Yesterday didn’t feel like much of a Saturday. Knowing that my assignment was due in but not finished, I set the alarm (shock, horrors, I hate having the alarm go off on a weekend). I got up and got on, and texted to find out what time I was due at school for the meeting, [...]
This week Tim has been away in Suffolk, which has meant his standard evening task of reading bedtime stories has fallen to me. I don’t really remember when bedtime stories became his job, but they usually are, and tbh, I quite enjoy that - after a full day of children it’s quite nice to have [...]
Time, 18.30. Location, bedroom.
Small: can we watch another episode of Doctor Who?
Me: are you going to want something to eat tonight?
Small: yes.
Me: then I don’t think there’s time - another episode of Doctor who will take you to quarter past seven, and that’s too late to be eating when you need to have a bath [...]
At the weekend I found a diary that I kept for around 18 months in the late 90s. It details a relationship or two, a job or two, my state of mind, and most particularly, at least to my state of mind tonight, it details the evening when I called my parents’ house to find [...]
Two months ago, I posted about Small’s reading. I talked about whole word recognition, and how that’s what we were focussing on.
We didn’t tell Small that. Somewhere since then, pretty much unaided, especially as he didn’t come to school that much in holiday club, he decided that he would get phonics, figure out most [...]
started by the fact that I didn’t surface until 12.30, as I was finishing off my book, The Margarets Not sure that I can be bothered to write a separate book review post (although I ought, as there are a couple of other books I’ve read that I haven’t reviewed yet. But there you) [...]
of our new school attendance pattern, and I think it’s gone pretty well all round. Big is now going four days a week, and Small three, so they’re both back to flexi-schooling, which I think suits them both well. Big is slightly unimpressed that Small gets a whole day of Daddy to himself, but seems [...]
Quite worrying that before I post I have to read the last post to work out what we’ve been doing…
I can’t actually remember Saturday terribly well. Ah yes. Big made her first purse out of the wool we’d bought on Friday, so we went down to the shop again to buy some more of a [...]
Small wants to get in on the current earning money challenge - he’s drawing pictures to sell. This is quite a step away from his standard approach of drawing them and giving them to anyone who expresses interest! I think I should try scanning a few in for display purposes, but I’m also going to [...]
Today I found the right motivation to teach Small some more maths. I informed him that if he could count his own money out of the pile, he could have the same pocket money at Big gets (£1 a week) rather than the 50p he’s been getting. It took an hour, but he counted out [...]
But not posted on Friday night as I was in a field. Well, for some of it, quite a lot of it was spent drinking wine in a nearby house.
The week before. No walking (no cat to feed). No library trip, got books to read before that happens. Did a bit of reading, started We [...]
So we provided one.
He wasn’t this sad throughout the whole day, this was because of the sticks in the ground - they were for rounders, but he felt it was deeply wrong to shove things into the ground, and I had to remonstrate to get him to leave them there. On some levels, he’s probably [...]
After a long chat with Tim’s brother last night, Tim and I came to the conclusion that Small needs whole word recognition, that phonics is not going to be the way forward for him. A has been doing that a small amount at school with him too, but today he sat and read Read at [...]
done. And home again. Big is playing chess with Tim, and Small is learning backgammon from me (his choice) except he’s gone for a comfort break.
It’s been a very long day and I have a stinking headache - I may be back later, but if not I just wanted to say thank you to everyone [...]
I keep thinking I’ve cried about enough and then someone says something nice, or I catch the eye of another member of the family and I’m crying all over again. Then again, we did difficult things today - went to the funeral home and saw the body in a coffin. I really didn’t want to [...]
Tonight I made the mistake of trying to do two things at once in a phonecall to a financial institution. I said I wanted to make a withdrawal and update my address details - at which point I was informed that I couldn’t make any withdrawal because I’d moved. Huh? If I hadn’t told them, [...]
the start of my morning was very similar to Jan’s apart from the fact that we don’t have a dishwasher so that was more of a manual operation. Oh, and the children had already got themselves up and breakfasted. Oh, and we don’t have a dog.
OK, so I did washing and breadmaking
The [...]
end of first week with new member of staff on board - we’ve got by through quite a challenging week so that’s gone fairly well. I’m beginning to feel on top of classroom management on some days - for some reason Thursday seems to go a bit pear shaped, obviously need to work harder then. [...]
First of all, gather your children into an ellipse, sitting on chairs in the children’s house. Then you can start
The 29th May 2003 was a very special day - that was the day that Small was born! We’re going to do a birthday walk - what do we need?
A candle. [...]
We’ve had two birthdays this week, as mentioned previously, so there have been drawn out celebrations. After thursday, which was multiply blogged, on friday we met my mother at M’hell, partly for the purposes of buying wedding wear as my sister’s nuptials are approaching. (This is my sole remaining unmarried sister, so unless they [...]