A lovely week! Monday was a bank holiday, so was a much enjoyed rest for everyone.
Rose researching the preferred diet of the Painted Lady in one of the first books I bought on our home ed journey: the wonderful Colour Identification Guide To Caterpillars Of Great Britain
Elianna writing a story on the computer as part of Intermediate Language Lessons. It is rather strangely named ‘The Dorito, The Millionaire, & The Peach’. It is a funny story 😉
Michael the cat 
Rose discovered that Pak Choi makes the prettiest rose-shaped prints 
She was also really excited to discover a huge crystal in our salt grinder & promptly removed it to look at it first with the magnifying glass & later under the microscope. She had a good search through the salt & collected varying crystals, looked at sugar crystals, Rose Quartz, & finally had a look through this book: Collecting Rocks & Crystals. 
We went shopping & bought a new box of sea salt, just for Rose. The girls had fun searching through for more crystals. 
We dedicated Thursday to learning about why we need governments, types of governments, & of course, the general election. There were some smashing one minute videos on the BBC of the main candidates giving Party Political Broadcasts especially for children & young people. We discussed a lot & the girls filled in their own ballot papers that I had made for them, so they could have a go at ‘voting’. They came with us to the polling station. Then we waited…. I was awake from 3:30am on Friday, not helped by my constant hitting of ‘refresh’ on the election results. Rose & I got up at a decent hour & watched the votes come in. It was a fun break from our usual routine & I learned a lot myself! I would highly recommend ‘Who’s In Charge?’ As a smashing resource to learn all about different governments. 
Science club was smashing again this week. What a great group they are. We discussed chemical reactions & conservation of mass. We watched a video showing the reaction between Iron oxide & aluminium, did the old bicarbonate of soda & vinegar activity, burned paper to show how chemical reactions differ to physical ones, talked a lot about cake, (hey! it is chemistry, after all!) & watched this smashing Harry Potter video about conversion of mass. We should be finishing up this unit on Chemical Fundamentals next week, then moving on to Botany In 8 Lessons for our next unit. 
Elianna’s Latin lessons are coming along nicely, though we won’t be done by summer. That is ok, we are going to be using Latin Prep One in autumn 
Rosie’s Caterpillars arrived today! This is our eight year of home ed & our eight year of having caterpillars from Insect Lore 
We both plotted their length on graphs in our nature journals, & shall continue to do so, until they pupate. 
I also subscribed Rose to the Eco Kids Magazine this week. It arrived very promptly today, so I will get back to you with what we think of it next week.
We also caught a smashing couple of BBC programmes ‘24 Hours In The Past‘ which puts six people as working class folk in Victorian times. We have watched the first two programmes & they were superb.
Plus all the regulars; English, maths & Latin. Maths almost killed me this week. Forgetting the rule for dividing decimals by decimals is really not the way forward…
Books we are reading this week;
Rose:
Gazzilions of the Usborne Beginners
A Child’s History Of The World
Elianna:
Anne Frank: The Diary Of A Young Girl.
This is dragging on now – the child needs to finish this book, but she has really lost interest.
The View From The Oak – This is a smashing book, recommended by a wonderful friend. A great living science book.
Happy Weekend!