Having somewhat overscheduled ourselves last week, it seemed a good idea to keep this week quieter, and I certainly seem to have slightly happier children for it. Plus I had a TMA and CMA to finish off, so that kept me out of mischief for a couple of days, especially when I drove to next town to hand the TMA in, got home, found I’d missed a sheet and had to drive back again 🙁
The children have done their work every morning – that’s becoming more of an accepted habit, and I’m gradually increasing the amount I’m asking of Big. Very gradually though so that she doesn’t get too wound up that she’s doing more than Small. When it comes down to it there are times he wanders off with whatever I’ve given him and does it for hours, as he did with Early Writing Book 2
that I picked up for him this week. He ended up doing four pages instead of the one I’d anticipated, though as he couldn’t find the ridiculously expensive pencil I bought him he did it all with a normal pencil held in his fist. Sigh.
He’s still got a wobbly tooth too, which caused a small amount of trauma when he bumped his chin yesterday and it bled. doesn’t seem to want to come out yet though, and I’m not about to hurry it.
We did some good science this week, based around states of water. Fun experiment with lots of ice so that you could turn your breath into clouds, and another one that the children persevered with and finally got to work where you try to lift an ice cube out of water with a piece of string.
We’ve done more Story of the world, which we intersperse with lots of discussions about how we think it really was, and they’ve watched various semi educational programs – Richard Hammond’s Blast Lab being a particular favourite 🙂
Usual weekly activities went on – Small’s Beavers went for an autumn walk in the woods just round the corner from us, and it was our turn to be parent helpers, so I sent Tim 😀 Well, I wouldn’t be much use as a parent helper with small children atm tbh! Swimming lessons I took the car as we were picking up some nappies and baby sleeping bags (freegle again), have just got the sleeping bags out of the bag to sort them out and discovered a couple of shaped fitted nappies as well as the bag of mothercare shaped ones. Am doing rather nicely out of freegle for this baby, for the few things that we didn’t already have or haven’t had handed down to us.
Brownies on Weds and Brown owl finally showed up this week, or so I’m told. She wasn’t there when I dropped off, but apparently she was by part way through the session. Still have some qualms about the older leader who seems to be drifting a bit – hovered outside until the junior leader appeared as I didn’t feel comfortable leaving Big with hordes of screaming children and one very much older woman who is lovely, don’t get me wrong, but seems a little fragile to be in sole charge of 20 or so 7-9 year olds.
Thurs we made it to the library, or at least Big and I did. Small declined the opportunity to leave the house and as he seems to be coming down with a bit of a cold I left him to it.
On Friday the after music park meeting relocated to someone’s house, which was a huge improvement on the park. Turned out it was also a birthday celebration which I hadn’t known about, but wasn’t too much of a problem, and if I keep taking the children to see this group of ppl eventually they’ll join in won’t they? Big complains that there aren’t any 9 year old girls there, I think in a couple of years or so she’s probably going to be very happy that there isn’t much competition as there are several 9ish year old boys 😆 The way she’s going at the moment I can see I may have to carry a very big stick!
The only really annoying bit of the week was the midwife fiasco. Went to my appt on Tuesday, dropping kids of at S’s where Tim was at the time, and bimbling as rapidly as I could down there as I was running late. Didn’t make a blind bit of difference as there’d been some sort of mix up and no midwife turned up. There were 6 of us waiting in the end, and it took an hour and a half to find out what was going on, as the phones weren’t being answered.
Now mix ups happen, and mistakes get made, I completely accept that. It did worry me that it was so difficult to get a midwife on the phone though, that ought to be the easy bit. There was one woman there who was due the following day and she was very stressed by it all, not on really.
So Weds morning I got a call from the head of midwifery, very apologetic, and they laid on an extra surgery on Thurs afternoon, at a children’s centre at the other side of town. Of course I got lost on the way there, so was late again. Sigh. Met a very lovely midwife who didn’t ask if I knew the Poffleys (standard question when I mention home education) but instead someone else who I had met, and said to say hi. (Which I did, on Friday, as she’s someone from the park.) She also said if she’d had her time over, she would have home educated too. And I think she meant it. So that was nice. And I’m as fit as a flea apparently – wish I felt like it! I feel like a blimp, and a pretty unfit one of those, but I guess that’s normal at this stage of bloatedness.
And that’s been our week I think. Not very exciting, but a reasonable amount packed in, and general progress in life being made.
