Author Archives: HHaricot

Musical monday – Handel Xerxes

i love the sound of a counter tenor. SO I have chose this, as one of my favourite counter tenor arias from Handel’s opera Xerxes. I saw this once at the ENO – really fab production. Actually, i think this version better!

a ‘post camp’ day

rainbows camps obviously take a lot more getting over than home-ed camps! even if they last only one night!! SO SB been perk free. i have been reading the worst witch too her, as she initially wouldn’t read it as it was too scary. she has decided that after all it isn’t scary, but quite funny. she is mildred and i am maud! So when ever i do another amazon order [i am booked out now!!] then i may buy some more, buy hoping a few might be found in the library. At least we now have a range of books which she likes to read [animal ark, magic school bus, dk 4 readers, rainbow fairies, horrid henry] that she is happy with for this stage of reading. the next stage i have lots of them still from my childhood!

SB and I played chess twice. i really am no good at it, but chris has bought her a book, which she has been reading on and off all day, so she may beat me shortly. we are relaxed on the no touching rule, and i tend to say ‘did you check all my pieces’ fairly frequently. the book suggests games to get the hang of all the pieces, but SB just wants to dive straight in. fair enough!

BB and i made YET MORE fimo numberjacks!! hopefully she wont break these ones quite so quickly. we also glued the airdrying clay coil pots back together again!! We rang my mum and all sang happy birthday down the phone. she was quite overcome, as my dad had arranged a surprise gathering of neighbours to wish her happy birthday. amazing! she liked the digital photoframe, though hasn’t worked out how to use it. [giggle, that'll give my dad something to do!!]

we all bundled out into the garden as it was gloriously sunny [no snow for us!] though the wind was bitter, and we wrapped up well. we fed the fruit bushes and planted the blueberries into their pots. no sign of the broadbeans and the carrots out in the veg bed. fingers crossed that they will come up!

A bit of wailing and BB-ing, so i came in and read stories to them both, and there was some magic tree housing whilst I cooked ken hom for tea – yummy. As an aside, why aren’t all tins stackable?? chris has been hoping that i will see the pantry like merry’s old sotck room, and enjoy putting away the huge sainsbury’s shop [it wasn't enjoyable!] and it really annoyed me that not all tins are stackable! its nicely sorted out now though!

SB turned down chess for who’s who for our evening games session. chris is now reading her peter pan as her bedtime story

she’s back!

my baby is back, returned from her rainbows sleepover. utterly exhausted and good for nothing! i think she had a fab time! SHe was very excited to see a chess board, so we had a game. TBH I am hopeless at chess, i know how the pieces move, but have never been taught or played before. so you know the game to thrash me at! anyway, we both enjoyed it, and will play again. i read 2 of the new amazon books – pebble in my pocket and drop in my drink, which we both enjoyed. then, totally run out of energy she watched pinocchio and sound of music before succumbing to bed!

BB and I had also done lots and lots of reading today, and played castle keep which we did without the knocking each others castle down, and it worked really well. [you can still see the rest of my order!! looking forward to getting the last 2 dinosaurs and the elf] we played hatching [sb also loved to be hatched at this age] and lots of tickly and romping games. when sb got home we were having a bath to wash off loads of felt tip [it only got reapplied!] She baked with chris, and did lots of bouncing.

oh, and thanks for the first commenters for ages on my other blog!!

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that countries quiz

has been messing up my blog, now deleted!!

anyway, was 70 first go [big square] and 80 second go [for smaller square which still didn’t work – i skipped the difficult spellings [yes, i am that bad i was doing continent by continent...]

have a go

oops we did it again

we bought a tent. entirely marcus and michelle’s fault! i emailed them as well as Khyam, and they had a classic porch inner for £35, so we have bought the classic. we should prob have waited for an ebay one, but they aren’t that common, and seem to have silly reserves!

So we will be trying it out when it arrives to make sure we like it. then we may say goodbye [sob] to the Khyam frontier!

SB’s sats results

as determined by me, looking lazily at the relevant pages!

English

speaking and listening – v mood dependent ? 3(- )

reading – level 3-4

writing – level 1

Maths

number and algebra -  we’ve done this obviously in a different order, as she can do bits in 4, but not all the bits in 3, but i’m going to say 3 anyway

shape, space and measures – prob 2-3

Art and Design [honestly! i can understand tha english and maths are assessable, but art and design??]

prob a 2+

Citizenship ?perlease

actually, there are no attainments here, but i think we have this fairly well covered.

Design and technology

prob a 2 , but i don’t think we have done much of the stuff they are talking about! when the summer comes, we tend to more junk building outside.

geography – a wild a woolly set of attainments

so I’m going to say 3 [-], as i think we do a fair bit of whats on there at different times

history

3 again, primarily because we do lots of reading and talking and visiting places. and i don’t know how they would assess her! the difference between 2 and 3 not so clear!

modern foreign languages

are not statutory, so our sketchy attempts are not bad eh!

