Author Archives: HHaricot

This is going to be a short blog I think, due to the speed i plan to write it in. I should be doing one of two things, either lying own with eyes shut getting rid of migraine [well i have eyes nearly shut and am lying down, and am typing this without looking at the screen, so it may look a bit weird!] or getting up and tidying and hoovering this room as my parents and my nepwhew and niece will be arriving soon. DH has been scurrying around trying to get our bombiste of a house a bit tidier – one day we will keep it this way [thinking prob only when kisd have left home as neither of us like housework, can always think of something better to do with time, and and and!] girls are tidyhing their desks. these are allegely for doing home ed on [or will be if the LA ever did a home visit, whicih we don't plan that they will]. instead, they are a flat surface for shoving half finsihed projects, boxes, books and anyhting and everything on! so currently looking more like the himalayas.

Anyway, I am gicing myself half an hour max to blog and drink tea and try and pretend i don’t have migraine [ot is moderately under control with tabs today] and then tidy and hoover this room, and then make this quiche enough for 8 for a lateish lunch. [will feedback on whether i actually did this!] so, back to weds and wodensmeet/weded/hewed or whatever else we are calling it!

this started with pumpkin carving. we nipped into somewhere along the way advertising pumpkins for sale [the good thing about being rural!] tho still one pound each. and arrived a leeetle bit late at zoes, and the girls got stuck in. i went to get my camera or phone to take pics and UTTER DISASTER I found i had left both behind on the ktichen table! I don’t mind being cold turkey without phone, but no pictures!! [imagine voice going up into a squeak] even when we had cameras with film in them i took lots of photos. so for this post i am borrowing the photos from the others since i harangued them into taking loads and posting on flickr [not good to be owning up to bullying!] . anyway, gids did a good [if messy] job, but didn’t quite scrape out enough from all the pumpkins to make pumkin soup, so it was pumpkin and other veg soup for tea

tidied away and got science and poetry ready. for science this time we were looking at plant cells, so we discussed what plant cells should look like and what we should see, and a bit of a comparitor with animal cells. kids then got a bit of the onion skin between layers, dipped into iodine to help with staining and then made a slide. gradually getting to less bubbles! we used the microscope from the portico – which we all think is fab and sent lots of love that way . we got brilliant views. i did lots of bobbing up and down to reset and focus, but we didn’t crack any coverslips [which i think is a result!] next time i must take some lens paper, as the eyepieces did get all smeary between looks. then we drew what we had seen at 2 different magnifications.

lunch was the normal pasta, and the second science and poetry group happened afterwards. Poetry was the lady of shalot. SB said she remembered the bit in anne of green gables [a book she likes a lot] and they drew some illustrative pictures. SB and E sightread their recorder duet beautifully between them, and hoping that if they practice they might play it at caberet. but even if not, good to practice playing together. when they are confident, should try more complex music with em and i on lower instruments! Em also kindly took SB for a clarinet nag, as she isn’t practicing much currently as we are between teachers! [thankyou] SB also did some music theory as 2 weeks away from grade 4 exam [panic!]

Merry had brought a fab fimo idea of making pixie houses using Bene’s baby food jars and fimo [waste not want not!] and the kids all spent ages and ages on it, their results were impressive. definitely an idea to revisit another time in another guise, as i thought M was going to do an arabian nights one for a bit [she didn't] and it struck me that several of them of different heights on a board with candles in would make a beautiful hand made gift. they spent so long it did mean that zoe and i did the first kneading of dough to make rolls to go with the soup, and got a bit giggly over not being gbb candidates :).

we said goodbye to merry and family at that point. After washing hands, all the kids left had some white and some grain dough and made a roll of each to bake – plaits and animals and hearts etc and smelled lovely :). then did bells with EM. Hopefully we are going to play bells to a care centre nearer christmas and also sing some carols, so that would be good Beautiful

soup and back for BB’s grading at judo – went fine, SB judo and now my hlaf an hour [plus 8 mins!] is up, and the girls are shouting so need to go and intervene, then hoover and then make a quiche

