Making it up

Carnival of Homeschooling - PalmTree Pundit

Welcome to the 5th Carnival of Homeschooling. Since I’m hosting this carnival here in the beautiful state of Hawaii, I thought we’d enjoy going through the entries at the beach. Grab your swimsuit, a towel, and some sunscreen, and let’s go!

I could really do with some sun right about now. In lieu of it, I’ll imagine myself on the beach as I pick my way through these blogposts Enjoy.

One For Kris

Especially for anyone who is worried that their children play too much - they probably don’t.

Failing to teach them how to handle real life - Sunday Times - Times Online

and now the children are gone for the afternoon

In case you’re wondering what I’m doing blogging in the middle of a Monday, I’m off work feeling kind of sorry for myself, and for once, not at all guilty. There’s no way I could have handled the drive today, just not up to it.

So we’ve had a relatively quiet morning with more class tv, especially Pod’s mission about plants, lots of imaginative play, and a fair bit of Lazytown inspired bouncing. What is it about that programme? They both seem to love it. Suppose it could be the very pink bouncy superhero girl for Big, but really not sure what the attraction is for Small. I know he doesn’t like Robbie Rotten anyway

And now they’ve gone off to puddlers, and I’m considering pottering through some of my task list and fitting in a nap…

eta - wonder if this sort of thing Picnic Day! (Ready-To-Read) would inspire Big to more reading

Now, I know it’s Sunday. I know it’s a day of rest for many. I know that my children don’t know that, and one of the things they’ve never got around to learning is that education is supposed to happen 9 -3.30, Mon-Fri, within the walls of a school. I’m quite pleased about that actually.

So today they taught themselves more maths, using the counters from our Make N Break game (which unfortunately now has a broken timer, guess I shouldn’t have let Small play with it after all ) Big is now pretty comfortable counting up in 10s - I had done some stuff with her ages ago on it, but she cracked it completely this week in school. And she’s happy adding units on as well, so that area of maths is coming along nicely.

I caught Small sitting watching Dora, and reciting his numbers along to the tv, and I’ve heard him counting things a few times this weekend too. I’m not sure how far he can count, but I definitely heard up to 5. Was blown away when he continued to join in when they started to speak Spanish though, a month ago this child had fewer than 10 english words and was very reluctant to try to say anything, now he’s speaking Spanish???

The speech is rocketing along now. We’ve got sentences, names, verbs, pronouns. A lot of it is still very unclear, with several completely missing consonants, but he’s pretty patient with us, and backs up important stuff with signing, so we’re getting there. I’m loving being able to talk to him though.

They spent some time on the puter this afternoon when I finally got CBeebies working for them, and we did more painting. Small’s ambition appears to be to put enough paint of to his paper to cause it to completely dissolve. He nearly succeeded today as well! Big’s artwork is changing almost daily, and I’m very much enjoying watching it evolve. Her other big challenge today was her writing - she’s desperate to write joined up, but as she can barely print, it’s not coming along particularly rapidly. I suggested that practise might help, but she’s a bit allergic to that concept.

The other thing she wants to do is read her Rainbow Fairy book, Jasmine the Present Fairy She is afraid it’s going to take her a month though, and again, all I can suggest is practise. Am I missing a trick here, is there any shortcut I can help her with? I’m thinking not, it’s just about trying and doing, she’s got all the basic skills, so I can’t do for her any more.

Right, the bug which has laid me low most of the weekend still has a fairly strong hold, so I’m off to bed. I’ve already decided that I’m not up to the drive in the morning, so I’m either going to ring in sick or do some work from home for a couple of hours, whichever they prefer really. Hopefully that should finally shake it off, and I can pick up the week properly on Tuesday.

is Feedburner. If for no other reason than I get to stare at another stats page

Actually, it’s more than that. Feedburner allows you to do nifty things with your rss feed, routing all current consumers through it (if you do a few slightly technical things with it first - wordpress has a plugin, and I know how to use it now) so that you can see how many ppl are really subscribed. I’ve been wondering about that - I check my stats fairly regularly, but just knowing how many hits there have been on the rss file isn’t very informative.

