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.

One of the plus points of being sent items for review is that very often I can work them into our educational plans. So it was great that we were offered a Wild Science Lip Balm Laboratory for Big to take a look at, as there are all sorts of educational experiences in a kit like that.

First of all there’s the following instructions. Then there is some understanding of the science behind it all, plus the actual activities of the measuring, melting and blending. And at the end of it you actually have a product that you can use! Which is rather better than doing most science experiments that I remember from school

Only criticism we had of the kit is that it suggests you heat water in a microwave to melt the wax beads, but gives no indication of length of time at power level. And in the end, we found using hot water from the kettle was far more effective, and even then the melting took a lot longer than described. It is true that it was a cold cold day, so the beads may well have been fairly well chilled, but apart from that, the kit worked well.

I liked the tray that contained everything and kept it organised. And unusually, it fits back in the box like this, rather than having to dismantle it again.

And here you have the scientist in action.

So that was one educational activity. Independent working – although I was there. The second activity, a Ravensburger jigsaw for the Ravensburger Puzzle Club, turned out to promote cooperation and team work, and if you’ve got older children, you’ll know how important that can be!

It continued the laboratory theme

The puzzle was great – not so complex as to put them off, but definitely challenging enough to interest them and keep them occupied for a while. So that’s a 200 piece XXL – ideally targeted at slightly inexperienced 8 and 12 year olds.

I’m a big jigsaw fan, but it’s not something I get much chance to do these days. I couldn’t resist directing operations from the sofa though, just to get them started, with sorting out edge pieces and so on. Once Small was fully engrossed though, I pretty much left them to it. And the sense of achievement they both had when they got it finished was palpable. And since they refused to take it to pieces again immediately, it’s just as well we’ve got the Ravensburger Puzzlestore

She looked through our recipe books and chose macaroni and cheese with an apple crumble dessert. She wrote out shopping lists (which we obviously then forgot to take out with us!) and came with me to do the shopping. We substituted reginette pasta for macaroni (neither aldi nor lidl sell macaroni as far as I can tell) and pancetta for bacon as it was pre chopped. That was the only thing that pushed the price up actually, but otherwise it was a pretty cheap meal.

She did all the preparation – I helped her work out what order to do things in, and sat in the kitchen offering what I fondly hoped were helpful words of advice. I remember my first home economics lesson way back when – we made baked stuffed apples. I also remember my sister’s at the local comp, they made angel delight. From a packet.

We had to adjust the recipe somewhat – the dairy cookbook advised 75g of pasta to feed 4 which seemed somewhat optimistic. And the half pint of milk was a bit miserly sauce wise. I’ve suggested that she uses an exercise book to write up her versions of the recipes after she’s cooked them, then she should end up with a really good resource for the future. And of course she has to adapt for the finicky vegetarian in the family (that would be me ).

The apple crumble didn’t require any tweaking. And was lovely. As was the custard she made to go with it.

Basically, the meal was a success. And as such she wants to do it every Tuesday (that being the day that she has no evening activity, so actually has time to be in the kitchen). Which sounds like a definite result to me.

Actually, it’s been an excellent education day all round. Small is learning about nutritional needs and how to do research and structure an essay around it. I’m hoping this might also improve his eating and drinking habits. Smallest did crafts with Big while I was at osteopath (yes, dp was in the house, I didn’t just abandon them to look after each other before I get a second black mark against my name…) and I also bought a pair of scissors with soft handles and she spent quite literally hours cutting. Meaning the kitchen floor could do with a sweep now I do love the montessori approach with that sort of thing, recognising that children will spend time on a new skill that interests them. I foresee lots of little bits of paper in my future.

So, apart from the fact that all of this structured organised education rather gets in the way of me loafing about online during the day, it’s all good. And it’s the way it’s going to be from now. Lists are already written up for tomorrow

The headline is All children should read Harry Potter books by 11, says minister

The actual quote is

“By the end of primary school, all children should be able to read and enjoy books like Harry Potter. But too many children can’t enjoy these brilliant books because they haven’t learnt to read properly.”

Now, the real ire here ought to be directed at the headline writer who mangled the quote, but I’ll save a bit for the politician too.

