We have books coming out of our ears in this house. Smallest loves to be read to, and she loves to read books back to us. She’s got a pretty good memory for them as well. We were sent a couple of lovely first shape/ colour type books for review the other week, and she adores them. They are rather lovely. These ones:

Lots of great pictures to talk about, with words in sensible font underneath. I particularly like the Numbers book having an owl on every page to spot, although I’m not sure what pages on Feelings and Manners are doing in there, particularly with nice/ naughty as concepts. I try to stay away from the word naughty tbh, I don’t find it to be useful.

Having the books did make me start thinking about actually planning some education for her, so that’s a good thing, surely?

So far she’s been educated incidentally. It seems to have worked rather well in giving her excellent vocabulary and speech – she’s extremely, almost relentlessly, verbal. (Which is to say she hardly ever stops talking. And at the moment all of her speech is phrased in questions. “What did I say? What did I just do? Why did I do that?” If you don’t know, darling, I don’t think the rest of us stand much chance :/ ) She also counts up to 7 or 8, depending, which is due mainly to playing hide and seek with her siblings. We’ve got no stairs to practise our counting on sadly, as that’s another good tactic.

She loves to draw. Mark making we’ve definitely got sussed. The other day I started her copying ones and zeros – it did occur to me later that zero is actually a rather complicated concept and I probably should have stayed away from it to begin with, but done now. I would like some of the early Montessori bead materials, I might make equivalents from some Baker Ross beads instead.

Ooh, Baker Ross. I nearly forgot the fabulous bundle of crafts they sent us recently!

They were country themed. We had African wooden necklaces, Scottish scratch art magnets, Welsh foam bookmark kits, St George’s Cross flag tissue kits and leprechaun masks.

Small loved them. Big loved them too, though bizarrely I don’t seem to have taken any pictures of her with them.

Of course, we don’t always use full craft kits. Sometimes just a pair of scissors and a piece of paper hit the mark. She’s pretty good with scissors, left handed here, although she does tend to swap them around.

So we do arts and crafts, writing, reading, counting and so on. There’s also singing, dancing, swimming, running, climbing, playing, watching, more reading, a bit more reading, some drawing, occasionally baking, and lots and lots of play.

Hm, maybe I don’t need to do that much in the way of planning after all, perhaps the incidental education will get us there after all. Although I should confess that I’ve ordered her a set of Bob Books

as I think she’ll enjoy them, and they might help her towards those first skills for reading in a relatively painless way. (After the experience of teaching Big to read, I did actually say I’d never do it again. I guess with two extra children I’m going to have to get over that phobia. Bob Books should be a relatively painless first step for me too )

Disclosure we were sent books from Random House and craft items from Baker Ross for review. Amazon links are affiliate links – if you buy via my link I get a small amount of money back. I’ve paid for the Bob Books. We provide our time and opinion free of charge.

And I’ve chosen a starting point. The technique is icord as shown in this video

and the project is this gorgeous bracelet. I’m fairly sure it’s an easy project, and while the yarn is discontinued I have some recycled silk sari yarn that I think might work. (Expect me back here in a few hours whinging that it won’t…)

So, anyone with me? Anyone else want to stretch their wings creatively?

I’m sticking a linky in to see what you get up to…

I was a bit panicked about the peg doll craft as I’d never heard of Nazca before it came up as this week’s theme, but a bit of research on wikipedia came up with “A large portion of dresses were found portraying birds with speckled bodies, double-headed serpentine figures, and anthropomorphic figures.” So I decided embroidery was the way to go, especially as someone else was already doing weaving

So, a Nazca peg doll.

Materials:

(So that’s a peg doll, some thread, a needle, bit of material and a pipe cleaner in case you aren’t sure.)

Embroidery – I chose to do a two headed serpent. This is the body with head number one.

And a close up of head number two, formed with a chain stitch, body filled in by sewing through the running stitch.

Here’s your finished serpent:

Although other ppl chose to do chain stitch birds instead – rather beautifully it must be said.

Twist a pipecleaner round the peg for arms, cut a neck hole in middle of bit of fabric and dress your doll. Hey presto.

Oh, and here’s a gratuitous cute offspring picture. Because she’s cute.

If you enjoyed this craft, you may also enjoy our Greek peg dolls and Minotaur peg dolls. I’m also hoping to link to other crafts from other participants.

Tim was away for a couple of nights at the beginning of the week, which cut down drastically on my (evening) computing time. It also meant a convoluted set of logistics for the Monday evening activities – Big was picked up slightly late for her fun swim with friends, and dropped back to let herself into the house while I walked Small to Beavers, waited there and walked (briskly) back. Actually, on the way we were accosted by another parent who recognised the uniform and was insistent that the Beavers were having a walk in the woods – he drove us up there to discover that his wife had got it wrong, and the woods walk is next week, so then he drove us back again

Big had the phone and a fall back plan that she could go to D & S if she didn’t feel happy in the house alone – in the event she rang to find out how long we would be, and as we had already set off from Beavers, she decided she was happy to wait. Takes about 20 minutes and I do know why I’m managing to lose weight all of a sudden, as that meant I did 2 miles with a soa in wrap, and she’s getting quite heavy now!

Tuesday the children spent a fair bit of time on Mathletics – Big discovered the top 100 student list and managed first of all to get on to the top 100 UK Students, and then top 100 in the world. She was very pleased with herself and went on to complete all of the year 3 work, get her first silver certificate and asked me to move her up. Was slightly confused to discover it thought she had done some something harders as she insisted it hadn’t, but we’ll cope (not least as it means that she’s not completely fallen behind Small).

Tuesday afternoon is of course swimming. For some reason neither of her friends showed up this week, meaning that I didn’t have anyone to chat with while her lesson was on and after, so we got out of there promptly enough to make it home for me to actually cook rather than feeding them pasta or pizza and they got to start catching up on Doctor Who while I did that.

Wednesday we were out all day. It’s music group in the morning in the town down the road, so we were up and out and waiting for a bus disturbingly early (for us). The bus driver hadn’t heard of the type of ticket I was trying to buy, so he let us on for free, and even though we got off a stop too early, we made it to music just about on time. So it seems buses could be a way to keep up with at least some of our activities as Tim starts work if we don’t go for a second car.

