Beginning February

February is about half way through the educational year and for some reason, this is a time of year for planning. I like planning months in advance, reading children's books, exploring curriculum and working out how we will use resources but planning for next week seems much more difficult!

Younger Daughter and Youngest Son have a bit of a pattern in the morning, where one reads with me and the other does mental maths or writing. It seems to work well, at present. Youngest Son is loving Reading Eggs. Phonics with me-not so much.

Veritas Self-Paced History still goes well. We have reached the Ministry of John the Baptist and I've started squirreling away the reading books to go along side the course for next year: Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation. 

We had snow this week, just a sprinkling but it didn't stop my younger two from having a snowball fight. By the afternoon, when we went out for a walk, most of the snow had disappeared except for in the coldest part of the woods.

Mainly, there was plenty of glorious mud,

trees, of course

and a glorious sunset. 

Definitely, worth going out and defeating the February slow down.

We've also had a trip out to the Natural History Museum, with friends. I realised that my younger two had never been. Their remiss Mother had taken them to the Science Museum on many occasions but really forgotten about the Natural History Museum. 

These photos were taken on my phone.

  

 The Natural History Museum is an amazing Gothic structure and in addition to the famous dinosaurs has collections of stuffed animals and birds. The latter really freaked me as a child! The best find  was the mineral collection and there are requests to go back.

What we've been reading:
Youngest Son loves Enid Blyton's Adventurous Four. This week, we acquired the first volume which is now called Shipwrecked so we are reading this. We had a quick reread of James' Mayhew's book Katie and the Dinosaurs before visiting the Museum.
Younger Daughter is enjoying Caroline Lawrence's Pirates of Pompeii although sadly, this isn't much of a hit with her younger brother. She also enjoyed the Andrew Matthews and Tony Ross children's version of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra.
I've been having fun reading Gervase Phinn's Little School series probably an odd choice for a home educator but funny and relaxing. There are plenty of books on the "to be read" list but I'm struggling to find the energy to read anything more than light reading.
As always, reading suggestions are appreciated!

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