I’m never going to remember it all!
First of all, the new mattress is lovely. Tim slept a full night on it – and I did alright even if Small did manage to crawl up on to it at one point and crash into me 😉
Pondering this morning on education and the point thereof, my categories are there so that should the LEA ever come to call, I can quickly compile a list of the sort of things we have done to support the rounded educational experience they will expect to find. In a similar know your enemy vein, I keep an eye on the national curriculum for this age and so on. But I wonder about what is actually useful and worthwhile, and that concerns me far more – I want to make sure that Big has a variety of opportunities so that she has plenty to choose from to develop her interests and to support her as she does so.
So today we have done two more pages of Jolly Phonics (ck and e for those keeping track. We’ve talked about numbers, and I finally got round to showing Big a number square up to 100 and we played with that for a while. She asked to have our eggbox button spindle box down, so that came out after lunch and she played with that for a while. Makes me wonder how we would go on if more of our stuff was actually accessible to her.
She made a stripy duplo cake (which started out with 2 red candles arranged symmetrically and got more added as we went, but always in a pattern) and she played with that for a while. While I was bathing she did lego and carpet rubbing with Small off her own bat. When I went out into the garden to hang out washing they both came out and ran around and played for a while, then she got a piece of grass and discovered that if you bang it on the gazebo frame it makes a pleasant musical noise. Cue lots of experiments as to what makes good noises if you hit it and what doesn’t, with Small joining in throughout. Then they came back inside and had a band, consisting of an ELC keyboard, a recorder, a mouth organ and a kangaroo.
They are now playing with Junior Meccano, following the instructions to build a seesaw with no assistance at all.
I’ve also read several books to Small – he has this cute way of bringing you a book, then leaning against your leg while you read it to him. Aww…somehow I’ve also fitted in time for breakfast, lunch, making laundry gloop and using it, and having a bath, and all of this while feeling very sorry for myself while starting my period. Tmi?
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22 responses to “If I don't write some of this down”
Weyhey! Good for you!
I think like that about the NC – its a largely limiting and helpless piece of info i think BUT i like to know that if any of the girls decided to go to school then they wouldn’t be a million miles off – however i reserve that purely for the maths, literacy and perhaps science side. Things you could “behind on” rather than “not done yet” or “done something different” – as was sort of applicable in the olden days of “coming from another school.”
Its nice for me to have a maths guide because i am so un mathsy that certain things that Fran and Maddy see as games, wouldn’t occur to me as not being “too hard” but overall PC games probably lead the way there for us. As they are so NC related, that probably still counts in the same way as getting the Curriculum Guide! Fran learns in from Reader Rabbit and then perhaps we find it in a more conventional way in a workbook or whatever.
What i WOULDN’T want would be to be stressing about keeping up with it, or being restricted by it – completely irrelevant to an HE way of life in my opinion. Its a map that i wander over occasionally, made more useful by the fact its largely based on stuff kids get interested in anyway if they bump into those topics, and less useful by the narrowness with which they then treat those topics because they are trying to cover them all in 9 months a year.
Yup Jax … that question crops up for me a lot. I think you need to learn ‘how to’, which you can learn by pursuing your interests. Additionally you need to learn two languages (at least) … a spoken one and a mathmatical one (an integral part of the ‘how to’ … the latter of which, at least, seems to require more structure?). I think you also need a balance of activity to hone your 7 types of intelligence … hopefully developing, early on, a balance of these with which to approach life (definition of which IS ‘learning’?)
????????
bw
you sound really upbeat today – glad you had a good one! tmi – never (says she the queen of tmi!) were you feeling generally carp about a period or are you ttc? (hey if you’re gonna give the info you need to go all the way 🙂 )
we’re having a very good week too as as usual we are in sync (not the boyband which once had Justin in it obviously!)
that should have been crap not carp – even I have never felt fish like (is there a word to use instead of fish like – like feline or bovine but relating to fish!)
