off my hubby noticed something wrong with the car. The accelerator pedal had snapped! We couldn't move forward at any great speed at all but we had to get the caravan back in the compound and in it's usual position, now that was fun!

We rang the RAC man and arranged to meet him back at our home, so we slowly made our way home. The RAC man couldn't fix it so had to tow the car into the garage - at this point I rang my mam and explained that we wouldn't be going to see her afterall :o(

Hubby arranged a replacement car for the next day so undeterred we put our plans back into action and set off. We decided we would stay the night at mam's house and then return home the following day.

In the end we saw the funny side of it and had a lovely time and just thanked God that it hadn't happened when we were flying down the motorway, not that you can fly down the motorway with a caravan on the back but you know what I mean ;o)

Hard at work!

During our sort out we came across this model of the solar system belonging to my son. My youngest then repainted it after finding out about each of the planets online, which then led to her re-doing a Solar System Digilapbook using this (just click on the boxes to reveal the information about each planet.

Below Molly is taking an interest in the planets, I suppose they do look alot like the balls she plays with :o)

We've also been trying our hand at calligraphy, Medieval style, to coincide with our history middle ages lapbook (which is coming along nicely :o)). My youngest has so much patience for it, it's unbelievable, she really puts me to shame. Although her line goes a little wobbly on this sheet, she has all her letters correct and all the swirly squigly bits in the right place too. I haven't bothered to take a photo of mine because I only managed a couple of letters and even then I don't think I did them that well.

Here is the art group homework that my youngest has done ready for her class this week. It is wet on wet water colours. She had to choose a painting and copy it. I love the effect of water that she's done. She goes to art every other week with about 6 home ed teens and she's loving it.

My son is currently learning Java, which is a programming language for the web and computer programs and of course he is onhand to help out with our computer queries :o)
My eldest is currently enjoying half term, refuelling her batteries ready for the next onslaught of college work :o)

Polymers and Glow in the Dark Slime

We had an impromtu science lesson today thanks to Aurora. My daughter really liked this as it was messy, my son liked it because it looked so good under his black light at the end... I knew we'd find a use for that thing one day :o)

First you had to open up a high-lighter pen and run cold water on it catching the liquid in a cup.

Then mix the liquid with the glue and borax and give it a good stir.

We used white glue here because I'm a cheap skate and wouldn't use any new clear glue until we'd used up the old stuff :o)

The white PVA glue didn't work very well,(sort of ended up with a bouncy ball) so we did another batch and used the clear glue which worked really well and we ended up with flourescent slime.

This is it under the black light, quite impressive.Below are pics of cornstarch and water mixed together to show how polymers act (as a solid when pushed together and as a liquid when left to run down your hand).

This had my son engrossed for quite a while.

The best bit about the class was that everything was explained as you went along so there were no tricky questions that I couldn't answer, phew!

Thumbs Up!

You know when you've almost finished painting but you've just got a bit left to do so you don't want to stop and do menial tasks like cook for everyone? well, that was where I was last week so my youngest volunteered to throw a few pizzas in the oven so that I could carry on.
Yippeee! so on I carried.I was just about done when I heard a shriek from the kitchen. My daughter had managed to burn her thumb whilst using oven gloves!

Picture of said thumb above but luckily it didn't blister or mark in anyway thanks to her quick thinking of running cold water on it. (I think I can tick first aid off for this weeks life skills lesson).

Below is offending oven glove which is rather thin in the padding area so she gave it a thumbs down but the next photo has our new oven gloves with lots more padding ready for when she next cooks :o)

My daughter edited all photos for me because I really wouldn't know where to start.

Theatre Royal again

Back to the theatre this week to see RSC Hamlet for kids and it was fabulous. My youngest and I really enjoyed it. We left friends their and had a shopping day gathering everything we needed so that I wouldn't have to go into town again for a while, it's far too busy for my liking.

When we got home we found a rather hungry and grumpy older child.

He felt this way for two reasons 1) There wasn'y ANY food to eat in the house at all and he was starving, 2) he'd wanted to go see Hamlet but we didn't book him a ticket way back in February because he hadn't wanted to go then.
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To comfort him for his mother mistreating him in this way I made him a batch of Granola (which he adores).

My youngest has continued to work on various lapbooks and meet up with friends during the week. She's also preparing for halloween by sewing her friends dress, I think she's done a really good job of it too.

My middle child continues with his on line work and is currently looking for an affordable C++ course to do and my oldest child is actually enjoying her college course, I would go as far as to say she is thriving on it. I am so pleased with her.

My hubby is currently on his holidays from work so we have lots of DIY planned for next week; I'll update if we actually get any done because usually something else happens and plans change, but that's life.

Carrying on:

Tuesday:

My youngest continued with maths,which she's doing really well with whilst I whizz around the house implementing flylady again. Then we read Romeo and Juliet to refresh our memories and then went to the theatre to see the play. It was fantastic and well worth the money. My youngest, if who you remember hated anything to do with Shakespeare last year absolutely loved it and is still going on about it now so after much umming and arring, I'm really pleased we went.

Wednesday:

Maths, English and various lapbooks done today along with conker picking in the rain. This was alot more fun than it sounds and we managed to get a rather big bag full, enough to do our conker webs with (I'll take a photo when they are finished).

Thursday:

We went to the Theatre Royal again for a workshop to go along with the play. It was very good, they showed us how they practised understanding the play and how they got into character before they even knew the lines. After that we had lunch and then did a bit of shopping, replenishing my youngest's sock drawer... I'm not sure what she does with them but boy do they disappear!

Friday:

At some point during the week my youngest started working her way through an I.T. book so she spent the day finishing off a few projects in this mainly related to Romeo and Juliet. She continued her Middle Ages and Reproduction lapbooks and I'm pleased to say she isn't finding it confusing doing so many at once, she rather likes it.

Afterwards we watched Downton Abbey, a new series on BBC.

I've been cooking alot this week using my new book that hubby bought me. It's full of great sounding recipes, that are really easy to make, I can't wait to try them now :o)

Blogger is playing up and won't let me put in the link but it is www.fixfreezefeast.com for anyone who wants to find out more.

We've been to see the grandparents too at some point but you know when you get so busy you forget which day it is and everything becomes a blur... well that's what this week has been like for me. I feel sure I've missed something important out but I just can't remember what it is, oh dear I'm getting so old ;o)

All go here :o)

Wow! What a week!

We've been sooo busy this week ,it's been a real tonic, just what I needed...

We started our table/school work on Monday morning:

Maths with MEP Maths. This is free and starts at Primary level and goes up to GCSE.

English: CGP workbook, we already had these from my other child so it didn't cost us anything but I think you can get them slightly cheaper from Amazon or Ebay.

Geography: We decided to do a Cultures of the World lapbook from HOAC seen as we've done about the continents,we thought we'd learn about the people on the continents.

Science: We've started another HOAC lapbook on Reproduction. This was a free one from many moons ago that I'd been saving until the right time and I think that time has come.

Then off to Alison's in the afternoon for art. I went for coffee and chat with the other mum's at a cafe whilst all the children were at Alison's (another home ed mum with the patience of a saint, who forwent the coffee in favour of being surrounded by 6 teenagers).

When we got back youngest made delicious chocolate chip cookies, the sort that just melt in your mouth, yummmm.

When I started this post I intended to write about the full week but time has passed too quickly so I'll have to finish up later.