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

Week beginning 23rd April 2007

Monday 23rd April

Welcome to the start of a brand new week.

Greg did quite a lot of Maths with both girls over the weekend. Stephanie is now working on the Maths for the next year and Jacqueline is progressing along with the workbooks.

When we came to do things today, it was just a stuck day all round. Both girls got stuck on their Maths. Stephanie did a Media text piece and said she had not covered these kind of texts before.
I am seeing some surprisingly basic gaps in their English grammar. Greg had bought a Jungle Book CD game with English, Maths and Science for 8 year olds. I was amazed at the questions they were asking me about the grammar, which they do not appear to have covered at school.

We went to school for the 2nd of Jacqueline’s Speech and Drama lessons. I stayed in the reception area this time and it was incredibly awkward, both with parents and with girls. I was very glad to get away and I am very glad we only have a couple more of these.

It was a funny day, with not much getting down. I got very frustrated with myself and had a bit of a “I can’t do this home-schooling thing” rant at the kids.

Their reaction stunned me.

They went into one of the rooms, got loads of pieces of card, stuck them all together to make a sign, which said “You are doing great”.

Tuesday 24th April

This started out with another frustrated session from my part. I had wanted to start at 9am to do a proper planned timetable and by the time Jacqueline had got dressed it was nearly 9.20am.

Jacqueline did the Jungle Book DVD for Maths, English and Science (year 3, for 7/8 year olds) and again I was surprised at the simple things she was asking me.

Mrs Morrell came to do a Speech and Drama lesson for Stephanie. That went very well and Stephanie is going to do her exam in a few weeks time.

We then did a proper planed out timetable for the week, with the subjects we are going to do and when are going to do them. I felt much better after that because I feel like we have really got some much clearer direction now.

Jacqueline had a dentist appointment and we walked into town.

I registered us with the Sainsbury’s Active Kids Cooking programme - http://www.activekidsgetcooking.org.uk/activekidsgetcooking/welcome.htm

and they registered us on their database as home educator, which I was delighted with.

The girls have been getting on much better together than they ever did when they were at school. The weather has been really glorious and they have been playing on the trampoline and also playing bat and ball and Frisbee in the garden.

George, the family rottweiler, loves these games and loves to play the part of the fielder. Only trouble is, he gets the ball or the Frisbee and then runs off with it and won’t give it back.

This usually leads to a great game of “chase” around the garden.

Wednesday 25th April

We went out for an early dog walk and then I dropped the girls off at the swimming pool, while I went and did a weekly food shop.

Stephanie found some interactive tests on the Plymouth Maths site and went through most of the Year 8 (12/13 year old) tests. She said she felt comfortable with all the work and felt confident enough to move onto the next year.

We are making food progress with Jacqueline’s Maths and are filling in the gaps as we go along.

After my self doubting rants and the girls adament insistence that they wanted to stay at home and not go back to school, I quizzed them on this.

It seems they feel they are covering about the same work, but the difference is that they do not feel rushed to complete something and then move onto the next thing, whether they have understood it or not.

We can revisit things until they are clear on them. We are also more flexible on time and they can finish things they are interested in and it does not really matter if the next lesson starts a bit later.

We started our History and Geography today. We have chosen the subject of CHOCOLATE to research. It covers a huge amount of things from the Aztecs to the Victorians, as well as climate and culture of the chocolate producing countries, business case studies, fairtrade and lots of interesting TASTING experiments for Science.

They really got stuck into this one and spend the afternoon researching. One of the best recipe sites is here http://www.best-chocolate-recipes-online.com/ from a fellow home-educator.

Thursday 26th April

Jacqueline finished writing her stories for the Writing Magazine competitions and we just need to format those before we can send them off. She wrote to the editor of the magazine and was delighted to receive a personal response from her.

Both have also been looking at submitting reports and photos to the Childrens’ BBC Newsround site. http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/presspack/

We got a huge amount done today. We went through some Science. Stephanie went through the interactive tests on the BBC bitesize site and was delighted that she could do most of the science. With Jacqueline we were using some workbooks. We did about materials, states of matter and evaporation/filtration.

I had a tarot course this morning and while I was doing that, Stephanie had found the words for several key phrases in French, Spanish and German. It is quite interesting learning all 3 languages at the same time.

Friday 27th April

Jacqueline sorted out her photos for her business website today and put them into categories. Stephanie wrote her plan for her tutorial videos to go through with her friend. Jacqueline made some biscuits as part of her Home Economics.