Let’s have a quick think about the Harry Potter books. They start as Harry reaches his 11th birthday. They go on for 7 years. In the course of those years there are deaths, kisses and iirc at least one birth. The themes, unsurprisingly, are increasingly adult as the books go on, and the last one is really quite dark. Much loved characters perish unpleasantly left, right and centre (it’s my suspicion that JKRowling was trying to kill off enough ppl that no one would want her to go back and write more).

Why on earth should we expect children of 11 to be able to or want to read those? I’d prefer, tbh, that my 11 year old *hadn’t* read all of that. That she didn’t want to know all of the possibilities of life by that age. As it is, she’s not utterly convinced by the kissing

I’ve said in person, and possibly before on here, that I don’t consider Harry Potter great literature. It’s a bunch of ripping yarns, fair enough, but as it gets to the end of the saga it could really have benefited from a much sterner editor. But by then who had the courage to tell JK anything? And yes, I’ve read them all nevertheless – scurrying to read the final couple ahead of Big to be sure of what she was about to encounter.

I read a lot of children and young adult fiction. I intend to blog more about it too – I’m going to be starting a new feature here on this blog called Our Year in Books – where I’ll share what we’ve all got on our reading piles week by week, and review some of it, mainly those that Smallest and I read. I’m hoping the children will also review on their blogs and if they do I’ll cross link. I like YA fiction, and there are some fantastic authors about. Why on earth do politicians not do their own homework and figure that out – why is it always the usual suspects that get trotted out?

And did they ever think that that could be part of the problem? That a few books get overhyped and if you don’t like the sound of those, then reading is shut off to you? Can you imagine being a child who just isn’t that interested in fantasy? That Harry Potter and his ilk bore you silly, but it’s what everyone talks about, so you think that’s pretty much all there is on offer.

I’ve no problem at all with children being encouraged to read. Nor with politicians wanting to increase literacy rates. But children being fed a diet of Harry Potter and Michael Morpurgo (who is fabulous, but also, depressing!) is not the way to do it. Variety is the spice of life, and also of reading.

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…

We’re using Story of the World Book 2 with our history etc monthly meetup. The idea is that each family does the reading separately and then we come together once a month and each family brings one or two craft type activities that support the reading we’ve all been doing. As we only got the book just over a week ago, we’re a bit behind with the reading, but we read the relevant bits and came up with a suitable activity.

The chapters we were looking at were 10 to 13 – First ppl in australias, Kingdom of the Franks, Islamic invasion of Spain and Charles the Hammer. The activity our family brought was to design your own kingdom – draw a map, put together a dynasty/ family tree, come up with some laws. I expected it to be the activity that the children turned to if they were at a loose end between other more crafts. Instead I found myself with a table full of children gleefully filling paper with their own kingdoms, and coming up with the most bizarre and wondrous justice systems. The conversations continued on and off throughout the day with alliances forming between the newly formed kingdoms and so on – a really thought provoking activity.

As usual the other participants brought some fabulous crafts. Merry brought Fimo from her CraftMerrily shop and some fabulous dot pictures of lizards and koalas were made. Helen provided chalk and the children blew aboriginal style chalk dust drawings. Zoe did snacks, face (or hand) painting and also stood in with the soap for a carving activity. Gina had dreamcatchers and Katy made Charles the Hammer’s sword as well as leading a play about justice and laws. I think that covers all the activities – I apologise profusely if I’ve missed any! I have got some pictures, though as usual not as many as I should have had. I was slightly distracted by an email conversation with dp about the leaking radiator in our bedroom at home

Which is the reason we aren’t at home tonight. Instead we’re stopping an extra evening with our friends – the children are currently ensconced in front of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader while Helen and I sit companionably side by side, netbooks on knee.

And that was home education for the day. Out of the home, very much not sitting on our own round the kitchen table. Hopefully that’s another myth/ stereotype well and truly dealt with

Skillswise on BBC have a good factsheet explaining commas

And then I’ve found a KS2 Bitesize activity to explore what’s been learnt.

[Edited to remove flash game but add in link to relevant place - hadn't realised it was making my blog play music, so sorry!]

Hoping that will at least get us started!

Here’s your Chinese peg doll – from the time of Confucius, dressed in a Kimono. Material should be silk or silky for preference, but I only had thin cotton or thick wool, so we went thin cotton.

The kimono is made from a rectangle of material, which I folded in half, then cut the middle third out of the front – hope you can see that in the picture as it’s a bit difficult to explain! Popped it round the peg doll, then used another piece as a belt, tied in large bow at the back. Fluff out the shoulders/ sleeves a little and there you go, one chinese peg doll.

