Tuesday SB spent most of the day on her arts award project [bit of an argh, as this week should mostly be about classical civ controlled assessment and her piano exam!] pm is the arts award class which she really enjoys. Ctually, io shouldn’t argh, because when later on in the week i apologised that our home ed hadn’t been rigorous enough that essay writing was easy for her, and perhaps i had let her down compared to my schooling, she did point out that she had had lots more fun, and that my school type [grammar] wasn’t available, and there was no evidence that the local schools were better than us. always nice to hear our children affirming the choice to home educate, as it is SB’s choice now as to whether to continue.

Tuesday was also DH birthday. he was very happy with his teapot and eggcups and the birthday candles in the dinner!

weds was a lets get down to it classical civ controlled assessment planning fest. I was a bit panicky to find that she and the tutor hadn’t really covered this as much as i thought they may have done. SB has never done anything like this before, and I am pretty rusty at this kind of thing [see comments in the ticksheets for my mind mapping!] however, when we sat down together, i asked her to start in the middle and pick things in the book that helped her answer the questions, and she found some events for Dido and some for Aeneas, whilst i printed out for her the mark sheet and the spec, so she could then use that to come up with a plan for context. It slowly and organically grew from there, and although the whole plan not finished by sat morn as hoped for, it was at least clearly developed. She hasnt approached it as I would have, and the flow therefore isnt quite the same [this is when we had the convo about essay writing!] but i have a psych degree, and this had a fair bit of essays making an argument, so i have all that practice. this has to be her own work, with some help and guidance, and i have been very careful to cheerlead and help her decide and prompt about context, but not to actually interfere with her decisions, flow and what she wanted to include. I have no idea whether it is at the right level tho for this exam, just hoping so since she has done a fair bit of work for it. [home ed panic!]

After lunch on weds we declared it to be SB’s birthday and opened presents before going to see Jupiter ascendant at the cinema. She was v happy with her presents [especially since she thought she was just getting the replacement retainers for those she had lost!] . One of those presents was a lap desk with LED light – cool Jupiter ascendant is a feel good film which is best watched to enjoy rather than use any thinking or critique .

so happy birthday my glorious 14 year old . We love you very very much, and are proud to be your parents . evening activities – marching band for SB and judo for BB.

The day didn’t end quite so smoothly though, as somehow BB managed to severely wrench [or something] her shoulder and ended up in a and e at midnight

argh! and she has been in pain since, seen at fracture clinic, had bloods done etc etc.

Thurs – SB had french and multisports, and classical civ prep! due to BB feeling in pain and miserable, there was a friend chain to get her to all the activities – thankyou – and then the bus back. She is pretty good now at getting the bus in and out of town. Friday was a total classical civ prep day. not as much really as i would have liked done, I think she missed me sitting there chivvying, getting tea and biscuits and general cheerleading!

So what about BB? well, actually she has spent a lot of this week in arts and craft mode, with lots of pencil work  – mostly angry birds pictures, computer based pictures and fimo. I have been really impressed with her angry birds fimo set – will have to take a pic of them all, but here are some going into the oven.

There are no ticksheets this week tho – SB would be all classical civ, some maths, some piano and a bit of french! BB would be some conquer maths, lots of art and craft!

BB pretty much stops anything formal, tho still reads a lot including fact stuff and soaks up interesting things. it is a bit of a push to get her back into the swing of things, but hre we go. her ticksheet is essentially unchanged.

SB mostly did clarinet until after her exam [woot again for a merit for grade 4] and her french and classical civ stuff, with a bit of bio and geog thrown in. She has now pretty much finished the geog coursebook, so we are planning on using the revision book and doing practice papers and getting the style right now in that before the exams in may. Geog and classical civ i think are both exams, certainly for the gcse, that have a functional english component to them of grammar and spelling – not her strongest point! with biol, we have done weds4ed experiments that complement the syllabus, but have pretty much got to the end with some genetics stuff. the last section of her biol to do isnt really experimenty. she is a bit behind on where we haad hoped she would be]Will have to ask the kids if they want to redo some more practical biol stuff or start working towards chemistry. Having chatted about going for grade 4 piano this term, or abandoing and grad working on grade 5, SB has decided to go ahead with it. SO she has been duly entered, and we are hopefully going to put in the work for a pass/merit. Anyway, so far this week has been a pretty good SB educational week. we have looked at and honed her starchart [she prefers stars to ticks currently ] and tried to make it as reasonable as possible – showing what is ideally done, but like all our ticksheet/starchart iterations, we all know it isnt compulsary to follw and do everything! The gaps are for her to add things to. the activities top layer aren’t weekly, and are either fortnightly or monthly. It does look a bit intimidating… Am hoping that we will have some very good weeks as well as more slack weeks! certainly this exam home ed is quite different kettle of fish to the primary school – years up to 8!

so what did happen?

SB had arts award [bronze] on the tues pm, getting herself there and back by bus as she is more independantly minded. she is doing something photography related, and i am hoping she is independently getting on with that! Her pictures were looked at, and ok, and she has homework to research an artist. probably one with a photographic interest.

weds was are weds4ed, where we finished off the degas modroc, which look fab, some fun science and also board games and minecraft

also a very long judo, and BB had her judo grading in the seond half, so a full 2 hours for her, and she was exhausted! She did get her next belt though, which is her yellow belt, so very happy

thursday and clarinet lesson was cancelled, which was unfortunate as SB’s grade 4 clarinet exam is soon. However, she is sounding good, so should be OK there was also multisports, so a great opportunity to meet friends and get muddy. there are quite a lot of teens/older kids there now, which makes SB happy. So it is a good group.

Thursday was also BB’s birthday hooray she got some lovely presents and was particularly happy to have got a 3ds from my mum and some games from us. Even more lovely, was that Josie from patch of puddles came for a sleepover to enjoy birthday cake and go to cubs as a friend. BB was really excited about that and they had a lovely time. BB had a wobble on the return about sleeping arrangements but was all settled and the girls happily watched malificent with icecream.

Friday was french lesson for SB as she is working towards her igcse then conservation group. After this josie was exhausted and went home. we then got ready to party party with sorting out the dining room for the influx of computers, and some baking for party food. I guess I might do the weekend as a separate post.