The theme of this month has been decorating. In a fit of enthusiasm, we decided to decorate both girls’ bedrooms at the same time before their new beds arrived (they’d outgrown their bunkbeds). We’ve therefore been mass sorting, decorating and moving furniture and children around the house for what feels like forever. It’s been chaos! But the girls are now back in their rooms and very happy with the end result!
In between all this, we’ve had a productive month academically with lots of new things learned and enjoyed. We’ve ended some topics we’ll miss for now and some we’ll be glad to see the back of for a bit; we’ve then started new ones which we’re excited about. That’s the thing with GCSEs – you know you’ll have to return to topics for revision regardless of whether you actually like them or not!
What we've been up to
- GCSE subjects – highlights this month
- Non-GCSE learning
- Extra-curricular activities
- Day Trips and One-off activities
- Trips Away
GCSE subjects – highlights this month
Sciences – we’ve reverted back this month to watching the weekly videos all together but then the girls each go off separately to work on the online assessments and quizzes (with help from me if needed). We’ve done some really hard topics this month on which I was clueless, especially in chemistry, so I needed to watch the videos to understand the content. It makes sense to watch them together rather than me separately in the evenings; I’m not exactly at my best at 9pm!
English – Aggie finished The Sign of Four this month which is the first GCSE text covered on her course. We’d already read it last summer as a family but she’s loved revisiting it and looking at it in more detail.
History – Aggie has started a new unit on the Cold War and we’ve decided to use lessons on National Oak Academy as our base to mix things up a bit. Aggie has asked that we watch the videos together as she enjoys discussing the questions and writing activities with someone. As someone who’s never liked modern history and did just medieval history for my degree, I’m actually really enjoying learning about the Cold War and sharing new things with Aggie.
Business – Peggy is now working completely independently on this subject and is producing some really good notes and revision aids. We’ve actually reduced the number of sessions we do on business per week now as we’re getting through the syllabus too quickly. We’ll be bored stiff early next year if we finish everything too soon. That’s definitely not a problem with some of the content-heavy subjects!
Maths – Aggie has spent a good few weeks working on foundation level revision which has been really productive. We’ve done many past papers and she is now consistently achieving very high marks. Funnily enough, this has done wonders for her confidence and I can even see glimmers of enjoyment when she gets a hard question right. We’re definitely now ready to tackle the higher paper content!
Latin – I attended an online talk about the contents of the new De Romanis Book 3 textbook which is coming out next month. We’ll be using this to get the girls up to GCSE standard (we’re already using books 1 and 2) and I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy.
Non-GCSE learning
Peggy completed her online course about Alexander the Great before half term and continues to love her ongoing pre-GCSE English course. Aggie has continued to work hard on her anatomy course with Dreaming Spires; it continues to be a highlight of her week.
Ancient Greek course
As predicted, Peggy has left me behind and is now doing her Greek course on her own. I missed sitting in on a few of the weekly lessons with her as we were decorating and I’ve not had the time to catch up. So I’m now merely providing moral support! She’s found the last few weeks tough grammar-wise but she’s worked diligently on her homework and appears to be getting pretty much all of it right.
Forensic Science workshop
This month we attended an online workshop by Think Forensics all about the management of crime scenes. This fitted in beautifully with the law course Aggie had just completed on forensic evidence.
The session was run by a former crime scene manager who talked through a real scene she had had to process and what the outcome was. It was fascinating to hear about the processes they go through and how you really do have to constantly analyse the situation and evidence you find. This brought back great memories of an in-person workshop we attended 18 months ago – you can read about that CSI workshop here.
Extra-curricular activities
Music
The girls got to attend a Mass Brass event at Halifax Minster this month. Their band played some of their pieces on their own and then joined together with the other six bands for some pieces all together. The sound echoing around this stunning building was really quite something!
This month was all about the North West Area Brass Band Championships held in Blackpool. After working on their set piece for four months, the day finally came to play it at the contest. The girls’ band played the best they’d every played; I may have cried a little. Sadly they didn’t place, but they honestly couldn’t have played any better.
After their performance, they got to spend time in Blackpool with their friends hitting the arcades, shops and chippies! The band gives the girls such a great social life. With children from over eight different high schools represented, it really doesn’t matter that the girls are home educated and a bit “different”.
Volunteering
We’ve helped out three times again this month at “Monday Club” as they were low on volunteers but up on visitors. We all thoroughly enjoy going to these sessions and the girls are a genuine help every week.
Day Trips and One-off activities
Have you ever booked yourself onto a workshop thinking it’s not THAT far away and then actually looked at Google maps the day before and got a bit of a surprise….
That was me this month after booking an event in Southport! So it was rather a trek over there, but it was totally worth it (phew!). All four of us attended an evening talk by Alexander Mariotti hosted by the Southport and Birkdale Classical Association. As a renowned historical consultant to the film industry, and appearing on several documentaries we’ve watched, we were enthralled for over an hour whilst Alexander told us about the history of gladiators and what their world was actually like. We could have listened to him all night! It was absolutely fascinating and even more special for being just £5 each. I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for more events run by the Association but perhaps we’ll make more of a day of it getting over that way.
Trips Away
There were no trips away this month as money had to be spent on decorating and new furniture!
So that was February!
A super busy month which helped us to not notice how cold and wet it was. We’re looking forward to March and hopefully the ability to spend more time outside without getting drenched or frozen!
