Category Archives: Books

A weeks beginning.

Posted on October 26, 2005 by | Leave a comment

Suffering ‘Blogger’s brain’ again re yesterday.

Monday

Both Stringbean and Butterbean slept a bit longer after Helen went to work -Stringbean hadn?t got to sleep until gone 12 (or was it 1 am?) as she’d slept on the way home and unfortunately woke up when i put her to bed . She did spend a long time in bed but just didn’t get to sleep so she caught up a bit. Both woke up all perky soon enough though. BB is such a total wiggler when it comes to getting changed, as so a you let go she rolls over and is off across the bed. She loves it so much – she does this thing where she sort of flops her head down on the bed while sticking her bottom up and then chuckles away. That and making beeline for the end of the bed so she can stand up holding the top of the frame. So with her and SB generally messing about and ?helping? it can take a while to get her changed.

SB seemed a little out of sorts after the weekend, as she often is after seeing people, And didn?t want to settle down to anything that I suggested in the ?worky? nature so after her breakfast while I finished BB and mine she pottered about in the playroom. She found some more pens and pencils in a small draw in the cupboard so dragged them out and sat herself down with some paper quietly to do some drawing. She did a great picture of a rabbit. It is apparently jumping up into the sky so the grass isn?t too long. She spent a fair while on this so me and BB got a little while to play little peep-bo, hiding games, taking and passing games etc. Bit of a blank spot here, though I do remember some reading of stories, though I got SB to try reading some of the words out as well.

Did go outside after BB went down for her nap. We filled up the bird feeders ? talked about why we put different food in them, why some goes on the bird table or the ground, what different birds eat, why small ones need to eat often, why fat useful as a food for them in the winter, the names of some of the birds we see. And then spent ages poking around outside. Found a couple of big sticks and played a few ?big stick games? , balancing them on end. trying to find the point of balance (talked about why it is roughly in the middle), a bit of sword fighting. Various other things which I now forget came up as well.

After our lunch, BB then woke up, so SB settled down to play a few games, listen to stories etc. on the Cbeebies website while I fed BB. Tried to listen to a couple of the record BBC Schools Radio programs with her, she was half into it ? particularly the one where we had to act out a little drama ? making noises, being an elephant etc. but not really into it. A little bit later at some point Helen came home. Not sure exactly what was done there but they did some good lego Pyramid building at some point before dinner. There were plans to make some lemon curd, we even went and bought the eggs, but somehow didn?t get round to it.

Helen here – we actually did quite a bit, but can’t remeber so much either – oops. did do some explode the code, 3 pages, SB helped me write the numbers in the Kakuro game – she has grasped it is an adding game, so that made us do a bit of mental maths. I also read 3 or 4 stories from the usborne around the world, and therefore she had to read me a red nose reader [for every 3 I read, she has to read 1!!!] lots of squiggling about with BB as well. lego was fun though. We even put the characters in the pyramids with the lego animals to keep them company in the underworld.

Tuesday

Well girls esp. SB awake early enough this morning BB had a pretty poor night ? she is doing this thing where she will wake up and have a feed, then when I try to take her, she will scream madly as she wants to go back to mum, so bad night.

After her breakie, SB went back to some more Lego. This time making a train and some ?sofa?s for all the people to sit on apparently. Once me a SB had finished up we got dressed etc. and sorted out the library books she wanted to take back and which she wanted to renew ? She uses hers and BB?s card and has various books taken out on different weeks, so we have fair pile of books to sort out, check etc. Still wondering what has happened to two Mr Men books that disappeared in the house ages ago. Did I hide them is despair and my dislike of then I wonder?

Got sorted, time to go out. First stop baby clinic. Have only been once since we moved here, no real need to go, but BB weighed and got HV to try and get the endless requests for SB to have jabs she has already had stopped (various people not doing/telling who they should it would seem) Missed SB 8 month check as GP does it ? but she seems ok ? Sb had an hearing test but don?t do that now, and we missed the birth one. But she seems to hear ok.

To library, where for once we managed not to cause delays and confusion as we normally seem to manage to do. Read few books ? found some Red Nose Readers, so we read those in the library. Got out some more books and headed home. BB to snooze, me and SB to eat toast, drink coffee and read all the books at least once. My Mum rang asking if we could go over to help sort out some problems with wiring the TV, video etc. so once we ?d finished and sorted out stuff to take we headed over there.

We played a bit of game that my parents got when I was around 10 called Hare and Tortoise . It?s a fairly cleaver race type game, but it?s not dice based, so there is much more strategy to it than chance. A bit to old for SB, but she saw it and wanted to try it .She got the hang of the general gist of the game – collecting and then ?spending? carrots to move around the board. And it gave us excuse to practice working out how to make up the right number of carrots from various denomination cards, talked about the idea of counting in tens again. Didn?t finish the game as I had to pop out and then she wanted to stop. Also impressed Nanna a bit later by slicing up the potatoes to make nice chips. Spent basically all afternoon there, not as planned. Was a nice afternoon and had had an idea to get out again and maybe do something like bark rubbings.

Managed to get home with out SB falling asleep. Tea, a bit of reading of library books again. SB made some pictures for me and Helen ? I liked the ?love to Babby? Bit on mine :-)

Butterbean note. She is so much into everything at the moment, put her down and she is off investigating, nosing about, getting stuck in places. She loves the dishwasher. As soon as it is open she is in there. Almost literally – I found her on the open door, head inide the machine….. :-)

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Posted in art and crafts, Books, Butterbean, Dance/drama, history, literacy, numeracy, Out and About, photos, Stringbean, Stringbean's HE

Sleep…? how quaint an idea

Posted on October 15, 2005 by | 4 comments

Edit – Ahh, like buses, two blogs have come along at once – my take and Helen’s take below :-) Ah well leave as they are I think

11 pm, SB still awake upstairs – and she’d had bit of late night last night as well. Fell asleep on the way back from the puddlers group and when we got back I just couldn’t get her to wake up. Ah well, means that she was full of energy for when Helen came back from work.

