Remember This Moment

Both and E. and J. want to go to school. Since the move we know no children their own age. Well... no children at all really not for many many many miles.  And J. (my sweet little M. replica) is a very highly social child.  She is an extrovert.  I don't always understand her need for people and noisiness but I do understand that despite being with her best friend every single day she wants more.  And E. my sweet little highly sensitive child will go to school because she doesn't want to be alone and enjoys a bit of gentle competition.

So this moment right here. I'd like to keep hold of it make it last till high school at least but my kiddos have their own ideas and dreams and hearing J. tell the orthodontic assistant the homeschool can be kinda lonely nearly broke my heart.

xx Jo

California's Pilgrims

E. and J. have just finished their fall homeschool history project. JUST in time.

The girls tend to work from books for all their main classwork but for history we always make it a little more exciting with a topic project three or four times a year. We have made a medieval newspaper, had Roman feast for M.'s birthday and traveled the world with craft paper passports which get a "stamp" once a culture has been "visited".   Having just moved back to the states from a town on the south coast of England (only a little way away from Plymouth)  we have been studying the pilgrims and the Mayflower. To most Americans the idea of being completely ignorant of Pilgrim history probably seems incomprehensible but my kids were. 

Completely. Ignorant.

They have had such a great time researching and writing these diary. For example their characters existed and survived the first year in the New World when most of the immigrants died in the terrible conditions. Also E. and J. know where their characters settled married and how many children they had.  I had nothing to do with the research and writing (other than book buying/spotting and insisting on a minimum of ten diary entries) just the physical leather manufacture of their amazing Pilgrim Diaries.

We used regular printer paper aged and stained with coffee but not crumpled up a la fake treasure maps.  They wrote their diary entries leaving a good size margin on each page so that there was space to trim the paper down to fit leather sheet covers.  Which we punched with a bradawl tool and they stitched their diary up using leather thong.  They then wanted to mark the initials of the character on the cover. E. was Remember Allerton, and J. Mary Allerton. I didn't have the right tools but my girls really didn't care. A screwdriver did the job nicely.

 

The leather is rather expensive for a faux diary cover and only comes in one size from Michael's or Beverly's by us but a bigger one might have more options.  Having said that the work the girls put into writing up each entry, spell checking the lot and then by hand carefully re-writing them onto diary paper deserved a more noble finish than a fake leather or felt cover so I caved and bought the more expensive stuff.  In retrospect it was the very best thing I could have done. Children put value in the things their parents value.  By covering their work in leather I told them (inadvertently) that their work was worth something more than throwing away.  They are so proud and excited.  Just in time to share them with the family at Thanksgiving.

xx  Jo

September means birthdays.

Bath, Sommerset 

 

At last I am in the digital world again properly. After I sent our computer off for a repair in May (ages ago!!!!) It came back months later- broken. Seriously. I had a little tantrum and threw my toys out of the pram. There was much argy-bargy and pointing blame between the store which handled the repair and the company who manufactured and repaired the computer; eventually (another month later) one of them took responsibility and gave us a credit note for a new computer. So here I sit typing at our new shiny laptop.    I t   h a s    v e r y    w i d e    s p a c e d    k e y s     s o     I     m a k e    m a n y     t y p i n g     e r r o r s ! ! !

 

The long and short of it is I have a computer so I also now have photos!! Taken on my lovely new Canon EOS 600D (thank you to my sweetheart for that BIG treat after I... ahem... never mind what happened to my old camera).

 

It has been such a crazy busy summer. We've been all over and done so much I would have liked to share our adventures with you but I don't have the energy to make it interesting. So instead I will bore you with just whats been going on here in the last week... or so.
 

 J. and I both have our birthdays in September. One of us has turned 9, the other of us has kindly asked that her age not be published to the world. I will leave the guessing up to you.  Birthday cakes in the last year (due to popular demand) have almost exclusively come in adorable cup cake holders which look like tea-cups. Our cakes are always served on my great grandmother's glass cake stand which was a gift from my mother when I got married.

J wanted to have her birthday at Alice's Adventure Wonderland which is not so local now we have moved but lots of fun. K is too grown up for it all (though she spent many hours trying and retrying to work her way to the middle of the maze) and E is pushing the boundaries of finding it fun. The benefit of AAW (Alice's Adventure Wonderland) is that its never full and there are no queues so the girls run from one ride to another with a look of maniacal pleasure in making the most of every second. The most important thing was that we all enjoyed it and we enjoyed being together.
 

 

Other than that there has been a lot of quilting and sewing and untill this morning and very little homeschool. We are back to it today and it feels great to have a morning at home just focoused on home and learning.

