Author Archives: HHaricot

Tour de Yorkshire and birthday parties

do you know what, i might need to discontinue blogging for a while. life has just got too difficult to ignore such big segments. so as a last hurrah I am going to put up pictures of Easter, where we had mum, dad, nephew and niece and MIL staying. it was v relaxed. lots of chocolate was eaten, games were played and there generally was general relaxing. the last calm before the storm perhaps. I am so glad we had a wonderful centerparcs.

SB did holiday orchestra, which she enjoyed

we had our first weds4ed of term which went well. i didn’t take any photos. they did some fresco painting with kfish. science was respiration revision, which i think was useful.

Hope everyone has a great summer, and will pop by here now and then with a picture perhaps.

I have been reminded to blog [waves at M] as just cos there seems to be so much unbloggable at the moment [i don't blog things that i feel are 'owned' by others, and i am fairly certain they wouldnt want in the public domain. these things are currently fairly massive in my life. i also dont blog work, which is being taken over, and we all know how that process works!] there is also lots of lovely life affirming things happening. life does go on, we only live each day once, and although it might be tempting to huddle over farmville or minecraft or our smart phones, we only have today. carpe diem and all that!

so one of the very lovely things we have done is spent the week before easter at centerparcs with my parents and my nephew m and niece e. we have gone to centerparcs a lot with friends, and my mum has always thought this sounded like a great holiday to do althogether. so, uncharacteristically of me, seizing the moment like it was an enormous turnip, i moved heaven and earth to get me 2 days leave to make it a goer! aided by not working weds, fri being a bank holiday and agreeing to work mon, and tues and thurs being in different leave years and some generousness of colleagues . i also sucked it in that the holiday in an easter week costs 5 times that of a january week. somethings are priceless. [tho clearly, i am having to mention it here!] . i got over the fact that they would all arrive before me and that i spent all sunday making food to take [ok, that wasnt a biggie, as i like cooking, and BB helped me, which was lovely ]

it was wonderful . TBH is was absolutely as good as i could have hoped for. the weather was a bit on the chilly side at times, but no torrential rain whilst we were walking about . the kids did pretty well with the no laptops, tho did use sundry other screens for periods of downtime. we all loved swimming – mum went on the rapids a number of times tho i think the lazy river was her fav. she went swimming on all occassions. dad realised the evening swim was quieter and more pleasurable, so came in with us for all the evening swims, but usually stayed somewhere outside with a soft drink for the morning swims. we giggled and laughed, watched and admired and were v v sociable in the pool. M really loved the cyclone, so was good to have DH and SB to be crazy on it! i just love centerparcs

all the kids were really enjoying the swimming. all had new cossies to wear, and SB also loved the look of a bikini [superdry!] and shorts combo in the shop, so as her holiday treat… BB shopped and got a massive nerf gun and lego and a new football.

dad gave each child an activity as a treat, and after much deliberation, BB chose introduction to scuba diving. M and E decided to do that with her. they all really loved it, and all want to do it again at some point. bb certainly came back absolutely raving about the experience. dad and DH went to be photographers. SB decided to do the climbing with adrenaline heights – including a leap of faith etc. She didnt want to do it on her own, so DH volunteered to go as well he ached for at least a week. for her it was the highlight she said. she is so very fit and fearless!

we ate convivially, with plenty of food and treats to sit round the table too. always good to eat and chat together at the end of the day we got some game playing in. a lot of ticket to ride, and camel cup [a game that dh was lured into buying!] and a bit of dixit. Dad taught SB how to play crib, so she enjoyed doing that a fair bit too :)  SB did a little bit of her gcse revision. not really as much as required, but still a good amount. oh, and mum gave me a hudl as my birthday present early! and oops, i have got a little bit hooked on farmville 2 – it is a good distraction!

I’m going to come back with convivial pictures, but we really had a wonderful time, and it was just exactly what we needed

some swimming pics

I had a week off, and the original plan was to go to Rome, but original plans dont always come off for a variety of reasons! so we stayed at home pottering for the begining of the week, then went to babysit my nephew and then onto my parents. I haven’t been to my b-i-l house before, and he has lived there perhaps 4 years now? so interesting to nose. M had made up the pull out sofa bed for us for when we arrived, which was nice, and i brought with us mac n cheese for tea, tho bil had put lots of microwave meals in freezer. The kids then played the gun range on call of duty [i prefer them not to do actual shooting games. not sure how much difference that makes!]

The next day we set off for mum and dads, and whilst we stayed there each night someone went back to stay with morgan until friday, when he came to mum and dads. a bit of a muddle, but hey ho!

SB did a little bit of biol and geog each day at mum and dads, and on thursday had a classical civ meet up in london, that dh took her to. it was apparently v good, and she was v happy with it, and it will help her remember the oddeysey story [lets hope so] classical civ being her 4th gcse this year, and the one i remain the most worried about. She met her friend C, who she has loved doing the classical civ with. SO if this is all about education rather than exam passing, it has been very successful!

those of us at home did game playing. we were going to walk to the park, but DH had taken all our coats with him in the car! also the game we planned to play. but actually BB found alhambra a reasonable game to learn to play, so that was ok.

the following day we again divided in two, as SB, Nanny and I went shopping, as they have a rather nice shopping centre. Mum even bought herself something! SB had 80 of next vouchers burning a hole in her pocket and had a top up from mum and me, so did a very fun and successful shop. We had lunch at patisserie valerie – which was yummy. Also as we were going back to the carpark, we accidentally sat down and had cake there too ;). what is that i hear you say – eclipse?? bah humbug! such dense cloud that we had to watch on tv. cloud had completely cleared by 11 though