Morning disappeared soon enough, with a trip to Tesco’s, Staples, sorting out an activity for the puddlers group (and then leaving the materials behind…..Grrrr…..), a few house chores. Group was good, as Merry has blogged elsewhere, it’s turning into nice little group (or even not so little), Shame we don’t live little bit nearer when it comes to travelling to it. SB always enjoys it, she spent ages today cutting colouring etc. to make T-Rex stand up model. She took great care in carefully cutting it all out. Taken by Tammy’s comments re recent evidence that some dinosaurs had some sort of feathery covering rather than scales she stuck feathers on it -Fluffy T-Rex any one :-)

She also enjoyed the ‘make a skeleton in the ground thing with bits of pasta’ activity, as well as making, and more importantly, noisly throwing around paper Pterosaur. I’ll get some piccies of them tomorrow, (forgot the camera again, but Merry has some nice ones)

Once home whilst SB snoozed, BB woke up, so me and here played for bit without interupption, she is getting gradually better at standing, and is happier about holding onto things other than people, and almost lost the lopsided crawl she had. Just starting to cruise the furniture a little bit. She had dinner while I had a cuppa, and then Helen came home just as I was starting dinner. Work seems to have been a crap last couple of days, and she is on call all weekend :-( Does have next week off though, and no plans for us to go away anywhere until the weekend)

SB seems to have got into Story of the World, I was looking at it last night and she wanted me to read her a bit, so we did the first chapter, and I heard them reading the next bit about the Ancient Egyptians earlier. She’s been resistant to books with lots of words and not many pictures until now, so maybe we’ve reached another little milestone, she even let Helen read her a bit of the Faraway Tree at bed tiome last night. Might get hold of Winnie the Pooh and try that now, before she get’s too corrupted by Disneys efforts ;-) anyway, been looking at the SOTW Activity book and itching to ahve ago at some of those things – by the time we’ve finished hacking the garden some more should be plenty of long wooden bits and stuff – just right for building a nomads hut . What say you Merry and Tammy – maybe next week?

Chose a little Usbourne Pocket Science book about how cars work or somesuch as her bedtime reading – fascinates me how she loves to sit and listen to this sort of thing, even though some of it must go over her head. didn’t blog it on Tuesday, but we sat and I read her a Ladybird book about Aeroplanes. It was not at all simple stuff, and I didn’t read the text verbatim, but we did look at the diagrams and pictures whilst I talked about Aeroplanes, the shape of wings, lift and other forces on the plane, different types of engines, controls etc.

SB bedtime update 00.22 – still awake……….. Time for our bedtime though

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Posted in art and crafts, Books, Butterbean, history, Out and About, science, socialisation, Stringbean, Stringbean's HE

fridays child is …

Posted on October 14, 2005 by | 2 comments

…finding work hard.I’ve had a bad 2 days really. Feeling trammelled by forseeable work constraints, and not sure how to resolve any of these issues without having to move at some point – sigh. feel I have therefore made a crap choice for my family, as we are all settling here really nicely. hmm. Also been in terms of actual work a difficult 2 days. sigh. Also working this weekend. groan!!

Some things OK though – although been home very late at night, the girls have been up and enthusiastic. And tonight that has been really valuable for me, as I came home feeling hopeless and uncomfortably dejected, but just doing normal things with them has enabled me to relax.

SB very taken by the story of the world. Chris started reading it last night, and she asked me to read some more tonight. We are discussing writing – she actually seems to remember a lot – where the nile is, flooding and farming, and egypt, pharoahs, heiroglyphics etc. Anyway, we discussed the sumerian cuneiform writing, and she would like to do some. must but some clay, but playdough to start with! She also laughed at the hippopotamus being a water horse. these books are written nicely aren’t they.

We also read the usborne pocket science books what is the earth made of without prompting she named all the planets and that they were in the solar system. she even told me why we could only live on earth. not bad really. Each time we read the books, she picks up a little bit more, and asks a few more questions. The other one was how do cars work and she was quite taken with the idea of how the pistons worked, and naming car parts.

At bedtime I read a few more chapters of the faraway tree. She has finally decided she doesn’t need pictures for a read aloud as long as she likes the story. She’s still not really aleep though and keeps coming downstairs.

this is mainly as she fell asleep after the puddlers group. They did dinosaurs, and I’ve seen her t rex, pteranodon and muddy dinousar pasta bones!!

BB’s black eye is improving. She is starting to walk more around furniture – oh help!

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Posted in art and crafts, Books, General, history, science, socialisation, Stringbean's HE

Wednesday’s child is full of…

Posted on October 12, 2005 by | 6 comments

.. beans and energy and enthusiasm! We have had a great day [rather full-on]. i might even have to dash backwards and forwards re-editing, as I think its going to be hard to remember it all. i had thought that since I fell asleep with the beans last night and then woke up at 11, stayed up till 2, and at 3 had to leave to sleep in spare room as chris snoring so loudly it woke me up [I kid you not!] that I would feel lousy, but somehow no.

