Week 16 ~ Wild Weather

Nature study on Monday morning gave us a very wet, windy, & cold start to the week! We have been struggling to get to ‘our’ usual pond for nature study as it is a 40 minute walk & we are a one car family. We have been visiting a nearer pond, which is only 15 minutes or so away.

It is great fun here as the birds, ducks, & swans are quite tame.

I often take along my copy of the Handbook of Nature Study, but today it was just far too rainy to open & read it.

We had a lot of fun observing the pigeons today

As well as our usual wild bird seed, Rose took them some mealworm. Which, to be honest, they were a little fussy about.

My big girl, practicing her Latin chants.

Both girls are cracking on with their maths

M&M’s always help 🙂

We have had a big schedule change here the last week & a half & I am loving it! If you remember, I used to get the girls downstairs at 7am & read to them for a good hour. It gave them a chance to embrace the day gently & made sure we got a lot of reading aloud & poetry into our day.

Then last week, I went to wake up Elianna & she was fast asleep. I mean *fast* asleep. I just didn’t have the heart to wake her. So at 7 am I started Rosie on her lessons & she worked through them well & with minimal fuss & grumbles. She had a b-i-g stretch of time to play before we worked on her history in the afternoon, and I began to think we were on to something! I have carried on with this. Elianna has been really responsible, setting her alarm & of her own accord starting her work at around 9am. So much of her work is independent – I give her a lesson plan for the week & we check in with each other throughout the day. A lot she can accomplish alone, some lessons she needs input, but honestly, this new plan is working so well. Except…we are not reading aloud as much. This is a big part of education for me, so I need to find a new place to ‘peg it’.

I shall keep you posted.

Rose has enjoyed learning about coal mining this week. We read about how coal is made in our encyclopaedia & watched a TV program about mining at the start of the industrial revolution. We had a go at replicating a narrow coal mining passage in our living room with cushions, tables, & a quilt. Rose had a wonderful time smashing coal from our scuttle with a hammer 🙂 We found some interesting resources online & Rose drew a fabulous picture of an explosion in a mine. She is really taken with this topic, so I want to research to see if we have a mining museum close by. Being in Lancashire, I should hope we do!