Our history etc days are based around The Story of the World: Ancient Times v. 1 with whatever additional crafts ppl can find to add, and it works well, as each family can go into whatever detail they want to outside the group, then the children can do as many crafts as they like while together. And the adults even get to sit and chat in the sunshine every now and then.

A good day.

Today Big learnt to spin on a wheel. So she’s done carding, felting, (drop) spindle, lucet and spinning wheel. Apparently she’s now made 4 skeins of wool, and is really quite proud of herself.

Small has mainly been an urchin. He has attended Barn School, learned his numbers (Roman), some extra letters such as thorn, and new methods of multiplication and addition, as well as playing much chess and other medieval games. There has also been rambling and wanderings with other boys around his age, and it’s been great to have him have freedom without me having to worry particularly about where he is or what he’s doing. Because all the adults keep an eye on all the children, meaning I’m fairly sure all is well with him at all times.

Smallest has majored in being cute. She’s ever so good at it. The one drawback to being Tudor myself is I can’t whip out a camera and immortalise her, so I’m hoping that other ppl have done it for me, and I shall be searching flickr and the net when I’m home.

I have learnt a little of how to felt. It’s rather fun. And so fast! Do you know how long it would take me to knit a statute cap? They can be felted in two days. (Though I have just discovered that the statute of the name was actually after the year we’re in. Oops. Historical anomaly as Sheldon would say.) And I’ve taught children their letters and numbers, and about canonical hours versus god’s hours, and mazed them well, by telling them we rise with the sun, and I kill my hens when they stop laying by ringing their necks….

Oh well.

It has been, in every sense of the word most wondrous.

And the reason I’m blogging this now rather than when I get home is because you still have time to come and see it. The Great Tudor Re-Creation runs until Sunday 10th July, and is open to the public this very weekend. There will be a great fair, with many entertainments, challenges, games and things to buy – if you are within reach of Long Melford Suffolk and have any interest at all in things Tudor I hugely recommend that you come and see it. And tell your friends. And relatives. And if you arrive, look out for me. I look a little like this:

So far this morning I’ve turned linen into a shift, and now wool into a kirtle.

Yes, that’s a kirtle. Bit like a pinafore dress. It’s not finished yet, but it’s a lot closer than it was a hour ago!

I think it’s safe to say I’m not completely caught up in the hype…but I am a bit excited. This is my day out, meeting lots of ppl I chat with on twitter, whose blogs I read and admire. They are my main focus, though yes, I’ll talk to lots of prs as well.

I’m going to offer a word of warning at this point. If you’ve never been to anything like this, you’re going to be rather blown away by the goodies and the excitement and the competitions. But you might want to remember what you blog for. If it’s for goodies, excellent, full stream ahead. But if you have other focuses, then go steady. Don’t do what I did last year and say yes to everyone about everything. You won’t manage to do everything you want to, and you’ll be embarrassed.

Case in point, some months after cybermummy last year I was sent a Kodak playsport video camera to review. You can search my archives, there’s nothing there not because it’s a bad product, far from it, it’s fantastic. It does everything they claim for it, it’s so easy to use that Smallest takes pics and vids, the quality is fantastic, it’s water right and survives the sea and swimming pools, and the only problem with it is me.

I just haven’t worked out how to manage videos online. I’m a geek who doesn’t do visuals, and I hereby grovel to the lovely Kodak ppl, and hope to do better in future.

So that’s my cautionary tale. Don’t overcommit yourself. You are only human. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a kirtle to put boning in…

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.

Point 1 – there is no one way that suits all children. I know about the current educational vogue for synthetic phonics, and I suppose in a way Small learnt to read using phonics, but he doesn’t sound things out and never did. He skipped that stage of Montessori in a matter of days and went from not appearing to know all the individual sounds to working through Stile trays to a quick flirtation with Oxford Reading tree and suddenly reading fluently in the space of a single term. And when I say reading fluently, I mean reading Harry Potter. By contrast we laboured on a huge variety of methods with Big from age 3 (when she asked to learn to read) to about age 6 when she finally cracked it. Not a set of years I plan to repeat to be honest, it wasn’t fun. (And if you don’t believe me, have a wander through the archives. It’s all there, in glorious black and white.)