We started with reading. In a rather countdown style when SB asked me to read, I asked for 1 from the top, 3 from the middle for her to read and 2 from the bottom [rofl!!!] i sort of got them. So I started with the story books - the twelve princesses orchard books [v nice] and something a bit mawkish about baby snow fairies from the library which she really liked. In fact liked it so much she then read it to herself. She then read – with varying degrees of success, but at last really trying – 3 red nose reader books. Both she and I were really proud of this. I then read a fair wodge of the rest of the Usborne Greek Myths [bellorophon and the flying horse, king midas, the chariot of the sun, pygmalion and his wife, eros and psyche]. She has got the hang of quite a few of the ancient greek gods – and goes ‘oh no’ in advance whenever a character says they are better than one of the gods! Whilst I played with BB for a bit, she then got out the Happy Street and made a huge track.

just before lunch we went for the chosen craft of the day – glass bottle painting. I had got some half price glass paints from lakeland last christmas sale, and chris had gots some Ikea bottles, so SB set too. the isntructions were limited, so it has been a bit trial and error. For some of them I drew the demanded shapes with the black outliner for her to colour in, and others are coloured without/spotted/splodged. We have done this on and off then all day, as you have to wait a fair while for side to dry enough to turn and do next side [oops for the drippy sides]. We haven’t quite finished any yet – 4 on the go and a window transfer. Both of us have really enjoyed this!

Between sides I finished off some of the mammoth greek myths session [as above] and suggested we get a greek history book to look at things in more detail. Nope said SB, I want this one – Usborne beginners Elizabeth 1. We read the book and discussed bits and pieces of it. She was much taken by the idea, and remebered some of the names from before. We – for once – dd the internet linked bit as well, and printed off the pages to colour in as well as looking at the various games and linked sites. She particularly liked a link to some Elizabethan music. so we stuck on a CD of roughly right music while we then read most of The history of britain – the Tudors. This book is aimed older, but still reasonable as a read aloud, with snipping if the page doesn’t seem to be as attention grabbing. the first thing SB noticed about henry the 7th was that he didn’t have many jewels, so we discussed fiscal reponsibility, and the fact that wars had made the country nigh on bankrupt. how much she takes in I don’t know, but I go round things until she indicates we move on – or I run out of knowledge! When we got to Mary Queen of Scots, it shows her being beheaded – but she was in prision shouted SB, so we wenty back to first book and re-read it, pointing out she was beheaded in the text, even if the picture was prison. I guess that means it is mostly going in. Not that I actually mind. i think of this as foundation stuff – learning to love listening, finding out, and working out how things are ordered – for example king and queen numbering is understood now, and that there are many year gaps, asn she is happy our queen is Elizabeth 2.

Half way through the book and BB woke up. As agreed with SB, this was BB special time, and she sat down to colour in the Elizabethan pictures. BB and I played with cars, rolling them to each other. We put the happy street people in and out of the cars. We did a bit more peeboo games and walking practice. BB then meandered over to where SB colouring,a nd did her best to see what was going on! SB decided to join in – so heavily moderated happy street play. [No SB, you can't take all of BB's cars to the far end! - we have at least 20 of the things!!] SB played peeboo too, and then pushed BB around in the happy street box, until decided it looked fun, so daddy roped in to push them both! A final bit of glass painitng and curry for tea. Aaargh to SB eating speed!!

After tea and bath SB insistant on Joe the Dragon maths website. She did the non-carry over addition and subtraction pages – though I scaffolded quite heavily some of the subtraction as she was being odd about it. [7-3=7 type thing??] however, soon got the hang and I could be less gritted teeth.

Just as I thought she would go to bed, she spotted the newly arrived rainbow resources box [yippee!!!!] We pulled out the story of the worlds and their activity books. the main text is apparently for when she is 9 [her arbitrary age!] and the activity books for now. And then she saw the Latin!!!! So, massively excited to be learning Roman language, and we have done the first 3 sounds. It is really nicely done, and suitable for her age [though I do have to do the reading] So thankyou really v much Jan for that tip. Dare I open up the massive doorstopper of a rainbow resources catalogue though????

I think that might be it – I was childed out as it were though by this stage!!

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Posted in art and crafts, Books, Butterbean, General, history, language, literacy, music, numeracy, photos

Short Blog

Posted on September 24, 2005 by | 3 comments

well, for once I’m going to be succint as we have guests.

yesterday I finally went to the emergency dentist to have tooth done – should have gone ages ago as cracked filling was spearing my gum. Still painful today, but in an aching something done way, so much better. the emergency dentist at the hospital was a fab woman.

Jaw ached so much, that I called it a day at lunchtime though and came home, just in time to nip off with the beans to puddlers. [my first!]

that was very nice! will def go if free from work for whatever reason. It was an egypt session, so we made tammy’s fantastic sugarcube pyramid – from the story of the world activity book. Rather unfortunately, she told me that the activity boook comes with suggested stories to buy, all available from rainbow resources, so Jan may be main another order when this one comes through!

other bits of fun – heiroglyphics, scarab beetle seals, making a paper pyramid and sand camels. I rea d a few books as well. tick box, tick box, tick box!!!!!! Hopefully Merry took a photo with our beans, that I can nick from flickr!

Home again home agian quickety quick, as imminent arrivals from ‘making it up’. I say imminent, but although Tim did OK, Jax got caught in traffic from hell. Big and SB instantly disappeared to play, and eventually all 3 were intently happy streeting.

any thoughts they might wear tthemselves out were, of course,erroneous. eventually a midnight socks the survivor tape did the trick. they still woke up promptly though, an BB had given us a dreadful night. luckilly i am coming too whilst blogging. may even get dressed!!

guinness back as well

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Posted in art and crafts, Books, General, geography, history, literacy, Out and About, socialisation, Stringbean's HE

The long and the short of it.

