Home-Schooling, Dancing, Riding and Pianos...

Hannah has been asking for a while now if she can try ballet classes. It's been 7 years since she had a term at ballet, but she really does love to dance so I've been looking at the local possibilities for her. We found three classes, we watched one, made an appointment to watch another, and the third (Hannah's favourite choice) invited her to try out a class last night. She loved it! She came out of the class so excitedly and couldn't wait to tell us all about the class, and the lovely teacher and how she even knew how to do some of the exercises. According to Hannah she is absolutely, definitely, no question, going back every week for ever!

Nervously waiting to go in, they were excited nerves though so all was well!

After the excitement of dance, we headed over to West Wittering to collect a piano that we had been offered. Hannah has had piano lessons, but we've never had a piano for her to practice on and she really does want to progress, so being given a piano is a fantastic opportunity for her. She is absolutely thrilled with it, and even happier that she can still remember everything she learnt in her lessons.

School-wise, we've been doing a lot more at home instead of going to classes, and that has been working out well. Hannah is using Khan Academy for maths (she previously hated maths - now she even quite likes it!), we are carrying on with the science and geography books we've been using, as those are working well, and have plans to do some lap-booking with a small group of friends after half term. Hannah is practicing her writing skills by making up her own mythical creatures project, inspired by Harry Potter, and with the new piano we have music covered as well.

On Tuesday Hannah had a pony morning at the stables. She had had a bad night (nighttime anxiety), very little sleep, and morning transport issues with a train strike and long bus journey. She was at about breaking point when we arrived, and I wasn't sure she was going to cope. But her riding instructor is so great with her, she got her started with her favourite pony straight away and all was well.  She told me afterwards that she went into Murphy's stable, put her arms around him, and it all melted away. I am so glad she has the stables. The people there, and the ponies are so good for her.

Homeschooling

It's not all days out, a lot of Hannah's education does take place outside of our home, such as learning to tie dye at Adventure Group on Tuesday,

but Hannah also does Language Arts, Math and Science at home. This year we are using Spectrum Grade 5 workbooks for those subjects.

Today she has covered common and proper nouns, long multiplication and scientific method.

 I like having something to follow and some sort of plan, and Hannah likes the sense of achievement when she masters something new. She has also started to appreciate the usefulness of some of the skills that she previously wasn't keen to learn! It's so lovely to see her excited about the prospect of learning new things! Homeschooling is an ever evolving journey!

Always Ice Cream - An Educational Website For Girls

I have recently signed Hannah up to Always Ice Cream which is a really fun learning site for girls grades K - 8. She really enjoys learning and playing games online , and this site is proving perfect for her. She can choose from Math, Language Arts, Foreign Languages, Music and Arts, Bible Studies, History and Geography, Life Skills and Science, and earn medals and gain ice cream scoops. The scoops can then be exchanged for items for her online world or can be spent taking care of her online pet, and it gives me a learning report so I can see how she is doing! It's been great so far and Hannah has not only learnt a lot already, but she has also made friends with other homeschooled girls who share her interests. Fabulous!