Author Archives: HHaricot

France update – week 21

oooh, we are getting really close to having SB home now! A happy phone call. SHe was told she was the best singer at school, and has a lovely operatic voice :) . she would like to do more singing, but i am thinking when FrB here, we are using so many weekends going about places, that not sure whether joining choir and orch is going to be possible. She also did v well in the last physics test and is i think on the whole doing well at school! She has found that she is surprisingly good at handball :) . Currently she is reading harry potter in french. I think she has had a wonderful exchange.

40 days – operation playroom!

this has slipped since christmas, with things played with, presents scattered everywhere. On weds i admitted i couldn’t bear being in the room as completely over my tolerance. It looked like this.

weds4ed

argh!! so this weekend some time was put to tidy it up. Which is done, and I can breathe again. however…

jan 2014 024oops ;) so one last chore

jan 2014 028yippee :) :)

40 days – still tiling bathroom

but it is getting there. really hoping we will get on to do the flooring soon, or the painting :) . but i like the effect of this little wall, and the taps. Hasn’t DH done a brilliant job so far :)

jan 2014 016

Week 3 tick sheet 2014

Not quite such a bookish week

20140119-181906.jpg

another family christmas!

we always have an extra christmas/festivus with DH maternal familiy in january. so this sat we all got together, laughed, disagreed, played games, swapped presents and generally had a lovely family time. BB was the only child in a group of adults, but did really well [helped by the fact we had preagreed that after dinner/presents/game she could then go on her laptop :) . she loved all her presents. It is lovely to see the wider family. we are hoping to see many again at the family party in may.

jan 2014 family party 030 jan 2014 family party 024

jan 2014 family party 025 jan 2014 family party 029

reduced weds4ed and other things!

we had what is called an exclusive gathering this weds ;) just us and TB, so 3 kids! was quite relaxing in numbers, tho BB had got out of bed the wrong side or something, and struggled all day with just being awake i think! Art was in the style of Klee, using oil pastels and contemplating colour mixing, contrasting colours, block colouring with hidden or less hidden extra shapes to give meaning to the whole picture. BB didn’t finish and R completed 2!

weds4ed
weds4ed weds4ed

TB did some maths games, the first I missed, as phoning work to check up on something i had been doing the night before, and the second was yahtzee – i remembered how much I like yahtzee

weds4ed weds4ed

After pasta we did some science – this time we did a biology experiment using our benedicts solution to test for sugars. only bb had done before, and raises a fair number of ‘sciency’ points in it – how do you know there has been a reaction, what makes a fair test, is what you surmise really what has happened etc!

weds4ed weds4ed
weds4ed

In other news this week, all the clubs are back so BB restarted them all – I had another cubs badge to sew on in a hurry! Home ed groups are back – multisports was last week and this week was the conservation group on friday. this was mostly pruning fruit trees. BB hurt her thumb tho, so hoping not broken!

Kontemplating Klee

I know! terrible alliteration. We have been mostly working on 20th century painters and art styles. We looked at Klee, talked about the variety of his styles, but concentrating on the more more blocky. I have always liked Klee, and have a poster of a north african scene in our dining room. We considered the blending of colours within the blocks, how there was a tonal impression in the picture, and then a few details making the whole image into a landscape rather than purely abstract. The children quite liked the blockiness being similar to minecraft.

We started with choosing the medium. we used djeco crayons that are similar enough to oil pastels but very easy to use. They are easy to blend. We used sketching paper. We had some fee paper to put our designs on and to use to practice belnding and then sketched out our blocks freehand with pencil.

weds4ed

Following that we gradually built up our pictures. Some going with bright and colourful, some going with contrasting blocking, and some quite idiosyncratic. I think mine is too picture representative, but I liked the one by TheB. We all got more proficient at blending and making different colours as we progressed, and some mixed colours weren’t quite what we had expected.

weds4ed weds4ed
weds4ed weds4ed

Here are all our pictures

weds4ed
weds4ed weds4ed

France update – week 20

We had to wait a while for our sb update. We hadn’t managed to ring them at home so tried lots of times so she rang us on weds. They had FrB birthday party over the weekend with a girly sleepover party and had lots of fun. She sounded v settled and happy :) I have told her to make the v most of her last month

Board game #4 – survive!

great game, but ruthless :)

survive: easy, chance with slight strategy, family, played with BB. draw

jan 2014 010

minecraft weekend

BB has been approved for the home educators minecraft server. She is ecstatic and spent quite a while investigating this weekend. On the minecraft theme she also made a ‘steve’ head.

jan 2014 041jan 2014 043
jan 2014 022

we did a fair bit of board games playing

jan 2014 010

BB did a fair bit of playing with things whilst commentating to me, and I sewed :) [yes, it is that time of year!]

jan 2014 016