Author Archives: HHaricot

as anticipated, we didn’t so much spring forward as groan and try and squeeze some more sleep out of the morning! BB crawling into bed and being my diplodocus egg kinda stopped that, the she was a turtle, and then… SB had been up watching tv for 2 hours. that girl never sleeps. and it caused a prob later on…

so here we are, all up, and the girls decide to do some more egg making. we had a chick and some eggs last year, and kept the packaging, so have made that a mould too! SB puts chilli choc and mint choc as her mini eggs. she far prefers the plain chocolate. we all smile, laugh and get on with things!

bit of a contretemps over SB doing her clarinet prac at the same time as bb’s sock puppet show, but we duck and dive, and both get to do their things. we finish card making, and go and race outside being v noisy!

After lunch sb and i play a game, we read story of the world, we do some wii olympics. i think we are getting better. BB has some moments of losing her cool, but we cuddle, snuggle and do chip chop cherry tree and the world seems better. the girls patch things up and go off and play happily. i feel a bit of a spare part. i make the curries for next weekend, i sow some broad beans and water the seeds the girls have sown.

they rush back and fill me with their brightness again, and we thread crystals into our alleged supersaturated solutions, for them to dissolve over the next few hours. oh well. SB and i play another game whilst bb cheers us on with her lizards and frogs, and then it is teatime.

Fter tea, sb questionauts and wiis with me and chris, and then i snuggle bb with part of a video. then its bedtime and an allmighty fuss and ruckus. i get it all wrong. I am sorry SB, i should give you more patience and time. i love you dearly and expecting you to have a management strategy for bb’s blowouts when chris and i barely do is too unfair of me, and it backfired and you ended up v upset. hopefully our hugs and snuggles and love yous help you forgive me. i do this too often though, even tho it is on my highest priority list. patience for my elder, dear, patient daughter, who has a deep soul and heart, which she wears on her sleeve. xx

my keyboard being a bit awkward about placing the l’s, so forgive me if some are missed out!

wed = latin etc day. i liked that fact after serious amounts of reminding, SB took her clarinet and music, but gina pointed out that she took no reeds!!! i remember turning up to a violin lesson with an empty case, so can’t comment much! lol!! we drove to latinetc listening to a new french cd. we do a lot of listening to french cd’s when i drive! this series is supposed to help you speak with a better accent, and is more repetition based. SB had asked for something a bit different, and i saw a good price on it and had a go:

it isn’t such a good price now, and the series is quite expensive!! what did we think?? well even bb had a go at the repetitions when slow. SB and i kept going as they got faster and faster. i think we were both enjoying it! i don’t think it is a good only resource tho for children, and maybe even adults! but my current plan is to randomly or sequentially put on one of these for all the journeys in my car [as they are usually under 30 mins hops]

which will cover our diverse likes and needs, and me we don’t get particularly bored with anything, and hopefully move on!! we tend to listen to french at least once on longer drives when i am in the car too… I must get back into the habit of reading them a french book at least once a week tho. my list of to do gets longer doesn’t it!

ok, back to latinetc – we were actually early!! french, latin, music theory and bells, and nearly clarinet went on. I got to chat a lot with merry, which was v nice, as we are often in separate rooms! And i did science, which was fun. the group that we call the littlies is maturing into a very sensible, considered and careful group that are a real pleasure to be involved with. they listen, concentrate and try, question me and think around the subjects with great enthusiasm. we first looked at broad beans we have been growing at home through a light maze, which was felt to be quite cool. they then set up the flowers in coloured water experiment. we then opened up our bacterial plates. those which had had nitrofurantoin on them had grown bacteria. those with amoxycillin had grown a mould… we rediscussed antibiotics and their sensitivities for different bugs. they then all very carefully scraped and transferred a small portion of bacteria [slides off easily] or mould [has grown into the agar] to a microscope slide. dropped with a pippette a single drop of water on it, and most of them then successfully put the coverslip on top. we then looked at all of them. the full sunshine meant we could do this at power 200 as well. [and yes we had gloves on, washed hands and dettol wiped the surfaces!] i repeated this with the older group. we then all looked at the flowers, and segments of the stems under the microscope too. i think the groups, at least for science, should get a name that isn’t age or ability related, perhaps i will suggest different 6 names to each group to poll from [atoms, quasars, comets, molecules, mitochondria etc!]

back at home we had great fun making way over the top birthday cards for dad!! and SB made him some mixed fruit and nuts dipped in chocolate. those dried mango slices cut up are delish!!! BB started her easter egg. must do SB’s too! brownies and judo finished the day!

today has been a tots and nots day. clarinet with reeds with gina! music theory paper. some house tidying and bits and pieces in the afternoon, and then lots of huggles and snuggles when i came home from work! 2 new coats fo SB from ebay [age 10-11!] which she is v happy with, and some isopropyl alcohol for an experiment… also our new toothbrushes! SB loves her electric one because it vibrates rather than whizzles. BB not so sure! i get to try ours out tonight!

SB! woohoo SB, well done love. She is really pleased as she wanted a ‘merit or extinction’ [glad we got a merit!] and practiced really hard before the exam. She has now started practicing some grade 1 clarinet pieces to take to gina. bit more worried wrt scales, as i can’t find anything for her on the clarinet, and will say the wrong named note if i don’t concentrate, as it is a transposing instrument.

