A few more snapshots...

Butternut & Sweet Potato pie - home made, pastry and all, by the fair hands of Abbie. 
It was SCRUMPTIOUS!


Macro-art by DD. There were faces drawn on the bricks.

BBC-inspired art by Stitch. 

This took him three attempts to get it to work, 

simply because he thought he could adapt the instructions ;-)

Can you think of anywhere better to study your geography :D? 
He was having to hold the pages against the breeze though.

Meanwhile inside...DD cooked fudge.

He did really well, but then boiled it a little too long, so it crystallised and I had to rescue it for him. Thankfully I succeeded and it tastes alright, but perhaps a bit to 'strong' - a little bit liquorice flavoured we think - and it still has some grit to it. Next time...

  

At the same time, Abbie was doing some cooking with Chip - making cookies.

  

  

He did all the work. She really just helped him with the weighing and the order of things. Look how chuffed he is with himself :D

In other news, Abbie had her college interview today and has a place to do her Level 2 Btec in Patisserie & Bakery, with GCSE Maths and English concurrently. It was a bit of a boring, paper pushing exercise tbh, and they didn't know quite what to do with her 'no GCSE's' status, but in the end it wasn't an issue. The chap we met at the open day popped in and remembered her - and pretty much said 'no problem' - I think he can tell she is going to be a great student to have around. As she is starting a year early, they just need to pull down funding for her, but having looked at government stuff online tonight, that really should not be an issue for them, especially as they are already providing 14-16s educational courses.

And, Phoebe has her college induction day in a couple of weeks too. Again, I'm waiting on confirmation of a couple of details, but she looks good to do her VOP + GCSE maths and English a year early (alongside Abbie), which will enable her to jump early onto onto a Level 3 course next year.

It's all change - and it's happened quickly - and been a so much simpler process with Reaseheath than it was first time round with Jake at SCC.

COOKING & ART CATCH UP

I'm a bit behind with my Home-ed blogging, so just for now this is what we've been doing in Cooking and Art ~ the two things we do more collectively.

COOKING:

Custard trials...

We cooked two types of custard; traditionally made with eggs and milk, and the other with custard powder. It was generally agreed that the traditional one was nicer, but another time we might make it a bit sweeter. Abbie also felt it tasted rather to eggy, but there's not much can be done about that ~ perhaps more sugar would change that a little. The powder version was quite uniformly disliked and was really quite tasteless! Problem is, my children have got rather to used to the taste of Birds 'ready to eat' version of custard and neither tasted anything like that!

The powdered custard was improved by the addition of cocoa and a little extra sugar ~ then they ate it! I meanwhile happily finished off the traditional version, which I thought was delicious!

All about Eggs...
Then last week we made a little back-track and had a lesson 'all about eggs'. We talked about how to tell if eggs are fresh, how to store them and how to use them. We talked about their numerous uses and how to prevent curdling them when you add them to things (which of course we had practised the week before with the custard). Each of the children then practised breaking and separating one egg ~ which left me with a few eggs to find a use for ~ so so we made pancakes (as not everyone is fond of omelette, which would have been my first choice). The children asked if they could make chocolate pancakes, and as we'd already had lunch and this was just for fun, I conceded ;-)
They made up the mixture and from Joel down to Lilo they all made their own pancakes, and of course they then spread Nutella on them too. 

ART:

We are all quite grateful to see a few sunny days at last; sunny enough for us to be able to begin to take lessons outside. We took art outside a couple of weeks ago and, appropriately, painted butterflies :D

These were oil-pastel and ink. The children had the choice to outline in oils and paint in ink, or colour-in in pastels and wash over with ink. The results were quite lovely, but most of the children struggled not to make a mess with the oil pastels because they are so smudgey.

In order; Stitch, DD, Phoebe, Abbie, Lilo, Mine & Chip's (started but not finished). I don't think Joel kept his :(

This week we did a bit of Lichtenstein Pop-Art, because it was simple and relatively easy, but it still took a long time, and these are the only finished two - Abbie & Phoebe's. I'll put the others' pictures up as they emerge. 