I have been meaning to blog since saturday, and if I don’t, it will all run away from me! it is already no good, as i have forgotten all those little bits of loveliness! well, not all, SB and i had a lovely bedtime story snuggle together, with a chat about life and the meaning of everything and also a ticklefest sometimes as she is getting so grown up it is lovely to have her as a child, even if such a short time. DId i blog that she looked so grown up and assured in her smart clothes for judo grading last sat? Tho once I had said this, she then went into silly mode and we had a giggle at lots of pose striking – including duck-laying-egg!! SHe is adorable Currently we are reading Blood Feud by rosemary sutcliffe – my book from childhood. I love the tactileness of books, and was quite put back when SB announced she would quite like a kindle for christmas birthday! I think i have loved sharing friends with her [my childhood books] and find it hard to believe the kindle would be the same! I ahve also had lovely moments with BB cuddling as we watched human planet, sitting on my lap playing with SB’s chocolate game, being part of her whirling ninja or astronaut etc sketches,watching her snuggling under the duvet with big on the sofa as they watched jurassic park together. so often big and bb just dont mix, so it is often a bit of a stressy juggle when she stays over on that front [tho fab for SB], so it was partic lovely to see them being happy and giggly together. I think it is that 3 people spells trouble problem, as SB was out at judo or guides at these moments.

oh, did i say that big stayed with us after Jax left on weds until sat afternoon, when her dad came to pick her up? we had a lovely time other things that big shared with our family – a sports session at the local HE group, a not-forest-school session at the local HE group [lots of scrub clearance i think!], doing some book home ed, and playing with barbies. Oh, and lots of board games . we really enjoyed having her stay with us

I, unfortunately, was working a lot of the weekend , but i did get to spend some time at home. both girls wanted to play games, and currently they are v keen on agricola and carcasonne. BB also found our polydrons. this reducing screen time has, as thought, got her looking again at resources we have around the house, and she had a wonderful time building different shapes, and turning them into rockets and making imaginative games with them SB and i did a long overdue piano lesson as well. i do enjoy playing duets with her

Monday the family went to the inlaws for the day, so a bit of a telefest! but also roast dinner treat SB and BB both came home with some bibles – one that nana got when just 15. although we are not religious, my inlaws are, and it is important to me that both girls have some understanding of the various faiths, but also christianity in particular as it is important to so many family members and friends, and also of cultural value to help with understanding history and literature. SB was still limping from her judo grading tho [oh, she got her next belt ] so didn’t go to ballet or gym . when i came home from work [late] we enjoyed playing her chocolate game from thebabs, i did get to the end but bb also enjoyed the logic challenge

yesterday they had pottery/ceramics which again they v much enjoyed with the local HE group. DH will hopefully put up the photos. BB has apparently made a mask and a pumpkin, not sure what sb did! she was too engrossed in her laptop when i got home from work. they had also tidied the playroom – phew! Swimming lessons also, and SB able to walk well enough to do this. We spent a fair bit of the evening setting up the microscope from the portico, and getting it to work and looking at things under it. it is a beautiful microscope, even if i am too dim to understand the instruction booklet! our cheap BBC wildlife magazine came as well, and we all enjoyed reading bits and looking at some stunning photography. SB has kept going with music theory, as exam only 2 weeks away – eek!

what are we watching??

we are enjoying a few programmes on i-player currently to watch with the girls. Human Planet, War Farm, Great British Bakeoff and Merlin. BB is also rather taken by Leonardo and SB by Danni’s house. however, we tend to pick up the odd dvd cheaply, so this week we have enjoyed the jurassic park trilogy – bit of a gorefest! one is scariest, but we enjoyed them all. Particualry BB, and our friend Big who was staying seemed to enjoy them too [will see what Jax feeds back!]. Tonight we are watching the mountain episode of human planet with the girls. excellent and gripping and both girls and parents learning from it of the marvels of our planet and humans ‘on the edge’ as it were.
DH and I are really enjoying Andrew Marr History of the world, who do you think you are and Neil Oliver Vikings [with QI and Bones as a bit of fluff ] . We do tend to limit the tv time the girls have, a little bit of fluff on getting up or getting in from somewhere, and a shared thing in the eve, which we tend to talk about and comment on. then dh and i will watch something before we go to bed.

what are we reading?

DH and I are reading different books in the greg mandel series by peter hamilton. It is scifi, and i really like it, as does DH. You need to like the genre to like the books SB is loving a book from her book box – troubadour. her book box is book people and cheap books i come across and squirrel away, and have to be earnt – working hard on home ed, doing well in exam/grading, being a lovely sister etc etc. SHe recommends this book. BB is currently not reading a book. I try different styles, genres and push at age boundaries a bit [tho not too adult]

what are we playing?

bb is still playing a lot of roblox on the computer SB and Big have been playing wii winter olympics, and we have all including Big played board games, carcasonne, agricola, smallworld and giro galippo. very different games but all great fun

I meant, 14 posts ago, to celebrate the fact that this blog has 2500 published posts . i forgot so i will celebrate now 2514 posts!!!