From music we went back to WFHelen’s house (yes, on the bus) for the afternoon, and then back home via yet another bus and the coop. Only just enough time to turn around to take Big out to Brownies, and then Small, soa and I called on D & S for a while. Figured out later that I’d had soa in the wrap for an hour 45 minutes during the afternoon – not a bad exercise rate for me and she’s pretty happy with it

Brown Owl dropped Big off minutes after we’d got back, and Tim wasn’t far behind. Had a good catchup with family as well, and even remembered to ring my sister to wish her happy birthday. (Hadn’t managed to get cards in the post to her though )

So was barely online at all yesterday, and don’t seem to have managed much better today. Kids have mathleticed again, and both have spent some time doing digital art. Had tears from Small when he realised he’d overwritten a picture of soa with one of Big and also when he got back with a smart haircut that apparently he didn’t like. He enjoyed coming to Baby Yoga with us though.

soa has tried a few more foods but not really enjoyed very many of them yet. I’m assuming that continuing to offer when she seems interested (she stole some pasta off me at baby yoga, but just chomped on it without actually eating it) is the way to be going and that the advice given by another mother that she needs to be on 3 full meals by 7 months is a little excessive. (Just as well I’m reasonably sure of myself, all this contradictory advice could be very offputting. I did get WF and Em to reassure me on these grounds yesterday though!) She’s seemed a bit out of sorts today, although obviously has now spent the entire evening sleeping which means I’m in for another night of it. Wonder if it might be time to change her into a night nappy and try to get some sleep anyway.

There were two candidates that stood out, Blickling Hall and Fellbrigg Hall. We decided that we’d keep Fellbrigg as a possibility for a stop off on the Tues and go to Blickling, mainly on the grounds that Blickling wasn’t open on the Tuesday

We didn’t regret the choice for a moment. Blickling is absolutely stunning, and really, you could spend days there rather than hours. It was our first visit to a National Trust property since buying membership at Sutton Hoo and I think may well have put us half way towards paying for membership. A visit with parking would have cost £30 We need to cram in a few more visits to make it all worthwhile, but I think we’ll probably manage it over the summer.

With it being a slightly cold day (understatement!), we decided we would focus on the inside of the house, and leave the stunning gardens for another day. Turns out that The National Trust provide packs that children can borrow – these consist of a “gone exploring” badge, so that room stewards know what they are up to, a folder with a page of suggestions of things to look at in each room, pen/pencil and pads for making of notes, and torch, magnifying glass, binoculars and measuring tape so that they can really focus in.

Those who know Small will know he was in his element with this pack. Big was too, just as soon as the connection with Anne Boleyn was mentioned – and she kept careful note of the Hobart bulls as we went around the house.

The room stewards were unfailingly polite and helpful – when we broke for lunch part way through one of them short cutted us out to the main door and when we reappeared a little while later took us back to where we’d broken off We had our lunch (using our rather wonderful Outwell Calabash Picnic Bag, complete with wine glasses for squeezed orange juice don’t you know ) at a picnic table next to the little play area – the kids played in a determined fashion despite the chill while I walked briskly to the car with soa to fetch the food.

The only bit missing appeared to be rubbish bins, surely a reasonable addition to a picnic area?

To summarise – we loved Blickling Hall. We fully intend to go back and enjoy it again, and we were very impressed with our first experience of National Trust properties as members. It was a very good day out. Oh, and the children even got to keep their “Gone exploring Blickling Hall” badges

Home education for us is very home centred right atm, due mainly to soa’s needs and requirements. We are going to introduce a weekly music group as of next week, which will mean we see ppl every week which will hopefully be a good thing, and of course there are still the weekly sessions of Brownies (soon to be guides I think), Beavers and swimming to fit in. Means that we leave the house three days a week, no bad thing. Must follow up on swimming club for Big too.

Anyway, the formal education part of the day has been reintroduced as of Monday. Big has her weekly planner that lets her choose what to do over and above maths, handwriting and spelling, and the routine of it seems to be helpful to her. Her basic skills seem to be improving along with her overall temper. Having said that, she is full of cold atm so her self control isn’t particularly good. She is very much enjoying the Sharon Creech books that I got her for Christmas, she’s started with Bloomability.

Small is proving to be a bit of a challenge atm. He is very oppositional – a direct request usually gets a direct response of no, without a pause for thought. Indirect requests don’t fair much better, as they are either ignored or misunderstood. I’m working on finding new ways of dealing with him, but it’s an uphill battle right now, mainly I think because of my continual tiredness. If he’s left to his own devices, he forgets to eat or drink, neglects other basic needs, and spend the entire day exploring the internet. Hm. Not ideal really, so he can’t be left to his own devices, meaning we get back to those confrontations. All by himself though, he’s exploring the tree of life, Scratch, learning how to use a calculator and doing mental maths and working on email netiquette. So his education isn’t being quite as neglected even if it’s a rather eclectic mix!

He made us laugh the other evening – he was asking how to divide a series of numbers by 4, and I didn’t know why. Turned out that the nutritional values of the caramel sweets he’s been eating were listed for four chunks and he wanted to know what the values were for one…sweetie maths!

soa, as previously noted, is gorgeous Her current education is to practise smiling, and the entire family enjoys encouraging her

Can’t remember when I last blogged properly about the older children (odd thing to say about Small!) so this is going to be a braindump of things I can remember that I may or may not have blogged before.

Small is continuing to enjoy Beavers, and now has three badges down his arm, and a Promise badge on his chest. They seem very organised at his pack – they’ve baked twice, he went to a swimming gala (Tim was very impressed, said Small did actually swim the whole way across with his float), they visited a church and wrote a prayer and last night he went to the district carol service. Even more impressive, I put soa in a wrap and took him there

He’s also still enjoying his swimming lessons, and seems to be making progress faster than I would have expected for just a half hour session once a week. Really wish I could be getting them swimming in between times as I think he’s very near to cracking it, but think by Centerparcs he’s going to be either actually swimming or will be by the end of the week.