Both have also written out their Ideal Day, which made very interesting reading.

For Music, we thought we would follow the CHOCOLATE theme and so the girls did the Ooommpa Loompa dance from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory DVD.
They even got me doing it!

They have joined Stagecoach for singing, dancing and drama. Tonight was the first one and the girls had a brilliant time. They have already started making some new friends, which is excellent. Stephanie is starting with Sportscoach tomorrow.

We are now 3 weeks into this and I am finally beginning to feel as though we have got some direction and a plan. I just need to apply the same discipline to my business.

More next week.
With love and abundant blessings
Amanda Goldston

Week 2 starting 16th April 2007

Monday 16th April

This was the day all the other children went back to school, so it was the day we needed to start a little more seriously than we had been.

We have been working our way through the Year 6 and Year 8 Maths from the University of Plymouth site. http://www.cimt.plymouth.ac.uk/ This is a really fantastic site for Maths resources.

Jacqueline fell asleep in her Maths class. She said the work was hard and she did not understand it.

There seem to be a lot of gaps in their understanding of basic Maths topics and basic parts of English Grammar.

For English, both girls wrote a plan on the “Pros and Cons of Home Schooling”. Stephanie went on to write a well thought out article on the subject, which she then submitted to the BBC Newsround Press Pack site.

In our Business Studies lesson, we did not market research on other products and services that are already available in our markets. There is very little on Photography for Kids and loads on Maths help products, so we looked at what could be our “difference”.

If we are aiming these products at children, then the best approach is going to be the “for kids, by kids” approach.

In PHSE, we looked for some pictures for our Dream Boards and made those. That was a fun activity, as it had lots of sticking and colouring and creativity. We have also created a Reward Star chart and some of the items on the dream board have become reward items, with a number of earned stars attached to them.

Monday was also the first of Jacqueline’s Speech and Drama Lessons back at school. It was not too awkward as I did not really see anyone. The teacher said we could not have Jacqueline’s art work from the walls until then end of term, so we will have to wait for it.

Tuesday 17th April

We are getting into the routine of an hour of Maths and an hour of English each morning now. The SATs book for English we bought for Stephanie is proving very useful, although it is highlighting all the things she should be competent with – and isn’t. Quite worrying really.

We introduced a combination of Art and English. Jacqueline suggested we design and make a monster, which we could then write about for English. We used some simple creative mind mapping with coloured pens to describe the character traits of the monsters, where it lives, what it eats, who it’s friends are and also the nicest and nastiest thing it has done.

We had great fun making the monsters, with the girls thinking up some quite innovative art techniques.

We had also fitted in swimming and a dog walk, so we all did plenty of P.E. The dog has been for more walks in the last 3 weeks than I think he has ever done.

Wednesday 18th April

We got out with the dog first thing in the morning. That seems to work best, as we have then got the rest of the day for other things. It is a bit of a struggle dragging ourselves out of bed at 7am, but it is still later than we were getting up for school.

In English today, the girls wrote a description of their monsters and Jacqueline wrote a couple of short stories bout the escapades of her monster.

Stephanie showed Jacqueline how to resize some of her pictures in photoshop, so she can put them on her website, so that is ICT.

Today was a money earning day for the girls. We worked out what I would pay them for certain jobs, such as hovering, ironing their clothes, tidying their rooms and cleaning the cars. The next thing was they decided they would clean the car and their was suddenly a long hose trailing through the house from the kitchen sink to the car outside.

We could not get the hose fitting to stay on the end of the hose, so there was water everywhere. They ended up by squeezing the end of the house to spray the water over the car. This obviously meant that everything- including themselves- got sprayed.

It was well worth £2.00 each to see the happy, smiling faces. I am in the process of showing them a basic accounts set up, so they can keep track of their money.

Thursday 19th April.

With Maths we have continued working through the workbooks and worksheets to make sure they have covered everything they need to do, so we can move on to more challenging material.

In PHSE we created an “I am “ chart with all the wonderful characteristics about ourselves and things we are good at.

We did some Languages work today for the first time. We decided to learn French, German and Spanish at the same time. My Spanish is a bit rusty, but we did very well in the end. We did basic greetings in all 3 languages.