having moved on from that bit of celebration I will now have a quickety quick run through the week. hmm, where had we got to Monday turned out to be a bit of a disaster. both girls did lots of at home bookwork stuff, and then SB was supposed to have a root canal. [2 years ago she slipped and completely tombstoned her front upper 2 adult teeth to the pulp. since then she has had them built up at the dentists, when fully grown she will have veneers. unfortunately this leads them prone to infection. last year she had one root canal, and this year she needs the other] . DH forgot so she didn’t, and this will also put back the traintracks further . anyway, she was relatively happy and had ballet and gym as normal. I got back from work a bit early so BB was happy as she didn’t have to go and watch SB gym. DH had also sorted ‘scratch‘ onto BB’s desktop, and she was having a complete strop moment of creative frustration over the process I have asked DH to work it out and then give her a few lessons till she gets started! He put an animation prog on SB’s netbook, so she was having fun with that making her glasses move all over her face

tues SB had an animation session with the local home ed group for 11+ – it is nice to have some older kids events, and she really enjoyed it. BB was v jealous [increasing sb enjoyment] but instead went shopping with DH to spend book vouchers from last year. SHe really really loves shopping! so both had a great day out, and swimming for them both in the eve. Jax and co arrived as well in the eve, so they rampaged around with Big and Small and I zonked on sofa [having had appaling sleep night before and humongous work day] poor hostess that I am. it is lovely that they travel so far to come though, as it gives the older girls some time for face to face rather than internet contact.

weds was history day. Jax and Zoe have already blogged this, so since this is the second time i have written this blog post [the first time my computer did something wobblish and it was lost] I am slightly tempted just to say read theirs!

SO we are starting on our Story of the World book 3, and we covered today James 1st ascension, religious beliefs, gunpowder plot, tirade against smoking. we also covered the settling of virginia and commencement of planting tobacco leading to expansion of the slave trade. a quick mention of nzinga of ngola as well in the morning. The craft based activities were done with listening to the relevant chapter or extra resources and then discussing.

for the gunpowder plot we made peg doll guys and then burnt them :evilgrin:

we discussed king james anti smoking treatise, and how posters are peppier and so made some. I loved the imagery taken from his treatise, and also the attempt to make the language appear mock-tudor. they all spent quite a while on this, allowing me to read a fair bit, and katy discourse on the ascension to the throne.

meanwhile some where baking thanksgiving foods with zoe – succotash and cornbread and parkin. they were all delish. the succotash perhaps a bit too buttery for everyday [tho this was a celebration] and the cornbread surprisingly sweet. all eaten up

katy had a variety of kids volunteering to be stuvyesant with his peg leg [an adapted sink plunger!] and jax talked about the triangular slavery trade. some of the children were still doing their antismoking posters, and others drew slave ship pictures. the older children were asked to write something about what had caught their interest that morning in the history scrapbooks. SB opted for the gunpowder plot. The plan is to stick in pictures/artwork/ maps and info prints and photos into these scrapbooks this year as part of the visual record they keep.

we then had a late lunch, played with the tiny ones, oohed and ahed over the tortoise had a cup of tea to revive and then katy set up a sumo ring. this was excellent fun we learnt about the traditions, the correct ritual and reason, and then various kids had a go. obviously BB was desperate! we adults laughed in the sun

gradually all the families left, and we were left with Jax’s big, who is having a 3 day sleepover . the elder 2 girls did some watercolour painting, SOA did some daubing painting before she left, and BB and SB had judo [separately] . on BB return, she and Big watched Jurassic park 2 and laughed lots it was nice seeing them snuggle on the sofa.

I think I might finish this blog post here A great day with friends, and sunshine! after all, SOA had granted me a wish with her magic wand the night before, and i had wished for a sunshiney day

resources for the day
[amazon affiliate links]

It is a while since i did a resources post. I meant to do them regularly, but, well…

this one, is a bit of a plea for help really. SB wants to learn italian. she wants it to be fun/enjoyable, progress through rather than stop when she can say her name, and have a fairly intuitive standalone core resource and then some fun peripherals.

for example, in french we use galore park french, which she says is fine, tho a bit ‘dry’ and she is happy ‘getting on with it. ALongside it is skoldo french – but currently she is on the last book. she likes this one far more though. They both have spanish versions, but no italian. for the audio, we use collins french mostly. alongside this we have bought loads and loads of different bilingual books, which she reads aloud, or i share with her. On the whole, this works [or would if we actually did it more regularly...]

