Sarah's Blog

Same but different

I thought a quick overview of my 2 websites might be in order.

This (Sarah Sellers) site is, and always will be, my main website. Here I blog our homeschool days, talk curriculum (or lack of!), share our days out, post piccies of seasonal holidays and nature tables and put up my free printables.

The Simplest Life is kind of an extension of this site. It takes some of the concepts I might touch on here - eco-friendly cleaning, de-cluttering, simplifying homeschool etc and expands upon them. The Simplest Life is NOT about living like a Zen monk with no furniture and complete silence all around! It's about creating a deliberately happy and joyous existence, free from as much toxic rubbish as possible and making time for your family. It's about realising what REALLY is important in life, and, no, it's not money or possessions or the BEST homeschool curriculum EVER or going out to the poshest places...... it's about focusing on what REALLY matters.

So, in short. THIS website will remain as it is - full of happy piccies, homeschool days, the odd recipe, seasonal celebrations, fun printables ... all of it. The other website is if you want to dig deeper into specific topics - learn more about eco-cleaning, essential oils, cooking basics, healthy food etc. You can visit one or the other or both, 'tis up to you! :)

One thing you won't find in either site is unpleasantness. There is too much horrible stuff on the internet and I, for one, am staying away from it. I am tired of reading the horrible, hyped-up news - daily we are bombarded with horrible images and stories - the images in particular, really didn't have to be there, the words are bad enough on their own.

I have always tried to make my website a happy place but even I'm guilty of going off on one sometimes! The words in the paragraph above are the last gripes you will here from me. I'm going to try very hard not to do that now and make this a truly happy place. :)

PS - as mentioned above, I'm going to have printables! Yes, I'm digging out my old files and putting some free printables back on the site including my new Life of Fred, end of book, worksheet packs! There is no sidebar link yet but there is a link in the top bar - enjoy!

Oh you know, this and that ....

What have I been doing? *smiles*

Firstly, I dug out all the old homeschool ebooks I wrote years ago. At the time I had a page on my site which sold these books and, I have to say, they did very well! I got some excellent feedback and reviews for them. Anyhow, for whatever reason, I eventually stopped selling them but it occured to me the other day that maybe it was time to get them out again and update them and put them back up for sale. So, that's what I've been doing.

• Re-writing, re-formating, tidying up and making sure links work.
• In some cases, expanding with new material.
• Putting into Kindle format rather than straight PDF (didn't have that when I first wrote them!)

It's a slow process because I don't generally have a vast amount of spare time but I'll get there eventually!

We're on a break from home ed now for Easter (chocolate! Mmmmm!) but Core Knowledge STILL going very well! I have some photos of stuff we've done to share with you but I'll post them when we get back to work (read that as I cannot be bothered right now to get them off the camera and photoshop them etc!!)

Other stuff .... the cold weather continues unabated. We're lucky, here it's just been icey but at least dry and at least no snow. The poor people up north have been absolutely hammered :( Basically, we've stayed tucked up at home and not ventured out unless we absolutely had to!

April did go out and have fun though :) She went to the last Brownie meeting of the term last night and they had a masked ball using masks they made a few weeks back. It was a proper party with games, Easter egg hunt and pizza!! They had ordered in a selection of Domino's Pizza which went down very well apparently :) Anyway, here she is in her cat mask just after she got home.

Right, now I have to get stuck into the cleaning big time because I want everything perfect and lovely - after today, Tim only has 4 days of work and then he's on holiday for a week! :)

Stinky!

Well, the spring which had been springing decided to unspring and it's gone all grey and yuck again. This has been a little sad-making but I decided to cheer things up a bit and re-paint the kitchen - nice bright yellow! Thing is, we are now living with a bit of a stink because I also re-painted the tiles and tile paint REEKS for daaaays after painting.

I hated the tiles in our kitchen, REALLY hated them. Re-tiling wasn't an option so painting them (lovely crisp, shiney white) was the next best thing and, despite my fears, they actually turned out ok.

See what I mean about the "old" tiles? *shudders*

...and here are the yellow walls (they were originally a sort of dull peach) - picture doesn't really show them off to best unfortunately!

Apart from that, we've been moving on with CK Year 2 and learning about ancient Egypt. As mentioned in the last post, we made the collage map of the Nile and immediate surrounding area.

Finally, I've decided to open up my website to be more "general" again (not so focused entirely on home ed) so expect more stuff about ... well, stuff really!

On "Selling Out"

Over the last 3-4 months I've been contacted on numerous occasions offering me money in exchange for advertising various organisations on my website ... basically writing blog posts saying I use this stuff or that company or whatever.

Frankly, the amount of times I have been contacted recently I could have made a small fortune!

You know what though? I absolutely refuse to! You know something else? People who do that are "selling out", ruining the integrity of their blog and taking the piss out of their readers.

There, I said it.

I've just come across another blog that I have frequented on occasion - this time saying something along the lines of "you should get home insurance, we use xxxx" (insurance company begining with "A" and ending with "a" and containing 5 letters!) I actually laughed out loud and thought "no you bloody don't you liars, you're just saying you do to earn an easy buck!!" Do you want to know how I know this dear readers?.... because I got offered the VERY same company to promote that's why!

Now, some of you may be sat there thinking "well, perhaps these people badly need the money and this is an easy way of getting some" ... perhaps, maybe ... ok. However, at the risk of sounding an absolute cow, I wouldn't care how broke I was, I would NOT say I used a particular company/product if I didn't JUST to get a few quid because it's a LIE.

A lie.

They lie to get money. Nice.

Oh heck, maybe I've just got too high moral standards!! ;)

Rest assured though, you will not find me advertising/selling/promoting ANYTHING on this site which I have not personally used and approved ok?

New homeschool post coming up later today or tomorrow :)

Back!

Well, hello! I'm finally back to get into regular blogging! Hurrah!

However, a word of warning first - if you have linked to any of my posts prior to this one, you may find that link now goes to an entirely different post. This is because I gave up blogging on our old computer and had to install Thingamablog on my laptop. Republishing has caused all the blog post numbers to get mixed up - sorry!

Anyway, that said - back to work!

I decided to cover a few bits with April that we didn't get chance to do before Christmas, namely planets (order of), brief study of constellations, solids/liquid/gas and land/water forms. So, this past week we've been doing the planet and constellation work.

I started off getting the models of the planets out to see if she knew the order, she didn't so I introduced 2 a day and we made a little booklet using the circle insets. By the end of the week she knew them all :) We slipped in a little review of solids, liquids and gas after talking about Jupiter which is made of gas (neat eh?)

With the constellation work, we looked at a few of the common constellations, learned the names and used the overlay cards I made ages ago. Then she made a nice poster with 3 of the constellations on using silver paint and gel pen.

We didn't go into huge amounts of detail with any of this because a) The Montessori curriculum is cyclical so we will revisit these topics (several times!) in more detail in future years and b) We are going to start the "Great Lesson" work next year and want to save a lot of it for then. Oh, and yes I know kids in a Montessori school would have been introduced to this before the age of 8 but Montessori is very advanced and I prefer to hang on a bit.

Anyway, here are some piccies :)

We also threw in a bit of number work review this week with the cards and stamp game (I think it always helps after a long break!) We're going to get started on some geometry next week.

So, next week is landforms! I've dug out our geography box and April's already had the landform models out (I made these a while back from plastecine) She poured the blue water in, got out her animals and sorted them out into land and water. Ok, pretty elementary but I do think these kind of sensorial experiences are REALLY important when introducing new topics. Means she's already got a few of the names of the forms learned ahead of actually starting work - result :)

Branching out into new things

Hello again!

Well, we've continued to be busy here with lots of work going on ....

April on her maths using some (very cute!) base 10 people - I got her these and made a set which I'll have as a free download shortly - it's to make a place value street but more on that another time!

She's also been continuing her study of the Artic and has been doing some Draw Write Now copywork to go with it. This one is the wolf - love the picture so much!

Rosie has been continuing with her GCSE/iGCSE work - in this picture she's making drawings of plant and animal cells:

I got an email the other day from a lady who's son is doing iGCSE's like we are. She said that they had used Waldorf/Charlotte Mason influences in their home education and was worried that using the textbooks might be a bit dry. I decided to answer her question here because I'm sure others could benefit from it too! :)

Basically, my feeling is, that whatever your children are used to, you should continue in that vein. Just because they are now using textbooks for their information, doesn't mean that the only option is to read and answer questions. YES, there will come a time when they will have to practice exam type questions in readiness for the actual exam but the learning along the way doesn't have to be that dull!

So, if you're used to Waldorf, have your child read an appropriate section in their book and then create paintings or drawings in the usual Waldorf manner in a main lesson book (imagine what a stunning review tool these main lesson books would be!)

Charlotte Mason? Continue narration (both oral and written) and perhaps find quotes related to what you're studying to use as copywork or dictation.

Is your child happier learning on the computer? Go search for some websites which can help with learning online. Here are some that we use:

Skoool

iGCSE Geography

Biology Resources

Mr Hoye's iGCSE English

The same goes for hands on learning - if your child has always enjoyed learning by making models or "playing" with things, then just continue with that.

We use a combination of online resources and hands on work/drawing because that is how Rosie has always approached her learning.

Ok...other things!

I've spent a lot of time over the years maintaining a home eduation website, making learning materials etc. and I will still be blogging here regularly. However, for the longest time, I have wanted to have an outlet for 2 of my other great loves - namely, homemaking (more specifically seasonal homemaking) and crafting.

I was going to delay this a little longer but I'm so excited to be finally getting going with it that I'm going to share! I've begun 2 new blogs (just Blogger blogs):

Changing Seasons Homemaking - my homemaking site

New Life Pretties - my crafting site/shop

I won't say much about them here as you can hop over to them and check them out - not much there at the moment but they will grow!

Hope you like :)

Hello

Long time no see!

We think we may have fixed up our old computer by reseating the ram sticks and replacing the whizzy graphics card (which we think is dead) with the graphics card from our very, very old computer (which has been in the garage for years!)

The graphics are now terrible but I can at least blog!

Have installed Thingamablog on my laptop but if I use it it's going to republish everything with new post numbers which means that if anyone has linked to one of my posts they'll probably get an entirely different post! It's a long and boring story!

So, at least for the time being, I'm blogging using the old computer but how long this lovely state of affairs will last is anyone's guess!

Back with proper post in next couple of days!

Site/Shop Updates

I should have entitled this post "On Not Spreading Myself Too Thinly"!

I've had to take stock recently because I was starting to get stressed over the sheer amount of work I had to do. Making materials, writing books, updating the website, making videos, housework, childcare, homeschool planning ... and trying to be a wife!

So, I had a long think about what I want to focus on. Obviously, housework, Tim and kids come first but I decided to slim things down a bit on the shop front.

I want to concentrate almost entirely on getting my writing done - little Kindle books on various homeschool subjects. I've got a lot of old ebooks I wrote ages ago that I want to dig out, revamp on and put, inexpensively, on to Kindle so I'm going to be working on those.

As such, the actual materials are going to take a backseat for now. Certainly, I don't intend to produce any more Montessori materials (other people do it so much better than me!) So, all the Montessori materials that were for sale on my site (plus some others I have on file which I still need to upload) are now free.

The other, more generic materials are still for sale. This is because it's entirely likely that I may continuing adding to them at some point when I get the Kindle books done - they are still a growing thing whereas the Montessori materials have come to a halt (although we still use Montessori!)

I'm still going to continue making the videos but production will slow down a bit while I get the books sorted.

I also want to try and spend a bit more time blogging and writing stuff to cover the homemaking side of a homeschool life. I do enjoy this aspect of it and I thought it might be fun to share some ideas here.

Finally, we're not that far away from the start of the school year. We work in 3-monthly cycles and I'm going to post the details of what we're going to do for the first cycle very soon. We do use the New Child Montessori books as a framework for our year and, if you don't have them, I can strongly recommend as they have made planning so much easier!

That's all for now - go check out the Montessori stuff! :)

Shop Updates & New Blog

You get 2 posts today! Second one in a second but first a couple of quick site updates.

New in the shop:

In both English and Maths categories is my Summer Maths & English Activity Book - 39 pages of summer themed activities and worksheets.

In the science section I have a plants mini unit covering parts of a plant, what a plant needs to grow, plant growth sequencing and food we get from plants.

There are also plenty of freebies going on in the free section - both Montessori and non-Montessori :)

Finally, in website news, I've set up a companion blog - The Thrifty Mummy. I pretty much love anything to do with saving money, reducing waste and being more frugal (and earth-friendly!) My blog is a place for all those things and I hope it will develop into a lovely little community for sharing ideas. Link is in the sidebar, do check it out if you get a chance :)

Anniversary

Today Tim and I have been married for 14 years and I'm SUCH a happy bunny about that :) It might seem a bit corny to say we are soul mates but I really believe we are. Here's to another 14 years .. and more!

Oh, and Tim made this for me - he did all the music himself (he's been beavering away with the piano, keyboard and recording stuff for ages! I didn't hear it because he had the headphones on). Some of the photos are terrible, some are funny but it's so lovely - made me very happy :)

Just a quick note about the website - I have FINALLY started putting stuff in the shop! I've added a Montessori category as well as the other, more generic, items and that is where I have started.

I lied about the update

Ok, not lied exactly .... but I didn't end up doing what I planned to do. To be honest, there's just been stuff going on.

First there's unbloggable stuff (not necessarily unpleasant - just unbloggable!)

Then there has been a serious case of writers block (brought on by the heatwave turning my brain into an over-boiled cauliflower).

Then I get an email from a person I never heard of before who turns out to be the adopted son of my paternal grandfathers brother! he's apparently tracing our family tree and wondered if I had an information. Um... no, apart from the barking mad members of our family who, in 1906 named their firstborn after the horse that won the Derby that year .... Spearmint. Oh, and there's the other rellie, called Gerald, who was a jockey and came 4th in the Grand National. Our family has a thing with horses :)

Then (as if that all wasn't enough!) I hear from my father who I haven't seen for about 10 years (don't ask) and who I've now got to go and visit next Wednesday. If I don't chicken out. Which is quite likely. Actually.

Sheesh!! It never rains but it pours!

So, all of that means the website and work in general has been neglected. I'm doing stuff over the holiday weekend but I'll be back to it on Tuesday and I will sort the pages out then. Honestly.

Update type thing!

Just a quicky!

The shop bit of this website will be "stocked" come Tuesday/Wednesday next week. I'm working on some stuff at the moment and that, together with some other bits, will be put up then.

At the moment my writing time is being hampered by the fabulous, hot weather - NO! I'm not lazing about in the garden *laughs*, I just can't write - my brain melts I think and I end up with serious writers block! Sooo, I'm writing a little in the evenings when it's cooler and I can think straight so progress is slower than I would like but I am getting there.

Finally, you will know that I have my Montessori Themes website for the Montessori packages. As well as that I'm THINKING about adding a section here, on this website, for individual files for those that don't want the sets. I'm thinking .... we'll see what happens :)

Update done! If you are having lovely weather where you are, hope you are enjoying it :)

Some freebies

Well, my website is really taking shape now :) All the pages (apart from the contact form) are up and I'm starting to add content to them.

I promised a little alliteration freebie for you to celebrate the new site but I'm actually going to go one better than that (2 better in fact!) - 3 cute freebies!

First is the promised alliteration set:

Alliteration Set

Then, I made some stuff on frog life cycles. The first item is a Powerpoint which also includes a video (I didn't make the video!) When you use the Powerpoint it will ask you if you are sure you want to open it (because it contains a video) - just say yes :) Unfortunately, if you've got an older version of MS Powerpoint, the video will just show up as a picture and not actually play. If this is the case, here is the link to the video so you can still watch it.

Frog Life Cycle Powerpoint

To go with that I made a set of life cycle sorting cards and worksheets.

Frog Life Cycle Cards & Worksheets

Hope you enjoy them :) More stuff in the shop (including freebies) soon!

Have you noticed?

Look! Blog done!

Ok, I know I said it would all go at the same time but it will actually all go at more or less the same time - the rest will follow in a day or two. It proved impossible to make it all live at once.

Tim has been working very hard to get it all done for me and the other pages are coded I just have to add my text and upload them. Apparently, I have to tell you how wonderful he is ... ;)

So, Tim is wonderful .... actually, he is :)

Rest of site and lovely freebie in a day or two - watch this space!

Out with the old ....

The last post, on my fraction work with April, has inspired me.

For the last week or so I've been getting my Montessori shop up and running. If you haven't checked it out yet, please do :) It's Montessori for those who want to use some of the materials without going the whole hog. The materials are really fun and nice to use.

Thing is, that is now set up and kind of running itself (sort of!) and, as anyone who reads this blog regularly, will know I'm an eclectic homeschooler. We use allsorts. We dabble in this and that. Sure, I love certain aspects of Montessori but I also love Waldorf style nature tables and art and I also love Charlotte Mason style narration and nature study and I also love notebooking and lapbooking. We even occasionally love (gasp!) workbooks and worksheets ... and BBC Schools and other online learning. We take the best from everything and leave the rest behind.

All this got me thinking about THIS website - which is a separate entity from the Montessori one. Waaay back in 2004 I originally had a homeschool website (set up, then, under Tim's name). I did love it - it focused entirely on what I wanted it to focus on - homeschooling and a homeschooling family life. Over the years my website has kind of wandered about and lost it's way somewhat.

Now, with the departure of my Montessori stuff elsewhere, I've decided to get it back on track - turn it, once again, into a little home learning treasure trove :) It's going to get a complete overhaul, be consistent (appearance wise) throughout the whole site, and will focus entirely on homeschooling (eclectic homeschooling!) and living as a homeschooling family.

There will be:

• This blog for "what we've done", lesson ideas, our day trips etc.
• A shop - I ADORE making lovely little learning things (notebooking pages, lapbooks, card games, worksheets etc) and I want a place to put them. They will be colourful, fun, cute and (obviously!) educational. Don't worry - they won't cost huge money and there WILL be plenty of freebies :)
• A page for each of the kids - these will be mostly photographic records of the work they are doing in this (and subsequent) school years - their own indidivual little "class" page if you like :D

So that's what will be happening over the next week or so. Tim and I spent a fair bit of time this morning sorting out the new graphics (I brought a GORGEOUS webset to use over the whole site!) Tomorrow he's going to code the basic pages for me so I can start adding content (I CAN do it myself but he's much quicker lol!)

I'm HOPING (fingers crossed) to transfer EVERYTHING over to the new layout/style in one go rather than having to do it in dribs and drabs. So, expect everything to stay looking the same for a bit until one day the new stuff will whizz into existence!

Oh, and I've been doing some work with April on alliteration so I'm going to "welcome" the new site with a VERY cute alliteration freebie for you :)

"I Promise ...."