Work wise he’s spending most of his educational time wandering through the bbc bitesize site, particularly the KS3 area which has a subsite called Questionaut. This week he’s learnt to use a calculator, and I inflicted a KS1 Sats paper on them both – he scraped a level 2A (the top of the expected level for the end of the school year he’s in) with several careless mistakes mainly down to the fact that he doesn’t write any working out down. I’m not sure he understands what working out is supposed to be about tbh, on the one question that asked him to write down how he worked out the answer he put “I think of a question and then work it out” or something of the kind

Big’s big success of the last month has got to be her swimming. Not so very long ago she moved up from the yellow hats to the green hats – it was at the start of the current batch of ten lessons anyway. Then the week before last her green hat group was doing lengths rather than widths and it rapidly became painfully obvious that she is way more powerful than the rest of her group as she consistently caught up with the child ahead and had to manoeuvre round them. As a result she was sent over for a test with the next group up, and passed, and last week was her first session in with the blue hats.

The blue hats appear to be concentrating on the finer points of their strokes – turning the head to the side to snatch a breath rather than lifting it from the water in crawl for example. As Tim said, she’s already at least as proficient as either of us and there’s not a lot we can teach her although she does obviously need to develop her stamina, and continue with the fine tuning of her strokes. We are seriously considering the swimming club now as we think she would really enjoy it.

Work wise she has been exploring bitesize as well, though as she gets very stressed about things she doesn’t understand I am currently on strike where Questionaut is concerned with her This follows a major breakdown in communication where she just flat out wouldn’t believe me that a particular part of a question/ answer was irrelevant (it was a question about coordinates on a grid, if you are at (-2, 5) how many units are you from the y axis? She was determined that she had to know how big a unit was, and no matter how I tried, I couldn’t get across that that part really didn’t matter).

Positive news though is that she too achieved a 2A on her KS1 Sat , getting only one thing wrong. They will be attempting the level 3 paper next week.

Finally made it out to the library yesterday for the first time in a month I’d guess. Big bought herself a replacement library card as she has yet again lost hers, and then got out lots of books about Anne Frank including A Friend Called Anne and The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition itself. She also picked up Suffragette: The Diary of Dollie Baxter, London 1909-1913 (My Story) – she’s read a couple in this series and really enjoyed them. I’m just pleased that she’s reading again, as she went on strike when she ran out of Lady Grace Mysteries.

And now soa is no longer happy in her bouncy chair, so blogging more about my birthday present and adding piccies is going to have to wait til our next break.

I’m often accused of cloning, which I find amusing now that they are growing up – Big’s hair has darkened and her blue eyes are now brown. Small is still blond and blue eyed, but they are so very obviously brother and sister. Stick their half sibling there as well and she’s very much from the same pod too and given that she’s no blood relation to me it all gets a bit confusing.

Character wise, on first glance they are very different. But they both display a startling level of intensity. For Small that makes him incredibly self-directed, and woe betide the adult that gets in the way. He has a turn of temper that he has absolutely no control over, and while it’s better than a year ago in that he’s more likely to take it out on inanimate objects like doors instead of soft ones like ppl, the force of it still takes me aback.

Big also has a hair trigger temper. Her’s comes out verbally and in attitude though – she’s been practising teenager style strops since she was about 3. I keep assuming she’ll grow out of them, but there’s little sign of it happening yet.

When it comes to learning though, that’s when they really differ. As I’ve blogged before, I was waiting through a long deschooling period and seeing no inclination to get on with anything. If it seemed vaguely educational I would get wails and tantrums – Big has a perfectionist streak that holds her back from trying a lot of the time.

So I imposed some loose structure. A requirement for a certain number of work items each morning, to include basic skills like maths, english and then history, science, languages, whatever. And we got into that routine, and OK, we still had a lot of strops but overall life was calmer.

In the last week, things have changed. Small suddenly started wanting to substitute his interests for the third work. Then for the second work. Maths is non optional – I’m not going to get to the point we’re at with Big where the basic skills are a real struggle. So now he has a geography book, and he’s looked up a variety of countries on wikipedia, printed off maps, drawn or coloured in flags, written bits of language in, learnt about population, area, density. I didn’t know that he could read numbers into the millions, but he can, and another side track took us off into large numbers, learning what comes after million and billion (some of which he’d come across in Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Space)

Yesterday, for some reason, he dived off into dinosaurs. He’s spent nearly an hour looking them up this morning, and we’ve discussed how ppl know what dinosaurs were like, and which bits we don’t know, and how we know about their behaviour. He was quite agrieved to look up one and be told that it has very unusual teeth and therefore nobody knows what it ate, as they don’t fit the standard herbivore/ carnivore/ omnivore pattern. He’s looked up various other animals as well – came bouncing into the bedroom this morning to tell me that tigers eat crocodiles and boars. And then he looked up boars

There’s a vague interest in Albert Einstein coming through, and courtesy of Tim buying a 3-in-1 tuner from Lidl this week, his guitar is now out again and he’s working through his lesson book (Progressive Guitar Method for Young Beginners: Book 1) again.

It’s fantastic to watch him taking off like this, and it’s having an unexpected side effect this time around. First of all Big got very upset that Small didn’t have to do the defined three subjects. I pointed out that really all I want to see is them learning, and I don’t particularly mind what they are learning. And if she could come up with something that she wanted to do instead of something I suggested, she was very welcome to do it too. So she stopped stropping, and went off to find her myths and legends book, and spent a gratifying amount of time writing things up in a book for herself. She even went and got her spelling log, used it to write out words she knew she had in there, and put in words she wasn’t sure of.

She’s still doing maths every day, and we’ve agreed on a short amount of handwriting practice every day too. It’s paying off – we looked back to the beginning of her english exercise book and can easily see an improvement in legibility. She’s also starting to pay more attention to how she writes the things she’s writing, so we’re getting fewer spelling mistakes that are just missing letters. She wants to get back to playing the piano too, so we need to clear away the pile of clutter currently surrounding it that’s waiting a trip to the loft for storage.

So, tell me, can you teach autonomy? Is that what is going on here? Is it still autonomy if it’s externally encouraged? Thoughts in the usual place please

Yesterday they did logic games instead with aunt S, and I was quite impressed with how they were both managing Guess Who. Logical processes definitely improved there. Snakes and ladders proved a game too far though, as Small had a complete meltdown when he was overruled as to whether he’d landed on a snake or not Apart from that, they’d had a lovely morning, including a nice long walk out, which meant that they needed a lie down before swimming (given that I’d woken them up before 8. I know that’s not early for anyone who works or has children in school, but as we do neither atm, it’s very early for my offspring).

