Small managed mostly fine without her, apart from one brief moment today when he bounced off into the bedroom and then came back looking solemn.

“I forgot she’s not here” he said.

Let’s have an awww….

The rest of the time though he amused himself on the computer. As usual. He’s spending vast amounts of time writing programs on Scratch though I don’t think he’s been uploading them. Must remind him about that bit. And he remembered Questionaut and has spent lots of time on there as well.

Which led to the surreal conversation last night, when he was able to tell me that 50 add 25 is three quarters of a 100, but not what the actual answer is.

*headdesk*

Actually, if he can’t really do arithmetic, but is really hot on concepts, does that mean that he might be some kind of mathetmatical genius? (I can live in hope, can’t I?) As Tim said, if I ask nicely, maybe Small will explain probability to me. He certainly has a better grasp of it than I do!

Smallest has had a difficult couple of days. She is full of cold, and consequently her eating and sleeping arrangements have been all to pot. Tim and I particularly enjoyed the hour or so of bouncing happily on our heads at 2 am two nights ago. Or not.

She is oh so very close to walking. Has done a single step independently lots of times now. And last night she even used a spoon to eat some of her yogurt! With her left hand again. Aunty K is going to be thrilled that we’ve finally another leftie in the family!

And the lego? The extra goody bag arrived following our LegoHeroFactory outing. Small was absolutely beside himself to discover it contained Furno. Furno is apparently THE hero to have. So one ludicrously happy boy, especially when Big immediately said they would share them both.

Thank you, Lego Hero Factory. You are definitely my hero

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?

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.

Took Big down to the library to pick up her next Lady Grace Mystery, Deception. She is absolutely adoring these, and getting lots out of them historically as well

Of course, a little later we had a row, when I told them that we were going out, and they didn’t want to, but Tim and I wanted to go to Orford Ness, this being the last week that it’s open during the week, and it was a glorious day for it as well. Departure was hindered by the fact I’d put the temporary membership sheet into a safe place, and couldn’t find it again but we got away eventually, to arrive after the last ferry crossing :’(

Making the most of the day out anyway, we retired to Orford Castle. Tim had taken the kids before, but I hadn’t been. He disappeared with Small to do a high speed tour, while Big and I took our time with the audio tour, which was excellent. I managed all the steps apart from the basement, but was aching somewhat by the end so we gave up on a plan to pop into the town for an explore and headed home via a moderately scenic route showing the kids where Tim grew up and his walk home from school.

It was a lovely afternoon out and although I was in some pain, it wore off a little on the ride home. Wimped out on tea though as didn’t want to risk really setting my hip off, although I still went out for a walk to pick up a baby bath from freegle, while Tim marshalled the kids into the shower.

Afterwards they wanted to sit in the living room with us, while really I just wanted some child free time. Big was quietly perusing catalogues, but Small isn’t very good at quiet, and tried to assist Tim with his scrabble (which was very funny ) before finding Space (DK Eye Wonder) and reading selected excerpts of it out loud. Eventually they did retire to their bedroom for a short time playing, allowing me to heave a sigh of relief and start hunting out the resources for my last TMA for MS221.

Have had enough of this maths now. Am trying not to get stressed about the exam, but can’t help feeling it’s going to be a disaster as I really haven’t understood or acquired skills during this course. I have to score 40% to pass, and I need at least 40% on this TMA too, which should be feasible as it’s at least partially on imaginary numbers which I did at A level (surprised to find that they are now being introduced at level 2 of OU courses. But don’t worry, there hasn’t been any dumbing down of qualifications in the last 20 years since I did A levels….) but it’s so very difficult to focus on something I’m enjoying so little. Taking a year off OU next year, don’t think it would go too well with new baby anyway, and then will ponder after that.

And then we watched TV and I went to bed.

Hm.

Not sure that I’ve quite got the hang of this scheduling yet.

Anyway, we started out by dashing over to the next town to drop off my TMA – looked like there was another envelope without stamp on her doormat too Then we went from there to see Helen-who-lives-near-us (rather than HelenHaricot) for a play/chat/early lunch which was very lovely. Right up until I said it was time to leave, when Small collapsed into a sobbing heap as he hadn’t had chance to go on the trampoline. Apparently the 10 minute warning wasn’t sufficient because the dog was outside, and he’s not as familiar with Helen’s dog as he was with Roxy, so didn’t feel comfortable going outside with her.

Rectified and we stopped an extra few minutes for him to bounce, then I said we had to go or there was no point in going as we were only going to get an hour at group, and Big collapsed in a heap over the idea that we were already late.