Hi Merry, I do wonder about Maths sometimes, I very much enjoyed it right up to O level, but I do wonder if following a curriculum would be a good move to give some chance to explore bits that might get sidelines otherwise.
Sal – what do you mean by a mathematical language?
Nic – no, not actively ttc, but I’d really like to have another baby and so each period is just another chance wasted iyswim. Look, I didn’t say I was being rational about it! Tim says piscine.
I’m inclined to think following about 4 might allow you to explore but following one would probably only let you explore one idea of maths. But what do i know?
i suppose that is why i quite liked (but have slightly failed to put into practise!) the idea of a set of “maths books” combined with Monte materials and Miquon.
Piscine, I think?? TMI – no, you share whatever you want 😉 Glad the bed is comfy. I always think beds are such a leap of faith. Sometimes I feel education is like a buffet meal. You prepare loads of stuff, probably far too much, in the hope that people will find things that they like, and that they will keep going back for more. Bit of a tortured metaphor that, really. 🙂
And ps – WordPress with all its categories pleases me somehow. It’s a bit like the cyber version of colour coding ones hama beads into plastic boxes. I just don’t know if I could do it. (the techie bit) I’m considering web space for my xmas, though.
Joyce! Come to momma! We can sort out wordpress, it usually takes about 5 minutes and then another 5 for the blogger import. (I say usually as Sarah and I between us managed to make it take a *little* longer…but we’ve made that mistake now 😉 ) If you want wordpress though you do need webspace that includes a database. Quite happy to help you get it all set up, and you don’t have to buy your webspace from me 😉
OMG… HOW is it that my children are not nearly as obsessive about bead sorting as i am?
Well, 2 out of 3 aren’t anyway…
Tilda wants them all sorted, but won’t bother doing it!
gasp, you mean there are people who leave their beads all in one bag all mixed up colours!!!
so, lets talk sorting technique – do you pick out all of a certain colour first, have a couple of colours to pick out one in each hand, pick out a small handful of three or so different colours and then sort them again or pick them up one at a time regardless of colour and put them in the right place???
Ooooh – it depends… normally 2 at a time i think – i go all the way through all of them to take out the whites and yellows, then all the way through to take out the ext 2 colours – depends on quantity and space a bit though!
Alison, is that possibly because she knows eventually you will? ;~) I’m sure thats what Fran does!
I’ve given up. *People* keep pulling out the dividers between the different sections in my trays and short of supergluing them in (which would render the sizes unchangeable) there’s no way to stop it happening. I just try not to put close shades next to one another in the drawers, so that at least if they do get mixed up you can still tell them apart easily enough.
My mini beads *were* sorted till some annoying child came and tipped those pots upside down the other day and I discovered that the dividers don’t quite divide the sections in those either.
I was VERY CROSS!!
I take a handful at a time, and sort them into little heaps, and then just keep adding to them. Is that more relaxed, or more anal? Jax – I’d have to get it from you, as its the only way I could do it at all. Plus everyone else gives you such a good reference 😉 Would I be able to have a nice domain name as well, rather than that crappy email address I have?
But did you swear Sarah?
I almost daren’t admit this, but all our beads are still in their mixed bags. Life is too short! I sort them as we go if we’re doing something that requires numbers of a particular colour.
Joyce, will mail you offblog, but yes, you would have to get a domain name as well as space, and then you would indeed be able to have a different email address.
I alternate between picking out one particular colour (have never tried two – will have a go next time, lol) and getting a handful and sorting that one by one.
Yes, Tilda knows I’ll do it …. I’m such a soft mother 😉
Go Joyce! Now all you have to do is think up a good domain name that someone else hasn’t already nicked …
eastmilk might be available,,,,whatever that means.
I means nothing, Chris, except a play on Hannah’s surname. Which incidentally, is not available as they’ve all been bought up by the water companies.
Hands up too – mine are in boxes – all mixed up but they are maxi beads and easy to see the colours when you need them.