Swimming was excellent. Small completely stunned me by doing half the small pool in a very creditable back stroke (no idea where that has come from, but he seems to have got it) and they both got badges and certificates, as well as Big having it confirmed that she’s passed her test and from next week she’s in green hat. There are several other children her age/ size in that group, and it’s taught in the proper pool, so she shouldn’t end up with quite so many bruises on her knees during lessons in future!

Small is taking the lead in deciding what he wants to study as part of his three work sessions in a morning, and as it’s really the doing of something that I want to encourage rather than a specific choice of subjects, I’m really quite happy with that. So this morning he did some sticker maths, read some Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Space and then asked if he could learn about France. So we explored wikipedia, found him a little map of central Europe, he drew and coloured in a flag, wrote some French phonetically and we looked up the name of the island nearby (Corsica). All good stuff, and completely self directed.

Big and I had a little fall out over the idea of a spelling log, mainly based around her concern as to what would happen when she’s filled the book. I can’t see that happening desperately soon – it’s a smallish exercise book, but it still has 50 pages (100 sides) so we did some extra arithmetic to work out how many sides she could have per letter, and settled on 4 for each apart from x and z which each got 2 Given that she can fit two columns of words per page, I think the book should last for a while!

Once that was sorted out, she went off and read some more myths and legends. She’s also doing a project with Tim on how this town looked a couple of hundred years ago, so while she’s doing that, I’ve planned to do some artwork/ drawing with Small and we went out this afternoon to pick up Giovanni Civardi’s Complete Guide to Drawing which I’d seen for £8 in the shop down the road. Got Big some terry fabric and some felt so that she can do the decorated baby blanket she’s planned as well, so I foresee arts and crafts in our immediate future.

Explored the charity shops on the way home looking for Hallowe’en costumes – found Big a wonderful slinky sparkly black dress and a broom, but not so successful for Small. However he already has a red cloak and red trousers, and will be happy if I whip him up some horns and a devil tail. So all I need to do now is work out what we’ll take as a food contribution. Think it’s likely to be bread cheese and fruit!

Tim’s away off up to old house tomorrow with a large van to try to empty the shed and garage (not *quite* sure where everything is going to go but cross that bridge when we come to it) and I’m going to be hoping that baby isn’t in too much of a hurry and can hang on til he’s done up there and safely back home.

Oh, and Small lost his second tooth yesterday. He doesn’t look like my baby boy any more – isn’t it odd how the changing teeth changes the face so completely?

I had a plan. Last time I was in the library, I’d noticed a book, Gifts for Baby, that looked like it might have some simple craft projects in it, suitable for Big to do. And our library is open on a Sunday.

So, before lunch, but after she’d exhausted the book she started last night, we were ready to go to the library. Slight hitch in that Big had lost her library card, so she decided she would take her purse and buy a new one, plus she had fines to pay off. We set off in the glorious autumn sunshine for a pleasant walk together.

Thankfully the book was still in the library, and even more thankfully, she liked the look of several projects in it. *And* it turned out her library card had been left in the library – as there are self service machines for checking your own books out, it’s quite easy to abandon your card. So she didn’t need to pay for a new one, though she did clear her fines off, with a comment from the librarian about it being good to clear off your debts, but better not to incur them in the first place

Joy of joys, the next Lady Grace Mystery, Keys, had arrived as well! So that meant she would have something to read when we got home too. Sadly, she has now caught up with the author, so we’re back to scrabbling around for books to catch her fancy after this one.

Then we headed for home, via a quick stop in the cheap shop for some black acrylic yarn for my current crochet project. Seems odd that with five crates of yarn and fabric that I have no black, but there you go.

We looked through the craft book together, and there are several projects she likes the look of, so looks like crafting is back on the agenda. Which is good, I do think part of the reason that she gets herself into a state from time to time is that she’s not being productive, and crafts are excellent for that.

First project chosen was making soft blocks – she still had some stash fabric from the remnant shop bargain basket, so I printed her a template and she cut out 12 12cm pieces, before learning about nets to make cubes and how to lay out the fabric so that the patterns wouldn’t run into each other. Then we had lunch

After lunch (which took a while, I don’t understand how Small can spin out a banana sandwich, a yoghurt, and a biscuit to last nearly an hour!) I set up the sewing machine and we sewed the first block together. Big did the straightforward flat bits and I took over once we were into 3D. Then we turned it the right way in, she stuffed it and finished the last side.

She also wants to use these things towards a Brownie badge, Toymaker – I’m assuming that some assistance with complicated bits is acceptable? (Really wish that our Brownie leaders were just a tiny bit more forthcoming!)

And by the time we’d done all of that, complete with the usual rethreading of the sewing machine a couple of times and so on, I was nearly passed out on the kitchen chair. I didn’t sleep well last night, due to the hacking cough that developed as soon as I tried to lie down, and the acid indigestion that set in later on So I needed a nap.

Big wanted to know what she could do while I was resting. I suggested that she could look through her badge book and plan what badges she wanted to do, that she could take pictures of the block she’d made and write a little bit to explain how she’d made it to show to her Brownie leader (who I’m assuming will be tester), and that she could design another toy – she wants to make an activity book out of felt that will have dressing practise in it, such as a zip, buttons and so on.

I think she probably read some Lady Grace as well

I slept two hours. While I was sleeping, I think Tim may have explored some of a project he wants to do with the children too. And as soon as I got up, they started fighting again Although Tim tells me that it wasn’t for my benefit, they did fight while I was sleeping too.

Made tea, baked potatoes, broccoli, bacon (all things that Small eats) and we ate. The whole sitting down as a family thing is working pretty well now, although I could do with getting my timing a bit tighter so that the kids aren’t running late on shower night.

And then it was shower night and bedtime. And now it’s tomorrow, so I think it’s my bedtime too.

So I sorted through piles of clothes into different ages and he sorted through piles of stuff generally and then dismantled the bed and manhandled the mattress downstairs. Didn’t get as far as reassembling the bed downstairs as we had a date some distance away, so at 4 o’clock we loaded ourselves into the car and set out for a swimming birthday party. (Which reminds me of one of the things the children must have done – make birthday cards!)

