October is always an eagerly anticipated month as it’s Aggie’s birthday. And this year she turned THIRTEEN!!! How on earth did that happen?! She spent her special day in school. Yes, you read that right. We’ll tell you more further down…
We have had an intentionally quieter (i.e. cheaper) month this month trip-wise so we’ve had a good focused month on academic studies. We’ve got back to doing a wider variety of subjects again which has felt good.
What we’ve been up to
Subjects/Activities done jointly
Spanish GCSE June 2024 – the girls have continued to work daily on Spanish to build up the vocab they need. They’ve enjoyed playing games on Conjuguemos to practise their verb endings; this really does take the edge off the tedium of this element of language learning.
RE – we’ve finished a six-week course on Buddhism run by Humanatees. It’s given us a really good introduction to this religion which we’re following up in November with a visit to Manchester’s Buddhism Centre.
Forest School – we’ve only had one trip into the forest this month due to staff illness, bad weather and half-term. We thoroughly enjoyed making garlic bread on the fire on the session we did attend.
Youth Club – the girls have continued to enjoy weekly sessions at this home ed group. There appear to be new faces every week and, as a result, from half term, they’re moving to a bigger venue which is closer to home. Win win!
History – we’ve looked at the theme of power in the Middle Ages using the first of Aaron Wilkes’ KS3 books. This covered Thomas Beckett, Magna Carta, Parliament, the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 and how people were punished. We’ve really enjoyed filling in the gaps in the girls’ knowledge (i.e. the bits Horrible Histories don’t include!).
Chemistry – we’ve been looking at the acids and alkalis section of Activate 1 (Chapter 4). Some of this has been revision but we’ve gone on to look at neutralisation and salts this time. We’ve enjoyed using universal indicator paper to test out food and household products and have tried neutralising acids. We’ve had the greatest fun, however, with watching copper sulfate crystals grow bigger every day.
GCSE subjects done separately
Latin June 2025 – Aggie is continuing to work through the De Romanis book at a good pace and is working largely without any help at all.
Classical Civilisation June 2024 – Peggy has been focusing on filling in the Paper 1 workbook written by Daedalus Design Curriculums now that we’ve watched all the videos on the Humanatees course. We’ve also started to look at how to make notes and how to revise. In November we’ll be looking at exam questions and technique before starting on the content for paper 2.
Business studies June 2025 – this hasn’t really happened this month. There’s no particular reason other than Peggy has chosen to focus on other things. We’re taking a very relaxed approach to this subject so I’m sure it’ll get picked up again at some point. Although I’m thinking that may be later next year…
Psychology June 2024 – Aggie has almost completed unit 2 of her pre-recorded course by Survive Succeed Achieve and is aiming, with a big push, to get units 3 and 4 done before Christmas. That’ll mean she’ll be slightly over half-way through the syllabus which is a good position to be in before the Christmas break.
Other subjects done separately
Maths – After completing the number topic for year 8, Aggie has then moved onto the same topic for year 9. We’d decided to run the year 8 and 9 books alongside each other for each topic to get the full breadth of each KS3 topic completed. This is more challenging and in turn more interesting too! Peggy is part way through the year 8 number topic so will move onto year 9 after that. This timing also handily means the girls aren’t working from the same textbook , so that’s easier for the girls deciding when they want to do maths.
English – The girls are continuing to work through the Hodder KS3 English anthology series doing one extract a week. Aggie is particularly struggling with the creative writing (this has never been her strong point) and so I know we need to do more work on this area. I’m going to properly start researching English Language GCSE before Christmas so I fully understand what skills she needs.
German – Peggy is continuing to fly through the CGP KS3 book and is constantly asking what the German is for something we’re doing in Spanish!
Coding – Peggy is continuing her Python 100 day course and is now coding pretty complex games. We’ll share some with you all shortly (once Daddy’s worked out how to embed them in our website).
Latin – Peggy has taken to Latin as well as German (how did we produce such a linguist?!) and so we’re continuing working through the De Romanis book 1. I suspect she’ll catch her sister up pretty soon which will make my life easier!
Criminology – Aggie completed her course on criminology run by Kate Law Tutoring and absolutely LOVED it. She’s written a post about what she thought of it here. She’s signed up to do another course in November which she’s excited about.
Music
Aggie has now moved from tenor horn to E Flat tuba due to a shortage of bass players in their band and Aggie struggling with her braces. The girls aren’t too delighted about having to sit next to each other but they’ll get used to it soon enough!
The girls are thoroughly loving their weekly rehearsals for The Addams Family the Musical. They’re practising together most days and we all now know every word to every song! The production is the first weekend in December and so the rehearsals and stress will really ramp up in November. Wish us luck!
Both girls attended a brass workshop at the RNCM (Royal Northern College of Music) for a Sunday morning where they learned lots of new techniques to improve their playing.
Sports
Aggie’s had her usual swimming and gymnastics training and both girls have each played two competitive hockey tournaments this month.
Peggy took part in a home ed rock climbing and caving session this month too. Peggy gained her NICAS 2 qualification over 18 months ago but she’s not been climbing for a while. This session has made her want to get back up those walls again more regularly so that’s on our list to sort in November.
Books
Our reads for this month have been:
Peggy – Peggy is still struggling for motivation to read. We know it’ll come back again at some point so we’re not pressuring her to read for the sake of it. She’s opting to do wordsearches and puzzles instead.
Aggie – The Hawthorn Legacy by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
Dom – Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann, American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins and A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson
Susan – Under the Whispering Door by T J Klune and A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson.
Day Trips and One-off activities
We ventured out just once this month in the UK to Eden Camp over in North Yorkshire. This is a must visit for anyone with an interest in World War II. We spent just over three hours there but that wasn’t enough to see everything. A return visit is definitely needed once Aggie starts properly learning about this period for GCSE History. We’ll write up our visit shortly.
Trips abroad
We headed over on 26 October to Málaga in Spain for the girls to attend a Spanish language school. This is why Aggie ended up in school on her 13th birthday! We went on an immersive trip organised by Kelly from Adventures in Spanish. The girls had a term of lessons with Kelly a while back and, when we saw she was organising a trip for home ed kids, we jumped at it.
The trip was just four full days from Monday to Thursday so we decided to make a holiday of it and go across to Málaga for two weeks. We arrived four days before the course and stayed on for a further week afterwards. We based ourselves in an apartment just south of the centre of Málaga; it was the perfect location.
The girls had a brilliant time in the Spanish lessons. They covered so much and were encouraged to speak to Spanish people when the lessons ventured out to the market or the beach. They were rather thrown in the deep end but that’s why they got so much out of it and enjoyed it so much. The other children on the trip were fantastic and they all worked really well together. Aggie will always have fond memories of spending her 13th birthday with new friends eating enormous churros dunked in lots of thick chocolate. We’ll write up in more detail now we’re home what this Spanish school was like and what else we got up to in Málaga.
So that was October!
A seriously productive month that ended in the sun in Spain. Shame all months can’t be like that!
