Thursday was Tots as usual, but with the added excitement of a Victorian Day for the Nots 🙂
We arrived at 9 and managed to get a few normals out of the way whilst setting up (Maths for K, finishing off an old workbook for L, word crocodiles for L, M and K which we will come back to, I think, music theory for J – just a little look at a Grade 4 paper, piano for all but M, who is still waiting for his music but doing practice from other books in the meantime) and then the older 4 (it still feels odd saying that!) disappeared upstairs to make hats and be shouted at by a very strict Victorian teacher. Apparently they make hats first so that when they are wearing their hats she can shout at them and they know it’s all in role 😉
It was very quiet with only the Tots, but nice to have several of the mums of older children in one place and free to chat. I can feel some kind of Gathering coming back into shape again, which would be really good if we can make it work – we just need another couple of sessions like that to get some informal planning done…
Mid-way through the morning the whole class (16 children from rising 6 to just turned 12) appeared in the hall for drill, which we all very much enjoyed watching 🙂 They appeared to be having a whale of a time – M was grinning away, while L and E were taking it very seriously but enjoying themselves too. Then they went back upstairs for dictation of school rules – the Js managed to keep up, M did an impressive effort in beautiful handwriting (as ever!), K opted for noting down the first letter of each word (ingenious!) while L and E just gave a good impression of listening hard and writing everything down so they wouldn’t get shouted at – a useful life skill 😉 All the children sat beautifully and listened to lots of interesting Victorian facts too, although of course the main ones they have retained are things like how many women burned to death because of their big floaty dresses 🙄
For lunch I’d made some vaguely Victorian stew and dumplings and pease pudding (with yellow split peas as we’d run out of green and no shop in our town sells any, I discovered on Wed night) which we ate with nice cheesy bread courtesy of the Coop late-night reductions. The afternoon was dedicated to craft so by the end of the day we had children sporting paper masks, shooting marbles through paper arches and demonstrating how to put the bird into the cage (or the dog into the kennel) – all good stuff!
Gina and I had had vague hopes of getting some recorders and French done after the others had left, but in the event what was needed was lots of play and then a quiet afternoon, as they had pretty much reached capacity on doing “stuff”, I think. We came home to find a Victor Borge video on the doorstep, so watched that with a snack, then learned the Latin word for the day (agricola – agricola sum) and watched SmArt. Oh and M did lots of violin practice – I think he’s addicted! He gets tired and I suggest he stops, but he shakes out his arms, grins broadly and says “I like violin!” then carries on…
Bob got home in time to get J and L to do some violin too, while I cooked tea and admired K’s cello playing (would have said supervised, but he did it all with no help from me really; all he needed was some admiration :lol:).
Over tea Bob talked us all through a page on how to distinguish different types of triangles using a flow chart, which K really got into, and then after tea we found the books on Victorians which we had been meaning to read before today and read one of them together, with lots of looking at the pictures and talking around them rather than following the text. Many requests to do another today, so will try – when M has finished his violin practice…
