Home Sweet Homeschool

Home Sweet Homeschool
Home Sweet Homeschool

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

"Leafts"


Aideen wears her apple hat to keep warm :)



















Autumn , especially the Autumn we are having , so far a lovley dry one...has given the girls many opportunities to get out and collect "leafts" as Daisy calls them , and to make drawings , rubbings etc.. Daisy is going through a love affair with "Dikky tape" (sticky stape) at the moment so sticking leaves to paper was high on the list :)






Also , Aideen has been busy catching up with writing letters , and made this lovley booklet for her adopted Gramdmother , Daisy Lila , in NYC , who loves W.B Yeats , her favourite poem is "Lake Isle of Inisfree" so Aideen copied it out into a little handbag sized booklet for her...






also Aideen is busy catching up with French and English work , but theres always time to go outside to play and she made this lovley 3D Autumn wreath in the garden the other day , with a little help from Daisy of course !






Aideen is hoping to learn the recorder soon but as you can see , Daisy got to it first :)






Sunday, September 27, 2009

The Alpha and the Omega

still on our Greek project , the other day , Sadhbh and Caoimhe joined us for a lesson in Greek letter-writing... the girls all coloured in some pictures of the Greek Gods and Godess`and then wrote their own names using the Greek alphabet ! After lessons , everyone went outside to play (making the most of every dry moment) , and Daisy had the girls worn out playing "ring o roses" over , and over and yes, over again ! To round the evening off we went out into the back garden/yard and picked a bunch of whats left in the garden...still some beautiful colours...



































Sunday, September 20, 2009

The ONLY homeschool...





































Can you believe it? We were the only homeschool in Ireland to have our photos picked for the NCCA (they choose the curriculums for the public schools in Ireland to follow) , to have our photo accepted and published and used for their 10th year celebrations...it IS a bit of an honour and a boost...any HSer will know that you DONT need a certificate to know you are doing a good job , but hey everyone needs a boost now and then...so we had to go and get a frame and hang it up...well done Aideen !!!!








also (before I got ill with shingles) we`ve been studying poetry by Robert Frost , especially his Autumn themed poems...and when we went to the local pet shop they gave Aideen a talk about snakes and even (ugh) gave her the whole skin that one of their snakes had shed...it IS amazing to see , but its safe in a ziplock bag...thanks guys !!!!








Also Daisy has been very busy , guess what...yes , painting , how did you guess ???? here are some of her flowers...of course mammy helped with the cutting out , but Daisy did the painting and glueing all on her own...well done sweetie !!!!








Back to "normal" tomorrow...

Monday, September 7, 2009

Angels and Greeks







Ohhh Daisy is STILL painting everything in sight LOL...today she painted this little autumn angel which I cut out and helped her stick together once dry (DLTK a GREAT site for the little ones)...we are also mid-way through making toilet roll vases with paper flowers...very colourful ! Aideen is studying her Greek legends...she has choosen to be ARTEMIS, the Goddess of animals (wouldnt you know) and the moon for Noras play...I CANT wait to see the costumes and see the girls all dressed up ! Artemis has a wolf as her animal, but the best we can do is a toy husky dog that Aideen got for Christmas one year , hey , whos looking for perfection ! She has to make her bow and arrow and help make her helmet , but Nora is sewing the main part of the costumes...Artemis (aparently the Greeks believed that the sun and the moon were pulled across the sky by Gods and Goddess in their chariots) , well she was in charge of the moon...you learn something new everyday ! We brought our book in the local Book shop , and its great for kids aged 7-14 , full of information but not enough to make the mind boggle...enough is as good as a feast as the saying goes. Also today we made some of our Peace Pinwheels...and there was the "boring" stuff like maths,etc (has to be done) ! But we made it fun by seeing if we could come up with pur own ways of doing the sums...classes ended early today as Aideen had swimming so dinner has to be earlier as you cant go swimming on a full stomach, apparently as soon as Aideen had just gotten into the water Daisy jumped at down clapping and shouting "yeah Aideen" !!! Talk about support :0)

Friday, September 4, 2009

its teeth are WHERE ?

Well this months animal just had to be the crab ! And we were able to study this little sea living fella in depth as we found a crab (shell...or exoskeleton) on the beach in Skerries as well as a claw from a bigger crab ! While researching her facts Aideen was fascinated to find out that a crabs teeth are in its stomach ! And of course Daisy had to get into the action and paint her own crab...Aideen let her pin it to her project and now it hangs on the kitchen door (we are SO running out of wallspace)...everytime she passes it Daisy points out her crab to anyone even the dog, shes very proud ! Aideen got an "A" for this she really did her stuff...even made paper seaweed behind the crab !
Also this week saw Aideen read the first of her 5 books for Noras Monthly book club , Noras kids 9Sadhbh and Caoimhe) and Aideen have to read 5 books (this months theme is legends and fairies) and do 5 book reports then at the end of the month Nora gives them a prize !!! Aideens also busy reading for her MS readathon ! Daisy is gone paint mad on us, she barely eats breakfast before the paints have to come out ! Im running out of thing for her to paint ! She had to paint loo rools this morning :o) and I picked up a great bargain today in the bookshop , €3 sees Daisy playing with magnetic letters on the bottome door of the fridge...keeps little hands and minds busy while parents cook dinner ! Have a lovley weekend everyone and hope everyone had a great first week back at school !





















Tuesday, September 1, 2009

First day back ...





































31st August , and back we go to "real" HS work , by that I mean back to the academic side of things...the theory as it were ! We`re all glad to be back in the routine again , Aideen is now in 5th class (6th Grade) and Daisy is still in pre-school homeschool :0)








We started off the day with some maths , then English...and its that time of year again...the MS readathon, so Aideen is off collecting sponsorship money again for MS Ireland. This year Aideen has choosen to study Jaqueline Wilson , last year she did a project on Roald Dahl...after that we had art/humanities , we got going on our "PEACE" posters for World Peace Day and Daisy even started colouring her pinwheel for peace. Daisy is doing shapes , "square" is this weeks shape...and Henrietta the hamster was happy to have bustle in the HS room again too :0) Then for a relaxing end to the first day Aideen started her knitting...I showed her 2 stitches and that was it the girl can knit !!!! She says shes knitting a scarf as her first project...and then our HS pals called over for tea as we all (especially the mammys) wanted to see how everyones first day back went...a great start to a great year !

Back in time...














































Today saw us having a history tour with our good homeschool pals...and what a tour it was !!! We visited the famous Castletown house in the next town (Celbridge) and had a guided tour along with some German and Swiss tourists. The house dates back to 1720 , and is still currently under reconstruction , but the West wing and most of the 1st and 2nd floors of the main house were part of the tour...unfortunately , but very understandably we couldnt bring our cameras on the tour , this is due to security and also because of the age of some of the paintings, wallpaper etc...but we got a guide book and some leaflets and postcards and over the next couple of days the girls will all be writing up a field trip report...we all signed the visitors book and as you can see the girls thought it was "really good" and "really cool" high praise from kids ! We also had a lovley tea in the tearooms , and afterwards went on a big celebration dinner to the Springfield hotel...a treat indeed for us all , and a lovley way to start the Homeschooling year ! so thanks a million to Nora , the driver mom , and heres to many more tours throughout the coming year !