Boredom is good for them.

Over the last day or two, the children have started to get bored of the television and computer. This shows quite simply – they fight, which is not so good, and then they start to do other things, which is better. Big has played recorder and piano two days running, and they are both still reading HP like it’s going out of fashion. Small was so proud today to finish the Philosopher’s stone, some kind of triumph for a child that wasn’t reading at all 6 months ago. Big has also finished Phoenix and has now started HBP, and not to be left out, I’ve finished Azkaban, read Goblet today and am now some chapters into Phoenix.

As well as music, Small did a small amount of his maths workbook yesterday, though I don’t think he was really in the mood. I should know better than to push it, this child learns when he is good and ready to do so, and then he learns in a scary way, but I do feel better when he’s doing a little maths every now and again. Guess that’s my problem though, not his.

Both of them spent time with the science book we’d picked up, I quite like the style of it though it’s not very indepth. Big was particularly taken with an experiment to measure the length of shadows at different times of the day, which she remembers doing with K, the deputy head who left their school a year or so back. Don’t know when they did it, but as K didn’t teach elementary, I’d guess some time back. These things really do take root though, don’t they?

And then we went charity shopping again, and I succumbed to the lure of the book, Graceling,that I’d looked at the other day, wanted to borrow from the library, and couldn’t as they haven’t heard of it. In some kind of recompense, I took and donated a book and film that were just littering the place, one in, one out, that’s good, right?

Also bought big a rather nice top for 99p, and in the spirit of fairness, told Small I would contribute 99p to the box of books by Dick King Smith that he’d found, meaning he would have to pay me back £2 when we got home. Should have got it in writing, as he still argued later, but never mind.

After the shops, the park, and they ran around like lunatics, climbed on the climbing thingy, spun on the roundabout, and she even pushed him on the swing. While I read, and froze, until it started to rain, at which point I beat a hasty retreat. We stopped into the supermarket to pick up essentials, and had a quick lesson in how to do the right thing, when we spotted a guy acting very suspiciously by one display. Unfortunately the security guy in charge of the camera desk was very young and very stupid, so I don’t think he saw anything, and I hustled my offspring round the shop and out rapidly, in case suspicious looking guy had seen us trying to turn him in.

That was not our only uncomfortable moment in a shop today. In one charity shop, I signed a petition for more care for heart patients and got into a conversation about the government with the stereotypical sweet little old lady behind the counter. I mentioned the home education review and how ludicrous it was and she said “funny you should mention home education, I was watching that Waterloo Road on the BBC on Wednesday. Did you see it? That had home education in it, wasn’t good.”

And on those grounds, I think it’s time to start up our next campaign, of complaints to the BBC.

This isn’t on. It is not fair at all for the media to be agitating against us, but it won’t work if we are forever reacting and on the back foot. We need some positive press that we originate, and I’m trying to work out in what way we can achieve that.

But to the rest of the day. We came home, Small read several chapters of several different Dick King Smith books (so that was definitely a good purchase for him) and then they had tea, bath and bed. It’s Friday night, so then the neighbours started up, and Big had to go sleep in Small’s room, but they seemed to cope with that. I think she likes it anyway, which is good, as she’s going to have to when we move.

And tomorrow, we start work on the bedrooms. I figure if we can trim down the amount of stuff in them, it will make packing so much easier.