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Big

The first song.

13th March 2020 by Jax Blunt 7 Comments

Parenting is full of firsts. First smile, first steps, first word (different children achieve these in different orders and at different ages, don’t panic).

What I’ve found unexpected is that the firsts don’t lose impact as your children get older. In fact, sometimes they’re greater. I’ve written before about being the unheard cheerleader, now my role is behind the camera, taking photographs and videos as two of my children take to the stage.

Not a theatrical stage. A musical stage. My social media followers will have seen that Alison has launched a career as a singer and songwriter. Her third single releases today, it’s called Letter from New York (and can be found on all streaming services, links to follow ๐Ÿ˜‰ ).

It may be the third song that is released to the world, but it was the first one to be performed. Nearly two years ago now, she rehearsed with (NotSo)SmallTeen (who is a guitarist these days, and very much not small at all) and one of his guitar classmates and then got up on stage at the guitar school concert and performed it.

It wasn’t the smoothest of first performances. We hadn’t been completely organised about it being part of the show, so it wasn’t on the program, and I had to run over and give the compere a heads up before she went on, but it didn’t phase him in the slightest.

There were nerves. (Hers.) I was firm, she tells me, and encouraging, and the nerves were brought under control and not at all evident from my position in the audience. And there were tears. (Mine. Lots of them.) Yes, I weep. I cry when my children swim, perform, excel, achieve. I am a weeper. I go on filming, and taking pictures, and singing along under my breath (top tip, don’t do this when you’re filming. Unless you’re backing singer quality. Oops.) and I cry, and blot my eyes and smile and say no I’m not crying don’t be silly, and then I sniffle a little and get on with it.

I adore this song, partly because it was the first, but also because of the story it tells. And the way it tells the story. And because that first performance was so completely unexpected – we’d never heard her perform in a venue with a mic, and she totally stole the show. The compere, Wayne Bavin a local BBC dj, was extremely complimentary at the time and since, and that was the first external inkling that maybe I wasn’t just been a proud parent, and that actually, objectively speaking, this music is good.

Like I said, there are three songs out there now, and there have been gigs, and a festival performance, playlisting on spotify and radio airplay (this link should take you to the right bit of last night’s BBC Introducing in Suffolk). I know there are a lot more firsts to come yet, nobody told me that parenting a 20 year old would continue to be just as exhilarating and terrifying and emotional and unexpected as parenting is from day one. I thought I’d kind of get used to it.

I haven’t.

If you’ve a minute or two to go listen to her music, I’d really appreciate it, handy links below. Do try not to cry. (Can’t promise I won’t.)

Letter From New York On Spotify

Letter From New York on Apple Music

Letter From New York on Amazon Music

Letter From New York on Google Play

Letter From New York on Deezer

Letter From New York on Youtube Music

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Filed Under: Big, rhythm of the day, Uncategorised Tagged With: Alison Marchant, Firsts, Letter from New York, Parenting

Home education, how's it looking these days?

14th January 2019 by Jax Blunt 8 Comments

I still get a fair few contacts via social media about home education, so I thought it was probably time for a bit of an update on where we are, how we’re doing and what it looks like these days. Also, I was inspired by Adele over at Beautiful Tribe who wrote a beautiful post about resetting homeschooling intentions, and that sounded like a great idea to me.

For the sake of completeness, I’ll cover the whole family, even though some of them aren’t home educated any more.

At the moment, Big (rapidly approaching 19!!) is still at home, doing a Level 4 course in Music at college. That’s equivalent to the first year of a degree in terms of qualification level (for those of us at the back completely lost if it doesn’t say A level, O level etc). It’s very hands on, and she’s already gigged several times. If you’re interested in what she’s up to, you can follow her musical adventures on instagram or facebook.

Small, who really really isn’t small any more, not that he was at the time we started calling him that, is also at college. I’m still unclear as to whether he’s technically home educated at the moment, but given he’s in college 2 1/2 days a week, also doing music performance but at level 3, I figure he’s fairly effectively educated should anyone come knocking. There’s also music practice on three instruments these days, music composition, computer club, fencing, guitar lessons and gym and a variety of other hobbies. He’s rarely not busy, and it’s all self directed, which I love.