The girls had great fun with the “cht” sound in German as in Nacht, as this is a very throaty sound and is almost like you a lion roaring. The Spanish “ç” sound, , which is a “th “ sound. That really sounds and looks like you are spitting.

Friday 20th April

We did quite a lot on Business today. The girls looked at what they had done so far and what steps need to be taken still to launch the sites. Both Jacqueline and Stephanie are making excellent progress with this.

Both have set up their accounts to keep track of their money. Stephanie is quite a whizz on Excel and I showed Jacqueline how to use Quicken.

The weeks are flying past now.
I am really enjoying having them at home.
Until next time. With love and abundant blessings
Amanda Goldston

Friday 13th April

Friday 13th April

Today we had a bit of a slow start to the day. The girls did not get up until 9am and nor did the dog!

Stephanie finished her Devon diary, although she clearly was not very enthusiastic over it. As she will need a GCSE in English to get into University, we need to find things that she is interested in and will write about.

Jacqueline happily finished her diary and illustrated it with lots of pictures from the brochures.

Stephanie did some of the Year 1 worksheets she had printed off and was both frustrated and surprised to find there were things in there that she did not really understand. I think it is just expressed in a new and different way.

Jacqueline did some of the Year 2 sheets and then came across things she was not sure of. Greg is going to help her over the weekend.

After lunch was business and website time. Jacqueline created some new pages and created the table to put the content into. She then went through the pages and put in notes about the content that is going into each page.



Next steps are to create the written content, manipulate and insert the images and then get things such as an autoresponder and shopping cart set up for her.

Stephanie got out the pad and pens and started planning her site. I asked her the same questions based on:

Why- are you doing this? Goals?
What is it? What does the project consist of?
What is on the site? What is free and what is chargeable?
When will it be ready by?
Who is it aimed at?
Where will you be selling your products?
How will you reach those people?

Literary aside here- with thanks to Rudyard Kipling for the 6 honest serving men.



Stephanie got on well with this. She is also pleased that her friend from school is prepared to act as a guinea pig for the project.

Stephanie then started to think about topics they had covered in Year 8.

We made good progress with this and both girls seemed to really enjoy the activities today. We have got quite a list of things we need from Greg over the weekend in terms of image manipulation and Maths.

All in all a good first week.

With love and abundant blessings

Amanda Goldston

Rest of week 1

Wednesday 11th April

I was expecting to do a Tarot course and have a meeting today, so we arranged for the girls to be out most of the day. They walked over to the Leisure centre this morning and went swimming, so that covered PE.

When they came back, Jacqueline did some more of her Devon diary. She seemed much more interested in the events of last Tuesday, when we visited the Glenn Lyn Gorge and saw the money tree. She wrote a lot more than she did yesterday. She cut out some pictures from the leaflets and found some other pictures of the Lynmouth Flood on the Internet.

Stephanie did not progress as well because she wanted to use some of Greg’s photos to illustrate her writing and did not know where to find them on the computer.

Greg is going to show me some basic image techniques in Photoshop, so I can teach the girls how to manipulate their images for their writing and also for their web pages.

With the Maths, Stephanie printed off some more sheets from the Exeter University site. Today’s module was on Algebra, which she did at the end of last term at school.

She got very frustrated because the information was presented in a different way than she had seen before and she felt she could not do the exercises. When Greg came home, he explained it to her and she felt much happier.

We have decided to go right through this Maths programme from the very beginning, which is Maths for 5 and 6 year olds. Stephanie has printed off loads of sheets and the girls are going to work through it together.

As the programme builds on itself, we should be able to highlight any gaps of things they have not covered- or not covered in any great depth.

With Jacqueline I tried to follow the rest of the lesson plan about units, tens and hundreds and it confused me. So I found her some division practice to do in one of the old, incomplete workbooks.

We will be working through all of those in due course.

Both girls worked solidly for a couple of hours and then went to the cinema to watch the film, “Meet the Robinsons”. English work for tomorrow will be to write a film review and also to continue with the diary from last week.

We did not manage to get out with the dog today , so he was a bit of a grumpy grouch

Thursday 12th April

It is becoming clearer by the minute where my children’s passions lie and it is not really in the conventional academic subjects.

Jacqueline wrote about 5 lines on her English and filled the rest out with copies from the guide books of the places we had visited. Stephanie wrote a couple of lines about her holiday in Devon last week. She is still on Monday!

