Currclick American Girl Club - October

This month the American Girl Club book was Kirsten Learns A Lesson by Janet Beeler Shaw which is the second book in the Kirsten series.

Kirsten starts school in America, but she doesn't speak English very well. Miss Winston, her new teacher, is strict and not very understanding. Things get worse when Miss Winston comes to live with the Larson family. Kirsten's only escape is playing with her secret friend, Singing Bird. When Singing Bird suggests running away forever, Kirsten must decide where she belongs. Kirsten does learn some important lessons in school, but she learns something even more important about herself.

Hannah loved the Native American connections in this book and really enjoyed learning a little bit about Sweden (Kirsten's homeland) during the class.

After talking about the book and discussing some of the characters the children did some really fun crafts.

Hannah made a replica patchwork quilt in paper such as Kirsten would have made,

and a buffalo skin native American writing craft.

Currclick American Girl Club can be found here American Girl Club , if you'd like to join in.

Beach Day

We had an awesome beach trip yesterday, I love the beach in autumn it's quite possibly my favorite place to be.

Luckily Hannah shares my love of the beach and had a lovely time wave jumping, sand dancing and running around.

A Homemade Loom

Inspired by a recent trip to Little Woodham 17th C village, Hannah wanted build herself a little loom and see if she could make something. With a couple of knitting needles, a doll desk and some yarn she managed this -

and made herself a bracelet!

She is now busy investigating proper looms as potential Christmas presents :-)

A Rainy Day At The Playground

Only one other family came to the home ed meet at the adventure playground this week - it was a very wet day - but they were the family of Hannah's really good friend so she still enjoyed herself immensely. 

She spent lots of time on the zip wire,

and they excavated some very interesting rivers and lakes in the sand.

A Quick Catch Up

My laptop isn't working, and blogging on my phone is proving tricky, so here are a few pictures of Hannah and her friends this week!

At tennis!

At the adventure playground,

With Chocolate the rabbit 😀.

And at Priory Park in Chichester.

She has also been to her English, Math and Art classes!

Little Woodham 17th Century Village

On Wednesday we spent the day immersed in history with some friends from our homeschooling group. Angela who blogs at Journey Unique organised the trip and it really great!

The site is run by volunteers who dress in period costume and 'live' in 1642. They taught the children (and adults) all about spinning and weaving, demonstrated pottery making and woodworking. The herbalist told us all about 17th century medicine and the farmers wife taught us how bread was made from field to loaf. The blacksmith was really interesting to Hannah and told us all about how horses and oxen were shod, and then showed us how to make hooks and nails in his forge.

Hannah absolutely loved it, and really enjoyed spending the day with her friend Summer (also from Journey Unique). We have been to Little Woodham a couple of times before, but sharing it with friends made it even more fun.

The Village In The Woods

Village life inside one of the houses,

 Spinning and Weaving,

Blacksmiths forge

The woodcutters house

 Angela and Louis giving us a demonstration!

 The farm cottage where we learnt about bread making,

and Hannah and Summer tried out the accommodation!

I lost them to Harry Potter for a while when they discovered a besom broom !!

Unfortunately it failed to fly so they did a spot of housework instead!

I'm not sure they found the housework all that much fun lol!

 Then it was back to the business of learning about bread!

We visited the herbalist where Hannah was able to identify most of the plants she used.

and went to a pottery demonstration.

The potter was a lovely man, who Hannah was sure was actually Pettson from the book Pancakes for Findus. He was really gentle and softly spoken and so informative, he was my favourite part of the day!

Big thanks to Angela for organising the trip, we loved it!