Point 2) It ought to be fun. Reading is a fabulous tool, but it does no one much good if they don’t enjoy it. Turning kids off by trying too hard too soon to get them reading is totally counter productive. The vast majority of kids *will* get there in the end, so take it easy, and trust the process.

Point 3) I’m not sure I have one

I do have a plan though. With Smallest, we read loads. More I suspect than we did with either of the others, when reading had to be fitted in around everything else we did (like working and commuting and living and so on), and kind of was an item on a good parent checklist. So reading happened, but it wasn’t natural or spontaneous in a way I think it probably works best.

This time around, there are books everywhere (well, OK, there have always been books everywhere…) and reading goes on all the time. In the bathroom during nappy change, though I don’t let her take board books in the bath. Mean mummy Out in the garden. At the leisure centre. Wherever we are – there’s always a book or two in my bag, or she might even be carrying her own… There are also extra readers who both demonstrate the skillset in use on a near to daily basis and read to her as well.

And I’m not planning on actively teaching her to read. I’m going to follow a bit of a Montessori approach with it – I already do in fact. So when we look at alphabet style books, I trace the large letter with my finger and “This is a. a.” in much the way sandpaper letters are used. (I won’t be using sandpaper letters when we get to that stage. I might make them out of hama again. But sandpaper makes my skin crawl, so no, no sandpaper!) Sometimes she traces the letter too, sometimes she doesn’t. It’s not that important yet, and really, I wouldn’t expect her to do any of that for a good couple of years if not longer.

As she gets more interested though, I will try to find some kind of movable alphabet. I think this is a fabulous tool – children learn to ‘write’ without actually having to write. It means they learn to spell, and hear the sounds in words without having to decode the squiggly things on the page, it’s coming at reading from a whole different direction. And I know it works – I saw it in action at Montessori lots of times.

When we get past that stage, I might bring in pink materials (probably home made rather than this sort of download, I’m linking it to give you an idea. Note that really you should start with real things instead of abstracts in the form of pictures, so a very small toy cup, a toy hen, that sort of thing) mainly because they are fun. And if I go to use a reading scheme, the one I like best is Bob books. (And you can get it as an app for your iPhone! Drat, first time I’ve wanted an iPhone. Maybe not the best reason so far…)

And hopefully, that will be pretty much all we need. That, and time and patience. So, like I said, I have a plan.

This post will soon be featured in the learn to read carnival I’m ever so rapidly writing…

Run 1.5 miles on just under 16 minutes.

Home, shower, dress. Somewhere in and amongst put washing in, (nappies, strip sheet of double bed and bedside cot). Dress Smallest, wrangle children in passing.

Wander to Post Office (bumping into relative for chat on way) to recover money Big lost in stamp machine last night. Find it in rejected coin slot. Stop at coop on way home to buy stamps.

At home, pack lunch and hang out washing before piling children into car and heading to medieval reenactors fayre to meet with friends for afternoon to work out what is needed for Kentwell.

Meet dragons, buy signed book (The Tudor Tailor
) , facilitate drop spindle lesson for Big, get hugely reassured about whole Kentwell thing, but miss cafe and spend afternoon without tea.

Drive home.

Wash up, make tea, eat tea, fetch washing in, make beds and write blogpost on phone siting on bathroom floor while Smallest in bath and tea going cold.

And I wonder why I never seem to get anything done…

What you will need for this craft is a book, preferably a fairly hefty tome, and some yarn. We chose a novelty ball that’s been kicking about for years, basic acrylic would work well too.

Oh, and a child. I chose a handy 11 year old girl.

You start by wrapping the yarn around the book so:

You need to wrap a good amount of yarn around the book. At least 24 loops, and preferably 48 or a larger multiple of 24 would be good, depending on your yarn. Once you’ve wrapped that many, or run out of yarn like we did, slide it off the book carefully.

Next, tie off one end so that your loop doesn’t come unwound. This may be when your child requires assistance. Tie a second knot around the loop to make a ball head shape. (Am so glad I have pictures of this…)

Cut the loops at the other end.

You now take the bunch of threads and section them into eight bunches. Each bunch will get plaited, so hopefully you’ve got enough yarn to divide into 3. (Understanding the 24 loops now? )

Keep on plaiting.

You may or may not find interruptions of this kind cute or useful.

Ta da!

