'Maternity Leave' Busy-ness

I took some time out from 'official' schooling while I had my sweet Baby. Here's what everyone's been up to.

The Boy went to a Robot Wars Workshop! He met Matilda and Ripper which is completely cool.

I love this lot

We took part in the Big Garden Birdwatch

We hung out

Ballet Girl continues to work hard on her High School Diploma

The Boy learnt how to make a Key-Lime pie

He also went to Saracens to play in their rugby festival...

...and watch a match.

Sweet Sunbaby arrived and the children met her for the first time!

This amazing Boy...

...celebrated his birthday.

Pond-dipping and a Spring pic-nic.

Uncle A came to visit from USA

These amazing girls participated in a huge dance production with their dance school.

Studying

Reading with beloved guinea pigs

More pond-dipping

Reading without beloved guinea pigs.

Ballet Girl celebrated a birthday.

The rugby season ended...

...and this brilliant Boy won Coaches' Player of the Year! Good boy. :)

Cafe chilling

 Big sister helping little sister with her maths

 Cadet competitions

And cadet courses

And this baby continues to grow and be loved by us all.

A New Baby!

We were blessed with a beautiful baby girl in March and she is more wonderful than I can begin to articulate. I feel so blessed! Her blog name is Sunbaby!

Animal Pointillism, Farm Machine Inventions, Make Your Own Board Game and The Pony Express

We've been continuing our agriculture project with some varied work including learning sign language for animals and watching a BBC harvest series.

The Boy designed and made a farm machine which filtered and packaged cereals. He had to adjust and amend it as he created it. I think he's going to be an engineer :)

Monkey Girl veered away from UK agriculture and spent a morning researching and learning about agriculture in Africa.

The Boy did some cognitive development work which I based around farms to keep it themed and interesting.

Panda Girl worked on similar printables aimed at older kiddies.

We spent a morning learning about horses...

...including making hilarious Pony Express wanted posters (copied from actual posters from the time -  'Wanted: skinny wiry fellows, preferably orphans')...

...understanding how horses are measured using the 'hand' unit. A horse is considered to be a pony if it is under 14 hands and 2 inches. The kiddies guesstimated objects in terms of how many hands and by the end of the morning seemed to become experts in accuracy....

...and snack time became a lesson in horse nutrition (enough fibre, carbs, protein, fats etc)

Experimenting with Pointillism - art created using various size dots.

Panda Girl created her own board game based on farm successes (a good profit at market) and farm worries (bad harvests).

Monkey Girl named her board game Frustration Farm which I think was subconsciously created from teenage-ing and she found it extremely funny how frustrated everyone got trying to play it. Haha!

The children also created some lovely work about dairy farms and the milk process.