January 2025

Happy new year! So, we’re now in 2025. That sounds like such a futuristic date! And the ticking over to 2025 now means we can say we’re going on our gap year NEXT YEAR! We’re on the countdown to July 2026 when Aggie will have finished all of her GCSEs, Peggy will have done most of hers too and we’ll be jetting off to turn home education into worldschooling for 12 months.

But that also means we’ve got to get a lot done in the next 18 months. So, it’s been heads down in January to get a good head start for the year. But we couldn’t be all about the books, so we fitted in a fantastic four-day budget trip to Cologne for Peggy to get some German practice in.

What we've been up to

• GCSE subjects
  • Highlights this month
• Non-GCSE learning
  • Anatomy course – Dreaming Spires
  • Law course
  • KS3/Pre-GCSE English course
  • Ancient Greek course
• Extra-curricular activities
  • Music
  • Sports
  • Volunteering
• Day Trips and One-off activities
• Trips Away
  • Cologne
  • So that was January!

Sciences – we’ve had to do a catch up at the start of January as we didn’t get all the term 1 classes finished on our SouthWest Science School courses. We do love these courses but the amount of work scheduled on the timetable for each week is not evenly spread. Sometimes one subject can be done in an hour whereas we had one physics week which took us 4-5 hours due to multiple videos and assignments. We’ve now learned to look ahead to future weeks to see what’s coming so we can assign the appropriate amount of time (and enthusiasm when it comes to physics!). By the end of this month, we’ve now got back on timetable. For now…

German – Peggy has now completed the KS3 German CGP book and is ready to move onto the iGCSE textbook “Stimmt” in February. She is already at GCSE foundation level on Duolingo but we’re going slow and steady through the textbooks to get the grammar right. German is hard!

History – Aggie has finished her unit on Elizabeth I. This has taken longer than anticipated but she’s really embedded her knowledge which is great so early on. She’s done this pretty much on her own and has produced some really good notes and learning aids. We were going to spend a month looking at exam technique for this unit but instead we’ve decided to get cracking with the next unit instead; we’ll do exam technique for both units before summer. Aggie has chosen to do the unit on the Cold War and we’ll be using the lessons on National Oak Academy as our base to mix things up a bit.

Business – now we’ve decided to do business next year instead of this year, we only really need to do one session a week on this subject. Compared to the other GCSEs, the content feels a lot less for business. This means we can explore more around the topics and look at the huge number of case studies that Edexcel has on their website to accompany the course. Peggy is clearly enjoying it all as she’s asked to do either accountancy or economics GCSE when we get back from our gap year.

Ancient History (AH) – one of the four topics we’re doing for AH is Alexander the Great. We’re not going to cover this unit until much later in the year but when I saw an online course about him, we jumped at the chance to do it. Peggy has therefore joined a six-week class run by Thinkers Meet Up aimed at GCSE level. She’s really enjoying it and it’s given her a good taster of what is to come. TMU do lots of classics courses but they don’t record sessions if you can’t make it live. We’re always out and about and so that makes committing to a six week courses very difficult. It’s such a shame otherwise we’d do a lot more of their courses. I think they’re the only provider we know of who doesn’t record.

Maths – Aggie has reached a milestone in maths this month by finishing all the foundation level syllabus for maths iGCSE. We’ve started working through foundation level past papers and revisiting topics that she’s not so sure on; we’ll do this for a month before moving onto the higher level topics. Foundation level material forms about 40% of the higher paper and so it’s definitely worth spending a good amount of time on this level.

Non-GCSE learning

We’ve never normally done a lot of online courses but we seem to be doing a lot at the moment. I think it’s just we’ve finally found a handful of reliable providers who keep releasing great courses!

Anatomy course – Dreaming Spires

Aggie has looked at the nervous system this month and her narration work has been based on the heart. She’s also done another group project this month which went well. She’s really enjoying the content and also working with others for the monthly projects.

Law course

Aggie has done a three-week course this month with Kate’s Law Tutoring on forensic science in law cases. She’s absolutely loved the sessions and tells us plenty of interesting facts when she comes off the call. I’m sure we’ll be booking onto another course with Kate when she releases the next bookings.

KS3/Pre-GCSE English course

Peggy has declared English to be her favourite subject this month. She’s still absolutely loving her KS3 course with Jenny from Arts Discovery and looks forward to her lesson every week. This month they’ve been looking at the book The Giver by Lois Lowry. Peggy has given it a very rare 10/10! They’ve explored both literature and language skills around this book; Jenny is so clever at using one text to cover so many things. Peggy has used her pocket money to buy the next three books in the series as she’s so keen to read more about this dystopian world.

Ancient Greek course

Peggy and I have started a beginners’ Ancient Greek course this month with H M Classics Academy. Peggy was keen to give it a try and so we opted for external help on this one! We’ve done three lessons so far and have pretty much got the alphabet memorised. Peggy has worked hard on her homework between sessions and is now already ahead of me. My creaky old brain is finding it really hard to learn whereas Peggy is picking it up really quickly. I suspect she’ll leave me behind very soon!

Extra-curricular activities

Music

The girls have been busy at their brass band rehearsals this month getting ready for the Area Championships and the Youth Championships in February and March. They have a set piece to play for each so the judges can more readily compare bands.

This month they also spent a morning at the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) at a lower brass workshop as part of their Festival of Brass. They played together with 14 other tuba players – that’s not something you get to hear every day! The sound they produced together was pretty special.

Sports

Aggie completed her Aquatics Helper qualification this month and was awarded her certificate. There’s now a long wait until she can start the teacher training qualifications as you need to be 16 for this. She’s got plans to complete this in the summer when we get back from our gap year and before she starts college.

Volunteering

We’ve helped out three times this month at “Monday Club” as many of the usual volunteers were away on holidays or off with illness. We missed the meal week as we were in Cologne but did the usual toast and brew-making and lots of washing up!

Day Trips and One-off activities

I think for the first time ever, we did no day trips or workshops this month! We really have had our heads down working hard.

Trips Away

Cologne

But it wasn’t all work! We managed to book a bargain city break to Cologne in Germany for four days. We didn’t fall in love with Cologne but we definitely enjoyed everything there was to see there. From the stunning cathedral and the chocolate museum, to amazing art galleries and even a Roman museum, we walked 31 miles in those four days! You can read more about where we stayed, what we visited and where we ate in our post about our four days in Cologne.

So that was January!

It definitely feels like the never-ending month of the year, but we’ve actually enjoyed this January. It’s been good to hit the books again after three weeks off over Christmas and it’s been great to take Peggy to a country she’s long wanted to visit. Overall, it’s been a great start to 2025!