Author Archives: HHaricot

you may have noticed, but my blog died! well,it lost connection with its database. before tht the server was part of some crash or other, so the blog was deactivated. sigh! so, i don’t quite know where the blog is, and plan to ‘go back in time’ with posts until i hopefully meet myself coming the other way [and DH finds whats wrong with the database]

This week has been a busy week for BB, she has worked quite hard at reading and also better at getting the 20 things on the ticksheet. These things are of variable length, and none long. it is just to try and develop structure we can build on. She likes the new organisation of ‘fact books’ and has been happily reading them.

Evening activities have restarted as well, so back at swimming and cubs. Judo had a miss as this weds she tried out for swimming club and has been put in the pre-racing group. v happy about that tho that means we now do something on a fri . This week some of the local home ed group stuff was going as well – the regular multisports on the thursday, but also a new thing – orienteering – on friday. She loved it and was happy with her group of friends, even though they mostly walked and ambled rather than being made keen to finish first [maybe DH has some pictures?]

on the weds front we had Weds4Ed, a perhaps not so snappy title! For me this was slightly messed up by a requirement to attend a very urgent work meeting in the morning, so jiggering around, gave DH to young engineers stuff to sort out. kfish also had a day out to take l to Ypres [see their blog] as far too good an opportunity to miss . E and B then got the day going, with chess, as quite a number of the kids are interested to quite serious about it, and animation. When I got back, the creating the storyline was going full swing v happily . Pasta for lunch and then some balloon rockets with young engineers. worked initially much better than expected, zooming along the string! the dual balloons not so good, but interesting how they twirled around [as not equal sized] and then the booster rocket ended up being predom adults only, keen to make it work! E and I took the interested [2] to do some general musicianship, starting easy and working up which was fun, and E and I then played some piano duets together – more fun – whilst the kids had some playing time, taking turns doing their credits animations. 4pm is the games hour, so some joined up to minecraft together and e and i played board games. think this will work well, as BB loves minecrafting with small and R , many of the other kids like boardgames

SO in all, a good week. BB still misses SB a lot [as do we] , but is shaking into new routine, and we are trying to keep busy busy.

SB has been settling in this week. A more upbeat phone call than last weeks. school still boring, but has lots of people interested in being her friend, as being english is cool . She mentioned a variety of v french names, i remember Mia . maths is easy, not done art. english tedious, and french horrible – the teacher more grumpy. they have civics – a mishmash of geography and history which is complicated. SB says the teacher is lovely and looks like a young me, and says she neednt do the homework currently as all writing. She has been nervous of school, so FrB came up with the lovely idea of blowing candles out for days at school.

you cant say a lot in 20 mins a week, and you darent ask much too deep. but it seems to be working out.

so, both because i wanted to see them, and also because bb and i need to keep busy and not brood on how much we miss SB being away, we went to visit my parents, leaving dh behind for diy purposes. the drive down was awful! the rain was bucketting, the road had lots of spray, and wereas most drivers were like me, staidly driving 50, some were still at crazy speeds. argh! however we got there safely, and it feels like home

sat we went to cliveden. just mum, as dad didn’t really want to go out. he didnt go out much all weekend, which makes me worry. cliveden was lovely. mum and i werent sure whether bb would like it – she is unreliable at liking! but she loved it. she loved the maze [a lot]the paths, the waterfalls, the slide from the terrace [very much] the icecream and shop, and also the younger childrens playground. when i said we would perhaps go back in the summer with FrB, she was really positive, especially as we will go to the older play area and the pagoda . so good day

the next day after a bit of negotiation – and lots of games of biberbande, we went to marlow to feed the ducks and go to the swings, and also to a gardencentre. normal things and she was happy with all of that as well

hooray and 3 cheers . negotiated lunch [thanks to mum for understanding] and went with dad to the village swings. gald dad came out with us. BB liked them. loads of red kites – 5 at one point! home and the drove home, at least a better drive.

