A New Coat for Anna

We recently rowed 'A New Coat for Anna' by Harriet Ziefert. It's set in some unidentified European country shortly after the end of the Second World War and shows the process of the making of a woollen coat from sheep to wearer. It includes topics such as bartering, the seasons and Christmas. We had a lot of fun with it, both children enjoyed the story and both did some of the craft activities and Boykin made a lapbook using some pieces from Homeschoolshare :)

 This is my favourite bit in his lapbook. He designed the page and decided where to put it - I just measured him so he could add his dimensions. Look at the knees and shoulders - lovely little details :)

 
 

We made a pattern of Monstrerat from his French book and he sewed it together to make his finger puppet. This is a job that he's been wanting to do for a while but we've never got round to it. Monstrerat and French have nothing to do with the story but it seemed the ideal opportunity to kill two birds with one stone when the FIAR manual discussed patterns and patternmaking :)

 

Then we did some tie-dyeing - another adaptation of the FIAR manual lesson. I'd bought 4 packets of brand new orange napkins in a local charity shop just before Christmas which were perfect for this. Luckily, we'd already had some practice at this :) Yes, those are my children in those photos. Thanks to my lovely friend at Cheerymishmash :)





Luckily, there's been lots of textile type stuff happening in our local HE group this last month which has given plenty of opportunity to relate the story to real life. We live in what was a textile town so there are plenty of resources available. That's one of the reasons I was so glad to do this story with him :) 


Useful links:
Natural Dye activities
Sheep website for children 
Downloadable Educational factsheets

Places we visited: 
Bradford Industrial Museum
Bradford Colour Museum

Books we used:

Where does the time go?

 OK. So 2 whole months have passed since I last posted on this blog. Obviously, 2 very busy months, far too busy to write on here ;)

Since I last posted Spring has truly sprung, much to my two's delight. The Girl declared it was 'like a fairytale' sitting in the garden doing maths while I sewed badges on their Brownie and Beaver uniforms. That memory's one to keep :)
We're still using The Girl's time table but not quite so strictly as at first. It's still a helpful tool that she is happy with. For me, the best thing about it has been to stick to half-hour blocks so that the day doesn't become dominated by the frustrating slowness of finishing a particular subject - usually maths. There are definitely less tears, tantrums and resistance - from me at least ;)

We've had some lovely Home Ed group sessions and workshops over the last two months as well - 

Human Body theme day

Spring theme day

Textile workshops

Felting

We've also been to an Industrial Museum to learn about weaving and been to a loom knitting workshop. The Girl played Victorian millworkers with her friends for a whole week after that :) Which could have had something to do with watching this when we got home....a blast from the past :)



There's seems to have been a bit of a textile theme going on which was great as it tied in nicely with our FIAR book (which I'll post about tomorrow...maybe... )

Today we went to Bagshaw Museum to look at their Egyptian tomb room which ties in with SOTW (which I will also post about tomorrow....or the day after....) I think they enjoyed dressing up in Indian clothes and dancing to Bollywood music better though :)