Monthly Archives: March 2007

One day…….

I’ll get the hang of bloggin every day…….

But as Michelle has been nagging me in Merry’s comments :roll: I’d better write something – can’t be doing with more extra women nagging me.

OK, Monday was our mothly HE group sports session, so we went along to that and SB ran around and did sporting things, BB pottered and I drunk tea and chatted :-). Followed by a trip to the park with the Katy and the crew from In at the Deep End. After that the plan was to head off get some lunch and go show shopping, plus a few other things. Went to the shopping centre where there is a decent sized Clarks, only to find that it was shut for refitting or something and wasn’t going to be open for 3 more days – so waste of car parking there then. Since we were there we got lunch and a few things, got back to carpark – it’s one of those get a ticket on the way in, pay on foot places. Realised I had no cash and it didn’t take cards, so had to traipse off to find cash machine etc. which meant of course we were welll over the hour, so that cost even more…. sigh.

So eventually escaped from the car park, headed off to the independent shoe shop we got SB’s last ones from – it’s out of the city centre and easy to park by. Got SB some shoes – a bit boring as she is now well into school age shoes, though they had better options last time, but SB really likes them so that’s fine. BB didn’t need any, though did discover that she has had a sock stuck in the end of one of them for who knows how long – it was squashing back here toes a bit and made it seems as if one fooot had loads more toe room…. :oops:

By now needed more tea – so took up an invite by Katy to pop round to theirs which is just down the road. Enjoyed Earl Grey (but no tea pot….. ;-) ) and admired the birthing pool masquerading as a family size birthing pool filling up the dining room.

home to, well not sure really – ISTR some computing stuff goign on with the girls.

Tuesday went round to my parents house for most of the day, did do bit of HE stuff here before we went – moslty more of the Singapore maths – still the money bit, and some reading.

Wednesday

Helen was doing job interviews today, so not at home as per usual. Helen got a Learning Resources book about using Cuisenaire rods to explore Area/Volume and Perimeter from Sonlight last week, so Sb wanted to have a go at that. She spent ages with it, not so much on the book activities as with all the pattern making and general playing around with them that ensues. also got to practice drawing straight lines with the ruler (in the right place…) . Funny how simple thing like that isn’t a simple as it looks – getting the pencil at the right angle, holding the ruler firmly, in the right place, lining it up etc.

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We sat and read a couple of the Anholt Artists books – Picasso and Van Gogh ones, and then spent some time looking for different pictures of their on the internet. There was some more Webland-ing and a bit of Ed City.

We finaly got some new swings seats (Ebay) to go on the swings, so we put one of those on so SB was happy to be able to swing again and spent some time on there. and generally playing outside – harvested some of the Purple Sprouting Broccoli which we have lots of right now.

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Never understood the whole ‘kids don’t like green veg ‘ thing, cabbage, broccoli, brussels sprouts, whatever it is out love them all.

Watched a bit of the Life of Plants DVD before bed.

Thursday

BB’s toddler gym thing, so that’s a 9.30 start. SB took her camera with her and snapped some photos, haven’t had a look at them yet and sat and moslty read some Letterland books she found in the cupboard this morning. She is such a good advertisment for a HE-ed childthere, sits quietly with her bag, reading, or drawing, or writing etc. :-)

Went into town after to do some shopping of various sorts. Noticed the stationers shop in town is closing, which is a shame – it was always useful for various bits, and very helpful in there as well. It’s our nearest town, and has survived pretty well with a range of indpendent shops as well as the normal high street places. But gradually the independents seem to be going.

There is a shop which sells gists etc. that has lots of stuff from different parts of the world – they tend to have little changing displys of stuff in one window. It was Chinese stuff for chinese New year last time. This week they had some Native American stuff on display, so looked and talked about some of those things, the photos they had etc. bought a few things in a charity shop, including a kit to make a worm observatory thing, so will hopefully be putting that together soon.

Once home had lunch, together me and SB read through a set of Quentin Blake books she got for Xmas and then Hellen got home early from work. There was somejigsawing – BB really getting into them now, head over heels practise, Sb did soem more of the Area etc. book before ballet class.

Like being a toddler again.

 

Stringbean’s reading has really taken off, I guess she is now at the pretty  competent, but not fluent stage. She is dealing very well with the Usborne Young Readers and their ilk. It really does remind of that thing toddlers do, when you can pretty much see them learning things right in front of your eyes. Everytime she picks up a book she seems to have moved on a step, and she is endlessly finding things around the place to read. It’s really quite wonderful.

And finally her reading is catching up with her maths, so she can now read some of the maths questions for herself.

On the topic of maths, are approaching the end of My Pals Are Here 1B, we are doing the money bit. Which sort of feels unnecessary as it’s basic stuff that she is picking up anyway from day to day life. But she wants to finish it off, and it won’t do any harm. In fact it’s required extra mental manipulation, as the book is the Singapore version, so the currency is Singapore Dollars and Cents, so we have flipped between calling them that or just pretending it’s pounds and pence, or calling them pounds but writing Dollars. All entertaining anyway. Will be moving onto Primary Mathematic 2A books after this, which follows the same curriculum, but presents it in  different way. Be interesting if it makes any difference to SB.

Other than that, today me and the girls went swimming. Poor old BB doesn’t get to go anywhere near as much as  SB used to at this age, and she really loves it. Whilst paying, she was sort of doing an excited little jig, pointing at the pool and going on the behind-the-desk person about swimming, going splash, splash!’ :-)

After lunch we read one of the Science Stories books about Pasteur, and looked a little bit at pictures of microbes, then did most of  jigsaw of a Roman town, where SB regaled me with various bits she new about Romans, she seems to get particularly excited by the Legionnaires.

