Week 31 ~ Crystals & Caterpillars

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 Britain1 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 😉2 Michael the cat 3 Rose discovered that Pak Choi makes the prettiest rose-shaped prints 1 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. 2 3We went shopping & bought a new box of sea salt, just for Rose. The girls had fun searching through for more crystals. 5 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. 1   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.   2 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   3 Rosie’s Caterpillars arrived today! This is our eight year of home ed & our eight year of having caterpillars from Insect Lore 5 We both plotted their length on graphs in our nature journals, & shall continue to do so, until they pupate. 6

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;

‘Who’s In Charge?’

Rose:

The Enchanted Wood

A Year On The Farm

Collecting Rocks & Crystals

Gazzilions of the Usborne Beginners

A Child’s History Of The World

Elianna:

Mockingjay

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!

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