You’ll probably want to tidy up the bottom of the plaits a bit, and your finished Octopus should look something like this:

Written up for RedTedArt.

The Magic Cauldron game *is* a bit basic. I think really it’s aimed at children a little younger than Big and Small – or maybe around Small’s age instead of his maths ability Having said that, we tweaked the rules a tiny bit and easily made it into a game we could *all* (me included) play and enjoy – we laid the answer tiles face down as a memory grid, and had to try to find one to give the answer that we wanted when we picked up a question from a pile. This raised the interest level somewhat, meaning they could still practise the maths without it being a game that would always be won by whoever started first. (They don’t tend to get basic stuff wrong. It just takes a while.)

I would think that this game would really go down well with children around 5 to 7, and the special bit on the card that you rub to check the answer did help to hold their attention. Only drawback to that was that when the game arrived it was cold, so it took a lot of rubbing to get the answer to show up. Suggest storing it somewhere warm The game is well made out of good quality card, and looks lovely, so all in all, I’m going to say it was a definite hit.

Thanks again to the lovely ppl at Orchard Toys for supplying this for review.

I’d have appreciated it if that had been as interesting as the journey got, but sadly Smallest decided to license up the proceedings further by regurgitating her early breakfast banana all over her lambswool jumper She seemed fine once she’d done, the jumper not quite so good. Thankfully we made it the rest of the way without further incident, pulling up to park a couple of cars away from our friends Marcus and Michelle with their daughters. Big was thrilled to catch up with them as it was the first time she’d seen C since her stay in France.

First order of the day obviously a cuppa as we started to gather and peruse handouts on making authentic Tudor costume. For my sins I have 4 of us to clothe, and even if I make everything from scratch the whole venture is going to set us back a couple of hundred pounds – I’m not up to making shoes, and we’ll also need wooden bowls, pottery cups, knives, spoons and other sundries. A friend and experienced Kentwellie, Katy had managed to snap up a secondhand kirtle that she thought would do for me, so at least that’s a start.

Tea drunk, time for the first talk of the day, this one aimed at new participants. A chat about how Kentwell came to host re-enactments and how they work, and what we could expect from the rest of the selection process. And then we were sectioned off into small groups and sent off for a tour with one of the existing participants, getting the real lowdown on the house and its immediate environment. Tbh, if we don’t get to go any further, the tour made today’s trip out worthwhile. Although both Big and I would still be very upset to not make the cut.

After the tour another talk, this time a briefing on the chosen year, 1553. Big and I have been doing research on it already – it’s an exciting year! Three monarchs, including the ill-fated Lady Jane Grey, and Kentwell in the middle of the region in the thick of it all.

And then we had lunch

Actually to be more accurate and then we queued for lunch. And while we were queueing I caught up with dyers and weavers – two of the stations that I’m most interested in. Regular readers will know that I’m quite into my yarn crafts – goes right back to carding and spinning wool at primary school, round about the same age I learnt crochet from my step-grandmother. The queue moved very slowly so I also had plenty of chance to chat to friends and the kids had lots of time to explore around the house.

After lunch, a chat for new participants this time more about the shape of a day during a recreation, with a Q and A session. And then more queueing, this time for a personal meet with the head of Kentwell, who does a quick interview with every applicant which feeds into the decision he makes as to nay or yay and if yay, what the station will be.

I’m hoping for something working with wool. Big was as well, but as it’s preferred to give older children a bit more distance from their parents, if I get woolshed or felting, she may well get something else entirely. Cross that bridge when we come to it I suppose.

And very eventually, we wended our way back to the car and home – last off the site (along with our friends ) Admired the supermoon on the way home, but didn’t stop for pics, only for food at macdonalds when we were nearly back. And now I’m flagging, but the baby is still bouncing frantically around the floor. I’m hoping this blogpost isn’t as disjointed as I suspect it is, but I’ve been interrupted half a dozen times when writing it, and rather lost the thread.

I wanted to talk about everything I think we’re getting out of this process. An enthusiasm for history. Bringing the past to life. Chance to socialise with ppl from all walks of life, learn new (and very old) skills, understand politics, conservation, all sorts really. But I think I might have to leave that for another time when my brain is working. And instead, I’ll finish with a pic. Always a good way to end.