Posted on September 23, 2005 by | 1 comment

Bwahh! just shut the wrong window – goodbye post….. Luckily it wasn’t too much written.

Took the tandem out with the trailer as well for it’s first run as a full rig – ‘The Beanmobile’ :-) To nursery and to ballet class – a few car-replacement miles to justify it’s purchase.Stringbean thought it was great having Butterbean as well. Lovely Autumn morning to be pottling along. SB seems much happier now about going off on her own into things. She’s happy now to run off to get cuddle from ‘her’ nursery nurse, always used to like me to stay for bit first, and goes off into ballet without a second thought. Good to see, as she was always happy to do this, but the move left her seemingly much less confident. Excited to have all the gear for her ballet class, though ‘Bad Daddy’ forgot to sew the little bits of elastic onto her shoes, but they stayed on fine. Quite why the teacher wants skirts above the knee when the skirts in the shop all seem to be longer than that I don’t know….. bit more sewing to be done eventually I guess. Supposed to have little basket as well. Outfit is mostly in blue though, I’m sure there are ploenty of disappointed little girls who would have preferred all pink :-)

She of course looks just so cute :-) in the outfit. Piccies will soon be on Flickr.

That’s about it for interesting things from today, a bit of mising catchup from Tuesday:

Morning started unsually with bit of TV – she asked to watch some TV, and had managed to pick the time when CBeebies starts on BBC2, so got to watch a bit of that first, prised her away for breakfast by promising to video a bit.

Breakfast was followed by finding library books, getting dressed etc. – always seems to be plaver when we want to get out, then she wants to take her dolly pushchair as we almost ready to go out :roll: , Amble round to library, drop off the books for checking back in, settle down for story time – BB seemed quite attentive as well. Then probably SB’s favourite bit of the colouring and glueing and sticking – it was a mermaid so she was happy with that. She is always the last to finish as she always wants to do two…..

Bit of a chat afterwards about HE and stuff, given pointer to a dance shop in local town, so planned a visit to finish kitting SB out with her ballet kit. home to give BB some milk whence she promptly fell asleep and slept for about 3 hours :-) – she had had very bad night – a lot of crying – I’d ended up taking her into another room, but she still continued for bit. So me and SB had peaceful time, reading some of her library books, having lunch, watching the bit of recorded Cbeebies – Balamory, hanging out washing, whilst SB ‘helps’ – eventually decided she would be the ‘peg giver girl’ and clambers on the climbing frame – latest trick seem to be to climb along the top of the ‘jungle run’ handlebars with a foot on each one.

Main thing is that we finally started on doing something with the ‘Muddlepuddle postcards’ (a bunch of children on the Muddlepuddle email list sent postcards to each other) Pinned the map to the board, joined postacrds to location with some red wool. It’s looking very good, but still not finished as we ran out of pins – ands while we must have loads, they haven’t surfaced from the boxes yet. SB got very good at stringing the wool, tying knots and cutting it. Will do a piccie when it’s finished. However the list contained 28 other families we only seem to have 20 recieved – is it time to ‘name and shame’…?

Somewhere onong the way, SB disappeared upstairs to play with her dollies for bit, while I was on the telephone, so I left her to it to grab a bit of valuable ‘me’ time for a bit of quiet reading of the Grauniad and drinking of tea. Helen was due back from work pretty late, and a bit of kid free time is very good for keeping things on an even keel later on.

Once BB (eventually) woke it was some quick late lunch and then we whizzed off to do some shopping. Dance shop was tedious, becuase all the new classes have started and we caught the after school ‘rush’ – well it’s atiny shop, so only afew customers, but only one salesperson, so it wasn’t goign very quickly. So we had to wait what seemed like forever. SB – and BB were good though waiting so long. SB pleased to have the gear now. Popped into closing down baby shop and bought a couple of fleecy winter hats for the girls each for ?1.50 each – SB talked me into buying this fluffy plastic Tiara thing as well……

Time for quick hit on Waitrose and then home for dinner. SB was fine really, but did come out rather to often with ‘can we have’, ‘I want these not those’ etc. I was flaggin g a bit, so came out with the old chestnut ‘ I’ve just spent loads buying you your dance stuff, I don’t want to hear anymore I want’s or we will take it back’ :-) – one of those ‘did I really say that’ moments…… Ok empty threat , but it had the desired effect :-)

Home for dinner, a bit later than normal, and BB seemed starving, she wolfed it down and was making a fuss > Helen didn’t get home until about 8 – 8.30, so SB pleased to still be up when she got home, so she had bit of late bed time. BB of course was just happy for some proper nosh. Spagehtti and sauce from a jar (Lloyd Grossman, rather nice actually) was just about all I could manage to get for tea for us by then.

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Posted in Books, Dance/drama, geography, literacy, Out and About, Stringbean, Stringbean's HE

Late starts and early finishes

Posted on September 21, 2005 by | Leave a comment

well, hopefully chris will finish the blog for yesterday and put up :?)

today – well I had had such a crap night with BB feeding permanently, and rather a few work calls that I was no good for man nor beast and had a lie in.

Rousted up, and came too with nice cooked breakfast from Chris and played ‘round the mulberry tree‘ board game with SB. I read the last 2 disney princessess magazines [oh joy] cover to cover. SB loves them though, and it is all learning to enjoy the written /oral word after all.

I gazed with a suitable amount of impressedness at the map and postcards she and chris did yesterday [is that a spoiler?] whilst feeding BB [so she went to sleep for 2 hours- nice!]. we found where people lived, and those that sent postcards from areas other than their home address caused some consternation. Chris had aimed the postcard to Dartmoor, but it is now re-aimed somewhat closer to home. [you know who you are!]

