Author Archives: Daddybean

So which new camera?

Posted on November 24, 2006 | 8 comments

 

Having finally got around to sorting out the insurance claim for the stolen bag, just awaiting the arrival from Jessops of the vouchers to get a replacement. The amount we got was fairly generous I guess, but we do have to spend them in the Jessops shop, so can’t go hunting bargins on the net. But we will easily be able to replace what we had with something  bit better so I guess that’s what matters.

I liked the A80, some am tending towards Canon again. At the moment I like the look of the Canon 710IS . In particular the 6xzoom (35 – 210mm 35mm camera equivalent) and the optical image stabiliser, which seems to work pretty well from what I can see. Both of which would help things along for the sorts of things we take photos of. The OIS ought to make taking photos sans flash indoors in marginal light a bit easier. 7MP is possibly verging on the side of too many really – you increase the risk of noise in the image as you squeeze more and more pixels onto the same size image sensor. but Canon seem to have got away with it (no worse than similar cameras anyway). – There is 10 MP camera further up the range, I thought the camera makers had given  up on the megapixel race  but obviously not.

One or two things missing from what the A80 had that I liked, but nothing major.

8 Comments

Posted in General

A few Raisins in your porridge madam…?

Posted on November 21, 2006 | 2 comments

Made BB some porridge for her breakfast, handed her the bag of raisins to sprinkle some on – they both like that. I continued pottering around the kitchen, turned round to see she had up-ended the bag over her bowl. Of course this was a nice big half full bag, not the almost empty bag they had yesterday.

‘Oooops’ said Butterbean :-) ……..

[italicised spell checking by Helen!]

2 Comments

Posted in Butterbean, Daft Stuff

Bemused Butterbean

Posted on November 19, 2006 | 8 comments

Butterbean is 2 tomorrow. We had a family birthday celebration today.

Best bit was probably BB’s face when we brought in the cake. We all sang Happy Birthday, and then she was told to blow out the candles. She then looked around the room totally bemused by it all :-)

‘all this fuss about? a cake’ ?

8 Comments

Posted in Butterbean, Daft Stuff, General

Angellina ballerina firefly

Posted on November 3, 2006 | 2 comments

DSCF5596

Originally uploaded by Merrily Me.

though she does seem to have lost a few of the bells!
Thanks Merry for photos

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Posted in General

Sister Ed and Little Firefly

Posted on November 1, 2006 | 7 comments

A couple of days ago, Stringbean was sitting at the table, with Butterbean. SB was teaching BB about numbers. She wrote down the numbers on a piece of paper, and showed them to BB and went through them telling her they were numbers. Oddly BB seemed to take it in, when I pointed to words and numbers in a book, she said yes and no when asked if they were numbers at the appropriate points. Or was it just a fluke?

Other than that, what else, some more maths – she has done some MPH stuff on weighing and mass, and multiplication. We have eased off on Explode the Code, as it seems to be going ahead of her a bit now, so we are concentrating more on a bit more reading, seeing as she seems to have moved on to actually reading things. She picks up (very) simple books and can read them, and is reading all sorts of other things, so we think she might appriciate a bit more focus on it – we do have some books we have stashed away for her to read herself, so time probably to break out some of those.

Spent rather to much time yesterday morning watching kiddy TV, I got bogged down it fiddling with the wireless network. The wireless AP fell onto the floor and something inside got dislodged. Tracked that down and sorted that, but then got bogged down with getting it all up and running again. I hate wireless networking – it can work fine for ages, and then it decides to not work. And the AP struggles at times with all our solid walls etc. to give coverage over our house, at the moment it has been relocated until I can rejig the network wiring feeding the old box currently in the sitting room feeding downloaded stuff to the TV. so now if you wear the wrong shirt or something the wireless just gives up. Pah! And (while I’m at it) our ISP is giving us a pants ADSL service at the moment…..

She watched some of the Walking with Beasts DVD as well yesterday.

