Well, we've tried it a different way

and given that I had practically no sleep last night, I actually think I’m holding it together fairly well. Took til lunchtime to persuade Big to get dressed, which didn’t help matters much, but we’ve done a fair bit.

What I’ve done is listed a set of activities to cover in a day, not timetabled them, and I’m not going to freak if I don’t fit them all in either. But at the moment, the list looks like this:

Poetry

Letter

(maths) Games

Story

History/Geography/Science/, you know, all that stuff

Exercise

Helping

I’m thinking that I’ll keep track of what we do, as a list of books, poems, maths activities and so on will work very nicely in our favour if and when we get the LEA knock – quick report that says we provide wide ranging activities to spark interests which we then follow up, honouring my belief in autonomous education while feeling that I’m covering a variety of stuff.

So today we’ve read Caribbean Calling (poem) and discussed where the caribbean is (yet to go and find it on the map) and Big is starting to memorise the poem. (I used to love learning poetry to recite 😉 ) For the letter, we dug out a JP workbook and she’s done d, not that it’s really sunk in as she keeps saying that it’s p 🙁 For our maths games, she had a rather unsuccessful stare at Set, then played with the pattern blocks for a while. I thought I’d alternate them with cuisenaire rods for which I have a pile of activities, and geomags, although we need more geomags 😉

Stories, I’ve read An Angel like Me which fits in quite nicely with all the child of our time discussions ;), and The Kangaroo who couldn’t hop, as well as the Tweenies counting book for Small several times – he chose it at the library, and he’s rather fond of it I think 😉 I have to admit to having not done an awful lot of reading aloud for a while, I’m not particularly fond of doing it, and Big much prefers Tim to read, so I tend not to bother. Small used to hit me with books regularly, but is just as likely to hit me with a broken car now for his attention, so he isn’t getting as many books as he used to. Hoping to rectify that for both of them.

For the other stuff, we baked cakes. Out of a packet, before anyone falls over backwards. This was part of a deal – Big was supposed to then play with Small so I could get some work done, yeah right. It’s the only thing I’ve asked her to do to help today, so she isn’t getting that star on her chart. (No, it wasn’t my idea to do a star chart, they were advertising them on Koala brothers earlier, so I ended up printing a couple out. Hohum.) Didn’t get out to do any exercise, so she ran on the spot for five minutes, which was interesting.

Small is pottering along fairly nicely. His comprehension is growing in leaps and bounds – yesterday he was given some mega bloks while we were out at a meal for my mother’s 60th. I watched him trying to build with them and said to Tim, he’d find it much easier if he used both hands. So he used both hands. Must remember that he is listening and does understand, even if he doesn’t say anything! He’s had quality time with books, on the computer, and just playing today. He’s had mega bloks out again this afternoon – although he didn’t build with them, just threw them with increasing accuracy at Big. Have to say, I do know how he felt, I’d agreed with her that I would bake with her and then she would play with Small so that I could work and instead what happened was she built a butterfly palace and refused to let him anywhere near it. I then discovered that she used the stickers meant for his new mega bloks on duplo, which meant they went over two bricks, to say that I was unimpressed would be an understatement. Well, I can just imagine her reaction if he’d done something similar to one of her presents 🙁

So that’s today. Hoping to get them upstairs to bed fairly soon, then maybe I can finally get on with some work. I’ve managed to fit in some washing and almost keep ahead of the washing up today, so at least that isn’t too disastrous.