Fantastic pool (very warm and comfortable) and once the children were separated a very pleasant swim. Even managed to chat with a few other parents in between wondering where Small had scampered off to now! He’s definitely lost all fear of the water which I suppose is a good thing on his way to swimming, but makes for some hair raising moments for me

Michelle had definitely not over (or under for that matter) catered, and there was a lovely birthday tea, and I managed to meet Grit Slightly odd to introduce myself to someone IRL using my blog address, but not completely unheard of. Long tradition of meeting ppl online first in this family anyway Nice to compare short notes on blogging, although it wasn’t really the environment to sit and chat, with a huge number of excited and still slightly damp children about. (Whoever says that home educated children don’t get to have friends should have been a fly on the wall there last night, there was plenty of evidence to the contrary for all to see )

And after the food, and the most excellent cake, back to the manor for cups of tea and chat. Small was over excited and needed to stay sitting next to me, but once he’d got over the immediate huff he was quite calm and played tangrams for a while. We didn’t stop desperately long, or at least, I didn’t think we did, but it was after 10 when we left, and that meant it was after midnight when we got in with very tired children. So it was a lie in for everyone this morning

Support group Weds afternoon, and they were the only big children there, so they absorbed the 4 year old into their game and had a lovely time. And we were on time It’s a very relaxing session for me, and apparently we are welcome to other sessions run in the same environment, some which are staffed, so it’s acceptable to go and sit in another room with a cup of tea and leave your children without you for an hour! Tempting There’s even a sensory room we found out as we were leaving this week, so Small’s been promised that will be turned on next time. I may find it difficult to drag him out again

Weds evening is Brownies. Almost a disaster in that Big’s brown trousers were on the line and resoaked following the downpour while we were out at group. But I remembered in time, so they were spun and then shoved into the emergency tumble dryer (I hate using it, but needs must ) Set off on time, then she had to run back for her cress seeds, which she’d forgotten to plant last week, so were only demonstrating two days growth. She took her badge book as required, and apparently they didn’t even open them. Sigh. Think we’ll look at moving to guides in January.

I don’t mind doing badges with her if that’s what we are supposed to do, but I do think a little communication would be in order, I don’t actually know where I’m supposed to start with it. She came back with an excellent little craft – bit of paper painted and cut in such a way that when you fold the flaps over you’ve got a union flag.

Another successful tea, Small very much likes lamb chops now (I think basically as long as they are cooked plain!) and he accidentally got a bit of kale in with his cabbage, and decided he liked that too. He’s really broadened his horizons food wise, the veg box has been a huge success in that direction. Just got to keep up the momentum now.

Hm, I was going to do the whole rest of week in one post, but I’m already up to 400 words, think I might keep going anyway.

Thursday was momentous in that I slept in and it threw off the whole morning. Which doesn’t bode well for when we’ve a baby and I’m getting irregular sleep We had another very serious chat with Big about her attitude – the arguments were sparked because Small didn’t want to play with her as he was too busy reading a french book. Tbh, if he’s doing something like that, I don’t really want her trying to drag him away – he doesn’t get enough space to be autonomous in the way that I know he can be. But all that put her in a bad mood, and there was flouncing and shouting, and like I say, serious conversations.

She pulled herself around, and even did some extra maths, although I was evil with her handwriting practise and printed out a sheet of “I must not hit people or call them stupid” which didn’t go down too well

For third subject we did music appreciation, which meant they each chose something to listen to off the media centre, and then I chucked in something classical. It went really well, they started listening hard enough to pick out instruments and rhythms and even enjoyed Brahms and Tchaikovsky

Afternoon we went to the library, and then called in on S on the way home to see how her extension is going. It’s now a proper room, with walls, roof and windows, and the electrician has just been in, so there’s lots of wires poking out of walls. Small wasn’t quite sure he saw the point in that!

Friday I woke up with a stinking head cold, but soldiered bravely on until the afternoon, when I collapsed back into bed. It did help It’s not actually all that bad a cold I don’t think, but when the space your lungs should be in is already occupied, it makes the whole coughing and sneezing so much worse.

Big had a much better attitude to her work, and did double maths, along with mental arithmetic which is the now standard response to her making any silly mistakes in arithmetic. She did some spelling incorporated with handwriting, and Small complained that number patterns aren’t maths and wanted to know what they were doing in his book

And that, pretty much was Friday, which wraps up the week more or less.

Small actually made some mistakes in his maths, but nothing to do with arithmetic. His difficulty was in deciphering the pictures in his book – he was doing a section on graphs which required him to count up different things and we had quite an argument as to whether one picture was a duck or a fish! He gets the principle behind it all, so I’m not worrying too much about it

For reading he excavated Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and did a chapter of that, and then I marshalled the two of them out of the house in search of shoes for Big.

To do this, I put on Tim’s docs, as mine don’t fit my slightly swollen feet. This was a mistake, as his appear to way a ton, and without a lift in the left one, I could feel it pulling at my back. Stopped off in Superdrug and bought a padded insole so it was better on the walk back, but not a long term solution. Am loath to buy a bigger pair of shoes just for the next 5-6 weeks though.

In Clarks it became apparent that Small’s struggles to put on his trainers were because one foot is now a half size bigger. Sigh. That means that that pair of trainers, barely worn, were a bit of a wasted investment. So he needed new shoes, and was quickly satisfied with an interesting looking pair of trainer shoes in black and red. Big was, as usual in a shoe shop, another story. She’s gone through size 3 without stopping, and from being 2 1/2 at the beginning of summer is now 3 1/2 width E. They had two pairs of shoes in that size, neither particularly practical for the winter (Mary Jane style, so with lots of exposed sock iyswim) and neither pair fitted her particularly well either. So we left without any, and she’s agreed to wear her wellies if we go anywhere in the rain until we can try to find something better.

Quick look in shoezone proved they have nothing much of interest to me, and then headed for home via the greengrocer’s for top up vegetables. We’re done with the veg box now, and we are regularly having sit down home cooked meals all together. So that turned out to be a pretty good way of doing it.