Sigh. There are definitely times when you just can’t win. Scraped her back together and suggested that maybe she needed to wear a watch so that she could keep an eye on the time if she wanted to be at places at particular times (and yes, I know I’m making a rod for my back there, alternative suggestions welcome) and headed off to group.

Which she then sulked through, as the other children were playing the same game they had last time we were there and she doesn’t like that game. It is refreshing to be in a place with several other mothers who just accept your children’s behaviour though, even when your children are behaving as badly as they ever do, and not only don’t judge your parenting, recite their experiences of precisely the same thing.

Came home so that she would have time to do her Brownie homework, which obviously involved a certain amount of wailing, then walked her over to Brownies along with her badge book as requested in the previous week’s letter. The assistant Brown owl knew nothing about this – when I said it had been in the letter, she said that that was addressed to parents and she hadn’t read it Beginning to feel quite concerned about what is going on at that group tbh. Am always making sure that there are other adults around when I drop Big off!

Once she was home, they were fed and put to bed, and then I think Tim and I watched something dire on TV, can’t for the life of me remember what though!

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.

So I pootled away the morning, completely forgetting that home ed music group was starting up again and rang again at 1pm. Which didn’t get me any further as the receptionist who answered the test results line didn’t know what any of the test results meant and suggested instead that she book me a telephone consultation with a doctor, first appt available at 2.45. Sigh. Or scream, depending on how energetic you are feeling.

In the meantime Big had helped Small to finish his Questseekers book, by reading the last bits to him I think So we all agreed that we would go to the library on the way down to swimming – we were due to pick up Big’s friend C to join us at 4.15. All just about doable.

Of course the GP was late calling, but once she was on the phone she was excellent. Gave me the rest of my results with an MCV of 93 and an MCH (I think that’s the right whatchamacallit) of 31.9 she thought my results were absolutely fine and that she wouldn’t expect anyone to have higher than 11 HB at this stage of pregnancy (given that the midwife said she medicated everyone under 11, that means pretty much everyone is being prescribed iron supplements, and the majority of them will be unnecessary and possibly dangerous ). So I have now declined the pregaday, my homebirth is fine according to the GP, and all I have to work out what to do is how to put this across to my midwife.

Kids were thankfully bag packed and ready to go so we left immediately after the phone consult and were at the library trying to locate a Questseekers trained volunteer by 3.45. So Small was signed off as well, result!

Picked up Big’s friend as she arrived back from school, and spent over an hour in the pool with the three of them. It’s far more relaxing going with a swimming offspring quite enjoyed the sensation. Of course Big and C contrived to fall out 40 minutes or so into the session, and both resisted any attempts at reconciliation until I pointed out that we were getting out in 10 minutes and they were wasting valuable playing time. Small splashed around with his ring, and sometimes took it off and tried a frantic doggy paddle, which did move him a little way through the water. The lessons have built up his confidence, even if they haven’t imparted any technique yet

Dropped off C and ended up stopping while the kids gatecrashed her sister’s birthday party for food and games on Wii. Which was rather nice. Then got a lift back as M was on his way to drop off DVDs at blockbuster – over halfway home. Quite amused at the shock which is expressed at the fact we do walk to swimming – it is a mile, but the kids are used to doing it, we must do it twice a week prob, as we go to the beach most weeks as well, which is most of the way there, and we do lots of shorter walks just to shops and library too. Guess I probably have nice fit kids even if they don’t do much organised sport They don’t think anything of walking to the beach or swimming, which I think is excellent.

So late home, kids processed quickly into bed and asleep very quickly – I guess a mile walk *and* swimming for over an hour was quite tiring then!

Anyway, apart from that, and the incident with the mouldy whipped cream (thanks again to the cousin for saving the day, or at the very least the children) they had a lovely time, and Big came home with a centenary badge for her non existent camp blanket, a little fabric badge that she’d decorated and a semi made friendship bracelet, done in the round bit of cardboard style (similar to the weaving disk from Merry’s recent viking blog). So now she’s going to teach me too

Small spent his day being largely self entertaining – he had his goes at playing on the computer, and then went on to do some more website design on paint.net and worked solidly on Scratch for an hour or more, getting his sprites to interact. I showed him LearnScratch as well, but I’m not sure whether he made much use of it.

Tim was brave and entertained cousin’s boyf at the club for several hours, and came back very cheerful shortly before our Brownie was delivered home. I left him in charge while I went off to take some books to drop in to a charity shop and have a stroll (a very gentle, not needing to be anywhere kind of stroll that felt relaxing rather than stressing. Lovely).

