This post celebrates more of the amazing projects Bella and Emily have created each week during their Autumn school term. These projects epitomise ‘child led learning’. The girls come up with each concept, inspired by what they see around them, then Rob guides and inspires them to incorporate creativity, maths, research, art, writing skills, life skills and much much more to deliver output, presented on Fridays (over over-the-top G&Ts) always as a prelude to our weekly movie nights. They usually reduce me to tears (a bit like the school assemblies).
Project time G&T Woppas!
School, MonicoFamilyTravels – style
This project was the planning, scheduling filming and editing of a short video describing the cadence, routines and teaching styles of school MonicoFamilyTravels-style. I think it speaks for itself:
Artistic works inspired by Los Potreros
Los Potreros is the wonderful estancia we stayed in north of Cordoba for a week. Animals abounded, and cosy nights in front of log fires, and new friends with wonderful hearts and fabulous senses of humour. All this inspired a series of artistic works including the below:
Los Potreros Acrostic Poem by Emily and Bella
‘Mist’ by Bella
‘Masai’ by Emily
Core health
James and I had roles as patients in this weeks ‘core health’ project. The girls gave us full medicals including eyes, ears, and teeth. Bedside manner was occasionally a little boisterous / unusual, and I think I’d be rather concerned if either of them head down the route of becoming a dentist, but overall they now know the difference between pulse and blood pressure, I have got a new vision prescription, and we escaped almost unscathed with a more-or-less clean bill of health…..
except for a few broken bones….
Bridges
This project was inspired by the Zarate bridge, and incorporated sketching, technical drawing, history, maths and an intro to engineering and architecture skills.
The culmination was an impressive to-scale model of the bridge, manufactured from cardboard, fruit boxes and balloon string. Impressive stuff!
The big reveal!
End of term festive finale
We were treated to a concert of Spanish, popular and Christmas songs, by ‘Arthur Band’. Lyrics were adjusted to celebrate the crazy world of MonicoFamilyTravels as a fitting and nostalgic end to the first term of school. Thank you to Bella, Emily and Rob for a wonderful evening of entertainment, and for bringing the Christmas spirit to Las Palmas.
Last but not least, PEN LICENSES!
In recognition of an age-old St Christophers tradition, both Emily and Bella earned their pen licenses (and new fountain pens) this term to honour their very neat joined up writing.
to Parque de Criollo where the Gaucho displays and games should have been staged. There were a few hopefuls like us lingering around, and a few gauchos hanging around on their horses. Turns out gauchos are pretty accomplished at hanging around, and they out-hung
(about an hour north of BA) for the entirety of October and November. The house is a wonderful mixture of modern and traditional (think huge glass walls looking out onto a blazingly green garden, with tall beamed ceilings and roaring log fires for the cold nights). There are about 150 large plots of land here where wealthy Argentinians ‘weekend’. The compound is fenced, and consists of nothing but horses (everywhere – literally), houses, a communal tennis court, and the clubhouse (which warrants a blog post of its own). It backs onto the reserve (direct access) which makes for great hacking and picnics by the river. There is tonnes of security so the girls can cycle around and enjoy some yet unknown freedom.
around for the last 10 years. We pick grapefruits and lemons from trees in the garden for breakfast / G&Ts respectively (actually the grapefruits go quite well in the G&Ts too….).
Wildlife abounds, my favourites so far being the burrowing owls, lagarto lizards, white-eared possum, fireflies, and the hares that race around in search of a better blade of grass…… I have resumed my early morning runs. Its deliciously flat going, but still throws out spectacular nature and sunrises to tickle the endorphin highs.
the terrace in case there are carrots involved. Whilst we like the familiarity and proximity, it does result in a fair whack of poo-picking, but the girls negotiated a rate of 30c per poo (it was supposed to be 25p per poo, but Em pointed out that the pound is weak against the dollar, and we pay in dollars, so it should be 30c………… so i capitulated on the condition they do their own maths). 
In La Boca (a very colourful place where there are houses of all sorts of colours), we went to a museum about sculptures/art. There was an amazing exhibition all done by Alexander Calder. The art was mysterious. It was put together in loads of bending twiddling ways. He was a sculptor and an engineer because there was something you could wind up but there wasn’t an engine in it. 