 

Matt has had an interview for a job in CA and has just this afternoon had an invitation for another interview soooooo.... things are moving and in the right direction. His visa is approved, the qualification reciprosity is done and is better than we expected. All we are really waiting on is a job and to run down our tennancy agreement on this house before we move. We have to remind ourselves daily of the principles of  Matthew 6:24 and not to try to map out the uncertainties.

 

x Jo 

 

 

 

 

 

Verde Huevos y Jamon

We've been sooooooo so busy. Whew. Little bits of Spring seem to be creeping into our space. Snowdrop coated spaces, the buds are swelling on the magnolia tree and the grass looks just that little bit greener. Not that I expect it to last. We still have March to get through before the nice weather will set in in earnest in these parts.

I would like to share with you a little home school joy!

SPANISH:

I'm not sure why I never thought of it- or have never heared of it before- but the girls decided they were getting a bit of Rosetta Stone Fatigue (an illness that makes you whine when its you're turn to get on the computer for your Spanish lesson) so they chose books from the picture book section of our multitude of book shelves to translate into Spanish! They have had so much fun, the excitement during Spanish lessons is palpable.

So for last week Kitty has been translating a book called George and the Dragon by Christopher Wormell.  It is a gorgeous story about a mouse named George who moves in next to a dragon. It is very British in its situations and language (George declares "Oh blow!" when the dragon cant lend him sugar for his cup of tea) and completely charming. It has always been one of Kitty's favorite story books and I couldn't count the number of times I discovered her reading it to her sisters.

Esther has been translating Green Eggs and Ham by Dr Seuss. That has been so much fun. I cannot get out of my head : "Yo no gusto verde huevos y jamon. Yo no gusto Sam I Am."  I'm driving my family nuts every time I spontaneously burst into Seuss en Espanol.

 BTW I am Loving this months Mollie Makes. Best issue yet!

Do as the Romans do

We've had a birthday in these parts which has been unusually pressured. Birthdays for adults (Matt in this case) are usually lovely, relaxing and peaceful affairs in our home. This year our children's plans for M.'s 36th (!!!) got bigger and bigger. And its all the Roman's fault.

It goes like this:

History studies for homeschool are done with all the girls together. We started with ancient Britain and have now reached the Romans in Britain. The chronological process has put a great deal of things into place for the children and produced an enormous surge of enthusiasm in their history lessons. It is all spectacularly thrilling.

However the girls unanimously attacked me with the idea of planning a Roman feast.Due to a surfeit of obligations and plans we put the feast further and further back till the only option was to combine it with M.'s birthday or leave it to January.

Kitty researched and planned the menu, Esther researched and planned our costumes and Jessica wrote a PowerPoint reviewing the history of the period. As planning moved forward it became more and more obvious that their vision outstripped my enthusiasm.

This is how it all turned out... Matt came in from working in the shed to be dressed by the household servant (me) in his tunic and toga. The dinner was being served in the triclinium where diners could recline on cushions around the "roasted swan" centerpiece of our meal (cake).

We had goat stew, pieceman bread, olives, bread, almonds, fruit, vegetables and (everyones favorite delicacy) stuffed door mice. It was delicious and admittedly easier than a roast dinner however... the cake. Oh the flipping monstrous cake. Not to mention the tunics!

It was spectacular Matt loved it, the girls were over the moon, and I am so glad to move on from the Romans. Long live the Saxons!

Autumn returns

I love this time of year as the whole world starts turning to paper and gold. We have pulled up the last of our potatoes (Desiree- by the way- they are the most delicious lates we've ever had!) and the chickens have been allowed on the bed to clear up the hoard of slugs we discovered sheltering under the plants...

We have returned to our homeschooling routine. This will be our first full term of everyone at home learning. We only withdrew from school last April and the summer term could only be described at best as experimental. I tried lots of different methods of recording activities and many many different time-tabling ideas all of which were wrong for one child or another. So this term I have made a simple timetable which covers all the curriculum and our own interests in textiles, cookery and home economics. And we have been working on it about two weeks now. The girls have all been enjoying it immensely and it has the added benefit of incorporating enough flexibility that when school-of-life opportunities arise we can take them and enjoy them without any pressure to make up subjects.


Tonight is cookery for E, and M and I found the most glorious field of parasol mushrooms ever- there were at least a dozen full grown and glorious. We only passed back by them when it was dark so we went scouring the field with a mobile phone flashlight examining parasols for slug damage by pale blue glow. We probably looked quite suspicious but we got a lovely enormous specimen! So E will cook Wild Mushroom Stroganoff with me tonight and it will be worth the evening scrabble in the field.

And as the vegetable garden dwindles my mind turns to Christmas gifts and winter warmth. You may hate me for mentioning it in September if you must but I have many many ideas and only so many hands and days!