Ds1 plays drums at Rock School for a week. (The staff praised him on his talent and were gobsmacked he'd never had any lessons - just a teeny proud mum moment :) ). Meanwhile ds2 went rollerblading in the local park, and dd went for playdates with her friends.
We go to a local festival, held at a large allotment. Dd stays at the festival with friends for the rest of the day, while we made our way home.
We pick courgettes from the garden. (Note the closeness of the yellow football. Plants in our garden have to be hardy to survive!)
Ds1 continues with his IGCSE chemistry and Geography reading
Blackberry picking, to make crumble and wine.
Ds2 empties the counties' libraries of books about manga. Then teaches himself.
He makes a short list of equipment he needs to do animation 'old school', then goes onto the internet to do a price comparison.
Ds2 decides he wants to make shortbread.
We move paving slabs to make a base for the new chicken coop that we're making out of a packing case that was being thrown out (our 10 hens need more space).
And discover a huge ants' nest:
Lots of talk and plans for the kids' new Minecraft server:
Thoughts on design:
We took down our posters and information about Australia and New Zealand:
And replaced them with posters on space and art:
We started a chart of moon phases. The moon decided to hide behind cloud for the next three nights :)
The children caught flies and fed them to the garden spiders, overcoming their fear of spiders and experimenting with size and type of fly.
We walked to the park intending to pick blackberries. But came home with elderberries for wine.
Swimming in the lake (bit chilly, but fine once we got over the initial shock!)
And catching crayfish
Ds2 took the screwdriver to the waterpistol to try to fix it.
Wine, all bottled up and fermenting happily under the piano.
Dd and I have a discussion about wine-making, fermentation, yeast, gas and the similarities with the chemistry of bread baking. So that's chemistry, biology, self-sufficiency and home economics in one 5-minute conversation.
Dd continues on her reading journey. Having finally decided she wanted to learn to read (or at least was willing to give it a go), in a matter of weeks she has gone from simple words like cat and bed to reading words like 'couldn't' and 'everyone'. She seems to have an excellent memory for sight-recognition of words, less tendency I think towards phonics deciphering. Each of my children has been different and found their own combination of what works for them. I haven't been teaching her. I just sit with her while she reads. She'll do it at her own pace when she wants to. Being, at the peak of "reading readiness" (which she, herself, has recognised) I expect there'll be no stopping her now.
The result of our group effort and the dog eating an awful lot of king-size cheap dog food (our stove is the shiny one):
