We’ve gained another teenager in the family this month! Peggy celebrated her 13th birthday in style by spending the day at Cannon Hall Farm in Barnsley and enjoying a picnic in the car (thanks weather). She requested homemade scones with jam and squirty cream and then a Chinese takeaway for tea.
Peggy has always had a strong dislike of getting older. She used to get upset when she was little saying she didn’t want to be a big girl; she wanted to stay little forever.
Now she’s grown into an awesome young woman and appears to have accepted her fate. Indeed, she’s now happily planning her campervan conversion and route around Europe for when she’s 18!
Aside from birthday celebrations, we’ve really had our heads down this month. We want to finish for a month’s break on 4 July so we’re trying to get various topics and papers finished so we’re all tidy for the end of this academic year. We’ve created ourselves a rather long to do list so we’re doing our best to get everything crossed off!
What we've been up to
- GCSE subjects – highlights this month
- Non-GCSE learning
- Extra-curricular activities
- Day Trips and One-off activities
GCSE subjects – highlights this month
Biology – we’re finding the science iGCSEs a lot. Aggie is doing all three separate sciences whilst Peggy is doing just Chemistry and Biology (we’ve delayed physics until her maths is a bit stronger). There is so much to cover and we’ve become worried about doing them all at the same time in June 2026. We’ve therefore made the decision to move Biology to November 2025 so we can get at least one of them out the way. Neither of the girls plan to do biology as an A level and so it’s just one we want to get done and dusted. We’ve therefore had to spend a lot more time on biology this month as ideally we need to get through all the content before our summer break. Thanks to the fantastic structure of the course we’re doing by Southwest Science School, this is easily done and we’ve got through a lot in May. We’re on track!
German – we’ve been really struggling with German. Dom has been trying to support Peggy through the iGCSE (he did German for GCSE) but he’s struggled to fit it in around work and so Peggy isn’t doing it consistently. It’s also been hard for him to take on the lead and to work out a plan of attack. I often take for granted that I’ve been doing it for five years now over many different subjects so putting together a study plan for a GCSE doesn’t faze me; poor Dom had rather been thrown in the deep end with a notoriously difficult language subject as his first go! Peggy has therefore enrolled on a GCSE course which will start in September with the aim of still sitting the exams in May 2026. The tutor has invited Peggy to join the current KS3 class so she can get up to the right level ready for September. We’re relieved to find that Peggy is pretty much at the right level so that bodes well!
History – Aggie enjoyed doing the first two units of the online National Oak Academy lessons for the Cold War topic but has now changed to using the textbook instead for further units. We wanted to try something a bit different but after the novelty of videos had worn off, she wanted to return to the textbook approach. I’m happy with that as it’s easier for me to follow along in the background with a book.
English – Aggie has completed the first of many past papers for English Language iGCSE which she’ll sit in October this year. She’s come on so much since starting lessons with Jenny at Arts Discovery and I’m confident that she’ll be well-prepared come the autumn.
Maths – another milestone has been reached in the maths department: Peggy has finished all the foundation level content. Yippee! We’ll do plenty of consolidation work over the next few weeks and then we’ll start tackling the higher paper content from August onwards.
Non-GCSE learning
Dreaming Spires – Anatomy course
Aggie finished her thirty-week anatomy course this month; Fridays will seem strange for a while with no online anatomy lesson at 3pm.
Overall, it’s been a very positive experience and Aggie has learned a huge amount both in topic content and in study and learning techniques. I’ll write up more about this course later as it’s definitely something I want to share with you all.
Ancient Greek course
Peggy has continued to attend every weekly class and has tried to keep up with as much of the homework as possible – an awful lot is set each week. It’s starting to get hard and more of a challenge. I’m in awe of how much she is taking in; I still can’t read the alphabet! We’ll give Greek a break after this term as next academic year she really does need to concentrate on her GCSE subjects. She definitely wants to keep learning it though and so we’ll aim to start the two-year GCSE class run by HM Classics Academy in September 2026 (she’ll do the first year whilst we’re on our gap year).
True Crimes Law course
Aggie has absolutely loved, as usual, the latest course run by Kate Law Tutoring. The theme of this course was true crimes and they looked in detail over three sessions at the recent Nottingham murders trial. Aggie particularly enjoyed learning about something so recent and which she’d seen in the news.
