i have just been on the phone to MIL about various family health issues ongoing, and she told me about a conversation she had had with a church friend – it seems we have converted her into a pro HE radical! I am glad about this – it is upsetting that my parents steadfastly – with no evidence! – feel we are doing the wrong thing by HE. it isn’t really pointful to discuss it, as they just DO believe this, and if there are any glitches of any kind, it is always because we HE and school would be better 
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!]
today the girls have made birthday presents for josie [sorry merry, but you need to prewarn a smile and a thankyou i think! i have a bought 'family present' too, but the girls were so pleased to be offering something they had made, and it does have a lot of counting thoughts, as it is most of this afternoon in the idea then making] SB done some maths – area – and piano, and a swimming lesson and reading like there was no tomorrow – a mixture of history, science and story books. BB has been a pickle, made rockets at the library group, and persuaded me into letting her do ‘bedmaths’ – a high treat!!