Unlike Monday, children managed to get dressed etc. quickly enough and early enough without too much faffing for us to get away almost on time, with me not to grumpy ;-) to head to City 1 for Tots and Nots. Quite a bit fitted into the session – some crafting – making little rockety things from foam sheets & sparkly pipe cleaners, wax crayon on card over painted with black paint – then scratched through to make patterns. Though SB proceeded to scratch all her paint off which I didn’t quite see the point of.
Someone else did a little session showing how a tune can focus soundwaves so you can hear things better, and both girls did some recorders (SB did two sessions) with our tame HE-ing music teacher. Rest of time filled with random playing.
Headed off promptly but at what I thought would be slighty late time to head to Town 1 for gym. BB has started pre-schoolers gym session at the same place that. It’s just a free play type session – they have structured sessions as well, but not at a time we can do. They have various soft play type things out, ladders and benches to climb up, but they can also go and clamber on the gym equipment, jump in the big foam pit etc. Slighty odd to have all the littlies runniung aruound whilst Louis Smith or one of the others their in the British Squads does their stuff at the other end though.
While BB and me do this, SB sits on the side (though grumbles a bit) and reads, does something out of a workbook or whatever. Today she was moslty reading the Castle Diary: The Journal of Tobias Burgess
After that headed into town for a modicum of shopping – picking up a new phone from Argos (being able to check and reserve things online makes it all so easy) though of course BB wanted to ‘buy something’ and they both decided they liked the ideas of remote controlled cars. Treated the girls to a cake in Starbucks on the way back to the car as we had a bit of time spare.
Then back to the gym for SB’s gym session. This is much improved for me as they have found some volunteers to run the tea bar, so I can get a cup of tea whilst waiting. Buy the time it finished I was glad to be completing the last bit of the triangle to get home.
Chips for tea whilst catching up on the second series of Robin Hood. Before bed, SB wrote her letter to a child from a school in Kenya that one of the local Home ed groups is rasing money for. One of the parents is from Kenya, the school was set up by the headteacher for children who cannot aford to pay for school, many of them are orphans and live at the school as well. At the session a couple of weeks ago, they reported back from a visit to the school earlier in the year and brough letters that some pupils had written, so we all took one to reply too. So SB has written a nice reply, Helen said she made a really good effort with it. Will take it with us when we go to the group to morrow (in City 2 for a change, though hope to get back to City 1 for a HE group Celidh in the evening)
]they pretty much all got on like a house on fire for the whole session. we adults had a good natter [well apart from Max, who did a good job of making party tea and enabling fran to sort out the birthday cake].
now chris’s niece and nephew were initially HE, and chris’s parents were very unhappy about this, they were far more autonomously HE and v much more rural isolated, so not the same, but i was concerned about how they would feel about us doing it. I think they had reservations, but we are diff parents of diff children, and although we don’t homeschool, and are pretty child led, and if we amass 1 hour of formal stuff in a day it seems we have done well, i think the fact that then there is so much other stuff that being closer and more involved in our lives they can see the educational value of [ie the cooking and games etc] that we obviously have not only convinced them it is ok, but enough for them to say it is def better than school!! euge! [sorry for extremely long sentence!]
