Our March round up starts on 6 March when we returned from Egypt. We won’t pretend it wasn’t hard coming back to the UK. We went from a sunny, cloudless sky with temperatures of 28°C in Egypt to snow, biting winds and -4°C in Manchester. We missed our new friends and the freedom we had over there. We missed the adventure.
After just a week of returning, Susan launched into 9 days of solid exam marking which meant Dom had to hold the reins for a while home educating wise. Whilst in Egypt, we’d decided we were going to share the home ed load more (and take the financial hit of Dom working fewer hours for a few years) so we got to put that into practice straight away!
What we’ve been up to
Subjects done jointly
The girls worked together on a number of subjects this month:
English – they did quite a swift study of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in anticipation of us going to see the play mid-month in Stratford upon Avon. The aim was for the girls to know enough about the play that they’d understand what was going on on stage.
Biology – we worked through the topic of cells, focusing on specialised cells and single-cell organisms. This was an entirely new topic for Peggy (Aggie had looked at it before) and it seemed to go down well.
History – we took over the kitchen wall with a timeline on which we put all the sites we’d been to in Egypt to help us understand the chronology of it all. It was also a lovely way to reminisce about what we’d got up to and what the girls could remember about what we’d seen.
Psychology – we followed another course run by Charlotte of Survive Succeed Achieve. This four-week course (which runs live but we watched the recorded videos) was about criminology and criminal/forensic psychology. It explored the reasons why humans commit crimes, the types of crimes that are committed and the way we respond to crimes in modern societies. This is the third course we’ve done with Charlotte and all four of us enjoy watching them together.
Forest School – we attended our first session back for 2023 which of course included food and great company. On the menu this time were Welsh cakes cooked on the open fire. They turned out surprisingly delicious!
GCSE subjects done separately – aiming for June 2024 exams
Latin – Aggie is continuing with Latin and has completed another chapter in our De Romanis textbook. She’s starting to tackle lengthy translations independently now. She was getting everything right as I was sat next to her correcting her as she went. I needed to step back to let her learn from her mistakes more (which has been tough for Aggie who is used to getting things right) and as a consequence she’s improved massively. There’s a lesson there for Mummy too!
Physics – we decided Aggie would work towards a second exam next summer so Latin didn’t dominate the entire year. She sat Environmental Management on its own last year as her first exam, and it totally took over everything and got pretty monotonous by the end. We thought Latin and Physics complemented each other nicely to study together.
However, it’s not started off well. Let’s just say it’s gone from the hope of Aggie working pretty independently on this using free videos to Susan “teaching her”. This subject was supposed to free up some time for Susan to spend with Peggy but it’s not working out like that at the moment. But it’s still very early days and we’ll see where we are at by the end of April….
Business studies – Peggy is starting this after Easter with the hope of it being her first GCSE next June. We had a look through the syllabus together and the resources we’re going to be using. The most important job though was to go stationery shopping, as every new subject deserves a new matching stationery set! We’re now all set to start in April once the Easter break is finished.
Other subjects done separately
Both girls
Maths – the girls have powered through a lot of year 7 maths this month as this is a subject they can work on independently which has helped whilst both parents have been working.
Creative writing – we’ve agreed that the girls need to do one piece of creative writing once a week going forward. The girls therefore wrote a short story each using a given opening line. Peggy, especially, has been a reluctant writer (much preferring to type) but we’ve agreed we’re going to work on handwriting, punctuation and grammar from now on. We’ve been reluctant to correct any writing she’s done to date in fear that it would put her off writing full stop. We’re bigging up the fact that she’s moving to year 7 in September so needs to work on these things and, so far, fingers crossed, we’re not facing any opposition.
Aggie
History – Aggie has been watching a course on Norse Mythology run by Jake of Humanatees. She does this snuggled up in bed and enjoys this more relaxed form of learning. She comes down telling us all sorts so she’s definitely engaging with it fully.
Humanities – Aggie has been to four-hourly weekly sessions at a local home ed hub aimed at teenagers. She really enjoys the social aspect of these sessions and it ticks her need as an extrovert for interaction with peers. This month they’ve been focusing on the country of Greece and its history, geography, culture and food. These sessions are child led but with an adult up front helping to steer discussions and activities. As expected, Aggie particularly enjoyed the week they focused on Greek food!
Peggy
Spelling – Peggy continues to work through the year 6 Twinkl spelling curriculum. Spelling is not Peggy’s forte but she actually enjoys working through the various weekly worksheets and we’re seeing an improvement in her spelling as a result.
Coding – Peggy has done lots of sessions with Dom this month on Python. They have worked their way through Oak National Academy’s Key Stage 3: Intro to Python Programming, learning about iterations in order to make quizzes where you have to keep guessing until you find a correct answer (“Can you guess my lucky number?”). Peggy got very excited about a times table quiz which used the same iterative loops.