Today was library/storytime day. BB insistent that she take her Muddlepuddle bookbag with her – dragging it along behind her :-) Afterwards, coffe, some reading of library books, lunch, BB and SB played for bit mostly making patterns with cuisenaire rods. My mum and dad came round, SB showed off her firefly costume, did some maths and then we headed off to the Puddle, where a very excited BB is going out Trick or Treating with Merry and the girls, followed by a sleepover – first time at someone else’s other than my parents. We are going over to pick her up tomorrow. All the girls were so excited, we were engulfed by a gaggle of noisy excited children (including an unsurprisingly naked Josie :roll:) as soon as we got there, and they seemed to spend the next hour crashing noisly about the place :-)

I got in touble for saying I was coming home and then spending and hour (oops…) drinking tea and chatting with Max though….

And here is our little Firefly. Would probably been better if we’d cleared the wooden train track out of the way first…..

[vimeo]113927[/vimeo]

7 Comments

Posted in Books, Butterbean, cute, Dance/drama, literacy, numeracy, socialisation, Stringbean, video

Action and Reaction

Posted on October 27, 2006 | 1 comment

Monday and Tuesday felt like nothing days really regarding home ed, though there was some maths, a bit of explode the code, some bits of reading of various sorts, and probably other things, there is usually some colouring/drawing goign on most days at the moment. House has bit a right disaster zone lately (sounds familiar) – one of those situations when it gets such a mess it feels like so much effort to do something about it that you don’t. And it’s really getting in the way of doing home ed things. Which of course just makes you more fed up with it. Not helped by being out too much last week. This week we have been staying in a lot more, and no classes etc. so feeling a bit more relaxed about that as well.

So made an attack on that this week, my mum and dad came over on Tuesday to help things along (why are Mums so much more effiecent at this than us youngsters…?), and when Helen and the girls went to Little Nanny’s on Wed I satyed here, and as it rained, I worked on tidying upstairs. Our bedroom is nice and tidy again,which is always so much more relaxing.

Still more to do, esp. the utility room – sort out some more storage for HE craft/science stuff etc.. General crap and ‘stuff’ that just seems to collect around the place and paperwork etc.

Anyway, yesterday focussed on a bit more on education – Stringbean spent ages first thing drawing and colouring and picture card for Mummy. Spent a bit of time upstairs tidying Butterbean’s room, whilst the girls ‘helped’ – though moslty they played a game of climbing in the airing cupboard and shutting themselves in :roll:

After lunch, once BB was asleep for her nap, me and SB got out the Physics science kit, and had a go at that- we ended up building a little balloon powered car. Lacking a camera, we played with video camera instead, so we can inflict his on you ;-) I particularly like SB’s ‘TV presenter’ mode and her ‘blowing up a balloon’ song:

[vimeo]112777[/vimeo]

1 Comment

Posted in art and crafts, Butterbean, General, literacy, numeracy, science, Stringbean, Stringbean's HE, video, writing

Bring me back my Legions….

Posted on October 20, 2006 | 8 comments

BB showing off here singing skills, esp. for afficionados of the Kellogs Rotten Romans CD:

[youtube]e9ZwO2A8k_k[/youtube]

8 Comments

Posted in General

And it got more expensive….

Posted on October 20, 2006 | 9 comments

Pah! My rucksak got stolen from the kiddies playground while we were there this afternoon, sadly it contained the digital camera (and the usual kiddie related stuff) :-( Turning it from a annoyance to an ******** ANNOYANCE :-( :-( :-(

We’d been to the last of the ‘African Drama’ sessionsm which had been extremely noisy – lots of loud drumming, and SB had enjoyed herself muchly. Afterwards we headed back to the car. We have previously gone to the nearby park afterwards with others. Everyone else was going elsewhere afterwards, but SB wanted to go anyway, and whilst I probably wouldn’t have otherwise, seeing as the car was parked right by it I said we’d have short play.

BB had been grumpy all afternoon, and was continuing to make a fuss about the swings. So I went in put the bag down our of the way and put her in the swing. At some point some scrote must have come in – I suspect over the fence and nicked it. Ar**, I would normally take the camera out – both for security and for piccie taking, but we were in there less than 15 minutes, and I didn’t.
:-) annoyed with myself and the theiving whatsit. Grrrrrr.