Once you’ve done things like that, there’s a whole other set of tools for analyzing, publicizing, optimizing and monetizing (and probably lots of other things with ‘z’ in. If there’s one thing I’ve got against the management interface, it’s the proliferation of the letter z!) A lot of that is slightly American centric - they can add your amazon.com associate id to your feed, but there’s nothing about .co.uk Daresay that they’ll get around to it though.

The other really positive thing I have to say about the company though is that they are really listening to their users. I sent some feedback to them this afternoon, and was impressed to get a personal response and then a dialogue which ended in a response from the top guy, Dick Costolo. Now, I don’t know how far the top is from the bottom, iyswim, but I was still impressed. (Well, I was some hours after I read the email not noting the signature detail and spotted that he was the CEO somewhere else entirely! )

So, if you’re wanting to have more stats to analyse, head on over and sign up with Feedburner. I’m enjoying it

Climate Challenge - The Climate Challenge Fund

Save the world and promote home education all at once A few catches, you’ve got to be between 10 and 18 on 31 March this year and you have to be resident in England. Any volunteers?

It’s been a long day. I’m not quite sure what’s wrong with me, I feel lightheaded, tired, and headachy, but nothing particularly concrete to say I’m ill. But I went to bed at 6pm for a lie-down last night, and didn’t surface til nearly 9 this morning.

Despite that, I can already hear my bed calling to me, but I don’t think I can go until the children stop yelling really, so I’m filling in time by blogging.

Long day, yes. But I’ve tried to fit in things they like - Big did her painted your own egg cups (from a kit she got at Christmas, desperately trying to work out who from though!) and very kindly shared with Small. I’ve only just discovered the small print, white on orange instructions on the bottom that say that you shouldn’t paint the inside of the cups, oops! As Small did, quite comprehensively

Then they moved on to painting on paper, and I retired to the bedroom to finish off reading Fresh Milk, the secret life of breasts.

I’d been a bit worried about reading this, as discussion around it over on the lactivist blog suggested that I could find it a little more enlightening than I might like I’m a bit of a prude tbh, or maybe a bit of a square is a kinder way to put it, I’ve never gone in for anything even in the way of soft porn, so I was wondering what I was going to be reading about in a book that includes a section on lactation fetishists.

I needn’t have worried. Apart from lots of gushing similes and metaphors (and yes, I did choose the word carefully ) there wasn’t anything much to be afraid of. Yes, there’s a discussion of porn films like the Battle of the Milkmaids (or some such, can’t remember clearly) but it doesn’t go into any gory detail, apart from describing the strength or distance of some low flying milk. And given that that is what milk does under pressure, as many of us no doubt know, it’s not that exciting a topic.

Much more interesting is lots of debate about how breastfeeding really feels. None of this wishywashy it might be slightly uncomfortable in the early days, either, some quite up front discussion of it being really rather painful. Which is good, tbh, as I felt like a complete failure when I was dripping blood for the first few weeks of feeding Big and everyone was telling me that I must have been getting it wrong. I think I was, slightly, with hindsight, but I still think it can and does hurt.

So anyway, I rather enjoyed the book, and I was grateful for the loan, from a friend on Feminist Parents

And back to our usual pastimes. We had a break from the usual routine tonight when I went and got fish and chips for tea. This turned out to be a bad idea. Small doesn’t like fish and chips. He doesn’t like the routine altering - I said it was a bit late for a bath and they’d better just go straight to bed and that was it, instant meltdown. Boy he’s loud when he’s unhappy. And verbal too. Now you don’t just get wailing, you get informed “I sad. I not happy,” which is lovely on the breaking into words grounds, but not too great on the actually happening and needing to be described.

Two edged sword this verbal stuff it would appear!

Anyway, Tim appears to have calmed them both down with a story, Swallows and Amazons, I think. So I’m going to watch some junk tv and then go to bed early.

You Passed 8th Grade Science

Congratulations, you got 8/8 correct!

From Helen, via Deb

And rofl:

You Failed the US Citizenship Test

Oops, you only got 3 out of 10 right!