We went outside to measure up the fruit bed – which looks a much more promising site for an archaelogical dig. I am going to buy minarettes, as although I think they are aesthetically fairly awful, they are the best functional use for that space, and then will have some espaliered pears and apples around the veg beds. Ken Muir are doing an offer with the kitchen garden magazine, which is effectively 6 at 12 each. I trimmed some more holly, and played catch games with SB, and stories for the climbing frame.

Found guinness, and unfortunately confirmed tht he has a very nasty leg injury, so is at present in the vets awaiting xray and then hideously expensive treatment. [so maybe fruit trees will wait]. Its either broken or dislocated – possibly from being run over. Rest of him seems ok – thank goodness. We will find out tomorrow.

SB had desire to make cupcakes, but settled for chocolate muffins. I have found out that she prefers to measure things in imperial – well there are far less oz than g! So returned to the past to measure in oz theingredients. They were delicious – so obviously an imperial recipe! Did some match and sort – AKA miquon while they were cooking – she def prefers singapore, but i think that is because miquon is so different to start with. She does, however, really like using the cuisinaire rods. Hooray – not a frip after all!

Whilst she ate her lunch, I got some of our shallots and started preparing them for pickled shallots – they are steeping in the brine overnight. prob 1/3 our shallot harvest, and will make 2 kilner jars. I will use some for shallot confiture. then discuss with chris whether to use the others fresh or pickle. Since we are a family keen on pickles and chutneys, I think its better to pickle and chutney, and use onions for everyday eating. We are going to replant some of them, as too late to do a shallot order.

BB keen on more feeding, so we read a book on earth sea and sky [well half], about, well, what is says on the tin – we didn’t get to sky part. She likes things involving the globe, so we looked at various features on there as well – though ours is such a cheap tesco globe that not very featureful, more political. We also played dinosaur ludo toghether. SB getting much better at understanding the flow of games. May even introduce the catching concept now. A ring on the bell, and the last of the redbook order [that had gone to leeds by mistake - I am sure i changed the address - LOL]. So we then read 4 of the anholts artists series. A real hit. A nice way to start thinking about art. She was particularly struck by the art in the Picasso one – asking why he painted the girl so many ways. [why not?]

We also have been listening to classic fm, and trying to discuss the type of music etc a bit. Must do a bit more stuff with the piano though.

BB has crawled alot today – getting very good at it. [in a slow lollopy way]. i am still making sure that I divert attention purposely to her, and SB getting better at following along, or doing something else [albeit reluctantly].

I’ve been out for a works meal – which was very nice. Given a slight grilling over home-ed, put played it as an even balance, not an anti schools thing, and something that just seemed right for us at this time. i wish Chris had never been a teacher though. I am p****d off with the, well its ok for you as Chris is a teacher – irrelevant!!! I keep plugging on about it just being an extension of what i’m sure they do for their own children without noticing anyway. no special skills, just time, patience, books and enthusiasm [well, ok there are some special skills in that lot - patience being one I have to master!] Some nodding there, so left it at that point.

Sundry messages and notices: I was having a dig at myself in the last post as a reaction to the school solar plexus thing. Do keep on posting your lists of what you do – i think it was the 10 pages of miquon!!! I like to see it, and although I do compare, on the whole I am not too stressed by it, as SB a wee thing. I can’t believe my blog stresses anyone – after all, we don’t often DO much of anything [ie 1-2 pages miquon with a lot of round the housesing] and its often me just reading lots.

If I was to be critical, I think i don’t do enough hands on demonstrations. This is why I am exited by the idea of a fake dig. I did look for old terracotta pots for painting and then breaking – with the idea that they could be dug up and glued together. However, we seem to have not brought any down from leeds with us. nor broken crocks. Will rethink. On a similar vein, having blanched the shallots in their skins and got a lovely deep coloured water, how much onion/shallot skins do you think you need to put in to make a dye??

Oh, and Kirsty, I only have 2 K books!!! [LOL] I thought I had more than that, but i have some 1′s and the usborne science ones making me think I have a lot!!!! My real flirtation with sonlight will start at about core 2, when the history and readers start to tie together. we might even try it then for that part.

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Posted in art and crafts, Books, Cooking, gardening, General, geography, literacy, music, numeracy, Ponderings, Stringbean's HE

Just call me Angelina

Posted on September 16, 2005 by | 5 comments

Nursery day today. Increasingly find us getting to Thursday and thinking that it is getting in the way of all the other things we could be doing. Though of course the plan is that I am at work on those days, hasn’t quite worked out like that yet though.

Afterwards took Stringbean to her first Ballet class lesson. It’s in the village which is nice, as often for us now things are elsewhere and need travelling to.

She has wanted to do ballet for it seems like ever (she said to me on the way there that she had wanted to do it in Mummies tummy). most of the other girls going there already had there leotards and their little skirts.and shoes, so she was a bit disappointed that she doesn’t have hers yet, but they had a leotard that she could borrow. Didn’t get to watch it sadly, but they did all look so cute :-)

Seemed to enjoy it, though seemed a little disappointed as ‘they didn’t do any ballet’, which I assume means they didn’t do any twirling around, dancing etc. – more simple movement stuff. did enjoy telling us how they all got to pretend to be a ballon going pop.