And we can’t take photos….!!!!!!

Other than that – a reasonable morning, Helen’s car playing silly buggers again re starting, at least this time it wasn’t blocking in the Mondeo – I’m hoping it’s just a knackered battery.

SB Hama-ed first off, BB being cute (to me)/annoying (to SB) insisted she wanted to do some, wandering around going ‘Hama,Hama, Hama’! Of course she wants to do midi beads like her sister – she even manged to put a few in place, but then SB was hiding some of the beads fron her and they ended up all over the floor …:-( Anyway, she finsihed yet another multicolour princess (photo – oh, sorry …).

Rest of the mornign involved breakfast – some upstairs playing of some sort, some more maths (MPH1B)and Explode the Code. The maths is a bit easy maybe for her – Addition and subtraction up to 40 – getting into Tens and Units, but before when we jumped about more we got a bit lost really. She seems to like doing it anyway, so we are just carrying on with it for now. anyway, she is bit dense at time re number bonds, so it’s practise for that. She mostly remembered about vowels and consonants when doing ETC. It also mentioned syllables. I don’t remember covering this with her, and she didn’t know what it was, so we spent a bit of time talking about that and spotting syllables in words.

Then it was hurry hurry for lunch so as to get out in time. (Lunch was crumpet pizzas – basically crumpets with a bit of tom sauce, cheese, + whatever on top and grilled – went down well)

After the debacle of the bag etc. we went and got a new battery for the car, went to Tesco as the bag contained all the drinks/snacks and SB was hungry/thirsty. Probably should have got her something cheaper than a pre packed fruit salad. But after she chose this in preference to some sort of cake thing that was also on display I felt a bit churlish. and both her and BB munched away happily on the way home. Back just in time for Ballet class. We cheered oursleves up with chippy chips for dinner.

SB called it the ‘Chippery’ the other day, which we thought rather good :-)

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Posted in General

Turning cinema into planes.

Posted on October 18, 2006 | 4 comments

 

Well, today we failed to have a free cinema trip and instead went and spent a fair bit of money instead. Enjoyed it though in the end.

We were supposed to be going to a NSFW showing of March of the Penguins. We even left home at the time we meant to, which should have been long enough for the journey. Unfortunately all roads into town seem to be snarled up. We left the motorway, to find traffic backed up to the roundabout, so headed back onto M-way to try the next road in – I go down it pretty often at this time and is not usually very busy by then. But today it was backed up right down onto the M-way and along the hardshoulder and not moving at all really. I suspect a crash, as police car came through at one point. We made another attempt, but we were losing hope by now and this was also snarled up, we were now late and were obviously going to miss a chunk of the film, so decide to cut our loses and do something else.

We had been going to meet up with Bob and Katy and co. but at least with mobiles we were able to keep them filled in and they were able to get the tickets and see it anyway.

Seeing as we had just gone past the IWM Duxford we decided to go there. Though it’s a bit on the expensive side (though not I think bad value) so if we had realized we might not have done, esp. as we didn’t have any lunch with us so had to buy that as well. Anyway, it turned into a good day out.

Dusford was very good. There is a new Airspace exhibition focusing on the history of British aviation.  It’s not finished yet, but it is partly open. A hangar full of various British planes, including one of the prototype Concordes which was open for viewing, which was mostly full of various bits of test equipment. As  latest plane it had an escape hatch in the floor – basically, AFAICS you dropped out of the bottom of the plane –  Helen wasn’t convinced by this. There is a pretty good ‘ hands on’ bit upstairs as well, with various things to do with the construction of planes and flight which SB spent a fair while in. We looked at exhibits inside a couple of other hangars as well as some old commercial planes outside – SB was inordinately pleased to be able to go inside another one of them :-). There was much more that we could have looked at but just didn’t really have the time nor energy. They did have nice cakes in the cafe though for when you reach that point in the afternoon.