great weekend, and bb agreed we should do it more often

BB is not keen on travelling, she is particularly not keen on travelling for long. you could say it wasn’t her week, but it was all shped round her and she had a fab time . Mondy DH took her to london to the natural history and science museum, where she met up with friends, looked aournd the bugs section, bought a wallbook and then went and got it signed , DH might blog more, or he might not… he has any photos! Tho I saw some when we looked at them. she got back v late as they went to pizza express for tea, missed train otr 2 and got in at 10.30 high on skittles

weds we went and met friends at ickworth a national trust property that was beyond bb’s drive tolerance . she had a fab time, talking with small and r as they walked round about minecraft, pretty much non stop! they enjoyed the playpark, she liked the packed lunch [woot] we went terrible wrong with a short cut after geocaching and she didn’t moan [suprised] but when we drove home she let rip about everything that was wrong . but she had a fab day, and prob was just tired. she fell asleep 3 seconds before we went on the drive

conservation group started on the fri – which was good and other than that she could stay in to her hearts desire .

oh, and her lava lamp arrived

SB has had a bit of a wobbly week this week, settling in , being nervous of school etc so en famille stepped in and helped her and her family with some talking at it seems to have worked out really well. Today on her phone call SB was pretty up beat, she didn’t have any problems, school boring, but she was going to work on that. she is gaining some french and the french family are filling her days and weekends. i am breathing again, and think it is going to be ok . they have done some stuff with scouts, played with young cousins, a bike ride got rained off, enjoyed baking with FrB

here is her first day at school

and here is BB really enjoying her phone call

and we are still here. my thoughts are with SB as i worry about her settling this in, as the first month is the hard one. fingers crossed an all that.

BB has got back into doing some gentle home ed and have got the ticksheet going. I think our gentle approach is paying off. she is such a different temperement and personality to SB and we have to be careful to balance moving forwards against overstretching. However, since we have been concentrating on gently moving with reading, I think she is finally a reader [tho she would deny this] . Have also spent some time reading interesting comic style fact books with her, with her reading some bits, which then later on saw her get one of these books out to read/look at the pictures herself. This is great as the start of being able to follow her own interests in reading [as apart from watching youtube videos of minecraft, lego and snake care ] a slow move forward with maths i think has confirmed she has finally ‘got’ hundreds, tens and units. also great as we didn’t want to move on without this being solid, and she has restarted conquer maths. we restarted piano, and took ginas advice to ‘consolidate’ before moving on, so we are getting bb’s fav carols shipshape and the agreement is we always start with what she can play and then we do a single bit of ‘moving on’ . BB really struggles at not being perfect or things easy, and seems to have no real concept of practice or learning to make things work. it makes education [and life] hard. we are planning to concetrate really hard on scaffolding and supporting her learning, partic with SB away, so that hopefully she gains confidence in learning new things!

but it isn’t all about structured learning. in fact this is just a very small part of life. we are hoping that being able to concentrate on her needs and wishes rather than sharing, we can also work on the difficult moments, and strategies for when life isn’t going her way – less shouting and conflict would be good. helping her find away to develop some control and strategies would be bliss. its a long job, and as parents it is so difficult to see where to help often. and for bb, there is the minecraft, lego, building stuff, playing with stuff, imaginative play and meeting and playing with friends.

This week we had a tentative start at a new weds meetup, with katy and babs coming with their kids. it seemed to work really well. they mostly played, but i did my first young engineers club activity, which was a nice simple one of making paper and straw rockets. bit of individual making, bit of group experimenting and theorising and lots of fun Barbara brought a really interetsing maths game, which i enjoyed . em and jax will hopefully join us too on other dates and we will add in some craft/art, some chess, geography, some animation and music etc just as the kids enjoy. i am looking forward to see how it shakes out

friday was the local HE group not back to school party at the conservation place. BB loved meeting up with her friends there and playing, even tho the weather could be better and this weekend bb has had a playdate with josie, which she loved . there was a thought she might stay over, but she didn’t really feel up to it yet, but maybe and it was a good feeling that she considered it. thanks merry .

so i think a good first week back to home ed