BB went to the village park with the men and enjoyed the new things that are there for slightly older kids.

more games were played, and cousin M came back ready for the weekend.

so very behind that I’m going to do a blend of the posts from there till now. It might only be 2 weeks, but in that time we have had 2 more weds4ed, been and visited my parents and other stuff which of course i have mostly forgotten. So this post will be the 2 weds4eds and then anything else i have remembered, and another post will be visiting my parents, and i will declare up to date!

weds4ed1: science was cells, and there was totem pole clay work , making paint and maths

we had a new family join us, who will hopefully pop in on a monthly basis it is lovely to meet new families with older home ed kids, as the teen pool gets depleted as kids go to school to do exams. we are bucking the trend to do at home. [as are various of our friends]

so the cells we talked about the difference between plant and animal cells, looked at an animal cell [our cheek] and plant [carrot] under a microscope, having stained with methylene blue. cells comes up a fair bit in gcse biology, and i am hoping that pegging an experiment to match revision work which is deifferent to the speriment that pegged with the first review will hopefully help learn and have something to hang the knowledge onto. I didn’t take many photos tho, and of course none down the microscope, but we def all got to see what we needed to.

totem pole clay work with 2 clay types looked fun. we are planning to home fire them in a big pit or metal bins. em is v patient with them all, and all the kids put thought and effort into their designs.

The older kids are really enjoying the maths they are doing with B. It is proper get you to gcse maths, as J has his gcse this year and SB and B are def doing it next year. I am surprised at how well it is working as a group activity. The non mathsers worked with kfish to make paints from scratch – oil or egg based. I think the egg based ones look the most luscious.

weds4ed2: science was transpiration, more totem pole pottery and maths

unfortunately it was an extra short one, mostly to fit a science in for J and SB, both sitting igcse biology this year. SO not time for painting, but hopefully will do that next time! So science was wrapping around plants. a huge area to cover! DH had very proudly made me a working potometer so we used it to talk about transpiration, and bring in photosynthesis [respiration] , and phloem/xylem . the older group got to do worksheets as well including flower structure as this often comes up somewhere in an exam. it was a bit boring i think for the non – gcse-ers, so will think of something more exciting for the next one that all can enjoy whilst still wrapping around the next bit of revision. i guess it might be dissection.

the younger group were a bit grumpy to see the older group had a hairdryer to make the wind, whereas they had jumped up and down with fans but then, they werent doing worksheets!

more maths for the mathsy group meant that not all did totems, SB helped join the squares together but BB did another ring. I also took the opportunity of making an elliptical one to go on the totem. i hope the other mums do a totem ring as well

I’m not sure we made as much of it as we should have done! Time is going quickly, SB’s gcse work is making life less interesting as a family, as we need to give her time to learn and do well. Thank goodness we all had such an interesting and exciting year last year! However, although not so outgoingly exciting, it doesn’t mean that we are not having quieter pleasure in each others company!

Nanna is regularly visiting on mondays, and this time I managed to get a photo! She comes for the afternoon and evening, and plays a game or 2 with the girls, and BB gave her a big hug and cuddle, which made her day, as BB is mostly physically demonstrative with few adults.

Wednesday BB went to the hospital for a final checkup of her shoulder. It is all fine, must have been a significant soft tissue injury, but nothing worrying . we did some bookishness and then finished mothers day cards – I should have taken pictures of the girls! and chatted in the conservatory on a nice warm day .  BB did some rather unusual mother’s day cards, including one for nanna which appeared to be a seagull divebombing a garden gnome… Poor BB fell and really bashed her head, so wore my migraine crown as that was very helpful. But meant she couldnt judo as needed regular pain killers . SB had a go at a classical civ paper on the oddyssey, which highlighted that there is a fair bit of work to do, starting with writing a bullet point summary of the story in the relevant books. Argh for feeling rather behind in this one.

BB has been doing a fair bit of drawing. This is a pencil sketch of a lego t-rex. She said she changed the mouth a bit to make it more realistic. I am quite impressed

She has also been getting a bit cheeky with her English always a sign that she is confident with what she is doing !

SB had a french lesson, they both did the home ed group multisports which they enjoy, and i am fairly sure they had the home ed enviroment group?

In the evening, SB and I watched the matrix on my recommendation. She thought it was cool, especially trinity’s moves at the beginning.

Fairly worky week. I think SB is getting fed up of exam work, so we have been mixing it up a bit but I am worrying a bit about how much there is! The French tutor is quietly confident that she is going to do well for that. The geog written paper she consistently is comfortably in the upper B area. We need to just keep going and now look more at the map work and alt to field trip. For the biol we have only done 1 paper 3 – again a comfortable B, but the 2 mcq have been on the c/d which is all about specific knowledge, so encouraging the revision work. Only done one alt to practical, again comfortably a B but showing up we haven’t really done much diagram work. So we are confident overall she should pass and working to make that a comfortable B. classical civ isn’t quite where we had hoped as it seems although the tutor has enthused and gone through syllabus elements, they actually haven’t done any practice work reflecting the nature of the exam. This exam is at the end, but I do have a feel of catch up to it.
Next week we have part work and part holiday to have a bit of a break, tho aware first 2 weeks April full of holiday things so can’t take foot off pedal too much!
Bb has been getting on quietly with stuff and making a big effort with maths and English. Can’t quite get her to see how helpful times tables are for division! She is also busy setting up a mine craft server.

To my mum

And to me