Author Archives: Daddybean

Latest in a (very) occasional series.

Yesterday

After a late-ish return home on Monday it was a bit of a slow start on Tuesday. Kids started off on a bit of a Magic School Bus fest since I managed to finish acquiring all the rest of the episodes over Easter. The girls love them and they have decent science content.
They spent ages decorating the eggs they got in a ‘decorate your own Easter egg’ thing at Easter. Well SB spent some time. BB wasn’t so interested, she’d rather just eat them :-)

What else? SB did a fair bit of maths, and piano practice. BB playdoughed. I was looking up somethings for SB on African Animals as she had said a couple of weeks back that she wanted to learn some stuff on that. BB wanted me to find somethings for her, so I printed off a few Dinosaur pictures from Enchanted Learning. She painted one of those and did a bit of colouring on another.

On the African theme, I sat down with SB and looked at the the globe, the nice big atlas we have, as well as the DK book on the Earth. We looked at where Africa was, the names of some of the countries, what was a Continent, what the other Continents are. SB was able to say that it would be hot in Africa because of it’s place on the globe.

Whilst looking at the Atlas Sb noticed that some of the maps had curved edges, rather than being just a rectangle. so we wandered off onto a chat about how you have to change the shape/size of things when you translate a from a globe to a flat map. Demonstrated by trying to convert a rectangle of paper into a globe and comparing Greenland on the map with globe. I would have gone and looked up some different projections on the web, but by then we had had a powercut so couldn’t . wondered where my Peters Projection map is, but haven’t seen that for ages.

We looked at some of the different maps in the atlas – showing countries,communications physical geography etc. We looked at a good map of Africa which showed the different types vegetation cover – rainforest, savannah, grasslands, deserts etc. and looked at some of the pictures in the DK book to see what these areas looked like.

Was just about to go and sort out camping lamps, torches and candles before it started getting dark when the power came back on – which pleased the kids as they could watch some more Magic School Bus :-)

Chippy was busy though with lots of people who decided not to cook dinner (power came back on at about 5.30)

Essential Practice.

Start as you mean to go on. Developing that essential male skill of sleeping on through when the baby wakes in the night.

BB Cold Turkey

Told Butterbean tonight that there is no be no more milk from a bottle (or otherwise) if she wakes in the night /early morn. Most nights she wakes up – anytime between about 1 and about 6 potters through (or down if we are still up….) climbs into our bed and has a bottle or two of milk and goes off to sleep again. This isn’t in itself any great problem, I take milk up when I go to bed, it’s not that disturbing (less so than having to take her back to her room) and we have a nice big superking bed :-)

Problem is, she doesn’t need the milk, it’s just a habit/comfort thing. If she doesn’t go back to sleep soon enough, then after a bit  she starts making a fuss, rapidly escalating most times to a supersize BB fuss wanting more milk – requiring trip down stairs etc. It also means she wees for England during the night, esp. if she has extra bottles (she already has a 10 fl oz bottle at bed time. – Extra bottle can mean another 15 fl oz or more during the night) – she’ll never get dry at this rate. So it can all get a bit silly really.

We hoped that she would gradually drop them, but isn’t really showing any desire to do so, so we are going to try cold turkeying from tonight. But I have bad memories of when we did the same thing for her night time breastfeeding – I used to take her off to a room 3 closed doors away from our bedroom, but sometimes she would just scream and scream and scream.

Here’s hoping.

Going to bed an excited girl.

Rainbows leader rung tonight just as SB was going to bed to say another girl had decided she didn’t want to go and so their was a place and did SB want to go.

Cue much excited jumping up and down from Stringbean, and much excited chattering about the sleepover when putting her to bed :-) She is so pleased to be going

Chris’ Shoe


You Are Bare Feet


You are a true free spirit, and you can’t be tied down.

Even wearing shoes can be a little too constraining for you at times!

You are very comfortable in your own skin.

You are one of the most real people around. You don’t have anything to hide.

Open and accepting, you are willing to discuss or entertain almost any topic.

You are a very tolerant person. You are accepting and not judgmental.

You should live: Somewhere warm

You should work: At your own business, where you can set the rules

A sofa too far….

Were out over at the Deep Enders this morning. BB fell asleep on the way back. I took her out of the car, she seemed to ha ve woken up, she walked indoors, but could only get as far as the hallway in front of the door to the playroom :-) Ah, bless

Couldn't make the sofa....

Pinocchio, but not as we know it.

I’ve been reading Pinocchio as my bedtime story with SB lately. The original story.

Like most people I suspect, my knowledge of Pinocchio comes from the Disney film version. That’s fine, certianly it’s a bit of classic, but it certainly has been Disney-fied.

So far there has been a talking cricket, but Pinocchio squashes it and kills it – he throws something at it IIRC. Though it’s since comes back as a ghost.

Pinocchio has bitten the paw off of a cat (when a fox and cat try to mug him). And they then hang him from a tree when they can’t stab him, here he seems to die, but seems now to have come back to life after having been rescued.

Damages – excellent stuff

Finished watching the last 3 episodes of Damages tonight, it’s been a  really good series. Lots of plot twists right up to the end. Great writing and acting (Glenn Close and Ted Danson). But a proper series ending as well, unlike some series which just seem to drag it out endlessly. And it’s set up nicely for what could be a good 2nd series
I think it’s part way through a showing on BBC, but we’ve been watching ones I previously downloaded. Highly recommended.

Hmm, maybe the Sarah Connor Chronicles next, H was always a fan of The Terminator.

Got The Wire sitting around as well, anyone watched that?

