Not Back To School

It was the first day of 'term' at Shawpits today, and I have been pleasantly surprised at how the children responded (although they haven't really done anything since about May but still...) and all in all it's been a good day. Apart from when Rosie shut her finger in the step ladder - the same step ladder that I've told her about 15 times not to mess about on - whereupon my equilibrium took a nosedive momentarily but we're all speaking to each other again now and the dog has come out of hiding.

Anyway! At 9.45, ie 15 minutes prior to the morning's lessons, this was what I saw on the dining table:

I know! And then, as if by magic, a keen student appeared:

I know!! This of course completely threw me and I hurried off into the kitchen muttering about not having made my cup of tea by which time Tristan had shuffled into position and we were good to go...although T was horrified at the scissors and glue stick in front of him in case I was going to ask him to do cutting and pasting for real rather than by right-clicking.

We started with maths but actually it was really good - we counted the number of seed pods on the hollyhock in the garden (stay with me) and then counted the seeds inside the 3 pods we'd collected, then we took the average and calculated how many plants that hollyhock could theroretically produce. And then multiplied it by all the hollyhocks in the garden. And then if we sold all those plants for £1. Well, we'd be £22,080 better off. So we actually covered averages (mean, median and mode), addition, division, multiplication, range, sample size and how to do pound signs the right way round in one lesson! Love home ed :-)

Tristan watched Horizon on iPlayer after lunch and the girls did some crafts:

and made these:

and I had time to walk the dog despite the rather dramatic sky:

and also do another mushroom for my autumn garland. I've got a few bits for that now:

So I think it has been quite a successful day. History tomorrow. Which just leaves a bit of room for a cute chick picture: