Chocolate Rules OK!

Thursday 3rd May

This afternoon Stephanie set up a simple EXCEL (ICT) spreadsheet for chocolate analysis. She created all the sections for calories, fat, sugar, price, packaging, company etc and we got started with the experiment.

This is Science at its very best!

When we laid all the chocolate out, I realised I had actually bought rather a lot!



As the bars also came in different sizes, we had to use all of our Maths skills to work out a comparable price per 100g.

We started with White chocolate and dark chocolate. All bars had to be touched, smelt and then we did a blind taste test. When they had finished they entered all their data from their paper sheets into the Excel programme.

When we have done Milk chocolate next week, we will have a fairly definitive guide to which chocolate is best for you.



The kids decided that they did not like dark chocolate. That is a real shame because it means Greg and I have to eat it! What a hard life being a home-educator!!

Friday 4th May

Stephanie made gorgeous CHOCOLATE cookies this afternoon in Home Economics. Yes, there is a theme to this! Good job someone can cook because it is not one of my natural gifts!

Jacqueline has made good progress with her website for her business on Dreamweaver. She has done most of the content. We have got to edit the video content yet for the tutorials. Greg created a beautiful pawprint background for her, which we will be using on the pages.

A brand new week starting 30th April

Monday 30th April

We did not do a great deal today because I had a Tarot course in the morning, Jacqueline had a dentist appointment to have a filling done and then we had an appointment with the bank to open some savings accounts.

This is part of the financial and money management curriculum.

In Languages Stephanie has been working through the Spanish CD and book we have and has been finding basic vocabulary in all 3 languages. For various reasons we have not done much language work with Jacqueline as yet. This seems to be mostly because she is finishing off English stories.

Both did some more work from the Maths workbooks. Stephanie did some more of the English exercises from the SATS book and Jacqueline continued with story writing for English.

She saw an item on the BBC Newsround site about a new planet that has been found, apparently in the Goldilocks Galaxy and scientists are asking for a name for it. She thought of Porridgeopia because Goldilocks ate the bears’ porridge.

She was absolutely delighted that her suggestion was printed on the website.


Tuesday 1st May

Today Jacqueline spent some time on the BBC Bitesize revision site for her age group for Maths. This is a really useful gauge to see what she should have covered and where the gaps are.

She also played on the Aladin Maths Quest DVD, which is really excellent for developing Maths skills.

Jacqueline also came up with some fantastic ideas for stories for English, which she can write over the next few weeks. We finally got her writing competition entries correctly formatted and sent off to “Writing Magazine”.

In the afternoon we decided to have a go at making cocoa pods and beans out of papier mache as part of our chocolate theme. This has got to be ART at its finest- pure creativity and no worry about the mess!

It probably would have helped if we had checked in the craft book to see exactly how we did this, BEFORE we started. We made the glue far too runny and ended up with some very soggy shapes.

Then Stephanie’s balloon burst! This was not good for holding soggy paper together. The sides of her cocoa pod ended up being propped up by bottles of paint, so it is going to end up rather a funny shape- when it eventually dries!!





We found the “Don’t laugh, it’s Rude” book we had started last summer, with all the funny stories we could think of. We went through them all and reminded ourselves of all those brilliantly funny memories.

We decided we would make a point of having a “Daily Laugh” and make sure we put something new in it every day.

Wednesday 2nd May

Today we all overslept, so the poor dog did not get a walk today. It was a bit of a topsy turvy day with swimming lessons ending up being at the end of the day instead of at the beginning.

We took Jacqueline to see the orthodontist today and went shopping afterwards. As it the tradition with going to Solihull to the dentist, we went into the cake shop and enjoyed a huge slice of chocolate cake each.

We put all this down to our research about chocolate. I love this chocolate project because I now have the perfect excuse to buy and eat chocolate- It is for EDUCATIONAL purposes!

More soon
With love and abundant blessings
Amanda Goldston