April has been a month of two halves: the first dominated by musical residentials for Peggy and the second back to our usual structured learning with a poorly Peggy for several days after too much galivanting! We had just one “normal” week in April which we were all grateful for after a busy few months.
Subjects done jointly
When both girls were in the same place at the same time, and fit to learn, we managed to fit in:
Chemistry – we enjoyed starting our new topic on the periodic table. We did look at this a couple of years ago but we’re now looking at it in a lot more detail and at a much higher level.
Spanish – both girls have started weekly Spanish lesson this month with Kelly from Adventures in Spanish. They’re in the KS3 improvers class for a six-week block which has a total of ten children in. It’s just the right level for the girls and they’ve thoroughly enjoyed the two lessons they’ve had so far. I wondered if 1.5 hours would be too long, but Kelly keeps all the children engaged for the full time – impressive! The girls have worked hard on the homework, taking it beyond the basics asked by Kelly. One week they were researching Malaga and Barcelona to write up in Spanish what there is to see and do there. Very handy for our adventures later in the year…..
History – we’re back to working our way through the Aaron Wilkes textbook and have been looking at England just after 1066 and the affect the Normans had on society and the landscape of the country. The girls particularly enjoyed learning about the lives of nuns and monks and creating their own doom paintings depicting their idea of heaven and hell. We’ve worked pretty quickly through a few chapters so we can cover everything on castles before we head out in May to see some for real.
General science – we’ve watched two live sessions by Theatre of Science: one on dandelions and one on ear wax! Both were entertaining and we came away with a whole host of weird and wonderful facts.
Food Technology (or Home Ec as us oldies call it) – the girls looked at knife and cutting skills before cutting up all the ingredients for a big batch of spaghetti bolognaise and fajitas. They learned about different types of knives, the two main knife holds and then cut carrots into julienne (matchstick strips), brunoise (tiny dice), macedoine (medium dice) and jardiniere (batons) pieces.
Forest School – we’ve just had one session due to the Easter holidays and the girls were glad to be back round the fire cooking up vegetable and noodle soup with bread for everyone.
GCSE subjects done separately – aiming for June 2024 exams
Latin – Aggie is just plodding through the De Romanis text book but we’re trying to spend more time on learning vocab as we go along.
Physics – we’ve had a bit of a breakthrough on physics and Aggie is now working a lot more independently on this (yay!). We think she’s finally accepted that she won’t necessarily understand everything the first time round and that she needs to keep persevering. We’ve found extra resources for her to use on those topics which she’s finding challenging and they’ve made a big difference. The stumbling block at the moment is definitely applying her knowledge to answer questions but that’s something that will get easier with a lot more practice; she’s only been doing physics for a month and a bit!
Business studies – Peggy hasn’t started on this subject yet as she was wiped out for a week after her residential trips. We’ll get cracking in May now she’s refreshed and back to full health.
Other subjects done separately
Maths – Aggie has finished the year 7 maths textbook and is super keen to start on year 8 after we’ve done a bit of revision. Peggy is still reluctantly plodding through the year 7 book wondering when it will ever end!
Creative writing – our plan to write something every week failed before it started! This is something we’ll get back to doing in May. Hopefully…..
English – Peggy took it upon herself to read through each of the Shakespeare plays in the abridged format by Andrew Matthews. Her favourite so far is Much to Do About Nothing, with Othello as a close second.
Craft Projects
Peggy – she’s not been around much this month to do any crafting but she’s part way through crocheting a duck for a friend’s new baby.
Aggie – she’s had lots of free time this month as her partner in crime abandoned her for nearly two weeks. She’s been continuing crocheting Dobby the House Elf and has now moved onto his limbs. She’s also crocheting an elephant for a present but she’s doing this without a pattern so is making it up as she goes along. It looks really good and she’s super proud of it. She’s just got the ears left if we can find another ball of wall the same colour…….
Aggie also put together a book nook from a kit she bought after our visit to the MAD Museum in Stratford. She spent a lot of time on this kit; several hours at a time. She needed a bit of help with some fiddly bits and Daddy had to mend some of the electrical circuits but, other than that, she did it entirely on her own. It looks really impressive on her bookshelf.
Music
This month has been all about music for Peggy. She’s had an absolute ball!
She spent a week down at Malvern College with the National School Symphony Orchestra (NSSO) for her first time away from home for more than 2 nights. We’ll let Peggy tell you all about it herself but it’s safe to say she’ll be back again next year as she had such a great time.
After four days back at home, Peggy then disappeared off to Whitby for two nights with Dobcross Training Band. Again, she had an amazing time and we all enjoyed going up for the day to see them perform on the famous Whitby band stand.
Peggy also enjoyed a special tuba focus day at the RNCM this month where she got to play alongside 30 other tuba players, a lot of whom were playing at professional level. What an inspiring experience!
After spending nearly 7 hours a day playing Tony Tuba at NSSO, she has unsurprisingly come home a much-improved tuba player! She is now working towards her grade 4 ABRSM exam in July and has started going to Youth Band rehearsals as well as training band.
It really is amazing what a difference an intense period of hard work can make. We’re so proud of what she’s achieved this month and so is she!
Aggie may have spent the month being dragged around Peggy’s various musical activities, but she has herself also attended a middle brass day at the RNCM and played in the St George’s Parade through Manchester with the Youth Band. It was a long 2.5 mile walk but it was so lovely seeing everyone smile as the band went past.
Sports
Aggie competed in her first swimming gala of the season, representing her swimming club. She was only expecting to swim in one race but ended up doing two. She particularly enjoyed getting to know her team mates better whilst sitting on the side of the pool for two hours together.
Books
Our reads for this month have been:
Peggy – Incarceron by Catherine Fisher and The Shakespeare Stories by Andrew Matthews (all 16 of them!)
Aggie – Good Girl, Bad Blood by Holly Jackson and The Midwife’s Apprentice by Karen Cushman
Dom – Game of Thrones Book 3 by George R R Martin and The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley
Susan – The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri and November 9 by Colleen Hoover
Day Trips
We went to see How to be a Good Monarch with Tracy Borman which is currently touring the UK. We really enjoyed this show which covered 1,000 years of Kings and Queens in Britain. We all came away with lots of new facts and an appreciation of eras in British history which we’ve not really looked at much before. Tracy was a very engaging presenter and she kept the mood light with an 80s soundtrack and funny cartoon visuals. There were only a handful of children in the audience as it was late for a school night but it was definitely suitable for all ages and the girls thoroughly enjoyed it.
Trips Away
Whilst Peggy was enjoying her week at NSSO, we stayed down in Malvern too in case she needed us (which of course she didn’t!). We enjoyed days out around the area which is not somewhere we’ve explored before. We went to Croome Court, Hereford, Chedworth Roman Villa and Hellens Manor and enjoyed a walk along the Malvern Hills to the trig point. It was strange doing all these things without Peggy and Aggie didn’t like being an only child for the week one bit. It was a lovely week but Peggy was most definitely missed by us all.
Website updates
- We’ve written up about a book study we did before Christmas on Bug Muldoon and the Garden of Fear by Paul Shipton which we enjoyed.
- How did we choose the history textbooks that we use for KS3? You can read about that here.
So that was April!
One of those months of being here, there and everywhere and needing a month at home to recover afterwards!
