Spring Art

It was a lovely spring day so we decided to take the paints outside and do some biology. We picked some daffodils from the garden and looked at the different parts of them, and then drew what we had seen.

It was also a good lesson in art, we have been trying to draw what we see not what we know is there, so we turned our flowers upside down or back to front to get a different perspective.

Royal Photo Exhibition

Today we met up with friends to see the exhibition at the Queens Gallery in Holyrood Palace. It featured photographs from the royal collection which were taken on the polar expeditions of Scott and Shackleton in the early part of the 20th century.

Mollie got herslef a copy of the worksheet produced by the gallery and enjoyed working her way through it with her friend.

Hannah was more affected by the photo's, she chose to listen to the audio comentary and it really brought home to her just how difficult things had been for the explorers. Scott's story was very tragic, but Shackletons was inspiring.

Edinburgh Science Festival

Today we went to the Edinburgh Science Festival with the Home Ed group. The girls were booked into 3 workshops each, Mol did E.R., Dr Clot and Dig up a Dinosaur. Hannah joined her sister for the first 2 and then went off to build lego robots for the last seesion. They also did drop in session at the Blood Bar and the genetics lab, and watched a show about sound and musical instruments.

Day Off

The past two weeks have been really busy here so today we decided to have a day off.

We cancelled our regular activies and stayed home. The weather was awful, raining, windy and grey, so we lit the fire, brought down duvets and ordered movies from Sky Box Office. We had homemade soup for lunch and pigged out on Easter eggs.

This is just one more benefit of Home Ed. We can take our holidays and days off on days that suit us. Rather than working when we feel tired and low we can stop and re-charge. We are not limited to 'school holidays' and 'term time'. We can work on Sundays and chill out on Tuesdays, we can work when we feel productive and relax when we don't.

But you know what - we have actually learnt quite a lot today. We have chatted about adoption - because I had time to do some research, we talked about the war, and those from the UK who either supported Hitler or wanted to make deals with him - a discusion prompted by one of the films we watched, and Mouse worked on her OU letter - because she finally had the space to just think about it and suddenly it wasn't quite as hard as she thought.

Easter Pony Show

Today was the girls second pony show - this time Easter themed so we went overboard with flowers, chickens and yellow.


The preparation effort was helped by Auntie Lindsey who re-covered the saddle cloth and Auntie Beryl who helped sew little butterflies and flowers onto elastic bands.


It all paid off because Hannah won best in class for 'Best Turned out Pony' and Mollie was placed 4th in 'Best Ridden Pony', which was a big improvement on the show in Fenruary. Then, to end the day Mollie won 'Best Easter Bonnet.'

Taking advantage of quite time

While Mollie has been entertaining her cousins Hannah has made the most of a few quite days at home to catch up with schoolwork. She is working on a story with poetry in so has been researching different poetry styles and continues to progress through her maths with the online programme, ConquerMaths, which, if she doesn't exactly enjoy, at least makes maths a bit more fun than a text book would.

Easter Crafts

Little cousins have come to stay for the Easter weekend and Mollie has enjoyed spending time with them.

One benefit of Home Education is that she is used to mixing with younger children so it is no challenge for her.

As well as making Easter cards they all decorated Mollie Easter bonnet for the pony show tomorrow. It was a real team effort.