A Home Home Ed Week so far

today should have been latinetc, but my persistent migraine problem became too great today to go out unnecessarily, and although i had been looking forward to seeing friends and enjoy the wed, i bailed out, sorry. i really try hard not to bail out of things due to migraine, but it just wasn’t going to work.

so, to catch up, SB has decided to do 40 things on her list this wee – something of a challenge i think! partly because she didn’t do any the week before, i said that wasn’t true, clarinet x 2, art x 1 craft x 1, planetarium could count as science [she demurred, trips are extra, not part of the count] the geocaching walk, playing the recorder? well, we agreed on 7! this is no big deal to me, as i keep stressing, that although n mature i like lists and ticking them off, this is SB’s process. just that if she is going to do it, she has to do it fairly [ie not tick off things she hasn't done] and properly [ie do what would be considered a ‘reasonable amount’ of something in a ‘best effort’ kind of way – ie no 2 second pencil scribble and call it art. she can do those of course, but counting means it needs to *count*, ie try reasonably hard to draw, or render an idea – abstract or concrete. i guess, to me, it is a lot behind the thought, that quality is more important, to try and reduce the desire just to see ticks? Anyway, for whatever reason, she has determined 40 is the number! She made a good start on Monday, doing a spread of 6 different things, less on tues as it was such an out and about day, and another good day of 6 things today. i know i could check on her chart what they are for the week, but i only know todays – maths, galore park science – which she is starting to realise how the book works to look for answers etc, and is finishing magnets, verbal reasoning [still 7-8 level is the right one for her here, spelling is the problem!], story of the world – henry 8 for the hampton court tie in! piano practice, box book and craft. BB also did some reading practice and singpore maths earlibird 2a. she is a bit of a monkey about reading, and is currently resistant, so still going on the v slow. i have a sneaky suspicion she will just do it behind our backs, not the least because today after completely failing to identify the s in six until i said, come on, it is in your name… oh, its that one then, s… she then found i and after me saying any guesses at the last one, she rolled her eyes at me and told me it was an ex. of course, she then made the word ixie! [knowing it would spell a number ]

but actually, in the morning, when i was trying to look alive whilst simultaneously slumping semi recumbent [or semi rutus] on the sofa, they decorated the christmas tree. they have elected not to have a tree in the playroom this year, as chris told them they would have to tidy the room before he would buy one [why i think i can give tidying advice to jax i have no idea!! ] anyway, so i thought about it, and since we are having one tree, its the girls tree decorated to their taste! we have loads of baubles and bits for 2 trees now, so have kept most of ‘mine’ packaged up, but did let them get out the 2 new sets i bought in the jan sales, and some of the angels. the tree is covered in decs, and looks absolutely fab. girls wer v pleased with their efforts. it smells lovely too!

after lunch, i made a valiant effort to interact more, rather than just being admiring! so i got out christmas craft from yellow moon! we painted with glass paints some dangly christmas themed things, and then some plastic tat things. the prob with the plastic was that i didn’t look at instructions suggesting acrylic first, and we 2 all sat down to paint, my poster paints worked fine, Sb’s did too, but BB’s… total melt down disaster. in the end sb [bless her] washed BB’s clean, and once she had done the glass painting one she was happy to start again with acrylic, luckilly successfully! funny girl copied my father christmas exactly, then came to the tree and told me i had done it wrong, as the tree one i was copying [actually i wasn't!] has green trousers. ah well! SB is much more individualistic, and hers is obviously aya napa party santa! both girls spent a lot of time and effort getting them to look how they wanted, we had carols in the background, and it was a lovely relaxing [mostly] 3 hours.

At the end, they wanted to know if they could go and feed rabs a treat, and we had to own up to rabs being missing since last night. we have said likely a call of the wild and rabs off with the local wild ones. hmmm. so we watched some wallace and grommet and had a snuggle followed by disney robin hood.