Which leaves the actual home educated offspring, Smallest of all (who obviously isn’t, on any measure, drat the whole funny giving of online names!) and Tigerboy. Both of them read independently, and Smallest is on a reread of Ballet Shoes at the moment. I did however find her a bundle of interesting titles at the library, including the sequel to the Lotteries, another Noel Streatfield, and the wrong Rick Riordan book. Will add all of them to the Amazon affiliate widget at the bottom of the post. She’s full of scientific type questions just now, and we’ve been working through some of the science kits they were given at Christmas, with admittedly variable results.

The solar puppy for example, not so good. (Have added it to the widget, but for information, not as a recommendation!) I could *not* figure out how to get the incredibly small wires through the very small gap to attach to the also small coil. Suggestions gratefully accepted in the comment box.

Solar science discovery kit

Solar puppy

teeny tiny wires not in place

I had higher hopes for the food science kit, but while it has a great booklet with it with loads of suggestions, it doesn’t actually include the ingredients you need for some of the things. Like the fruit jellies for example, which was what Tigerboy desperately wanted to do. So that had to wait until I’d shopped for gelatin. (The ingredients actually called for isinglass, but I’ve no idea why they wanted that instead of gelatin. I went vege gel in the end.)

Kitchen laboratory

fruit jellies in mould

fruit jellies

Other than that, we made it to a new group that started up relatively near us last week. It’s held in a soft play, so plenty of exercise opportunities and while we won’t make it every week, mainly because it requires me to be in two places at once, it is good to have it available. Tigerboy is still doing his home ed trampolining session too, and coming along nicely, although it appears the hypermobility that the older two both have has struck again. Unsurprising given the genetics aspect really. I’m told that trampolining will help him develop core strength so that’s good. Also, I read this really interesting article about suncream yesterday, and will be making even more of an effort to drag the kids outside very regularly so that they can build up a bit of a tan to protect them from sunburn. (I will probably stick to sunsuits for beach days though. The in and out of the water, along with the wind makes it too risky for very blond children, and sunburn *is* a cancer risk.)

As to home education intentions and or the resetting of them? Well, I’ve started myself a bujo, but a very pared down version, and when I get the hang of it, I want to get the kids into it too. I want them to form their own intentions and be aware of what they are and aren’t doing, although obviously I’ll still be guiding them. I’m more and more aware of how children can and do educate themselves if they’ve got the environment and assistance to do so, and that seems to me to be the ideal. I don’t know I’d go so far as to call us unschoolers, but it’s probably the nearest label there is. So that’s where I’m going – being more aware of our regular activities, making sure we’ve got group things to go to, they’ve got library, outdoors, science and so on on offer throughout the week.

Did you do anything to reset your home education at the start of the year?

Products from Amazon.co.uk

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Filed Under: Big, how we do it, It's where it is, rhythm of the day, Small steps, Soa, tigerboy Tagged With: bujo, emma donoghue, home education, homeschooling, library books, noel streatfield, rick riordan, science, spyder, the lotteries more or less, unschooling

Monday morning changes.

7th September 2015 by Jax Blunt 14 Comments

So today, this happened.

first day of school

Which was a bit startling. Big has, on her choice, gone to the local academy, joining year 11 to do GCSEs. She looked very happy and excited in her new uniform, which fitted her pretty well, and was thrown together in a week. All good fun.

(Or not. If you follow me on twitter, and experienced the saga of The Wrong Blazer. Still, fixed now, although I do have the original one to send back for a refund yet.) 

I don’t quite know how I feel about this change. It’s complicated. Maybe I’ll wait until the end of the week to process it properly and write it up then. The main thing is that she drove this, so I support her, even if a tiny bit of me feels like a home ed failure. The lesson to take from this is not to create your identity around your children, but around yourself. Still a work in progress there apparently.