On the way home we were talking about what the third piece of work should be and I suggested that we could read the Bible story of creation to compare and contrast with our theory of evolution from the day before. We were discussing this as we crossed the road beside an elderly gentleman, and I’m not sure what we said that was terribly upsetting, but he stopped dead in the middle of the road to listen to what we were saying. Perhaps it was hearing Small’s opinion of creation stories…

Home, and I was shattered and in pain, plus I’ve got the edge of a cold, so I ended up retiring to bed to recharge for an hour before taking them swimming, and even then we went in the car I don’t like using the car for these little journeys, but I know I need to conserve energy now, and I couldn’t risk setting off my back again.

Another good lesson for each of them (you have no idea how much I relish being able to write that!), Small can now put his face in the water, and Big has been told if she can just get her breaststroke breathing sorted out, she can be tested for the next group up. Which would be excellent, even if she does end up leaving her friend C behind, as it shows she’s making real progress and being more able to keep up with CP at next year is a real possibility.

Home, and Tim did the honours with cooking, sausages of meat and vegetarian persuasion, beans, eggs and toast Good filling fair for two exercised out offspring And during the meal they explained what they’d been doing in work that morning, and we discussed language including the dreaded word nice, which both Tim and I were banned from using at junior school as it’s a non word. Always makes me think of the comedy sketch though.

Somehow the conversation morphed, as conversations do, and Tim introduced the idea of rhyming slang. He even went off after the main course and brought back a cheat sheet, but he hadn’t edited it quite as carefully as he thought he had, so I deemed it unsuitable for little eyes. (I have no intention of explaining the meaning of some of the words that they have rhymes for just yet, thank you very much!) Then they rattled around getting ready for bed, and Tim and I watched Electric Dreams, the 80s before I retired, to toss and turn (well, more sort of wriggle and occasionally roll over) for several hours for no apparent reason. So I’m tired this morning.

He’d been asking for Brown Beaver’s phone number, and I wanted to know why he wanted it. He said that not everything had a why, and I said I thought it did. His response was that there was no why that the earth started, and I have to admit, I had no comeback on that one. So he wins the argument there.

Aren’t 6 year olds still supposed to be trying to work out the why for everything? Rather than disproving that there is such a thing. I think I love how his mind works though, it’s so sideways to everyone else!

In other news this evening Big and I made apple crumble between us – I did the easy bit of peeling and chopping apples and left her to do the crumble topping while I took Small to Beavers. Got a phonecall from Tim while I was there to confirm that I had finished the filling and immediately cottoned on that this was because Big had read the recipe and was concerned I’d left out the flour. I’ve never put flour in my fruit filling before and wasn’t about to start now, but this had left Tim in charge of a daughter who can read recipes and likes to be precise, and if she can’t be precise she’ll be dramatic. But I was a mile away so I couldn’t hear the histrionics for once

As I seem to be relating the day backwards I’ll continue. Afternoon was somewhat annoying as they started it by fighting at which point I gave them both more work to do. Fed up of the bickering which so often results in one or other of them in tears, so if I have to schedule the whole day I will Which was a shame as we’d had a pretty good morning – the work spun out over 3 1/2 hours, but that was mainly because they were really enjoying the history aspect of it, yet another Great Lesson, courtesy of Miss Barbara, this time on the coming of humans. Small is particularly taken with it all, and the maps which I printed out to go with it, and we discussed it all for ages. Then he went off and drew a timeline of a possible evolution of spiders, after confirming what evolution meant.

Big loves history, so any time to discuss any historical aspect goes down well with her, and recovered the morning after a struggle with her English. The struggle this time was with the question, which I’d read ahead and thought was straightforward. What I hadn’t anticipated is that she doesn’t do idiomatic language, and so she didn’t have a clue what most of it meant. The question was asking her to work out the meanings of various idioms (eg getting into hot water, showing a clean pair of heels) and then use them in a sentence, and I suppose I could just as well have asked her to translate them into another language for all the sense it made to her.

How has she got to nearly 10 years old without me noticing this in her? She reads voraciously, but I’m now wondering how much of it actually makes sense to her. Anyway, instead of her using them in sentences, I got her into Credo reference online courtesy of Suffolk Libraries and we started looking up the idioms and finding examples of usage. I’m hoping that was a better idea than the plan in the book.

Small finished his book (The Thing from Knucker Hole) this morning and they both did their maths without too much fuss, so despite the whole thing stretching out, it felt relatively painless. Oh, and I nearly forgot them working together to make a clock face for Small to continue practising with – they even roped Tim in with that as he passed by.

So that was Monday.

Sunday was quiet – I made it out for a walk on my own in the afternoon, and Tim excavated one of the two garden sheds. The one he sorted is insulated out, for no apparent reason, so may be a bearable bolt hole even in winter Small did demonstrate that he’s cracked telling the time by reading the clock accurately to a time that we hadn’t started work on yet He’s still a little hazy around the minutes to stage, but he’s pretty much got the principle of it down now.

Saturday was even quieter, mainly as I’d had a dreadful night’s sleep Fri-Sat and after fighting with my blog for most of the morning (and losing it has to be said ) I retired to bed for at least part of the afternoon.

And that is where I need to go now.

I’ve run out of patience

Maybe I don’t respond in the right way or quickly enough to expressed interests? Perhaps my purposive conversation is either not present enough or too purposive? Perhaps eight months isn’t a long enough deschooling time frame for three years of flexi school at Montessori?

Or perhaps my children just need a bit of structure and to be stretched every now and then. I’m so sold on autonomy and the theories of John Holt that I’ve felt terribly guilty this week – but not guilty enough to not impose a work requirement on the offspring.

So now, each morning, we do a bit of maths, a bit of english and something else. The something else varies from day to day, and I’ve tried to follow up on their interests. The TV is banned between the hours of 9 and 3 (would be 9 and 5, but realistically, that would mean that 3 days a week one or the other of them would see no TV and I can’t be that hard hearted). They each still have their two half hour computer slots, and if they are doing something educational/ work related, computer time extends.

And how has it worked this week?

Well, the first day Small did his work quickly and cheerfully. By the third day, he was resistant, thinking of anywhere he’d rather be and anything he’d rather be doing. Which is irritating, because when he does come in and get set to, it takes him minutes to do the amount of maths I’m asking of him, another few minutes to read a chapter of the book I bought for him as he couldn’t think what he’d like to read (The Thing from Knucker Hole (Young Hippo Adventure)), and then he tends to enjoy whatever the third part is. So he loved science, liked looking at maps, and had no problems listening to and discussing The Story of the World: Ancient Times v. 1.