KS3 English class
Peggy has been reading Woman in Black in her class this half term. She’s really enjoyed the book and the gothic style creative writing tasks she’s done using the book for inspiration. It’s all change for next month though as she’s moving onto a bit of Shakespeare by looking at The Tempest using a graphic novel adaptation.
Extra-curricular activities
Gardening
Peggy is doing really well tending to her plants. She’s potted on her cucumbers and her green beans are slowly climbing up the bamboo canes. The strawberries are fruiting nicely and have so far avoided our resident snails. The herbs haven’t come to anything though which is odd. We’re not sure what she did to those when she planted the seeds as nothing has come up. We’re blaming the seeds!
Music
The girls had one big concert this month which was a joint concert with another brass band from the local music service. Some players play in both bands so they had a very busy/tiring evening!
The girls have now picked all their pieces for their ABRSM grade 7s so it’s now full steam ahead to get everything ready for their actual exams in December. We say it every time that we’ll start working on scales super early, but you can be sure we most probably won’t. Although for grade 7 there’s some tricky ones so we may start those maybe a month before…
Sports
This month marks the end of an era. After doing gymnastics since she was 3, Aggie had her final ever training session this month. Now felt the right time to leave. She’s been at her final club for four years and it’s been the perfect place for a teen who just wanted to do one training session a week but still get the opportunity to do competitions. She’s loved every moment of it but has now accomplished everything she could realistically want to achieve with just 105 minutes of training a week. Here’s a picture of her first gymnastics certificate 9 years ago and then her final one back in November. She’s grown a bit in between!
Volunteering
We’ve done our usual helping out at “Monday Club” twice this month. We helped serve an American-style lunch for over 50 people, all accompanied by an Elvis impersonator. The visitors absolutely loved him: us, not so much!
We also helped out at the Great Manchester Run one Sunday. Each year the girls’ brass band and all the parents run the water station for the half marathon and 10K (right outside Old Trafford) in return for a donation to the band. It’s a very early start to get everything set up in time but we really enjoy doing it. The kids play in the band to entertain the runners and the spectators and about twenty of us parents hand out over 30,000 bottles of water to the runners. We can barely lift our arms the next day but it’s worth it!
Day Trips and One-off activities
Cannon Hall Farm – As mentioned above, we had a fantastic day at Cannon Hall Farm to celebrate Peggy’s birthday. You’re guaranteed a good time there, especially in early May when there are so many babies around. The baby miniature donkeys take cuteness to a whole new level!
Bradford Court Open Day – After a fantastic visit to the the Bradford Court Open Day in May 2013, we returned this month for their second open day. Now Aggie is pretty set on a career in law, she was super excited to attend the mock trials and Q&A sessions with barristers/judges. It was this event back in 2023 that ignited Aggie’s interest in law so she went back this time armed with questions and lists of who she wanted to see.
M&S Archive workshop – Peggy and I enjoyed a trip to Leeds this month to attend a workshop at the M&S Archive. We had a look round the little museum in the building which brought back lots of childhood memories for us parents and then we joined friends for a workshop about marketing and branding. This tied in brilliantly with Peggy’s Business GCSE studies.
It was a really well organised session which kept everyone engaged. It culminated in the kids working in small groups to create their own advert for a product they wished to sell. They all got very creative and enjoyed themselves too.
VR experience at Immersia – using a Groupon discount voucher, we had an Alice in Wonderland VR experience at the Trafford Centre. It was definitely something a bit different and we did all enjoy it; we were glad that we hadn’t paid the full ticket price though! I took these pictures of our girls and their friend before Dom and I joined them in the virtual world.
Wild Wings Birds of Prey – We visited this fantastic bird of prey centre one morning after seeing a deal on Groupon for a visit. You can read about our visit to Wild Wings here. We highly recommend it!
Rufford Old Hall – After the bird centre, we went on to this National Trust property and spent such a lovely afternoon there. We got super excited about the Great Tudor Hall and a moveable wooden screen which is the only remaining example of its kind. After soaking up all the history of the house, we enjoyed a walk around the garden and along the canal. We’ll definitely be returning.
So that was May!
I hadn’t realised we’d been so busy until I wrote this up! We’ve achieved a huge amount academically this month but that’s been rewarded with some lovely adventures beyond the books. That’s the perfect balance!