I didn’t know braces would do that to her. I’m so pleased that dp suggested we took before pictures as it will be a very long time before we see teeth without metal again. A very long time. These braces will be on between 18 months and 2 years, and then there will be a retainer full time and then part time until adulthood. I really hope it makes a fantastic difference to her, but on some levels the most important difference is the realisation she came to herself today.

And that’s that we do everything we can to make her life better than ours. She knows we make mistakes – oh, how I make mistakes – but we try so hard for them to not be the ones that were made in our lives.

I didn’t have dental work, and I wish so much that I had had. My bottom teeth overlap, I can’t keep them clean, my top teeth have little gaps between them and my teeth don’t line up at all. Though from what I’ve learnt in my crash course in orthodontics over the last few nights, that would barely rate on the scale. The real reason Big needs intervention is not about wonky teeth, it’s too do with the fact that one of her teeth has nowhere to go, there isn’t room for it to descend at all. So if they can’t jiggle it all around with braces, she’ll have to have surgery. And I’d really rather avoid that if we can.

So she has braces. Train tracks. With pink elastic bands, obviously. She was *so* brave during the fitting, but I also have to say that the orthodontist was absolutely fabulous with her. He explained everything ahead of time, and held every bit of equipment in her line of sight and showed her what it was and told her what would happen. It made all the difference – so if you have a child about to go through any of this, dig your heels in and make sure your orthodontist is at least as good.

Then we were prepared – I’d been told by Daddacool following some tweeting on the topic, to ask for orthodontic wax, and in fact we ended up with a starter pack that included that, a special toothbrush, a travel toothbrush, a very small bottle of mouthwash and some disclosing tablets. Oh, and a mirror. She’s very pleased with the mirror, and has used it extensively with the special toothbrush in taking her time over cleaning today.

We aren’t getting on too well with the wax though – it says in the instructions to get the braces dry, and she doesn’t seem to be able to achieve that. I daresay that will come.

But I have been so proud of her today, and proud of her staring down the smaller children staring at her (manners, what manners?) at the swimming pool, and even more proud of her going on and doing her Silver Challenge Award in swimming. Today of all days, she set out and did all sorts of skills – surface dives, 100m in 3 minutes, treading water and so on, finishing up with 800m in 30 minutes. And all this from a girl who couldn’t swim when we moved here less than two years ago.

Definitely a proud mummy moment. And I can be a tiny bit proud of myself, because I remembered to tell her that I was proud of her.

[If there was ever a post that was worthy of meming in the mummy blogger world, this must be it. Please feel free to share your proud mummy moments - no linky as I don't want ppl to think I'm doing it for the link backs or traffic, but if I can inspire you to think of a pmm and share it, I'll be very happy. If you want to drop it in comments, I'm happy to do a roundup post full of link love in a few days time ]

Quick, stop reading and run to your local newsagents/ supermarket if they are still open, and grab your copy of the Sun Buzz to get your token for a free Jamie Oliver DVD! (Oh, and you could follow them on twitter, so you don’t miss out on any of their free offers.)

No? Oh, OK then. But don’t miss out on the next few, as they are giving them away every day up til the 11th. It’s one of those redeem a token deals, and I rather think you just go to Tesco with it. Or, alternatively, you can enter my giveaway, as I’ve got a whole set to spare

I confess that usually cookery programmes aren’t my thing. And I find Jamie can be rather annoying at times – while I can see where he’s coming from with the school dinners crusade, I don’t like the telling ppl what to do attitude. But now I’ve got an allotment (though sadly not a gardener with it), and I need to improve my culinary offerings, so I *am* watching this series, although as a vegetarian I skipped episode 2 on furred game . I’m wondering if there’s some way to adapt some of the other recipes to be vegetarian too – for example in the leek episode, we love leeks, but oddly I don’t like parma ham so the first leek and pasta recipe wouldn’t do for me. It is pretty inspirational stuff, and it is making my mouth water looking at the gorgeous leek sauce as he serves it up.

So to get to the other point of this post, would you like to win a set of 6 DVDs then? If you would, leave me a pick-me comment And if you’d like a second entry, tweet or FB this post and leave me a second comment telling me where you’ve shared it. The competition will run just a couple of days until Mon 7th Feb at midnight, and I’ll pick a winner using random.org on Tuesday. (If that winner doesn’t get back to me by Friday 11th, I’ll pick again.) UK entries only please, as I’ve to cover the postage!