The evening deteriorated somewhat around tea time. I’d made a semi traditional meal – boiled potatoes, cabbage and green beans, raw carrots and hickory smoked chicken pieces (those came out of a freezer bag!) Something for everyone, but somewhere along the line Small got himself worked up, partly due to the fact that the weekly shop had been done at Lidl rather than Sainsburys and that meant various familiar items weren’t so familiar. I should point out that I used to shop at Lidl when we lived in old house, and at last house we shopped at Tesco or the coop, so Sainsburys has hardly been carved in stone, but it had been for him, recently at least. So he wound himself up for a battle and a battle we had. Which was nice.

After that, I think Tim and I watched mindless tv until I keeled over and went to bed.

Small did do some further work on his website design, he’s getting quite proficient with Paint.net now. Including undo last move, which is needed quite frequently I haven’t managed to explain to him particularly well about elements of websites yet, and he doesn’t believe that there can be any tutorials on how to do it that could be any use (sigh) but we are making slow steady progress.

Big read. She’s finished another Lady Grace Mystery (the first one this time, Assassin, and started no 2. Love it when she gets hooked on something like this, and she’s learning lots of little historical facts as she goes.

I processed 1 1/2 black bags from the garage through the wash and onto the washing line, though something went crunch in my back as I took the second load out and I spent a very uncomfortable evening feeling sorry for myself before I gave up and went to bed with Lonely Road from Tim’s dad’s bookshelves. Rather enjoyed it, and have woken up slightly more mobile this morning, so that’s good.

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.

Monday was a mainly quiet day as is usually required after visitors for rest and recuperation, however restful the visitors have been. There was much television watched, some putering, possibly some reading and drawing, but that was about it. Until bedtime, when Big asked Tim something about coordinates, and he launched into a beautifully judged, eloquently explained description of how it all worked, complete with illustrations on the computer and use of google earth.

I was learning lots, but I did rather lose focus when Big said, a trifle impatiently “but is this going to answer the question I asked you?” Ah well. It did remind her of google earth, so that was a good thing. Not sure whether any of the rest of it went in, which is a bit of a shame, but rather the way it goes around here!

Monday afternoon I set to with my OU CMA (computer marked assignment as opposed to TMA, tutor marked assignment). It’s on probability and statistics, which ought to be a doddle given that I’ve covered the topic at uni level before. The drawback being that I really don’t get either of them, and Tim and I had an interesting debate over the aubergine parmegiana that I was making that implied he’s not much further on that I am. Oh well.

The aubergine thingy was lovely, and major breakthrough with Small – he tried a tiny piece of the onion in tomato sauce that was one of the ingredients and liked it! That really opens up a lot of possibilities of sneaking onions and tomato sauce into things, or even making my own pasta sauces for them. It probably took us about 20 minutes to talk him into putting it in his mouth, but we got there in the end.

Big tried it and said it was alright. She later told me that she didn’t like the flavour, but I could always try it again with different cheese. Both Tim and I enjoyed it, and what’s more, Tim had a second helping! Definitely calling that one a success, which is rather good as I’d no real idea what to do with aubergines before that.

(Yes, I know that doesn’t sound very feminist, but Tim knows way more about looking after houses than I do, if I needed to know it like when I lived alone, I would deal, but I don’t need to right now, so I concentrate on the things I do need to do. )

Tim was up before we needed to leave while we were still doing the finding last little bits for day bags, and told me there had been a leak under the kitchen floor so he’d turned the water off before going to bed. That would explain it then. Left him to deal with that and went off to swimming.

There in good time, especially as Small had his trunks on under his trousers today. And we’d remembered to put pants in his bag for after His teacher finally back today, without so much as a word of explanation, though she did have one armed strapped up, so perhaps the brief rumour of a broken arm was the nearest to the truth. I do not have a problem with ppl being off, things happen, but I do have a problem with poor communication. What would it have hurt to have told us what was going on?