ICT

TBH, we haven’t done a lot of this 2

music

i have quite a prob with this one as i understand their wordage, and disagree. many kids don’t get to sing in tune, and doesn’t mean any less for their musicianship. i have a non-singing cousin with a grade 8 piano. so is he only level 2 then?? anyway i guess 2.

 PE [cough]

2

RE – which has v overt christian symbolism!
2

science

2-3

SATS, that wasn’t so bad was it!! but since she scores 1 for writing, how on earth would anyone external have assessed half of this? think it is pretty meaningless! It seems that ‘most children should be at level 2′ so having wasted all that time, its bedtime

latin, science and haircuts

we got up in good time, and then looked likely to get there on time, however at the last moment, BB threw sugar all over SB, so a shower in order, and… we were late! luckilly, our hostess is v accommodating. latin commenced, SB said on the way home that we need to remember to do more at home. since katy had had a chat about possibly accelerating the older few, i might see if sb can do the pace they may set as she seems keen. at least i have bought another copy of minimus. we did science on magnets, i tried to have a mixture of more complex for the bigger ones, and easy for the littlies, but BB was really not in the mood to let me continue on. however, we struggled on, and think it went ok, i might try electromagnets next time.

so then some yummy soup and general play and chit chat with adults. so very nice. SB had a number of accidents :roll: and BB perked up :smile: . Dressing up went particularly well. bB then totally lost it, we were about an hour later than i thought [body clock not adapted ] and in the end swept mine out when i should have helped a bit with tidying, as thought more prolonged BB howls might be less welcome than the tidying up would have been welcome. BB fell asleep on the way home [and has therefore taken for ever to get to bed tonight] and SB also had an early night due to the wailies once we got home.

we had an ebay parcel when we got home, so i thought it might perk bB up, but no, it didn’t work! aaarghhhhhhh. anyway, the seller will replace the pen.

a blog filled day

we are awaiting the ending of an ebay auction which we would have liked to have won. we have placed a max which is low, but reasonable, but is obviously lower than the reserve. i hate reserve auctions. i refuse to ‘bid up’ to see where the reserve is. And I think in this case it was obviously at something unrealistic, as we are nowhere near our max bid yet. grumble grumble moan moan!!

we had a playdate today with rainbows friend [RR for short]. she was obviously in a bit of a weird mood from the start, dropped off by her mum early in a tearing hurry [our girls stilll in pj's!] (Note From Chris: Early here was 10.20 :-) )they started playing ok, but after a bit our girls keen to go outside and enjoy sun, couldn’t understand why RR not so keen. but apparently she had watched a film on volcanoes. we prob live in one of the least likely areas for a surprise volcano in the world! it was oK if she wore S’s clothes though, and I went out too. fair enough, i sowed some seeds and interacted in minimalistic reassuring fashion. [a tsunami would be much more of a worry really]. SHe’s a lovely girl really though, just caught on an ‘unusual’ day – and no more off planet than SB can be. However, she did graze herself on slide, so i carried her in and settled her in front of magic school bus, and upset mine by insisting they watch it with her. pizza decorate yourself for lunch perked things up, and then after lunch i did an ad hoc weaving with scoobido fish dreamcatcher thing – which sort of went ok, BB and RR both gave up, and i finished theirs, but they tod me which colours and when to put pony beads on. SB did hers beautifully, but with a fair tension on it, so it is more of a tube fish!

BB showed RR her magnets, and a long discussion about magnets ensued, and a bit of iron detectiving. am planning to do some magnet stuff tomorrow. wish i had sorted out stuff to make an electromagnet, maybe next time. the older ones prob know it all already. hmmm

they went off and played happily for a bit, then a something or other, and I ended up hugging RR and chris SB whilst watching magic tree house and eating apricot scones [lovely] . so peace and happiness returned, chris and sb walked her home, and played for a bit there, as she was much happier back on home turf [obviously being about 200m away, no risk of volcanoes!]

BB and I did other bits and pieces together during the day. she was still wailing about lost dinodoors [if anyone goes to magna, or anywhere else that sells them, could we pay you for a 50p stretchy lizard?] so we made some about of fimo – a t -rex and 2 babies, that could also be eaten! we then went on to make the yummy apricot scones. mmmmm. We read alot of books together, and did some counting and guessing starts of words, and lots of singing. we also made a fish out of airdrying clay, whcih she insisted had a sad mouth [like prunella scales in that supermarket advert!]
Chris picked up BB from the floor at some point in the afternoon, and she really hurt her arm. not a dramatic pick up or anything, but she was really tearful, and held it as if broken. i checked all over and it seemed fine, so calpoled. after an hour of no mvt i decided we should go to have it xrayed, and she wailed and stormed she wasn’t going, and suddenly it was fine to push me away with it etc. yep, it isn’t broken!

anyway, relaxed bed time. chris has started on peter pan with SB, and we played battleships for our evening game.