In between times lately she has been doing loads of Webland, and some bits of Education city.

Later on, she did some Violin and Piano practice with Helen.

There has been a bit of black hole really here lately, SB’s birthday seemed to take out most of a week, with family visits, then preparing for a party, recovering from her party etc. Hopefully get back into normality next week.

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remembered to look at the moon. it certainly does look weird when it is the wrong colour! When I got home from work, SB and I read some of our new books – marie curie and the search for radium and eric the red and leif the lucky. She had lots of questions after the marie curie one about science and elements and atoms, but decided we would look at another book ‘tomorrow’

she has done a fair bit of webland today while I was out, and chris has done a grand job on sorting out this years propagatory – time to sow some seeds! bit late with peppers already – oops.

SB and BB both did some violin practice, and SB some piano. otherwise mostly chilled and did pattern blocks altogether. tonight before going to bed, I read SB some britannia and she read me clumsy crocodile from usborne young readers. Her flow at reading is really coming along, and she reads things all the time now during the day – fantastic.

I must make sure worries of work don’t eclipse the joys of home.

Fed up with Wikipedia?

Don’t like the liberal, anti-Christian, anti-American bias of Wikipedia, then maybe you should look to Conservapedia.?

Under the Examples of Wikipedia bias I thought that the one (no. 7) ‘uses foreign spelling’ amusing, as well as inaccurate – search Wikipedia for colour for example. And -’ise’ and ‘ize’ are both considered correct spellings in British English. Anyway, many of the alleged examples of bias seem to be just general criticisms of Wikipedia, (and there is plenty to criticise) rather than bias.

One of the criticisms is about the article on Feudalism , reading the insightful Conservapedia article which summarises Feudalism in Europe as ‘In the feudalism system everyone wins but some win more than others‘ I know which I’d prefer.

Home Ed on Radio 4

 

I caught the end of a piece on on home ed on the Today programme on R4 haven’t time to go and find and listen to it at the moment, as children want feeding, so this is just a reminder for later as much as anything. It was on around 8.40 – 8.45.

The bit I caught was the end of an interview with what sounded like a Home Ed ‘inspector’ or something.

Wuendvul :-)

On Thursday, for my birthday, Stringbean spent ages doing a picture (of a church) and then writing on the back, then putting it in an envelope with 60p she got out of her piggy bank. Except for asking me who you spell ‘er’ (of all the things) she did it all herself
It really is Wuendvul, and I was very touched.

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sonlight arrived!

actually ordered only in Jan, so nice and quick – was v careful to delete 2/3 of the order [having also taken notice of Jan's critiques of some!] before I actually paid for it though. I got the pattern block set, so SB has spent ages going through the cards and enjoying it. Also got some of the core 1 readers and books. I LIKE the science stories! will have to look out for the marconi and electricity ones elsewhre.

SB decided that the level 3 I can read books and the level 4 step into reading books I had got where just right for her. SO what with the usborne first readers we are well supplied for books at the mo for her to read.

I do think that if we ever did do a bought curriculum, sonlight would be the one for us, cos I like how the books are all interesting and around the timeframe. However, SB is def a follower of eclectic learning and the strewn book technique, and it does work for us. Just must make sure lots of strewn books!

it is about time actually to look at our books again, and remind ourselves and SB what we have, so that we can be more interesting.

BB has done loads of jigsaws today since I came home. She adores jigsaws. And both had fun blowing up balloons with the foot pump and letting them fuzzle away [though BB says 'I'm not doing that again' but does!] SB experimented ‘blowing’ it up with water from the tap, and of course realised the pressure thing that then makes the water spurt out and drench, rather than fuzzle like air – rofl!!

Sb also done some playing with birthday presents – thankyou all. in partic geomags, ocean mega puzzle, and a fight over ownership of the wooden maze [demonstrated by me in show of mode - rofl!] The pencils really are beautiful to use and the bionic putty is truly weird!

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Thanks again everyone for coming. SB really loved it, and was really happy to have her friends there and wasn’t at the end particularly phased by the lack of playbarn. Hope you all got home safely.

I can do a head over heels

well, BB was actually trying to do a headstand, cos she enjoys doing them, but found it even more exciting when she tipped into a head over heels, so did it lots more.

Birthday disasters

well, we did a modicum of tidying, got the food ready and then went to the play barn. disaster! the leccy was off, people were mending the overhead wires and it was shut! We texted those we had numbers for and rapidly thought of a plan B. The village chemist sells little toys, so I went there – shut! Ah well, bye bye plan B.

Guests arriving so I pillaged SB’s craft cupboard and found enough bits for pass the parcel, a treasure hunt and a prize. SB gutted that playbarn closed, but put brave face and decided the games sounded good, so once others arrived, they played in the garden, adults nattered and with help organised the pass the parcel. The games went well. Katy and children arrived eventually having had communication probs with our mobile – thank goodness for the balloons!

From then on, all the children had fun and plan C worked pretty well. SB said it had been a lovely birthday and she was very happy. Thanks to all the guests from near and far, it was lovely seeing and having you here [apologies for chaos - might have done a bit more cleaning and tidying if we had started off with plan C!].

SB and sleepover guest might now be asleep [with a bit of luck!] and hope all the rest went home safely with their treasures. I must now restock the craft cupboard as SB was saying she also had this and that when they were being won by others – oops!

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