We are continuing with Stagecoach for bit, but will drop it, maybe after Christmas as more things come on stream – she has enjoyed it, and it’s an area that is diffcult/impossible to cover well at home, but it’s expensive and it really messes up the weekend as it takes out Saturday morning every week (it’s a 20 mile round trip). I think it is maybe something to come back to when she is older if she really shows an interest in this area. But once she is 5 in Feb she can start proper swimming lessons – she has managed to swim a width of the pool now and that was the deal :-) They do do stuff for under 5′s but it seems more playing, confidence stuff etc. and she is well beyond that, also Rainbows, and if I can find one a Gymnastics class (there is special Gymnastics place , but nearer would eb nice – and there is a fair waiting list for the proper classes it seems.. plus various HE stuff as well. It should keep us all busy.

On return from Ballet, I gave the kids their tea and heaed straight for the bath as Helen is normally back later today. Once out of the bath she was home and BB could feed (priorities…) and SB could play with her. Not entirely sure what was going on all the time, SB mostly scampering around with no clothes on as far as I could see. She did play a nice ‘Hide something under the cups’ game with BB.

A few future thoughts are forming. We have accquired quite a bit of stuff now – esp. books (moslty thanks to a bit of an Ebay frenzy on Helen’s part, plus a bit of Barefoot books, Redhouse, Sonlight) We could open a DK/Usborne library I think :-) – as well as general history/science/geography type things, we have Singapore/Miquon maths, Explode the Code, various phonics reading stuff, Getty & Dubay handwriting, Sonlight Timeline stuff. We want to put together a box of sciency stuff we looked at so that when something comes up we can have a go at it there and then. a lot is general household stuff, but somethings will need buying. We were looking at the science kits Sarah has mentioned before I seem to remember. And I’ve got a couple of years worth of Krampf emails stashed away.

So plenty of things. I need to spend sometime sat down looking at and thinking a bit about it, and I sense a plan for aiming at a modicum of mild structure coming over me. Nothing to intense – one of the reason for HE is that I think school starts being too academic too early, and I am a bit Charlotte Mason-y at times. But there are areas SB enjoys such as the maths ‘match and sort’ workbooks and related mathsy stuff in general, she is gradually getting a grasp of reading, she loves trying to write things down, she loves looking at books about various periods in history. I’d like to organise things so that we can easily do bits of stuff, do Getty & Dubay regularly, try to bring bit of structure to the way we approach the maths (the ‘pick a page, any page’ approach of SB is falling down more frequently as she progresses and the concepts get a little ‘harder’.

An area I think is suffering is that of ‘nature study’ – we do do various of bits of this as it comes up., looking at beasties etc. But I was concious when down in Somerset when out walking together that we don’t seem to have done much of that recently, since we moved. When in Leeds we had Country park we used to visit, and some local woods that we often used to walk round – with some excellent big rocks for SB to clamber on. Don’t seem to ahve done much of that, TBH, though we live in village now, I don’t think I fihdn the countryside very inspiring round here to get out exploring. Must make more effort. Though even our garden itself is a good resource.

And ther are things like churches and graveyards, that SB seems very interested in for some reason, and maps – which she seems to have really got the hang of conceptually which are jsut asking to be picked up on whille the iron is hot.

So a bit of a plan is needed me thinks. There are also domestic aspects to this, as too often the house gets to much of a tip, esp. the kitchen – I find it hard to concentrate on playing/doing HE stuff wetc. witht he kids when it is too much of disaster zone. Need to work on it staying tidier. more organised.

Haven’t Flickr-ered for a few days, something very amiss there……

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Posted in Books, Butterbean, Dance/drama, Out and About, Ponderings, Stringbean, Stringbean's HE

2 day catch – up

Posted on September 13, 2005 by | Leave a comment

Suffering from ‘Bloggers Brain’ – as in I can’t remember what we did yesterday to blog it …..

I know we went shopping in the afternoon, Stringbean was very good, went to couple of shops and got some veggies from a market stall (3 caulis for 50p – bargain….) – helps out by counting out the requiste number of lemons or whatever – she always wants to buy lemons for some reason. Excellent help in Waitrose, they have small kiddie trolleys (proper trolleys, not those stupid ride in car type things), she pushed this around carefully while I had Butterbean in the buggy, carefully stacked everything in there as we went round, didn’t crash into anyone. This was quick in and out shop so not enough time to get bored and grumpy for either of them. Came home to find H home so of course BB had good munch, SB wanted to play with mum, while I did housey things (cook dinner etc. Cauliflower cheese of course, which pleased SB as it’s one of her current favourites.). Roughly put up the Kyham to air has it was wet when we packed (disadvantage with something like the Kyham, can’t just hang it up to dry) and I remembered it was still in the roofbox festering.

The main thing I rememeber about the morning is that BB went to sleep about 3 times, but woke up after about 10 minutes or so each time so got quite grumpy and so spent a fair while cuddling her, some ‘matching and sorting’ went on as did some more colouring at some point, and we didn’t fiddle about with the tandem to attach the trailer so couldn’t try out that to go to the shops in (and in fact went about 2-3 hours later than intended….) All in all it was bit of bitty unsatisfying day, to much mess around from the holiday still etc.

Today (Tuesday)

Read a chunk of the Osburne TimeTraveller Omnibus on Romans with SB over breakfast time, along with the associated little diversions of conversation that crop up. after getting dressed, pottering about erc. then found the library books (now I can look them up on the ‘puter to see which ones we have out I’m nuch better at getting them all back). Ambled round to the library, ‘Storytime’ has started up again so we sat and listened to that, did a bit of colouring and sticking to make sea horse for the undersea display before getting out some more books. Had couple of ‘going to school’ type conversations as of course various parenst kids have headed off this week. Responses to ‘We are home Edcucating’ were boringly uninterested

Had the though that things are bit like some sort of bad ’50s sci-fi, all the children once they reach a certain age, suddenly disappear from view – creepy :-)

Home again, home again to sit down to give BB some milk and settle her down for snoooze and the a good read with SB. After lunch she found the magnetic Jiglets from when we moved and we played with them on the fridge. A slight confusion with the way words go. On the Zebra the word ran from the animals tail to it’s head, when she did fox it was the other way round, but she still did the word the same way so it was back to front , took a bit of convincing that words always go left to right :-) A bit more dot-to-dotting and colouring (she is really into both at the moment) and maths workbooky stuff – she has a great collection of felt tips, most of which were cheap or free and are frankly rubbish, they run out in no time and clutter the place up, so finally convinced her to throw away any that have dried up and we will by a set or two of decent ones. (There are couple of Berol ones around whihc have been around for ages and are still going strong) while we played with BB then headed outside into the garden.

