Sunday 12 July 2015

The Great Outdoors wk 26-28; 37 hours

The downside of all the lovely weather we've been having over the last few weeks is that I'm forgetting to post our time outdoors total at the end of each week, although I am still keeping track. The last few weeks have included a lovely heatwave, which we made the most of by going to a nearby Lido, and had an amazing time there!
We've had lots of other outdoor adventures too, trying to make the most of the lovely summer weather that we're having. 



Monday 6 July 2015

Stay at home Mondays and an awesome visit to the fire station!

Today has been a brilliant day of home education! Most days the kids choose to stay at the table after breakfast, pottering with activities, working to a loose rule of 20 minutes max per activity/topic, and before we know it we've done a day's work in our PJs before 9am!

I look forward to Mondays being our 'home' day. I try and get all our washing done on Mondays. And we do our 'Charlotte Mason Feast subjects' - composer study (we're listening to Rachmaninoff this term) and picture study. Today we started looking at a new artist's work - Mary Cassatt. Last night I did a brief Google search to find out some interesting facts to tell the kids about her, which I try to do to help them build connection and relationship with the artist. For us today, this included her growing up in America and moving to France (we have family living in both places), her teacher being Edgar Degas (coincidentally our previous picture study focus for the last few weeks) and the fact that she was blind for 10 years before she died, meaning she had to stop painting (we have a guide dog pup living with us so the kids were interested in why Cassatt didn't have a guide dog). I showed the kids her self-portrait, before introducing her first picture in our picture study. I think I'll save how we go about studying a picture for another blog post... 

After finishing our table work this morning at 8:30am (just as most kids at school are starting!), the kids had a bounce on the trampoline in the garden and then Eden, with my help, made a cushion for her bedroom that she'd been researching how to do yesterday. She was very excited about this! We continued watching our Muzzy French DVD with a snack and then had a quiet time before lunch. 

As I mentioned above, usually Monday's are our 'home' day, but today I decided to take advantage of a local home ed visit that had been arranged at the fire station, and I'm so glad we did! It really was brilliant! Never mind the kids, I learnt so much! I'll leave the photos below to do the rest of the talking about what we got up to there!