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.

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!

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…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I think she probably read some Lady Grace as well

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

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

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

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.

Big settled quickly to her work again this morning – it seems possible that I’ve now found the right level of things to be working with her on both spelling and handwriting so she enjoyed it today. We did some work on a_e and ay words – I gave her lists and she tried to memorize them and write them out herself, and then she thought of a couple more words of each type. I pointed out that she’d used a capital B in the middle of a word and she said that that was because she’s never sure which way round that one goes, so it’s easier to use the capital to get the right one. Hm, that must be indicative of something surely? And then I printed her more jardotted stuff to write over, this time just the alphabet and we agreed that any time that she’s going to do some writing she’ll go over the alphabet first to help her remember how it works. Apparently the little arrows to show which way to write the letters really helps, as she doesn’t remember anyone ever showing her that before.

Am wondering if because she could already read and write she just skipped lots of the montessori starter stuff, and therefore doesn’t have the sound foundations on this any more than she does on maths. Sigh. Hoping that we’ll whip through it now we know what’s wrong anyway.

She did some maths as well, and then got stuck into the Nature Detectives autumn/ winter mailing, complete with lots of top trumps on fungus. By this time Small had come to join us, and he started with another telling time sheet, then did two maths practices (each was only a page long mind ) although he did at one point complain that his writing was too big to fit the answers on the page. At this point I discussed handwriting with him and printed him a sheet out and he’s decided he would like to learn how to form letters. I know he hasn’t learnt before, it’s all just been acquired as he’s gone along, but I also know that there’s never any point in trying to introduce anything before he’s interested in it.

Not sure how much of the handwriting he did before he got distracted by the top trump mushrooms They then went on to play cards for another hour or so

Eventually got them organised and headed out to the park to meet up with local home educators. The car park was heaving – had to wait for a woman to leave before there was anywhere to park, but then again, it was yet another glorious day. There were lots of families in the play area, including a family with a 6 year old boy who would like friends of his own, which of course explains why he and Small headed for opposite ends of the play area and ignored each other for the hour they were both there. Sigh. Have had a bit of a chat with Small about that this evening, he was quite pleased with himself for making friends with a little girl there but she was just someone we bumped into and may never meet again, while A is someone that we are likely to meet on many occasions.

Lovely lovely afternoon in the sun and the children played in the water with only minor intervention needed, then we headed for home. I’ll gloss over the carpark which I’m going to blog separately, then when we got back home, the kids watched James and the Giant Peach from this collection while Tim pampered me with tea and toast.

Children are now in bed and I’m trying to work out if there’s anything I fancy to eat.

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.

Anyway, with this weekend being Heritage Open Days weekend, and therefore Sutton Hoo being free rather than costing £15 for a family, we decided we’d go and see it.

Small slept in rather late (obviously tired from the night before!) but was reasonably obliging when he woke, and not averse to the idea of going out as long as he could watch WALL-E (borrowed from Big’s friend C the night before) when we got back. We looked up on our tourist attraction map how far it is and he thought maybe 7 miles, as it’s 3 1/2 miles to an inch, and it looked to be about 2 inches. When we got in the car the satnav said 8.8 miles, so we decided we had done quite well with the map

Journey is about quarter of an hour, which is perfectly acceptable, and the sun came out as we were on the way there.

There was lots going on as well as all the stuff that’s there all the time – there was a 1939 archaeologist about somewhere, an art exhibition and chance for the children to get involved and falconry displays, as well as the big exhibition hall, the shop, the cafe and the (small but well formed) adventure playground.

We started in the exhibition hall – the children were given clipboards with quizzes on them, and I discovered that this isn’t a particularly good idea now. Big got very stressed about finding the answers and was not taking in the exhibition in general at all. Small just handed me his clipboard and belted off to find a replica helmet to put on

Small in helmet

Once that was done we had a quick look at the special exhibition on feasting while trying to find Tim and Small, but didn’t spot them and wandered outside where the falconry was about to start. Tim caught us up when I texted our location, and we watched a Harris Hawk, a hybrid falcon, and my personal favourite, the eagle owl. He landed on a post right next to us, so we got to have a really good look at him, which was fantastic.

eagle owl at Sutton Hoo

Big was incredibly brave and when they called for volunteers, went into the display area and sat down so that the owl could fly close over her head, was very proud of her Unfortunately our angle wasn’t good for a picture, but she really enjoyed it. Small declined the opportunity.

Next thing we did was retire to the cafe for an excellent lunch. if we’d paid for entry I wouldn’t have felt happy about the £20 lunch bill, as it was, I thought it made the day a really good family treat And when we’d finished eating, Tim popped off and joined the National Trust – got a £20 or so discount for joining on the day, so we only need to make three more visits to Sutton Hoo as a family and we’ll be well up I can see that we might well do that during the year, particulary as I think we can take other children in with us, much as we did taking Scott and Princess in to Landguard and only paying for visiting adults.

We visited the shop as well, and Small impressed me by buying himself a cardboard press out version of the helmet which I think he’ll really enjoy making. Big bought herself a bookmark and pin to remember the day and we started a family postcard collection – we’ll try and get one of all these places that we visit, which will be a rather nice memento.

After the shop we went out to walk to the mounds. Turned out that this was rather more of a walk in the by now blazing sunshine than the kids and I were up to, so we retreated to the playground (I seem to have missed out the playground, we had already visited it though!) while Tim went for the walk. Big thoroughly enjoyed more time on the aerial runway, while I spent a lot of time waiting for Small outside the toilet (!) and then we had another look at the birds of prey.

And that pretty much did us for the day. We’d been there probably 4 and a bit hours, Small was getting more than a little antsy to get home to his DVD and the rest of us were just hot and tired. So we came home for screen time, Tim strolled out and picked up some reduced price food from the coop for tea and we all slumped for the evening.

But it was a really lovely family day out, and we’re looking forward to doing it all again

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.