That made me smile

Yesterday we did our now traditional watching of Look and Read, think we turned over during Episode 4 and stuck it out to the bitter end. Was highly amused by one statement from Big during it - asking me to read out the writing on the screen, she said
“I can’t read it fast enough”.
Spot the deliberate error? She’s no longer denying the ability to read, now it’s the ability to keep up that’s the problem

Afternoon, with me still working, despite a rapidly growing headache consisted of children’s tv. Small displayed a new ability as well. He thumped his sister (no, that isn’t new) and when I said we don’t do that, I was told
“I pirate”. Ah hah, full scale imaginative play.

Right, still feeling horrid. Off to find paracetamol and possibly somewhere quieter to put my head. Why do both my children feel the need to scream so much???

Given that I’m already getting hits for Hesfes 2006, thought I’d better point out that the information is out there, the website is updated and the mystery of the new location has finally been revealed.

Surprised to discover that I’m slightly disappointed that we won’t be making it this year, I’ve definitely got a bit of a love hate thing going on there. But working limits holidays, and Hesfes isn’t as important as some of my other plans.

Let me know how it goes, won’t you

BBC NEWS | Technology | Internet serves as ’social glue’

But the report, entitled The Strength of Internet Ties, found that e-mail supplements rather than replaces offline communications.

Funnily enough, this fits in nicely with what I’d been planning to blog tonight, although it has to be said that Jan removed most of my need to respond to comments

Just because I like blogging and communicating with strangers, doesn’t mean everyone does. Wordpress has plugins that allow a whole bunch of different ways of using it, there are other cms systems that do likewise. I use it pretty much plain vanilla, although I do have some comment moderation stuff set up. Got more to do with stopping spam than stopping commenters I don’t know though.

Likewise the blogring has more than one purpose. It does gather home education blogs in a place for ppl who are searching for them. It also gathers them together to make life simpler for the ppl we know about who read them. Not all of those ppl are particularly capable technically, daresay not all of them have rss readers, it just makes life easier to click through the links. The only condition I’ve set on blogs with passwords is that ppl without the password should still be able to click through, and as blogring admin, I’m very happy with that setting.

I will be continuing to meditate on the blogring future, and by that I mean how I can help to enhance it rather than whether it has one I think the blogring is a wonderful community - I enjoyed taking the time the other night to go around and comment places I haven’t for a while, and I enjoyed even more tonight discovering lots of other ppl have been at it too. It’s also a visual symbol of community (and don’t anyone tell me that it has to be visual to be a symbol, I know what I mean!) reminding us all that we belong to something bigger than our own blog. I think that’s important when so many of us are so remote from others in the same situation.

Grief, I seem to be doing a lot of pontificating atm. Something must have gone to my head I do apologise, I’m sure normal service will resume very shortly.

Oh, and Big lost another tooth, I did say that already didn’t I? The tooth fairy visited both times, and brought shiny coins. Big seems completely unconcerned that one was a pound and the second a 10p

apart from the screaming

That would be Small. He didn’t want to go to bed last night off the path as it was all too exciting, and tonight he was just too tired, so when he woke up getting out of the car, he cried.

Last night was pleasant, catching up with Jan and Jonathan. Amazingly I’d barely seen them since Okehampton, but it was good to stop over at our home from home

Would have been there longer if Big had managed to stick to our clothing agreement, but she didn’t. Big sigh - four changes of clothing and she eventually left the house in the first outfit, a mere forty minutes after we got started. And then they were doing carparking on the M1, even on the slip road that I would usually use, so we had a scenic trip round the back roads to pick it up above the blockage. Decent run in apart from that, and decentish run over to Jan’s afterwards, just a lot later than I’d been hoping too.

Big and M are really hitting it off atm, and Small made valiant attempts at several extra names. He’s really getting the hang of it now, although he does amuse me. If you ask who he is, you get told “Boy!”, but if you ask his name, he will tell you that too. He refers to Big as ‘nomar’, something he made up himself, although he does know her name too. I didn’t get to watch Big develop language like this, as she took to it really rather rapidly and quite early, so I’m very much enjoying and savouring this experience

Let’s see, what else? Big has lost another tooth, the one immediately under the first one, so the gap is now somewhat larger. She’s inordinately proud of this for some reason, very odd. Apparently she’s done lots of maths this last couple of days at school, and A, the principal seems very impressed with her. Small has spent some time in the children’s house again, although I get the impression his favourite area is the sandpit, closely followed by the sink. He does like being able to wash his hands!