The lovely news of this week is that my littlest girlie is now a fully fledged Brownie :) We went to the Guide Hall last night and watched her take her Promise - it was very sweet! Here she is, looking like she's going "oooo!" but in fact is saying her promise.

As soon as April came home from Brownies, Rosie had to be dropped off at the same hall to do Guides (Monday evenings are a bit packed round here!). She came home saying they had started doing some project about homeless people - not sure exactly what yet, sure we'll find out in due course! She was also very pleased because they got given new neckers ... she likes it and I can see why, the turquoise/purple colours are lovely :) Forgot to get a piccy of her actually wearing her uniform so here is her cupboard door wearing it instead!

Back to April! She, like most little kids, likes to get into small hidey-places - here is her latest place - under the dining table reading!

shhhh!

"hello!"

This morning I made bread. We all LOVE homemade bread in this house and I get moaned at for not doing it enough so today I did. Nom, nom, nom.

FINALLY (and this is VERY exciting), after all the hoo-haa deciding whether to put my curriculum here or on Currclick or on Lulu, I've decided .... to give it it's own website!! Yep, Montessori Themes has been born and I'm very proud of my babba! I won't bother to describe it here - just go have a look, it's lovely! :)

Montessori Themes

Mostly pictures!

Been sooo busy with curriculum stuff - problem is, my brain is coming up with ideas quicker than my fingers can get it all typed up! As well as my April/May curriculum, I've also got my Botany 1 and Zoology 1 sets up and (taa-daa!) I've JUST finished a set about landforms which will be in the store very soon :)

After the blinding hot weather a couple of weeks ago, we've been experiencing typically spring weather here - sunny one minute and absolutely chucking it down the next. Literally, as I'm writing this, it's gone from sunny to POURING just like someone had turned a tap on! Last night we even had thunder and lightening! Once that had cleared it turned into the MOST beautiful evening and a stunning sky .... look :)

By this morning THAT had cleared to reveal this .....

Gorgeous :)

Here are a couple of other piccies that I grabbed this morning .....

These aren't going to be around for much longer

Hello there :) The tree he's sitting on is JUST coming into blossom - soon it will be pink all over

A little work, a little play, a little rest ... and it's all good

Hello lovely people!

First off, eagle-eyed readers may have spotted the Twitter "follow" button in my sidebar - I started a Twitter account mostly for work stuff because it's easier to update new products there. I can also put any other education related stuff I think is fun too :) I DO occasionally put non-education silliness on there as well. Anyway, if you wanna follow then follow .....

So, work. It's going good! I made the big decision to move my purchase products from this website to Currclick. Currclick is HUGE and I can reach a far bigger potential customer base there than I can through my website. The free stuff (English and Maths) continues to reside here. So what's in the shop? At the moment I've got my first theme book (April/May) and my first set of Montessori Basics - this is a little something I put together for those who want the materials but not the theme element. They will come in sets for 3-6 year olds and 6-9+ year olds - for example Botany Set 1 (in the shop now!) is for 3-6 year olds. Botany Set 2 will be for the other age group. I'm currently working on Zoology Set 1 and hope to have it in the shop in a couple of days.

I seem to have settled into a nice little routine at the moment. Get up early, do some yoga, have breakfast with the kids, work for an hour or so on the shop/products, do some stuff with the kids, lunch, do some housework, play about, answer emails and so on ..... It seems to work well, it's a good routine :)

What else has been going on?