Big is another story. Her maths will improve with steady practise, but we’ve discovered that her English needs work in a number of areas. And I think that is what is holding her back doing some of the other things she wants to do. So instead of doing a unit a week from Focus on Literacy: Pupil Textbook Bk.5 we’re going to do a unit every other week and concentrate on basics in between times. Handwriting, spelling, punctuation, grammar, that sort of thing. Most of the time she reads of her own accord, although she had been on strike waiting for the next book in the series she’s reading, Conspiracy (Lady Grace Mysteries). That’s arrived now, so she’s reading again on an evening.

I’d kind of assumed that a child who reads as voraciously as she does would pick up the other stuff, but she isn’t doing, so I need to target it more directly. Still really wish I could find Small’s english book so that we could do bits out of that as well. But wherever he’s put it, it’s staying hidden

She loved the experiment she did this week, out of Outer Space (Funstations) I’d found. Lit candles under varying sizes of jars so that we could see what happened when the oxygen ran out. And we’d been having conversations about first ppl during the week anyway, so nomads in story of the world worked well for her.

In and amongst there was Brownies, Beavers, swimming, a not back to school picnic afternoon on the beach (fabulous weather, kids were in the sea on and off all afternoon), Tim popped to old hosue and brought back all the baby stuff so the children washed it all in the garden yesterday, oh and some blokes came round and cut down one of the hedges. Small cried. Turned out he’d really liked that hedge, even though Tim and I loathed it, and though we’d discussed removing it several times, Small hadn’t picked up on the discussions.

I’ve processed yet more bags of stuff from old house and now have large piles of clothing to process into storing. Oh, and Small had another visit to the doctors, who said that he has chronic otitis and prescribed a months worth of penicillin just in case it’s bacterial. Which apparently it probably isn’t. So am still umming and ahing over what to do about that.

This afternoon Tim and Small are at a Beavers mini Olympics – looks like Small at least is having fun.

This is mainly because I’m struggling atm. Bump is big and uncomfortable (and pleasingly wriggly!) and the strain on my back is pretty much constant now. I’m tired as I’m sleeping badly and backache is wearing me out and eroding my always limited patience.

That was my winge for the day, please feel free to ignore.

Anyways, we have managed some productivity in between bouts of selfpity and afternoon naps Big finished her reading quest by sitting and reading Gold (Lady Grace Mysteries). It’s historical fiction, mysteries set in 1570, and right up her street. To the extent that she got another 4 out of the library when we took that one back Quite like the way the author is doing single word alphabetical titles, and having just looked on amazon, Big will be pleased to hear there are plenty more than we found in the library so far.

Small managed to read The Latke Who Couldn’t Stop Screaming: A Christmas Story which takes him up to five books. He does enjoy reading, very much so, but very few things have the pull to get him to finish them. He got a Magic Treehouse book out and has read two chapters, but really doesn’t want to finish it just to get the medal. Which I’m pleased about on some levels, but I’m worried that he’s not going to react well if Big gets a medal and he doesn’t.

We also fitted some maths in – more of the singapore. Small and I did 20 minutes work on regrouping, which may well have been enough for him to crack it, while Big worked through some more of her section on regrouping as well. I do want maths to be a regular feature of our week – Big is reluctant atm, but that’s because her confidence is low, and I want that to build which I think it will with regular practice. Plus the books for the next couple of years have arrived as well so we’d better get somewhere with it.

The main feature of the latter part of the week has been IT though. Small has decided that he wants to be a website based around one of his superheroes, which should involve games and downloads, along with videos and possibly music. So he’s been planning it out on paper, and today doing a mock up using Paint.net. Not to be outdone, Big wants to make a virtual world along the lines of buildabearville or club penguin. I’ve suggested that she needs to start with programming, so today she was on Scratch using LearnScratch tutorials and lessons.

So there’s been reading, IT, maths. A bit of walking about, I’ve cooked a couple of meals from scratch again and we’ve discovered that Small will eat onion cooked in passata sauce, and cabbage but not if it’s been bubble and squeaked. Small steps forward.

Children played pretty much harmoniously all day, or at least, from when I made them turn the tv off. And our only shouting match was when Small said he hadn’t had enough time to play, at 4 o’clock in the afternoon when it was time to get ready for swimming.

Sigh. But he likes swimming, so he got over it quite quickly and they packed up their swimming stuff into their new time traveller bags (Big’s arrived yesterday morning, phew!) and we headed for the pool. As long as I leave plenty of time and have my hips strapped together I don’t seem to suffer too much from the walk, and while it’s like that, I think I need to keep up the exercise where I can. It’s not like there are any hills in the way around here

Small’s lesson first, his friend P has been moved up to a yellow hat group that runs at 4.30, so he now gets out as Small is getting in, so as anticipated, think that was a very short lived friendship However there are now a couple of other little boys in his class and I saw him playing around with one of them during the lesson. Hm. I know his goal is to make friends, so I can’t be too cross that he’s playing as well as swimming, but there will be a fine line to tread to make sure he doesn’t become disruptive in the class.

Got him out as Big got in, and then discovered that although he’d shown me the shampoo as one of the things he’d gathered together, he’d failed to actually put it in his bag. Sigh. So shower to rinse off the talc from the swim hat, but no actual washing. This did seem to speed things up though, so that I got to see some of Big’s lesson. She’s doing really well, as her teacher had mentioned they were concentrating on breaststroke this week, and she really seems to be getting to grips with it. Am still proud of her It is much more pleasant to write about swimming lessons this time around too!

Leisurely saunter home with them eating bananas, had called ahead for Tim to process a pizza for them which worked well. And they were quickly off into bed, and even quicker asleep – think that a mile there, a swim and a mile back is a pretty good way to tire them out for at least one night a week

Did some more OU while we watched CSI Miami. Horatio is ever so annoying, but it’s easy watching while I’m trying to work. Just got about 4 questions to do, then need to submit it online. Don’t particularly like this style of assignment though, there is no possibility of getting marks for working, you either get the right answers or you don’t. And there’s no indication of how many points there are for each question either. I’m going to be very happy when these courses are over. Think I might take a break next year and ponder what, if anything, I want to study next.