SB got most of the washing off the line for me (she stands on her little trampoline ), played in the still up tent, rolled around with BB, then when BB had another nap we went in and cooked tea. SB did a really good job of cutting up the tofu, carrots and cauliflower. H came home bit late as she was on call but just as were having dinner, so got to have it with us. Tidied up the playroom while dinner cooked, SB insisted I hoover soo that I could put the rug back down (wouldn’t countenance putting it back over the grub…) so it was softer for he ‘exercises’ – much jumping and twirling about, and seemi headover heels and handstands. Wa shoping to get her into soem sort of proper Gymnastics class, but haven’t managed to yet

After bath time was chatting with SB about HE and school, what she thought HE was, and what she thought school was like – no idea of course really – she did suggest we should ask M her cousin as he goes to school. Not sure what she thinks about it, but she is happy with telling everyone who asks she is not going to school and is being home educated, so we leave it at that, we don’t really mention school very often anyway, we don’t make big deal about it, just ignore it really. It’s just not part of our life.

We travelled a long way mentally in 2 years.

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Posted in art and crafts, Books, Butterbean, history, literacy, numeracy, Out and About, Stringbean, Stringbean's HE

Baaadd blogger me.

Posted on August 23, 2005 by | 4 comments

Esp bad as this started yesterday, but then I stopped to go to bed…… Can’t be bothered to edit it to reflect the correct tense though.

Helen was chatting to Jax on the phone earlier an complaining that she’s no idea what me and the girls are doing half the time becuase I’ve not been blogging – sorry, did someone mention something about talking… ;_) . I did find I was out of the blog reading/writing thing once we went to Copenhagen, so better write something……

So on to today. Well it rained most of the time it seemed, so little incentive to go out, so forgot to go and walk the short distance to get an appointment for SB to get her hair cut as it’s not been cut since before we moved and is annoying her (actually it’s ditto for me as well, but I don’t like ladies hairdressers , even when they say unisex ‘cos there is nothing else in the village, ‘proper’ barbers me). so a pottering sort of day really.

Once Helen was off to work and both girsl unusally were up and awake, we sat and generally played for a bit as BB wasn’t awake enough to be put down happily.

Headed off to the kitchen for breakfast, gave BB a couple of wooden spoons to entertain herself with, and so of course SB had to join in to. After her breakfast, feeling a bit crafty, SB dragged some bits out of the craft cupboard and started gluing and sticking. She found little Flower Fairies bag and wanted to decorate it for mummy. So she occupied herself for sometime with that, with just a bit of help now and again, mostly on strategic glue placement, while I continued with BB’s breakfast and mine, washed up and other kitcheny domestic tasks. The two Fairies on the bag are SB and BB apparently,and they are hiding. The craft table from the utility room is still out in the garden and hence was very wet so she did it on the kitchen table so we ended up with glitter etc. stuck to table as the newspaper had been forgotten. (re glitter, I bet the owners of our old house still vacuum up glitter …..)

Back of into the playroom where SB dragged out some books and ‘match and sort’ – aka workbooks of various sorts – moslty maths. We sat and did some reading, and various bits from the workbooks. she did quite few bits of various activities around of number bonds, more than/less than, simple subtraction and addition. She is pretty proficient at these now, what she doesn’t like is having to write down the numbers too much as she isn’t very good at that yet, though she can write them mostly pretty cleary if she wants to. Next step for numbers with her will probably be the whole tens/units thing. We come across it few times now. But it’s something she isn’t ready for yet.

When the postie came, laden down again with various Ebay parcels, – I bet she is glad we are near the start of her round :-) – she also brought a package for SB from my Mum and Dad. A magazine thing and a couple of quid to spend. Magazine kept her happy for ages. It came with little toy of a few little toy pigs and things which she played with on and off all day – including complicated game that lost me involving her little ‘Baby Annabel’ dolly. Spent a fair while reading the stories, helping her with the various puzzles etc. she did very well at writing the answers in on the little crossword thingy on the back. She does like writing, I think she is probably ready to be introduced to something bit structured regarding it, so just as well Helen has order Getty Dubay from Sonlight – by ‘slowpost’ so who knows when it will come. I’ve been pointing out the little arrows they often put on the outlined letters to indicate the way to draw them , and she does seem to finally be taking notice of them now, which will probably help her produce better formed letters.

Semmed to be some other things happening, but my mind is bit blank BB was of course around and joining in when when felt like it. Usualy when SB wanted to play with somethign without BB grabbing everything. She keeps on looking like she might crawl, but then just does the ‘extendable arm ‘ thing they do when they manage to reach all sort of things that you thought were out of reach. She also does the ‘how did they move over there – I never saw them move’ bottom shuffle thing that Josie was so good at. She loves standing though, nursey comemnted on it the other day. And likes now to walk bit if you hold her hand, I think she will be walker first like her big Sis at this rate. She does go backwards on her belly quite proficiently though. SB does love her to bits though and is generally so considerate of her, and loves to help wioth her. She does this shouting/screamy thing to her, which really gets on the parents nerves, esp. late on in the day, but BB loves it usually, bursting out in great smiles and chuckles, which of course just encourages SB……….

