Author Archives: Daddybean

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.

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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Preparations

Ok, you are organising a birthday tea in your house for 13 children, just how much tidying is it worth doing…..? ;-)

Certainly I am not vacuming the dining room.

” I’m not scared “

When we stayed at Chez Making it Up earlier this year, Small showed Butterbean upstairs. He started of by saying ‘You don’t need to be scared, there is no crocodiles’ :-)

BB still now often says‘Im not scared’ when going up stairs. She did it earlier today when we went up the back stairs. And I heard her saying it in some game she was playing with the castle, whne she had soem character going up and down the steps :-)

Little things can have such an impact on young minds….

Rainbow Birthday

As Helen has blogged below, SB went to a HE friends birthday party on Saturday (also 6 and very much SB’s best friend there). Rather than an indoor party, they had procession around the local park, with people wearing as much rainbowy coloured stuff as they could, singing songs , making noise etc. The girl of honour was transported round in a homemade sedan chair.

Ended with time in playground, a coconut shy (went on forever given the poor throwing accuracy of young kids) which was popular, fish and chips and cake. We sung ‘When we Were Two Little Boys‘ a couple of times, which always brings a bit of tear to my eye. I was often sung it from as far back as I remember as a kid by my Auntie Ethel,? before Rolf Harris did it.

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Have a grape


Have a grape

Originally uploaded by Scrumbledelicious.

new swing seat


new swing seat

Originally uploaded by Scrumbledelicious.