Home Educating in rural England
This week’s baking Welcome to the third instalment of our Fun Family Learning posts, written during the covid 2020 pandemic. Our theme this week is baking, as chosen by Dancing Toes. I’m really enjoying collaborating with her as we create these posts. Building relationships with my children has always been a foundation of my home… Continue reading Fun with baking – May 2020
In my last post I pondered over some of the relational, character and faith building aspects of continuing to homeschool into the teen years. I still believe these were the most foundational for us, but it was also important to continue our boys’ academic studies, and in this post I’ll chart a little of what… Continue reading Teens and exams – 2 June 2019
As I started tapping away, I realised this is quite a big topic, so I’m going to split it into two posts; the first of my reflections about this season, and the second with some more practical pointers. We have also done a podcast on exams, at Mended Tea Cups Embarking on IGCSE’s felt as… Continue reading The teen years and exams – Part 1 May 2019
One of Dancing Toes' lovely homeschool friends came for lunch this week, and we planned a meal around wild garlic; wild garlic and stinging nettle soup, wild garlic bread and wild garlic scrambled eggs. We were given the idea of the bread by another of Dancing Toes' delightful home school friends. She had made it… Continue reading Wild garlic bread April 2019
We have such an abundance of wild garlic around us, I've been trying to come up with different ways to consume it. Some are more popular than others. Myself and HWH loved this one, but younger kids were not so keen! I simply fried and onion, added some diced potato, and once softened threw in… Continue reading Wild garlic soup April 2019
It seems I continually fight a battle to live a quieter, simpler life. The sort I think I read about, where children have hours to run free in a meadow chasing butterflies, while Mum sits in a shady spot sipping tea and reading a book. Having purposefully stepped off the conventional parenting treadmill, I often… Continue reading Balancing busyness and rest March 2019
In our continuing study of the properties of matter, we’ve been learning about solutions, suspensions, solubility and precipitates. To demonstrate this, and because we needed a break from our usual routine, we had a kitchen science morning, raiding the boys’ IGCSE kit. We experimented with different chemicals, using some of the tests for cations (positive… Continue reading Kitchen chemistry – solutions and suspensions – February 2019
What is it that makes slime so irresistible to most small girls? I guess it's tactile and soothing. We used to make ublek (cornflour and water) for poorly children in hospital; it was part of the whole package of therapeutic play. As a mum, though, I'm not a great fan of it, as it creates… Continue reading Edible slime / January 2019
I always think the concept of mass versus weight is a difficult one, especially as we generally use the terms interchangeably in our every day language. Mass is the amount of matter in an object, and weight is the force of gravity acting on it. So, Dancing Toes' mass will be the same whether she… Continue reading Chemistry – mass and weight November 2018
Inspired by watching years of the boys’ experiments, Dancing Toes has requested to do chemistry this term. That’s a great choice by me; I’ve gone through the IGCSE syllabus twice with her brothers, and we’ve always had fun in earlier days working through our excellent homeschool curriculum. So, this week’s experiment was to work through… Continue reading Kitchen science – The scientific method September 2018