I would like something similar in italian, and we have a lot of false starts.
these for example: [the collins mindmap just doesn't work for her, and contatti is something you need to do audio and book at the same time it seems, rather than listen to the audio to help with the book or vice versa - tho i think we could use this better - i might have to 'play' with it.]

so it seems, that actually what we probably want is something she can do as a ‘workbook’ and something that she can do as ‘in car audio’ ideally they would tie together, but would be used separately [no book in the car, no audio doing the workbook] and some fun books and peripherals. We have a kids italian cd – which she has really enjoyed, but stops there, it doesn’t progress on – which is a shame, we need vols 2 and 3! And we have found an italian ‘workbook’ [which i have 2 copies of - doh!] which she seems to like. but this isn’t ‘all joined up’ and i am sure there is something better out there…

please help me through the muddle of resources needs to be something she can do on her own – she is quite self driven, that i can help with if required. I speak NO italian, so does need to be something that we can work out rather than in italian only! I am desperate [and don't want to add more resources to my not what we wanted pile!]

thankyou

[links are amazon affiliate, feel free to put affiliate in comments for me to click ]

as the twilight of this year darkens, it is the perfect time to think of the dawn of the next. so we thought of planting our spring bulbs. this involved a trip to a garden centre an a nice saunter around to see what we could put in the garden in the future.

we picked a good selection of bulbs – mostly dafodils and tulips, chosen by the girls for their pretty packets and then got planting in front of the conservatory in an area freshly weeded. we are hoping for a really good spring display

other signs of autumn in our garden

I Like having a new shiny blogring, and lots of old friends on it . for the new friends on it, I do have an admission. I am a polyanna blogger. Pollyanna (Wordsworth Children’s Classics) is book about a child who consciously makes a decision to always look for the positive. So this is how i blog. I don’t have time to blog all the in and out moments of our day, i try and blog some of those moments of tenderness and love, the gorgeousness of a child’s hand tucked up in yours, or snuggling on the sofa or getting a fit of the giggles together. These moments of love i wish to remember forever. I don’t want to remember the grumps or fights particularly. SO i just don’t blog them.

We are a normal family. i snap, grit teeth and say things i shouldn’t and wish I hadn’t. particularly when I am tired or migrainous. My SAH DH really isn’t bothered about a tidy house, so it isn’t, and also can stride about wave his arms about dramatically or growl, partic when tired and needing a break. My SB can cut off her nose to spite her face, tease her sister when she shouldn’t, pretend to have done things she hasn’t – or not done things she has! My BB is a child with all her emotions on her sleeve, and trying days ensue when this is frustration or anger. but at least 75% of our time, and often more is spent snuggled, hands tucked, giggling and loving and probably less than 10% grumping, snapping, arguing etc, and most commonly as bedtime approaches… the rest is variable. SO yes, BB doesn’t always want to read and shouts and screams instead [sometimes it can seem like the whole day], SB might have a teenage pout or flounce, and me a tired mum rant and you won’t find it here. Nor the mention that our house looks like it has been ransacked by toddlers. But it happens, so just add that in to your narrative if you read and find this blog a bit rosy! Oh, and the days when absolutely nothing interesting happens or gets done? yep, we have those too!

catching up . The girls had a fab arts award on friday on pointillism, which both were really taken with. they had a magazine photo which they reimagined. They also loved the fact that they went by bus for a change. so successful was this, that i see them doing this again in the future. Here are the finished works of art.

SB has worked hard with her home ed bookwork this week, and certainly powered through some music theory, feeling slightly hopeful about the grade 4 theory on november! SHe has started on galore park syrwtl english book 2 [thankyou alison] and is enjoying it. also maths and science and her new italian workbook are popular. less so geog, french and history. she has started blogging too [link on the side] , and is planning to expand the blog so it will be able to be printed out for her arts award later on. she does need to add more about the artists and techniques, but think it is a good start.

At the weekend – hence title above! – we went for a walk with friends to an RSPB place. we used to walk monthly there with them, which we v much enjoyed, but went a bit by the wayside over the years. It was a lovely reminder of good times shared going round on saturday, laughing over the various waily disasters we had had. We also were looking for funghi [sort of ] and birds [m did best there] and generally chatting as we strode forwards . It was a lovely day for a walk and the initial sun only turned into torrential rain and then hail when we had made it back to the cars

and for a bit of now and then… [last photo added as the first pic bb joined the pair in the throne tree ]

Ending with a lovely meal, more chatting and games playing back at their house – great day/evening

Every single meal cooked so far from this book has been a winner.

River Cottage Veg Every Day! (River Cottage Every Day)

I bought the book for SB as part of her cook every friday idea. I ctually thought we already had enough cookbooks, there were no such things a new recipes, just rehashed ones, and wouldn’t hve bought it except that it delighted her I had bought it for her Needless to say, she has barely used it. Luckilly DH has. I am amazed by the deliciousness of the food and recipes, and the easiness to prepare. If you are vegetarian, cook for vegetarians, or just like vegetarian recipes… I don’t believe your collection is complete without this book!