Anyway, she seemed to be putting them through their paces today, in preparation for moving some up as I think this lesson was actually the first of the new set of 10. Think there were nearly 10 children in Small’s group today, and know from seeing the list that there are actually 11 booked in, which is one more than the max, so she needs to move a couple out. Looks like it’s going to be Small’s friend P, which will no doubt upset Big’s friend C, but at least I overheard Denise saying that they need to be able to swim across on front and back, and C does keep stopping to put her feet down to breath when she’s swimming on her front. They are spending next week at a waterpark Eurocamp in Holland though, so she might get enough practise to sort it out then

Not sure it’s going to do her much good in catching Big up though, her teacher was giving her last minute instructions as she came out of the pool and the impression he gave was that she’s very near to moving up again herself. Apparently she needs to lift her left arm out of the water in crawl as she isn’t doing, and her breaststroke still needs some work, but they are looking at that next week. And she only started breaststroke during this course of 10 lessons, so I’m not too surprised. He says her crawl is quite powerful though, which I’d thought, seeing it during her lessons. Very proud of her, she’s really making fast progress now, and that’s without me taking them swimming much in between lessons.

And on to our beach playdate. J had taken Small out with her two while I waited for Big – she was only 10 minutes ahead of me and I figured by the time she’d gone to her car to pick up their beach stuff there wouldn’t be that long for him to get stressed. Sure enough when I got out there they were very happily building a sandosaurus, one of Small’s favourite things to do. She did tell me later that it had been his idea, and that he’d been quite happy to adapt it and name it after all three boys together.

Once I was there he was allowed to go paddling, and did, up to his waist. This lack of fear of water is definitely a two edged sword! Big was in and out as well, trying to swim in it, and nearly managing J said she thought I was very brave, letting Small in the water without floats or me. Tbh, I think putting floats on him would be a mistake if I wasn’t in there with him, as he’d be far more likely to be washed out to sea, as it is, if he gets too deep he gets water in his face and comes hurtling out again. This has only been a problem in the last week or so though, up until then he would never have gone in over his knees.

J got togged up to swim and her younger boy decided he wouldn’t go in so she leant Small his armbands. Didn’t seem to make him float much better and fairly soon he came out anyway, shivering. Was desperately trying to get him dry and warm as Big did similarly, tried to get her to take her suntop off and actually use her towel to get dry but she insisted on sitting on it, shivering, and was very soon into a full screamy waily meltdown fit, I think mainly because I was helping Small and not her. I thought she was capable of getting dried and dressed by herself, and he needs more help as he’s quite likely to decide he’s dry when he isn’t and then soak his clothes.

J removed herself to build a sandcastle with the boys while I tried to retrieve Big, but it was a full on 10 minute absolute loss of control. Very embarassing, and in the end I just had to get hands on and drag clothes off her and insist she do as she was told. Not helped by a seagull doing something unmentionable down my back and on her towel, which really overloaded her sensory wise.

Hohum. Once she was dressed and warmed up a bit she recovered herself and started apologising, but was quite surprised that J was still happy to arrange another meetup after all that! We’re going swimming together Thurs afternoon – will be interesting to see how Small manages now in a pool. And might be able to get Big’s left arm sorted for her crawl

Home and a quiet afternoon with yet again far too much screen time. I did require them to do some reading as well, and eventually sent them to bed with books. Small has finally finished You’re a Bad Man, Mr. Gum! and Big finished two library books yesterday. So I think a library trip is in order today, we’re getting closer to the end of the Questseekers challenge, and I would like them to finish it as this library actually does a presentation ceremony

So Monday involved far too many screen time, at least for Small. Think I managed to get him to read half a chapter of his book, but that was about it. Big however, did some more sewing with me in the afternoon, we made two reversible wrap skirts, one that just about fits the enormous toddler doll, and one which fits her smaller baby doll, only a shame that he’s a boy really There was a delay in that it took me 1 1/2 hours to get the machine to pick up the bottom thread after I reloaded the bobbin – it appears that you have to push pretty hard to get the bobbin to stay in correctly in a Singer 1507, and it doesn’t say that in the manual.

Hohum.

After that, tea was running a bit late, and I was a bit devoid of inspiration. We’d got carrots, courgettes, onions and cabbage left from the veg box, so I did carrot sticks, then courgette and onion kebabs. Apparently they were horrendously horrid according to Big, who couldn’t cope with the courgette at all. Small didn’t try them.

I quite enjoyed them though. Oh well.

And so to bedtime. When I discovered that the washing that I’d carefully folded and piled in separate heaps on Small’s bed to make it easier for him to put away had been thrown on the floor. I was not best pleased. He is pushing his luck in this type of area atm, refusing to do the smallest chore and expecting to be waited on hand and foot. Any requests for him to assist results in overblown reactions and a distinct lack of cooperation. I had to walk away last night as I couldn’t deal with his attitude, so the first part of my evening was not nearly as pleasant as it could have been.

Once they were in bed, I recovered with an episode of CSI Miami and then had an early night, as it’s swimming Tuesday morning and we had a playdate on the beach planned for after.