Helen came home so she had some time with the girls while I whatever boring doemstic tasks it was that I did.

Had pre-bedtime spurt of Miquon maths. SB had got it out earlier, but the childrens materials book is just a lot of pages of actvities with no explaination. some is obvious, some you aren’t sure quite what is expected. But The accompanying ‘Teacher guide’ thing has lots of explaination and suggestions etc. It’s approach in many ways seems quite different so this is useful. So I’d put it off earlier, but we went ahead this time and she did a few bits. It has some good things to do with using the Cuisinare rods. SB is really gettting the grasp of these now understanding how you can use them to represent a number, and how the different sizes relate to one another.Seemed a shame to stop her, but we did want her off to bed :-)

So, Tuesday

When Helen had gone to work BB was up but SB was still in bed, so me and BB had a nice bit of one to one time, and I could dangle her upside down (which she loves) and generally play around with her without Helen worrying that I am goign to drop her or hit her on the ceiling or some such. SB came down after abit, I think she’d been up in her room playing tea parties with her cuddlies, she brought basket of them down for her and BB to play with , ahhh :-) So we played for bit and then got around to breakfast eventually, having a bit of pop out the front to watch the workmen resurfacing the pavement. Intending to go to the library later we sorted out the books to take back/renew and actually picked a couple so we could get our first stickers etc. for the Reading Voyage thing (ermm we seem to have been a bit slow on the uptake her….) so of course we had to re read most of them. I tried to spark bit of dicussion as to why she liked some books rather than others, and what were the best bits, which was moderately successful, esp. the latter aspect. The Muddlepuddle bookbags have been successfukl anyway in helping keep out library books altogether. We actually managed to take all the books back in one go :-)

Anyway, it was sunny, SB was into workbook mode now, BB wanted milk, I wanted coffee. So we decamped outside with workbooks, milk, and a nice cafetiere of coffee and sat at the patio table. While BB fed and dozed off me and SB looked at the books. She had bought out the miqon one again, but the bits she wanted to do required me to explain some things to her and she didn’t really want that, so we did one of the other simpler more general maths type ones. She is getting the idea now of number lines. They had one of those in the book, went onto the discussion of numbers beyond 9, drifted into the ’10′s’ and counting up in tens. once we got to about 50- or 60 she was able to write down 70, 80 etc. herself. Showed her what 100 (and palyed around with the idea of it being called ‘ tenty’) and 200 was written like and then she could do the rest of the ’100′s. talked about how many noughts 1000, 100, 000, 1,000,000 etc. had which she found quite exciting. BB got packed of to the bedroom, and I wanted to sort outthe tomatoes in the greenhouse which have been neglected and look very unhappy. She was goign to help, but decidedd the GH was too hot, so got a cane and went to play. she was goign to be fishing, but I soon heard her ‘killing’ the towels hanging on the line…..

When she finsished her games she wanted me to do something wqith her, but i wanted to finsih, so she got a couple more workbooks :-) She went onto a couple of basic science and ‘opposites’ ones. Simple stuff really for her, but if she likes doing it fine by me. One spread was about animals living in different habitats – cold places and hot places, the cold palce had Polar bears, and Eskimo, seals and Penguins. Now this is a bit of thing of mine, so many kids books show penguins and polar bears together living in the same place [I assume dear readers that you all know they don't........ ;-) ] Now okay story books etc. I’ll let them off (grudgingly) but books which are supposed to be about ‘Science’ – Grrrrrrrr!!!!!! This idea is so prevaent that I find kids in a school of 11, 12, 13 etc. not realising this.

So anyway, we had bit of discussion about this, looked at the globe to see where the Arctic and Antarctic were etc. Short diversion into why they were the coldest bits (which no doubt lost her mostly, but I am endl;essy surprised by which bits stick, so persist in popping bits into the conversations.)and so why maybe the didn’t travel to the other poles etc.

So SB sat doing these while I finished in the GH and chopped down various bits of overgrown tree until BB woke up and called us to lunch :-) bit of blackhole here, as we didn’t get out to go to the library until getting on for 4 pm, but can’t quite think what happened in between. Did spend some time upstairs with BB rolling about sans nappy, while I put clean nappies and clothes away ‘ably assisted’?? by SB.

Nice visit to the library, renewed some books, got her Reading Voyage bits done, sat and read a few things, enterntained people by being dressed in her fairy outfit :-) got some new books. Came home via the church yard so had to stop and read lots of grave stones and the hairdressers to make an appointment for SB who hasn’t had a cut since before we moved. Home to make a rather nice cous cous thing (SB loves cous cous) for dinner, SB did a good job of cutting up the Runner Beans. Helen home a lateish as usual for Tuesday, more ebay parcels to open. A nice DK game which they played a couple of times while I finished diner preps.

BB was with me in the kitchen on the floor while I did this, she started off miles away from the the ‘to compost’ bucket but unoticed by me shuffled across and started rummaging. When I noticed she had a n apricot that had started to rot in one hand stuffed in her mouth and a bit of green potatoes in the other.

Dinner, small people to sleep, coffee, ahhh………

Some thoughts/ponderings are bobbing around in my head, but that will have to wait.

A few piccies (not esp. good) are of course on flickr

www.flickr.com

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Posted in art and crafts, Books, Butterbean, gardening, literacy, numeracy, Out and About, science, Stringbean, Stringbean's HE