So today, well chris has worked hard, and the room of doom not so doomy! ‘parently bb and sb went in and said ”ooh a table, we can use that for craft” which was the plan, about 5 years ago! SB did some painting of her craft kit, which we bought a while back at centreparcs in the sale, rather than our usual craft emporium. I think the usual emporium prob cheaper than a holiday to centreparcs plus a sale purchase, so would recommend it!

BB did some painting by numbers, and they both then made an easter basket. i got given the easter basket of BB later filled with spring flowers from the garden so v happy! they moved on to a mixture of normals type things including some of the nallenart l’art de lire for SB and bonjour mes amis 1 vid for BB [she likes the cat and singing frere jaques!]

then sowing a variety of seeds – i should have reminded chris that those potatoes should be planted from the potato council! ph, and chris has hacked back the vine in the conservatory ready for the rebuild. we are v much hoping it stays alive! a fair bit of playing outside, looking at spring flowers and ladybirds.

SB did some clarinet and piano prac with me before off to swimming. BB didn’t want to go, but as i had fallen down our stairs rather than walking them, and really pulled my knee, i didn’t want to go with them. massive kerfuffle, and she didn’t swim in the end.

Home and delish veg casserole and dumplings watching monsters we met part 2 – we are enjoying these, tho i prefered the first one with the clovis

or

and contemplating this for the girls

hmm, sb had forgotton how to play the piano, so daily practice, and it is coming back quickly! am doing a home made colourstrings alike with BB for piano, as she wants to play tunes. Fair bit of general stuff gone on – maffs, grammer for SB and maffs and cvc words for BB [she doesn't know all the letters yet, but we have moved onto words and she can learn them there]. lots of going out – optician, local group gym, nannas and the reg groups. SB is humming and hawing over brownies. there seem to have been a few comments that not clever enough to go to school, or wouldn’t cope, and seeing that e and r go to a group which is mixed girls and boys, she might want to do that instead. she doesn’t want us to have a word with the leader.

today had been originally going to leicester space centre, but chris had to clear a space for the treecutter to come [approved by conservation area] and the girls didn’t fancy the science festival things on offer, so we planned to do science at home. however, BB got stuck into calligraphy – ever since the denny abbey thing, when we bought her an ink pen… and SB did some ‘normals’. i suggested they took turns with what kind of experiment we did. SB first choice = surface tension experiments, so we did a few things with pennies, pippettes and soap – merry what was your colourful one all about? BB wanted to mix chemicals, so we pH our acetic acid, and then – with plenty of windows opened – added spoonfuls of lots of different chemicals [well, one at a time, washing out in between!] seeing if a gas was made and seeing if it was CO2, hydrogen or O2 [tho a bit flakily!] both were caught out by the sodium carbonate… we also saw some pH changes! the final one – chosen by both – was crystal making – so all set up now.

both did something cooking – SB made eggy bread, and BB decorated cupcakes. they then played alot v noisily together!! i ordered some magazine subscriptions, sorted out my tax rebate and my parents birthday presents. SB and i then played ticket to ride, with BB ‘helping’ me. SB won! even though i went to murmansk!!

SB off to brownies and BB played marching dinosaurs through air drying clay, whilst i made some family fimo beads – quite badly as i have no artistic merit! but to put on a geotravelbug when i get one!! finished the day with a snuggle watching robin hood, and SB got v tearful [hugs] so a long snuggling bedtime. she has just come downstairs, so i am now going to go up and cuddle her to sleep.

am gradually going to catch up with blogging! last weekend was in the science festival. we were somewhat late getting in – can’t remember why! and the girls had a desire to go to the sedgewick site bits, so we looked at the archaeology areas, the earth sciences area and the mycology before lunch. We’ve not been in these areas in previous years, so thought they were pretty interesting. BB wowed with her knowledge of t rex bone, and SB was fascinated by all the earth sciences. lots of microscope looking down in different bits. unfortunately the chaos thing was full, and although the main chemistry looked interesting, the family vote was then round the zoology museum [which they like] and then to the biology area – a real hit! BB loved making her virus, and SB having a mad sciencist pic taken and painting the microbiology by numbers. ALso a fair bit of chat and interaction with the various stands. SB impressing quite a few of them with her knowledge. we were shattered coming home, but that didn’t stop the girls engaging in earthquake reenactments with sylvanians!

sunday we did an rspb walk with 2/3 of the manor borns, the other feeling somewhat unwell. we totally messed up on meeting :blush: am hoping michelle might forgive us! but we did, after 25 mins, work out that we were both there!! and did a reverse quarry route and all had a lovely walk, with only one minor moment from the least likely of my children… really enjoyed it, including the icecream at the end!

only been a week!!
ermm! home ed stuff happened, some ‘normals’ to quote a merry phrease at the beginning of the week. lots of recorder prac and an exam on the wed [oohh eek!]. we picked up an electricity meter from the library to be one of the 100 households in the village to monitor our elec use, so lots of discussion around that.

Latinetc wed, SB had extra recorder! both enjoyed the sampler sewing, and BB did some french as well [i think?] science was discussing the results of the pea experiments and setting off the next microbiology one! growing our bacteria and having antibiotics to either by cidal or static [we hope!] fair bit of discussion. Am going to try and find slides and coverslips so that next time we might look under microscope…

Thurs SB and chris went karting as a home ed thing with max and the bigger puddles, with BB and josie staying with merry and having great fun. BB loved the play, and SB adored the karting [as did chris!]

fri i believe was mostly making mothersday cards for the grandparents…