For the story so far click here 🙂

Friday 15 November

I am making a dress!  I’ve got a whole lot of blue fabric and a pattern to follow.  The first thing you have to do is cut out all the pieces of paper, pin them onto your fabric and cut around them.  That’s what I did today. Next time I will sew the seams with the sewing machine.

While I was doing that, Jude made an apple crumble. I love apple crumble, I love the crunchy top and the soft fruit.  We had it after dinner with custard which Mum made.

I also had a times tables test today, and I scored nine out of twelve!  Then we made drawings of Dmitri, which was wonderful because he’s so handsome.  He’s black and white mostly, but I coloured in his brown eyes, his blue collar and his pink tongue.

In the evening we got dressed up and sat on the settee in a pose for Mum to paint us. I love being painted, I wore a scarf and a purple dress, and Jude wore her stripey top and Mum’s beautiful orange dress. It’s like being in the time of Robin Hood when they had to paint pictures of each other because they hadn’t invented the camera yet.

It’s not finished yet, Mum says it will take several sittings for her to do the whole painting. So far she has painted us all in lines, and started to colour us in, but there aren’t any details yet.

Monday 18 November

This morning for English I wrote a letter in formal language, and Jude wrote poetry. I like writing letters, it makes me feel like I’m in a story, because I imagine all kinds of mystery and adventure could be started by a letter. Jude has a book which is entirely written in letters, it’s called P.S. Longer Letter Later. That’s a great title because all the words begin with L, which is alliteration.

After lunch Mum and I worked on sewing the bodice of my dress, which was really complicated! I’m so afraid I’ll sew it wrong, there’s lots of pieces to sew together and none of them look like pieces of a dress.

While I was sewing Jude made two gingerbread cakes!  We had some after dinner and it is delicious!  I love gingerbread cake, it’s so sticky! I like that it’s soft inside and crispy like toffee on the outside.

Wednesday 20 November

Today in science we tested our rainwater for pollution and acid rain.  We had these special pieces of paper, called “Universal indicator paper” which you dip in the water and then it changes colour depending on the pH levels.  This is all to do with Hydrogen ions, and how many there are in the water.  Too many mean it is acidic and too few make it basic. Ordinary water should be somewhere in the middle, which is called neutral.So, if the rain water was basic, the test papers would turn blue or purple, and if the rain water was acid the papers would turn red or pink or orange.  If water is neutral, the papers turn green!  And that’s what happened.  We did the test several times because it’s fun.

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continues tomorrow 🙂

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vegan, vegetarian, home-school, education, learning, children, reading, books, literature, veggie kids, vegan children, vegan family,

For the story so far click here 🙂

Tuesday 12 November

We read to the end of chapter six of Wuthering Heights.  It’s a great story, everyone is very mysterious and dramatic.  I think Heathcliff is a bit scary, although you can’t blame him for getting cross with Mr Lockwood, he’s a very annoying character, I would get cross with him if I was Heathcliff.  Nelly is my favourite character so far.

We have been writing out our reports for Operation Independence in our best handwriting.  A whole week of shopping and planning and cooking takes a long time to write out neatly.

In the afternoon we made salt dough plaques to hang on our bedroom doors. Salt dough is a bit like clay, so I pretended I was a sculptor. We made our names and decorated the edges with forks.

Wednesday 13 November

We did Batik today!  We made our own dye by picking mint leaves from the garden and boiling them in water.  Then we melted red and yellow wax crayons in a pot over some hot water, the same way you melt chocolate.  We painted leaves onto a tea towel with wax, and then we let that go cold and used our mint dye to dye the tea towel green! Once that is dry you are supposed to remove the wax with an iron, but we haven’t done that yet.

In the afternoon we went to Nanny’s house and did cookery!  Jude made samosas and I made spicy garlic mushrooms fried in batter.  Sadly I don’t like them, they taste too spicy. I will feed them to Dad, because he likes things like that.

Thursday 14 November

Jude wrote a newspaper report for English today, which is one of her favourite things to do because one day she wants to be a reporter, like Lois Lane.

Mum said I should write an essay describing what happened on our trip to the Robin Hood Pageant.  I used a lot of adjectives.  Luckily I had written about it in my diary, which helped me remember the details.

Later on Mum made a still life for us to draw using a fruit bowl and things.  She showed us how to hold a pencil differently to the way you do when you are writing words and numbers.  You hold it gently so that you don’t press hard.

We read some more Wuthering Heights today, I feel sorry for Heathcliff, he is so lovely when he is little. Nelly is still one of my favourite characters, I don’t like the Lintons at all.continues tomorrow 🙂

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vegan, vegetarian, home-school, education, learning, children, reading, books, literature, veggie kids, vegan children, vegan family