Anyway, once she set off, that left 3 children to focus on. So far this morning, Smallest has done her hammering set, then a bunch of stencils, and then found an addition/subtraction game I picked up cheap in Lidl and worked through the easiest set of sums. She’s now trying to teach Tigerboy to add and subtract, mainly be whispering the answers to him so that he can call them out ๐Ÿ˜‰

cooperative hammering

He’s had a go at hammering, spent some time on CBeebies on the computer and is now point blank refusing to coperate with being taught maths by a 5 year old. No change there then. 

Small is here as well. He’s working on a plan of education for this year. I hope. We’re not precisely seeing eye to eye on that one, but it will sort out in time one way or another.

So, basically, we’re still home educating. But we’re school using too. Like I said, changes.

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Filed Under: Big Tagged With: Early years, first day, haba, hammering, home education, school, uniform

Treat day. (With bonus Shattered book launch.)

20th March 2014 by Jax Blunt 2 Comments

Today has been a treat day.

I try to do this with the children in some kind of rotation, but it can be difficult to juggle.

Today was Big’s turn. We got on a train to London. When we got there it was coffee time.

image

Then we went to a bookshop. For this.

image

This is Teri Terry. The event was the launch of the third in the Slated trilogy. It was a lovely evening, even if I did fail to realise that James Dawson was there and so didn’t get to meet him.

Gah

(We did meet The Jeff Norton again. *And* got a sneak peek of forthcoming exciting thing. *AND* I recognised him and remembered his name! )

๐Ÿ™‚

And now we’re on another train. Going home. Long journey but a very special evening out. Thank you for the invitation Teri, it was fabulous to meet you.

Now, if you’ll all excuse me, I have some reading to do.

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Filed Under: Big, Book club, places we like Tagged With: London, shattered, Teri Terry

Education courtesy of science kits and jigsaw puzzles.

1st March 2012 by Jax Blunt Leave a Comment

One of the plus points of being sent items for review is that very often I can work them into our educational plans. So it was great that we were offered a Wild Science Lip Balm Laboratory for Big to take a look at, as there are all sorts of educational experiences in a kit like that.

First of all there’s the following instructions. Then there is some understanding of the science behind it all, plus the actual activities of the measuring, melting and blending. And at the end of it you actually have a product that you can use! Which is rather better than doing most science experiments that I remember from school ๐Ÿ˜‰

Wild Science Lip Balm laboratory

Only criticism we had of the kit is that it suggests you heat water in a microwave to melt the wax beads, but gives no indication of length of time at power level. And in the end, we found using hot water from the kettle was far more effective, and even then the melting took a lot longer than described. It is true that it was a cold cold day, so the beads may well have been fairly well chilled, but apart from that, the kit worked well.

I liked the tray that contained everything and kept it organised. And unusually, it fits back in the box like this, rather than having to dismantle it again.

And here you have the scientist in action.

Big making lip balm with a Wild Science kit
ravensburger puzzleclub

So that was one educational activity. Independent working – although I was there. The second activity, a Ravensburger jigsaw for the Ravensburger Puzzle Club, turned out to promote cooperation and team work, and if you’ve got older children, you’ll know how important that can be!

It continued the laboratory theme ๐Ÿ˜‰

The puzzle was great – not so complex as to put them off, but definitely challenging enough to interest them and keep them occupied for a while. So that’s a 200 piece XXL – ideally targeted at slightly inexperienced 8 and 12 year olds.

Ravenburger Loopy laboratory puzzle

I’m a big jigsaw fan, but it’s not something I get much chance to do these days. I couldn’t resist directing operations from the sofa though, just to get them started, with sorting out edge pieces and so on. Once Small was fully engrossed though, I pretty much left them to it. And the sense of achievement they both had when they got it finished was palpable. And since they refused to take it to pieces again immediately, it’s just as well we’ve got the Ravensburger Puzzlestore ๐Ÿ˜‰

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Filed Under: Big, review, Small steps, things that go bang

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