Ah well, lots of other stuff was achieved instead. As part of my continuing (ongoing, proactive ) campaign to improve Big’s self-esteem as she compares herself to school children and finds her education wanting (sigh) I’d tracked down some Science SATs papers (yes, I know Science SATs have been withdrawn but it still gives her an idea of what she’d have been up against) and they did the first one in the morning. Then I marked them and checked out the levels – they are on track for a level 4 for Small and a level 5 for Big if they can keep up their scores across the second half of the test.

Both of them were quite chuffed with that. They’ve done no test specific preparation (I didn’t do any more than scan the paper myself to check if it was at all doable) and very little in the way of lesson type science. But they both love things like Questionaut, and we do lots of discussion of, well, everything, in day to day life, as well as every now and then doing explicit science type stuff. (I should note at this point that they probably do rather more than you’ll find in that category link, but quite a lot of it I don’t write about, or I don’t tick the right category box. Mea culpa.)

Which all makes me wonder – what was all the fuss about with the SATs stuff anyway? If children can just acquire the information required to do so well on them in day to day life, why did schools/ teachers make a fuss about it all? Why did anyone *need* to teach to the test, or children need to get stressed out about it all?

What am I missing? Because I must be missing something.

I’d like to claim that my children are geniuses (genii?) and that I’m the most fantastic home ed mother in the world. But truth be told, while I’m sure they are pretty bright, and we do have a lot of resources about, I’m just not that organised, and we muddle along doing what the blog says, making it up. So what is the secret? I think it’s that children are set up to learn, and that many schools actually get in the way of that process. Not all schools, and definitely not all teachers, but sadly more than should be. I think if kids are given time, space, confidence and support, they will learn, and it will be way more efficient than you could ever believe possible. I just wish that we could set up our educational institutions to recognise those facts.

However, Big came home from Guides this week with £2 and a letter saying that this is a fundraising challenge – she’s to use the £2 to make a profit and then take the £2 and the profit back to them. Scratching my head over this one I started wondering whether baking and selling cookies would be the way forward. I suppose it’s a bit better than just asking the parents for extra money – Guides is not cheap. It comes out at £90 a year for subs, plus Census (no, I don’t know what that is either) plus anything extra like camp I’m guessing. Oh and uniform, which I bought on Ebay.

So I got the WI Celebration Cookery book down off the shelf again, and wondered what we could try out of it this time.

Baby likes gingerbread. Looks like a straightforward recipe:

4 oz butter
4 oz caster sugar
4 oz self raising flour
2 tspn ground ginger.

We could get a little gingerbread man cutter – what do you reckon is the going rate for a gingerbread man? 25p? That should raise a fair bit of money *if* we can find ppl to buy them. Perhaps gingerbread isn’t ideal though – I know smallest loves them, but the other two kids don’t.

I’m really not sure about this. But I can’t think of a better way of doing it. Would love to hear your thoughts or suggestions in the usual place. And yes, I’m aware of the irony of me pondering fundraising following a month of banging on about building a library.

Here are the other recipes in this Cakes and Cookies Carnival:

Nova at Cherished by Me gives us her Cherry, Coconut and Marshmallow Traybake. Kelly at Domestic Goddesque posts her recipe for heart-shaped jammy-dodger-style biscuits in Baking with a heart! while Heather at SAHMLovingIt gives us her Scrumptious Beetroot Seed Cake Recipe. Jules at I Need Curtains for the Window in my Head posts her recipe for Almond Macaroons and Helen at Cheeky Wipes gives us her recipe for Coffee Cake. Gemma at HelloitsGemma’s Blog posts her (easiest) Banana Cake (ever)and Sian at Pumpkin and Piglet posts her Chocolate Digestive Biscuits. Cass at The Diary of a Frugal Family posts her Nutella Chocolate Chip Cookies. Clare at Seasider in the City gives us her Mars Bar Cake. Bod for Tea shows us how she makes Iced Animal Biscuits. Maggy at Red Ted Art has a guest post from Maison Cupcake’s Sarah showing us how to make Love Heart Cookies. Rebecca at twobecomefour gives us her recipe for Beck’s Banana Bread. Jenny at Gingerbread House gives us her Gingerbread cupcakes. Tiddlyompompom shares the fun she has making cakes with her daughter in Have your cake and eat it and Ella from Notes from Home rounds off the carnival with her Brownies