It’s a Chris catch up post

Never seem to have the energy to get a blog out of my head to the ‘puter by the time I settle down of an evening.

Friday, a bit of Milkshake/CBeebies TV before breakie. Over breakie BB got me to help her make a ‘man’ with some wooden sticks. Then they have made cars (well SB’s was a trike) using their K’nex – Sb made one mostly herself following the plan in the booklet, I helped BB with her Kids K’nex – hers of course had to have eyes – she likes her creations to have eyes. SB’s car used the friction motor unit which is very good – the cars is quite speedy and goes a long way – good to have a nice long wooden floored hallway.

K'Nex Bug Eyed Car K'Nex Trike

SB has done some Getty and Dubay handwriting, some Webland and reading and an online page of Exeter maths, I finally found the missing Singapore “B maths book – hiding underneath some other books. They went outside to run a around for a bit, and feed fish and birds – rather cold and windy – though sunny. In between times they have played with the wooden train track, that has been out on the playroom floor for the last few days (it has managed to move from one end of the room to the other whilst staying in the same layout) BB kept asking SB to play, but then wouldn’t let her have any trains :roll: – SB – “she wants me to play but only lets me have the turntable…”

This afternoon we cycled (it’s not far) up to the farm shop for veg, cold and windy. I did suggest the tandem, but SB wanted to take her bike. She was fed up with a headwind on the way home though – she’s learnt that lesson now though. Home to warming hot chocs and cups of tea. Watched a couple of episodes of Pods Mission – about food chains and temperature sitting on the hard drive. One of them had some character is wearing a space suit or something speaking in a funny voice saying they needed to go to the loo – BB thought this very funny and wanted to rewatch it a number of times. Me and SB read chapter of SOTW – on medieval India, looked at the gloe to find India, and where the Byzantine Empire has been. She then coloured a SOTW picture of a Roman soldier – complete with blood on his sword – he’d been in a battle and hadn’t cleaned it yet.

After dinner, while Helen put BB to bed I sat down with SB to read to her – i was reading Fairytale News – but I kept stopping and dozing off so she gave up and read it herself :-)

Other bits of the week:

BB has had a couple of half day sessions at a local playgroup. She seems to be enjoying it – she especially likes the trikes that she gets to ride outside. First time we stayed for about 30 minutes, and then she was happy for me to go – though when i picked her up she said she had cried a few times – though she seemed to have done plenty as well, so I don’t imagine it was anything major. Second time she was not letting me go anywhere at first, but we sat playing, and after about 20-30 minutes she was happy for us to leave her. Seemed fine while we were away.

We’ve told her it’s ‘her group’, as we think she feels she misses out a bit with SB going to Rainbows, ballet, swimming etc. So she is pleased to have her own group to go to. They get given a playgroup t-shirt, which BB is very pleased with as now she has special shirt like Sb has for Rainbows – she had fun posing with it once we got home, and went to bed in Thursday and wore it most of Friday as well.

Showing off my new playgroup top Showing off my new playgroup top Showing off my new playgroup top Showing off my new playgroup top Showing off my new playgroup top

Other Thursday things, – having to get BB to playgroup for 9 am means we are up and at it nice and early. Was funny going to playgroup as it coincided with the school run for the local primary school so we wandered down the road pretending to join in – kids causing havoc madly scootering down the road.. SB glad we don’t have to up and down the road this time of the day every day.

On way home went into bakers. Most of them in their know that we home educate, but someone had obviously missed it, as they asked SB about not being in school, this wandered into a conversation about home ed, primarily about how we do it – tried to explain how we approach it, but i suspect that most people never really grasp it as we have the whole school model so ingrained  that it’s hard to imagine anything else. Back home (it’s so quiet when only one of them is in the house) helped SB do one of the reduced Science Museum kits – the magnetic calendar:

Magnetic Calendar Kit

Carefully does it. Almost there
One tiny bit was missing, but not crucial, and i can make one if necessary – doesn’t seem worth contacting the makers. I think these Science Museum kits are good value as they do seem to do what they say on the tin, unlike some others.

Much fiddling and general playing about with magnets afterwards. Then it chucked it down with rain, so SB put on her waterproofs and went out to have a splash in the puddles:

Rain is fun :-) Splash !


Then it was time to get BB – luckily the rain had mostly stopped by then.

in the afternoon, Sb spent ages making a birthday card:

Birthday card - outsideBirthday Card - inside

Me and BB wrapped the pressie, she put a few a stickers on the wrapping:

Just a few stickers here then.

Posted these, then not sure what happened after that. There was some piano practice at some point.
On the topic of Science kits, we did a very cheap from Yellow Moon Horrible Science heart kit on Tuesday – which wasn’t so successful, though entertaining . It had round tubes which go into square holes so leaked a lot of ‘blood’ , and it has small valves, which unfortunately once they got wet stuck open due to the surface tension, so the blood didn’t really circulate.

Best bit was when SB first squeezed it and we had jets of blood squirting out all over the place.

IMG_3235 IMG_3233 IMG_3238 IMG_3240 IMG_3241

SB is reading loads at the moment -forever has her nose in a  book. Been polishing off various Rainbow Fairy books lately from the library, and some other things about Unicorns, or magical ponies or some such. In the library at story time on Tuesday she was complimented by one of the other Mums on her reading (she’d been sitting reading something out the other week) – said she thought she must have been about 8.

Saturday morning – Nice and sunny, but I guess cold day, must get something done in the garden this weekend – no snow :-(

I’ll just see if there is anything in the Yellow moon sale…..

Just see if there is anything in the sale.