Well, the other day, we took delivery of a new bed/shelf combo for Rosie ... that had to be assembled. Tim went out in the morning and I was left clearing out all her old stuff and dismantling things. Errk! What a horrible spidery nightmare! Anyway, whilst doing this, we happened upon an old bubble wand under her bed so, feeling rather tired of the work, we went outside to play in the sunshine ... spot the bubble :)

I also made little lemon cakes. Basically just regular cupcakes with lemon juice and zest added to the mixture. They are then decorated with icing made with lemon juice and bits of zest on the top. Rather hastily thrown together but quite yummy :)

Finally, yesterday afternoon, I had a check up with Mr Tiernan the surgeon who got rid of my facial mole a couple of months back. He seemed very happy with the way it had healed up (not NEARLY so happy as me - I can't tell you how pleased I am with my face now!) Unless the thing grows back (small possibility) I don't have to see him again. I'm very glad I had it done, he did a FAB job and I can heartily recommend him if you need anything like that done. I saw him at Newhall Hospital in Salisbury - it is private but, honestly well worth the money if you really feel bad about something like I had.

That's about it for now :)

Hoppity-Hop!

Easter is coming! Yippeee!! Chocolate!

I do love Easter - for me, it's the start of spring proper (although with the weather we've had recently you'd be forgiven for thinking we'd skipped spring and gone straight into summer!) I do my Easter bunny bit (no, not the Bridget Jones bunny costume although I'm sure Tim would love that!) - I just get up at the crack (ha ha) of dawn and go outside in the garden and hide eggs for the kids to search for. I ADORE doing it - so much so in fact that I believe I shall still be doing it when the kids have grown up - Tim will have to look for them instead! :D

Anyway, to celebrate this forthcoming holiday, April and I decorated the seasonal table with Easter stuff. We now have cute yellow fluffy chicks, an Easter "tree" (branches decorated with paper eggs) and even a small Easter bunny popping out of an egg :) Here's a piccy:

We've been taking a bit of a break from homeschool work for the Easter hols but I've still been working hard! I've finished my first curriculum book! Yay! It's now available from my home education pages (link in sidebar) and is on the theme of "spring" ....... I shall start work soon on the June/July book which will have an ocean theme to it.

Other than that, not much to add ... other than Floyd diving down by the side of the cooker this morning, rummaging around, backing out very suddenly closely followed by (I'm fairly sure) a large hairy housespider. He then pounced on the hideous arachnid and ATE IT!! Mmmm! Crunch, crunch, squelch, squelch ..... *barf*

Whilst I applaud Floyd's efforts to save me from 8-legged monsters I wish he'd not done it just as I was about to eat breakfast! Blleeeurgh!!

I'm still here :)

Yes, I did go a little absent there! Thing is, we've been enjoying the fab weather and getting on with gardening (got all the new fence up!) and planting out my seeds (potatoes, carrots, spinach, spring onions and lettuce). The seeds have all been planted in a quite bewildering array of "pots" - carrier bags with potatoes in to name one! I've been recycling big time :)

The nice weather also took us (today) to Linford Bottom - a very, very, very lovely place in the New Forest which Tim went to a lot as a small boy. Oh how beautiful! We even paddled in the little stream it was that warm!

The other reason for my absence has been work. Yes, work. I've decided that I'm going to contribute to the household funds (have plans .....) but I can't "go out" to work because of homeschool committments so it has to be something I can do from home.

So, I'm tapping into my skills.

1. Curriculum. This is something I've dabbled in before but never quite got off the ground but now it's all kind of fallen into place. Seasonal, hands on, Montessori inspired, bi-monthly curriculum books focusing on science/nature and "the world". There is a certain amount of reading/writing involved but I envisage that folks will use the free maths and English stuff I've provided to go with the purchased curriculum. The first book (April/May) is due out (fingers crossed!) on or around the 1st April. You can take a look on my home education pages (link now in sidebar!)
2. Consulting. For many years I've been assisting new (and sometimes not so new!) homeschoolers with getting set up, general Montessori questions etc. I've decided to do that on a more formal basis and offer more in-depth help so I'm offering a consultancy service. Three very reasonably priced packages are available so if you're reading this and are a new homeschooler, a new Montessori homeschooler or just plain in a muddle (been there!), drop me a line - make use of my experience :) Again, there is a link to the consultancy page in the sidebar.

That's all for now - got new work pics to upload soon but that will wait until another day :)