IT – Peggy has worked her way through a course on National Oak Academy on spreadsheets, using Google Sheets. She’s learned about basic data inputting, sorting, filtering, formatting. It’s been a really comprehensive basic introduction to spreadsheets; the highlight being using formulae to quickly double, treble or halve a recipe.
Craft Projects
Peggy – she decided in Egypt that, when she got home, she’d finish off projects that she’d left half done. She’s now finished Flo’s clothes so she’s now fully decent, completed Tim the Turtle and finished off a crochet hook holder.
Aside from crocheting, Peggy has also finished the structure of her teddy’s bunk bed. This project has been going on for a while…… Next up is to make the bedding. That’ll probably take her up to Christmas….
Peggy also spent many hours making a marble run out of a kit. It’s pretty impressive! She did a brilliant job considering the kit said it was for 14+
Aggie – she wanted to start a new project (looks like her koala is destined to remain one-armed and one-legged…) and so has started a new pattern to create Dobby the house elf from Harry Potter. He’s enormous and it’s taken the month just to do his head, eyes, ears and mouth. It took her several attempts to get the ears right but she’s really proud of sticking with it. As always, we’re super grateful for the support and encouragement of Clair at the weekly crochet club we go to.
Music
This month has been super busy music wise and this was the main reason we didn’t stay out in Egypt after the hub had finished.
Both girls attended a brass workshop at the RNCM and got back to their usual weekly brass lessons.
Aggie had a big concert with the Youth Band at the local Civic Hall called “Massed Brass” which ended with a joint performance with another band which sounded brilliant (and loud).
Both girls competed with their bands at the all-day National Youth Brass Band Championships which was close to home in Stockport this year. Both bands did really well and Peggy was singled out in the Training Band by the adjudicator as being an inspiring young tuba player – he referred to her as “an icon” to others in the band; that was pretty special.
Peggy started to practice her tuba parts for her residential with The National Schools Symphony Orchestra next month. They’re not too difficult which means she’s got more time to add the extra things like dynamics and style.
Exercise
The girls got back to hockey training but missed a session because of snow. We didn’t realise the practices ended at Easter and stopped until September. Unfortunately we couldn’t go to the final matches of the season due to other commitments but the girls will be back in September with their sticks! I’m sure we’ll manage to enjoy Thursday nights off in the meantime.
Aggie continues to go to swimming and gymnastics training every week. She’s working on a new floor routine set to music for her first external gymnastics competition in July.
Books
Our reads for this month have been:
Peggy – The Lost Hero by Rick Riordan and she’s just started Incarceron by Catherine Fisher
Aggie – Sawbones by Catherine Johnson and Good Girl, Bad Blood by Holly Jackson
Dom – Game of Thrones Book 3: A Storm Of Swords by George R R Martin
Susan – World Without End by Ken Follett
Day Trips
This month we went to another Into Film free screening, but this time of a factual documentary all about asteroids called “Fireball”. It was really interesting and engaging and we particularly liked the cinema (it was a Everyman cinema rather than the usual Odeon) as we got to sit on comfy sofa seats to watch the film.
We went on from the cinema to the newly refurbished Manchester Museum which has been closed for over a year. We enjoyed looking round the new displays and eating our packed lunch in the new picnic area. There was a special Egyptian Mummy exhibition which we had a look round. It was funny to see pictures of things we’d seen for real in Egypt. The girls were clearly still “Egypt-ed out” so we didn’t stay for long.
Trips Away
We managed to squeeze in a mid-week trip to Stratford upon Avon this month. We’d booked in a tour of the National Centre for Guide Dogs so we built a mini holiday around that.
The Guide Dog Centre was fascinating and we got to see a puppy which was just a few minutes old. Sadly they had no other puppies in the centre (apparently that’s really unusual so we got super unlucky), but we still learned huge amounts.
We visited Shakespeare’s Birthplace, went to see Julius Caesar at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and finished up with a fantastic morning in the MAD Museum. We’ll get posts up about these places as soon as we can.
Other Bits and Pieces
As we did with Aggie, Peggy has got a leavers’ hoodie to mark the end of her primary school years. She picked a bright green colour and can now be seen wearing it all the time!
The girls were reunited with their friends after not seeing them for 5 weeks. They had lots to catch up on and nonsense to talk.
Aggie has started the process of having orthodontic treatment. We’ve done the first consultation, come up with the two-year plan and nearly fainted at the cost of it all (no NHS option now due to closed waiting lists). This will have a major impact on her horn playing but we’ll just have to see how she gets on.
So that was March!
All in all, it’s been a pretty standard busy month! In the background, we’ve been writing up a diary of everything we got up to in Egypt as we’re keen to keep the memories alive for the girls. We finally finished that today so here is the link – Diary of our Egypt Worldschool Experience.