I’ve managed another step in our financial management tonight, only leaving me with I think four more pressing targets for the rest of this month. (Lots of non pressing targets as well, but I’m focussing on important and urgent, something I vaguely remember from a variety of books on time management from the bank )

And on that moderately optimistic note, I’ll knock off for the night.

A pealing tale

lying in the dentist’s chair this afternoon, did I distract myself with images of a quiet country day, a peaceful seaside walk or time with my family or friends? No.

I started composing a blogpost about it all.

I think I’m an addict

So yes, I’ve been to the dentist. Now, I should be clear here, I don’t like dentists. I’m sure it’s nothing desperately personal, but then again, I’m not sure I’ve ever met once outside a dental surgery, so how would I know? I’m not phobic in the same way at least one of my friends is, but I do have a problem with the whole needle thing. I have a problem with all needles actually, dates back to some very unpleasant blood tests when I was a teenager with a mystery illness. Sticking one into my mouth is not guaranteed to cheer me up, in fact, it is going to do the opposite.

And then, when I finally summon up the courage to be assertive and remark that I’m quite frankly terrified, being told that there’s no need, they are only doing a little injection the same way they do for children does *not* help. What, was she trying to patronise me into behaving better? How much better could I behave - I didn’t cry, moan, or lamp her one, although the temptation to do the last increased steadily throughout the forty minutes I lay there, as she drilled out old fillings, cleaned my teeth by pulling them out by the roots, and chatted over my head with her improbable mind-reading assistant, while failing to locate many of her instruments at first attempt, and having one of them fire gunk down the side of my neck at regular intervals. Oh, and then there was the moment when, staring at her gloves, I found myself wondering whether it was her blood on them, or a previous victim’s. Ghoulish I know, but they were at the time discussing the stain on one of her instruments, and how it just *wouldn’t* come of in the autoclave…

I’m not a happy bunny, can you tell? And this joyful experience cost me nearly £130. Must find HSA forms and work out what I’m entitled to get back. Hope it’s something!

Back relatively early, but not on best of form, to another ranty evening attempting to glean the smallest amount of cooperation out of the offspring. I’m not quite sure why we’re stuck in the pattern of mummy has to yell before anything is done that she wants (I’m not talking major stuff here, just getting into the bath at bathtime, getting out of it after a while, getting ready for bed, you know, the basics really) but we are indeed well and truly stuck. I had another of *those* conversations tonight asking if there’s any reason for it…pointless conversation, I know it, you know it, doesn’t change anything.

Hohum. I’m sure it’s down to her feeling attention deprived. I can see her point of view. Doesn’t help me much though

Oh, and Small’s verbal achievement of the day? Apologies Sarah, he’s topped saying your name. Now he can say his own

You come downstairs from an exhausting bedtime routine and think, oh good, the washing’s finished already. Then you realise that it hasn’t, *someone* has pressed rinsehold and it’s just sitting there soaking wet…

Has been rather up and down. She seems somewhat emotional and confrontational atm, and I’ve been somewhat preoccupied with some work I needed to finish. It’s not a good combination

Nevertheless, we’ve had some good times today. I particularly enjoyed setting her up on the laptop to work on some more programming with kpl, and then clearing off out to do the shopping, after watching her drawing interesting shapes in pink Apparently she only called Tim in when she put in numbers too large to display on the screen and confused herself.

Also had a chat with her about designing something to go on a Tshirt, but didn’t get very far with explaining the terms I wanted to use. Hohum, another day for that methinks. Was quite impressed when she went and fired up a graphics program on the ‘puter to try to work something out though, and the picture she produced, while not what I was looking for, was pretty good in itself. She’s also spent time on nickjr which seems to be a favourite online haunt.