Stephanie had printed off a whole load of practice work from the Maths section on the Exeter University project. As she had struggled a bit with the Year 8 work and Jacqueline had found the Year 6 work challenging, we decided to start from the beginning.

Stephanie printed off heaps of sheets from Year 1 (5/6 year olds) and Year (6/7 year olds). She completed a bit section of the Year 2 work, although she told me there were things she was unsure of.

Jacqueline did a few sheets of the Year 2 work and got stuck on equations with “greater then” “less than” and “equal to”. It turns out she had done that after Christmas in Year 6. Clearly not paying much attention at the time!

The kids interest level perked up considerably when we started on their business plans.

Jacqueline was itching to start building her website. Patience is not her strong point!

I asked her a few questions about her business including:

What were her goals for it?
What is her business about?
Who is it aimed at?
How is she going to reach those people?
What will on her site that is free? What will be chargeable?

To the question, “What will her business look like when it is finished?” I got the answer of “A website!”

Perhaps I need to review the coaching questions!

Once we had done this, we had a pretty good idea of the answers to those questions and what is going to appear on each page, as well as the action steps Jacqueline, me and Greg need to take to get it up and running.

Stephanie made a start on her list of things she knows how to do and things she loves to do.

We took the dog for a walk and used that time to discuss their businesses.

When we came back I started to show Jacqueline how to build her site in Dreamweaver. By the time we finished, we had the outline of the site with the basic pages.

Then she told me that she did not think we were progressing very fast ! Talk about wanting it done yesterday!

Nearly at the end of week 1
With love and abundant blessings
Amanda Goldston

1st proper day of homeschooling

Hi all

Tuesday 10th April.

This was our first official day of homeschooling. I wrote a plan out for the day which consisted of English, Maths, ICT/PHSE, Languages and PE for both girls.

Jacqueline (10) wrote the first part of her diary from our holiday last. She wrote a page and said she did not want to want to do any more and did not want to put in any pictures.

She told me that Monday of last week was the most boring day for her, which greatly surprised me. She spent about 40 minutes on that.

She has got all her books organised into subjects. This really is starting out as school at home. Next we did some Maths.

I have got a really good site, which is part of Exeter University, which has Maths activities and lesson plans for every year group.

Again we did about 45 minutes on units, tens, hundreds and thousands. I could tell when she had done enough as she was starting to get bored and fidgety.

I can quite understand what the problem has been at school. I could never figure out why the teachers said she seemed to start out with good understanding and got all the first part of the lesson right and then started to get it all wrong.

Now I understand what is happening. She has a razor sharp brain and has grasped the concepts. She only needs to do a few examples before she has GOT it and needs to move onto something else.

In the afternoon I got Jacqueline to write a list of the things she KNOWS something about and the things she LOVES to do. This came under PHSE (personal, health and social education) but it is also a great start for ideas for her website business.

She has settled on her first business. She wants to sell her photography pictures and teach kids how to become fantastic photographers. She has already done an outline of what she wants her website to look like.

I need to teach her to use Dreamweaver to build her site and also to get to grips with the coding behind the payment processor, so we can offer a choice of pictures and sizes.

We also managed to walk the dog (PE), go food shopping and change Jacqueline’s library books.

Stephanie (13) got off to a great start as well. From the Maths site, we downloaded a module on Factors and Perfect Numbers.

This is all Chinese to me at the moment but I have a feeling I am going to be getting up to speed on Maths very quickly.

She created herself an Excel spreadsheet to solve the problems (ICT and Initiative)

She happily spent a couple of hours on this – and discovered the answers provided had some flaws in them- and finished it off this evening. Her dad, the mathematician, checked it and give it his seal of approval.

I wrote out the shopping list in English and Stephanie then found pictures for all the items and found all the words, with the appropriate genders, in French and German.

She wants to learn both languages and Spanish. Jacqueline just wants to do Spanish.

We had done a similar exercise a few weeks ago, when Stephanie was off school and I was delighted that she had remembered quite a few of the words in both languages, particularly the fruit! That was very encouraging.

All in all we had a very good day. I have learnt a lot about my girls today. They are very different personalities with very different working styles.

Stephanie will happily work at something for hours, whilst Jacqueline needs everything to be done in quick, short bursts.

Stephanie did not get around to writing her English diary, however she read mine and pointed out all the grammar and spelling mistakes. I need to correct all that before I post it to my blog.

Who is teaching who in this house?

With love and abundant blessings
Amanda Goldston