As described below, ordinary, average days where we’re all a bit motivated out, often do revolve around “normals”.

So yesterday, while music lessons with our much loved music teacher were happening in the dining room

there was a fair bit of this sort of stuff going on too.

Reading a fiction/faction type book to give some depth to her Victorian/Industrial Revolution/Fashion project.

Education City.

Some reading. She also read the “I Wonder Why Tunnels Are Round” one and decided she quite likes the idea of a project on types of house. Amelie NEVER volunteers to learn things (despite being easily my cleverest and sharpest child) so i shall jump on this opportunity!

And she was probably playing Club Penguin. But as she rather valiantly attempted to follow her sisters advice of putting “c” in the URL bar so the right URL would drop down by actually finding Google and searching for “c” on there, i’ll count that as IT. She also listened to me read a book with Amelie, sounded out “moss” with her wooden letters and changed it to “boss” herself too, so she undoubtedly ticked some boxes. Oh – and i heard her haggling with real money at some point too

Fran has spent the last couple of days rather enjoying using the Galore Park (damn i love that site) Science Book for Yr7(ish) – she’d done life processes and organs and structures in animals and plants. She also has a CGP KS3 science book and a Biology GCSE book and we found the pages that applied to the topic in each and she used all three,also googling for some extra info. The idea here is that she learns to cross reference, uses different sources and hopefully see that GCSE could be quite manageable if she fancied it.

There is method in the madness there; not a big fan of gcse’s or exams but Fran is quite set on doing gym coaching and dancing teaching and really wants to focus on those. With that in mind i feel that some formal academic qualifications might be a good idea. It’s all very well turning up an eloquent HEd kid at a uni interview but if she chooses to spend several years coaching she might some time in the future want to go back to something else. I’d hate her to come up against people assuming she had done those things as she “couldn’t” do the academic side, rather than understanding that she simply chose not to.

We’ve also agreed that written work can be done on the computer now, so long as she handwrites any English work she does. To that end i’ve set her up a Dropbox account which has a number of advantages. One is that it means she has an obvious place to store her work (bit like having a school desk!) and she quite enjoyed tidying it and arranging it, another is that it is backed up on their server and the best is that the clever file sharing system means that she can access it from any of the computers at home, or even if she happens to go to work with one of us. Makes the hassle of dotting between endless laptops a lot easier.

Today she has done similar from GP geography; she read the first bit of the chapter and then she and i did grid references together. As Maddy was doing this a while ago, i thought i might set them a challenge on it next week and see how they get on together. If Fran has learned anything from our orienteering, it will be to listen to Maddy!!!!

Today, Maddy was very much the person who drove the interests. She’s been playing a piece on her (my!) flute called Spring and she had an idea that she’d like to do a YouTube montage of the tune with Spring pictures playing over it. When she came down this morning she wanted to draw a daffodil and this was her first attempt.

Maddy can be quite resistant to guidance and also very easily frustrated if things aren’t perfect but on this occasion she spotted the problem with her drawing and wanted help. We found a couple of books and then this rather fabulous tutorial on how to draw a daffodil and that helped a lot, which produced the smaller version on the right, a close up of which is below.

and then she went on to practise quite a bit

until she was happy with her final meadow picture. Not bad for a 9 year old.

She inspired her younger sisters too, so it was a harmonious morning.

Amelie’s version.

And later on some tries at the tutorial.

Josie’s version.

Yesterday we also set up some crystal growing experiments…

And today Fran has baked some brownies (and discovered that baking tin does not mean baking sheet!) and as well as all the other stuff, putting their washing away, music practise and filming latest tunes they can play, they’ve also played a rather bizarre 4 way roleplay game with Animal Crossing together.