She helped with the pizzas tonight, and had a good surprise in the middle of the day when Grandma turned up with the adjusted long denim skirt. As anticipated she looks fabulous in it, very elegant and grown up. Just as well we had a strop or two or I might have been struggling a bit to work out where my little girl went!

Managed to fit in bedtime stories for both of them tonight - Small chose Dr.Seuss’s Sleep Book, not one of my favourites as it’s very long and a bit tongue twisty to read at bedtime, and Big went for a bedtime story about a veteran car. Not her usual run, but there you go.

Attempting to catch him for his bath tonight, I said, “Small, am I going to carry you upstairs by your feet?”
“No!”
“Oh, are you going to walk then?”
“No! Run…..” and off he went, demonstrating

Once I’d got him upstairs, I started undressing him as the bath ran. Top off, trousers off, nappy. He looked down in surprise. “Mummy, my nappy gone”
“Yes”
“Nappy gone”
“yes”
“Nappy ‘peard”
“Eh? Um, do you mean disappeared?”
“MMM! nappy ‘peard!”
Oookay.

How evil are you?

Sorry and all that though…

That he set aside a time of half an hour each week when he actually listens to what I say…

Big’s suggestion is that he listen to me all the time…think I like her idea better!

eta - yes, he knows I’m blogging this…

Took some doing, but I finally located “Family Circle” Easy Sweaters: 50 Knit and Crochet Projects and returned it to the library this morning. It only cost £5.26 in fines , all the more annoying as I neither created anything from any of the patterns, nore got organised enough to copy any patterns out.

Oh well, let’s face it, I’m never going to clothe my family in hand crocheted garments, even supposing they’d hold still long enough to consider the concept!

So this morning consisted of major excavation, during which I also located a number of books for returning to other ppl, as well as a couple of books I bought a while ago, and had forgotten I’d bought. More Still, at least I found And the Skylark Sings with Me: Adventures in Homeschooling and Community-based Education before I got around to absent mindedly buying it again! And now that I’ve remembered I’ve got it, all I have to do is read it…

Took the final remaining one of Big’s library books back, and armed with only one of their library cards, allowed them 20 minutes to choose books. Small is funny in the library, he really enjoys looking at books, but as soon as you start gathering them up to put into our rather wonderful home educators bookbag, he gets all stressed and starts putting them away again.

Oh, nearly forgot, he made a bit of a grammatical leap this morning. He’s been forming sentences of the “me ready”, “me do it”, “me up” kind of style for a couple of days now, and this morning, he was following me about, saying “me ready, me ready, me ready” then suddenly there was this pause (longer than his usual pause between words, each word is clearly spoken with a break in between at the moment, I find it rather cute ) and then he said “I (pause) ready”. Well, I thought it was big. So I went to tell Tim, and of course he followed me. As I was explaining, I said “and he said ‘me ready’ ” and an indignant little voice butted in: “no! I ready!” So that was nice and clear then :grin:.

Where was I? Oh yes, the library, and then on to Morrisons. Cheques to pay in, so that Big can have her birthday money from Grandfather and buy herself a bike. Also wanted to get her some long socks so that she could wear the birthday trousers that another friend bought her (she currently only has boots, not shoes, and won’t wear boots with short socks, so couldn’t wear her trousers). Home with sausage rolls for a rapid lunch before dashing up to West Yorkshire to join in with an ‘off the path’ celebration of their newest family member. Big bizarrely decided that she *wasn’t* going to change into the new socks and new trousers and she also wasn’t overly happy about the church aspect of the afternoon, but she got a lot happier once we got back to the house.

So that was our day. Rather enjoyed listening to music in the car on the way home, discovering that neither of the children like Dido, Life for Rent, but Texas, White on Blonde, is acceptable. Especially as Tim had already told Big about a concert we went to before they were born, and apparently music played at that concert is automatically much more acceptable to her. Odd child. Managed to slot in a library book, Snarlyhissopus, when we got home, and they’ve gone to sleep listening to a Winnie the Pooh tape. Well, Small has gone to sleep, apparently Big was still writing her diary when Tim came down. Wonder where she gets that from