Last Week

~ Last Saturday the girls and I went to get Phoebe a new phone, as her hand-me-down one died and she would be getting one in a months time anyway, for her birthday (as is our tradition at 13). We took the opportunity to grab lunch, a hot-chocolate and a doughnut together :D. Then the girls hopped on the bus to Chester to meet up with Abbie's BFF, and go to 'craft club' ~ they're getting so grown up!

~ Last week Joel decided to have some fun with a 'Sick Science' can crushing experiment, but it may need to be repeated as it didn't really work. Not sure why. Maybe water was not hot enough, or possibly the cans weren't soft enough metal. We'll try again with Coke cans.

~ Last week little man learnt to hop ~ he was a bit pleased with himself :D

~ Last week we embarked on a new activity to do together each week. The bigger chids and I have decided not to carry on with 'Igniting Your Writing II' any more ~ it's a good course, but we all feel the need for something more 'hands-on' and all the children do enough English and writing in other ways. Instead we have decided I will do proper cookery lessons on a Wednesday! Last week we had some left over chicken bones (from the night when Paul rescued my burnt meal attempts ~ see the irony there), so we made chicken soup. It was just going to be plain, but then I found we had some Thai spices and lemon grass 'flavour pots' in the cupboard, so we converted it to Chicken Noodle Soup.

I did very little towards this (I just chopped the mushrooms to oblivion and then did the bone picking towards the end, because the chids had run off to do some other work whilst it simmered) ~ and I have to say it was DELICIOUS! In this case many cooks did not spoil the broth ;-)

This week we're making biscuits and next I think we'll make pastry. The little chids will probably join in with those too. I want to keep a mix between savoury, sweet and 'staples'. I've invested in an old fashioned home-ec' book, so between that and Delia I think I should be able to teach them the basics that they may all need one day :D

~ Last week (and so far this week too) Chip has been BIG into wanting to know how to write his letters and numbers. At his demand we've done lots on paper; I've let him make up his own way a lot, because it's just good for him to play with emergent writing; and we've done some like this too ~ because it's fun. He tells me what to write in dots and I obey!

~ Last week IT SNOWED!!

Not for long, but big soft flakes fell for about 20 minutes or so. It was enough to cover the ground; enough for DD to make a tiny snowman; enough for some of them to throw a few snowballs at each other; and enough to satisfy their craving to simply stand in the falling snow!

Chip remembered how cold it was last time I think, so he was very reluctant to go outside. Instead he watched from the comparable warmth of the living room window ~ and then agreed to sit there for a bit while I took a few cute photos of him watching the snow fall ;D

When the snow stopped falling and gave way to sunshine, we came inside and painted snowy trees instead. By the time we were done the snow outside had all melted away :(. We were glad we enjoyed the moment while we could!

Artwork oldest to youngest (Mine, Abbie's, TP's, Lilo's, DD's, Stitch's and Chip's);

I just want to say that with Chip I learnt from last week, and only gave him a half sheet of paper. Then he set to work and did his almost ENTIRELY by himself (the last one). He drew around the triangle templates by himself, he drew the ground and the dividing lines by himself. I initially drew the tree trunks and stems, but he did ALL the over-lining by himself. He then chose all his own colours and painted it entirely on his own. When it came to the snow, he chose to do it multicoloured and arranged them where he wanted them, I just helped him squeeze the tiny dots of glue. I think his might be my top-pick of the week! I think it's incredible and I absolutely love it!

Joel chose not to do the watercolour work, but instead did a rather fabulous sketch of a turtle (using a tutorial book we have). 

 ~ This week has been a bit bitty so far, but the three younger ones did have fun with Steve Spangler's Coin Tower experiment (looking at friction and inertia). They weren't entirely successful with it, but had fun trying and I think Lilo did manage it in the end ~ when I wasn't videoing of course!!