As is usual, I horrendously underestimated the time taken just to cut out 25 5″ squares, so C was still cutting at lunch time, while Big had cut enough for her first tier and quit at that point to start sewing. I made potato salad (from the free potatoes) and we had pick and mix picnic lunch, outside for the offspring, then they played for a while, including Small who wasn’t overly impressed at the time the girls were spending crafting.

And after that, we did some more cutting and sewing. The pattern is a free one from YouCanMakeThis.com – search for Twirls for Girls and you should find it. I do like the amount of instruction that’s included in the patterns, great for beginner sewers.

Sewing pieces of skirt together took up through the afternoon – I think the girls were at it for about 3 1/2 hours all told, pretty impressive concentration skills. Then I boiled up some pasta and Michelle, C, Big and Small snacked before our guests packed up to head home. Lovely weekend – both Big and Small adore C, but somehow don’t actually fight over her, and Michelle is a very easy house (or garden ) guest. Much fun all round, and we hope they come again soon. They could even bring M if they wanted

Quiet evening for offspring – shower and early-ish night, and I don’t think I was actually all that far behind them.

We also saw the biggest caterpillar I’ve ever seen – it tried to commit suicide in one of the watering cans, but I tipped it out and although it was a little dazed a little while later it was humping around the garden again.

After lunch (pick and mix sandwiches with home made bread) we sauntered via the fruiterers to the seafront, where we found hotrods parked all along the promenade. There were several fabulous VW camper vans, and various more obviously hotroddy cars as well as just some classics. The children played in the sand and the sea – the girls made a fabulous castle complete with moat and drawbridge, and Michelle and I were entertained by a completely batty old lady who talked to us for a while.

Tim came down and met us just as we were finishing up – sadly for the children we declined the opportunity to buy them ice cream on the grounds that they’d had access to strawberries, biscuits (for a little country market stall pitched on the grass beyond the prom), grapes and apples, so Small munched the entire bunch of grapes on the way home

Michelle, C, Big and I stopped off very briefly at the remnant shop to raid the bargain bin of 10p scraps of fabric to make patchwork skirts for dolls, and then we sauntered home again. Good way to spend an afternoon.

Evening vanished in cooking while the children watched a film or drew or read – I am so slow at everything! Bubble and squeak, the remnants of the carrots and beans, lamb chops and sausages for the meat eaters (except Small wouldn’t try a chop and Big didn’t like it) and I’ve remembered that I had a country vegetable pie the night before. There we go.

Children to bed relatively early – sea air tired them out, or maybe it was the lack of sleep the night before? Was quite amused to find some pictures that had been drawn of the film, Magic Roundabout, and to be quite unable to decide who’d done them. Ppl in Small’s drawings don’t usually have arms and hands other than stick ones, but in this one he’d done fingers and everything, so I’d assumed it belonged to one of the girls. But no. Not sure whether this is an evolution in his drawing or just a one off, but fascinating none the less.

Lovely chatty evening again but an earlier night than before, as adults were rather tired too.

“Um, the washing line?”

“What, not the tent?”

doh. They breakfasted and putered, and Big taught Princess and Scott how to scoobi keyrings for themselves. In the meantime, Tim cooked up a proper breakfast for Bil and himself.

Small wanted to go on the puter again, so I told him to wait until our guests had gone. Which meant he spent the last quarter of an hour asking whether each stage of leaving (going out of the door, through the gate, getting into the car) qualified as them having gone. Sigh.

Once they had gone, he putered and they watched some TV. Then I told them that they’d had too much screen time for the time being and they reluctantly did some reading. Small is working his way very slowly through You’re a Bad Man, Mr. Gum! which is his overdue library book that I can’t renew as someone else has it reserved. He’s determined he wants to read it, but somehow this is supposed to happen without him actually opening it. Not sure which of her library books Big started on.

Tim went out for his usual Sunday outing, and was a little longer than usual. Apparently there was jazz on. Left him refereeing the screen time/ puter time debate and headed off down through town to pick up a toddler doll from freecycle for Big. Thought that it might be better for her to make clothes for that, so that she can do the Dolly and Me style creations from YouCanMakeThis.com

I’ve been thinking that the walk to the leisure centre was around a half mile, and worrying over how long it’s taking me these days. Today I checked it on google maps when looking up exactly where the road is that I was going to, and found that it’s actually just over a mile. That makes me feel a lot better. Took me absolutely ages today, but it was kind of hot and without swimming lessons to get to, I wasn’t in any rush.

Home about 4.30, and half an hour later Big and I were set up in the kitchen making dolls clothes. Took an awful lot longer than I’d anticipated – we did lose a little time with me working out how to do zigzag stitches on the fabric that we were using, but also a lot of it with Big just not paying any attention to what I was trying to demonstrate to her. So I’d carefully explain what I was doing and show her how to do it, then we’d swap places and the first thing she’d say would be “what do I do?”

Aargh. Still, we managed a simple shirt. Nearly a disaster when we discovered it wouldn’t go over the doll’s head, but it fits Holly the bear nicely and can be put on the (as yet unnamed) doll by going up over its feet. Think we might try making a slightly larger one in the next few days, although tomorrow she wants to try a wrap skirt.

Also think I might try scaling the pattern up and making her a similar top, I think we have enough fabric for that and it would be good practice on messing around with patterns.

Have to say, that compared to standard patterns, these downloads are way better. They aren’t just pattern pieces, they are pictorial instruction sets, with written instructions as well, so even for this simple shirt (basically a tube with arm holes and an elasticated neck) there are three pages of step by step instructions on how to do it.

And the first thing you do, I’ve told her, is read the instructions right the way through. She doesn’t know why, but she is going to learn that that is a rule.

Small drew for at least part of the time that we were sewing, he took a look at the Usborne Starting Drawing book I grabbed from the library. Hoped it might inspire him to try out a few more things with his art. Not sure whether it did tonight, but it might sink in over the next few days, and I’m hoping to do some work with him as well.

Tim finished off their day with some more Wayside School and I sat and felt hot and twitchy. And now I’m going to go lie down and hopefully not feel quite so hot and twitchy in bed.