There is restoration work going on on various planes, which is being carried out in public view, so there were a number of planes is various states of dismantlement. I’m not esp. into planes, but I do like machines and things in general. Seeing complicated things like planes with all their guts exposed was interesting. It wasn’t greatly ‘ war-ry’ but there are of course lots of military planes on show. There was little bit of discussion about bombers dropping bombs. SB hoped that they were just dropping them on other soldiers, so we had to explain that no, sometimes they get dropped on ordinary people and children etc. as well.

By the time we had finished and got home we were knackered. It was time for a little relax before dinner. Though Helen read some books to SB, and a bit of SOTW.

After dinner I had to go out and pick up the latest Freecycle acquisition from someone in the village. We got one if those large (ish) freestanding pools, so pleased with that – SB has always been jealous of the Portico’s. so that should ensure lots of bad weather next summer…..

In one of those strange quirks of fate, the people listing it are the mysterious  ‘ other HE family’ that I heard about – she happened to mention it in an email. So now we know who they are, will hopefully get together at some point.

4 Comments

Posted in Butterbean, history, Out and About, science, Stringbean's HE

One day in History – Chris

Posted on October 18, 2006 | Leave a comment

Hi, I’m aged 43, married to Helen, with 2 daughters – SB 5 3/4 and BB almost 2.

We are home educating, and I am the parent who is at home mostly with our daughters.

Helen’s car wouldn’t start this morning – battery was very flat, so I had to get up to push it out of the drive so she could take the other car. So I was up (about 7.30 – normally I am up first and before then anyhow), so enjoyed my cup of tea (or 2) in peace and quiet. Catching up on friends blogs, reading news on the BBC and Guardian websites. But it wasn’t long before youngest was up. Breakfast of cereal for her (Rice Crispies), milk, toast, and fruit. Eldest had a lie in – catching up on sleep missed with friends staying for the weekend. So me and BB had a nice time to play together, drawing and colouring, reading, playing silly giggling games, she ‘helped’ wash up. Then we all went to the library

On the way back, did notice exactly how old the old school building is (now an electronic subcontractors). It has a plaque over the door saying it was founded in 1749. Though the building was built in I think it said 1784. The were also 3 bricks high up in the wall with the date and the initials of (presumably) some of the builders. All around the doorway are scratched intials in the brick – presumably of children attending the school. I wonder just how old they are? Must be one of the oldest building in the village. Most around this bit seem to be Victorian, and are built of different brick. Also wandered back through the parish church yard, where SB likes me to read the graves stones, while I try to put the dates into some sort of context. So plenty of reflection on history, change and permanence there. Much has changed in the intervening decades and centuries, but also much is depressingly the same.

Home to coffee, reading of library books, lunch (listening to the Little Toe Radio Show via the computer). It was going to be baked beans, but no beans, so had a treat of fried eggs on toast followed by yoghurt and fruit – youngest is on real Clementine hit at the moment. We do like to eat seasonal and local produce – and we do have great local apples, plums and pears – Cambridgeshire was real plum country and there are still quite a few orchards around. Ok clementines are local, but I do try to at least wait for the European ones to come in. The first Satsumas and Clementines being an early herald of Christmas. We’ll gloss over the Bananas though.

Afternoon passed with BB having a nap, while me and SB did some maths, some of her reading to me, watched a bit of a DVD of the old David Attenborough Living Planet programme, did a few domestic tasks like sorting out some washing. Our house is failry old 150 -200 years – in parts. So often reminded of history as I move around it. Youngest wanted some grapes (we have a 100+ year old grapevine in the conservatory). We went and cut a bunch and I am reminded of the woman (who was in her 90s then) who the previous owners met in the 1980′s. Who remembered the vine being here when she lived here as child. Did she enjoy the grapes like our two?

We finished off with a drive (6 miles) to the swimming pool, for SB’s swimming lesson. Home to pasta and tomato sauce for dinner. Once children were in bed we relaxed by writing our 1 Day in History blogs. One of our friends has had a baby today. I wonder what sort of history they will be looking back on in 40 years time?

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Posted in art and crafts, Blogging, Books, Butterbean, history, literacy, numeracy, Out and About, Ponderings, SB-PE, Stringbean