oh dear on proper blgs!
SB
nursery
FIRST BALLET LESSON – she loved it
archael dig again – but did a more q and a imagine approach
story games
‘mummy, i am going to have 3 jobs when i grow up, one at a time. first i’m going to do ballerinerin, then doctorin, the archaeolololololin!’ love her!
BB
nursery
hide the ball under cup
stacking cups
fun with SB
Posted in General, history, SB-PE, socialisation, Stringbean's HE
have to do huge presentation, so in shorthand to string tale together:
SB home ed
make carrot cake
silk road stories x 3. discussion countries, china, gods
globe – long and lat, china
maps and globe book – long and lat, n and s, used globes and maps
archaeol dig book
europa jigsaw map – guess countries
drawing family week planner/timetable
stamps – made card
eliz 1 book
sing primary maths 1a – missing numbers
balamory jigsaws
tell time book
jason and argonauts
snail and whale and squeeze books
bike fixing
studydog
sudoku numbers
harvesting
cuisinairepatterns
BB
crawling
finger foods
strong willed!
stacking cups
other
chris’s parents move delayed
car service/mot
lovely day, i am so happy at home.
love my girls
will write up!!
and yes, photos
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Posted in art and crafts, Butterbean, General, geography, history, literacy, numeracy, photos, Stringbean's HE
Horoscopes
Aries Aries
There’s no need to go pounding your head against a wall, dear Aries, your day today will be just as stubborn as the true Aries that you are. The planetary configurations today will push you to lay the foundation for the projects you have been planning over the last six months. Go with the flow. People say that Aries are good at lighting fires, but lousy at keeping them going: it’s time you proved them wrong!
Posted in Blogging, Daft Stuff, General
well, no photos taken – that must be blogworthy!!
postman brought sonlight order while we were away [its in things I have my eye on page]. I managed to restrain myself and open with SB. So we have read the archaelogists dig for clues, maps and globes, first 3 greek myths and done first 8 pages of explode the code book 1.
for a break, we went swimming! SB swam a whole width, so will have to arrange hose swimming lessons now as promised. STill in drowning dog style, but she has such confidence in the water. her stroke is far better when underwater swimming as not worrying about keeping head up. She almost immediately started playing with another girl, and they had a whale of a time together. Hopefully we will meet up at the pool again sometime. BB loves being in the water, splashing and kicking away.
Came home for beans on toast, read a bit on egyptians, greeks and romans from the encyclopaedia, also the earth and solar system. [SB chose the pages that looked interesting to her] Some singapore maths and then colouring of a big fun book she has.
I then went out to harvest all the onions/shallots before rain makes them worthless. they are v damp, so will need airing/drying.
SB got the hama out for another flower. She wants to make loads and loads, so have done a bead merrily order.
Minor moment as I insisted on playing with BB, and heaps of books brought to my feet. We continued, and when settled, relented and multitasked.
Now rewriting my lost presentation for friday – sigh. Anf flickr uploader crashed, so fiddled about with that, but first 50 won’t automatically be in the set. Have looked at screamteam’s photos while waiting
Posted in art and crafts, gardening, General, geography, history, literacy, Out and About, SB-PE, socialisation
agh, my presentation frozen – am i in autosave mode? dare i find out?
Anyway, will take this oportunity to blog – initialy sketchilly and to fill in.
tuesday
miraculously left at 7.30 and a few traffic jams aside, made good progress. Stopped in a service station to find chris’s bumbag [with everything inside] precariously hanging to outside of car through SB’s imperfectly shut car door [Yep, gave him a hard time on a number of the issues raised]
tent up easily – poles are helpful here
SB helping was even helpful in places.
Lovely campsite
We then went for walk up onto quantocks – it was BB’s first bushbaby experience, and she seemed to like it. SB enjoyed the walk as well.
It was still reasonably warm at night – no need for fleece blankets etc. If mudpud does end up moving, this would be a good alternaive week? could have a rising 5′s not back to school barbie [katy's idea, though we couldn't make it]
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Wed
Visited Crealy, and met up with the Screamteam and 2 red Boots. We were late, but they appeared unfazed. It really is a great place, but not able to forcibly move it to closer to home.
Lovely day and lovely company. the children played happily, and after a slightly shakey start, SB got the flow of things too. Kessie dog certainly a softie, and even I’m not afraid of her! Relaxed chat for adults, and lots of water playing for children. yep, it is going on flickr as I type!
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thurs
met up with a uni friend, Shaula, who is the children’s godmother. We took the somerset steam railway to minehead, had a picnic on the prom and then a walk and play along the sands. Not such scorching weather – Sb disappointed not to swim. However, looked at what I confidently explained were lugworm holes [i hope] and drew and wrote in the sand.
chris for some reason put BB in bushbaby backwards – looked very odd, and turned her round again.
Shaula had come bearing gifts – both children delighted!
She had tea and gossip with us, as it is far too long since we have met ‘IRL’
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fri
this time a drive to exmoor and a couple of walks. around caractacus stone and tarr steps ancient clapper bridge. lovely day. tea shop lunch and chips at minhead prom for tea! SB a good walker now. didn’t moan too much that BB now has bushbaby! SB loves tree climbing too. Lots of roving HE – geography/maps contour lines, flooding, landscape reading, history, ancient technology, flora and fauna [caterpillars, pondskaters, sheep, ponies]
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sat
slow to pack up, and had been rain overnight. SB took almost the whole tent packing time to tidy a few books and toys. Had been goingto look at a local abbey and then moveout, but just got going earlier to meet up with pete ‘n kate in bristol. He was Chris’s friend at uni, she mine at school and uni, they met at our wedding…..
lovely to catch up again.
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so all in all a chilled and sociable holiday.
Home ed taking place – lots of colouring, a fair bit of singapore maths. SB ‘read’ to herself a variety of red nose readers, and we read a lot of others together. We looked at her egyptian book , why it rains and a space book as well. ed on the hoof as above, also star spotting in the evening – mostly making up our own constellations. I think shaula read SB the whole child’s bible.
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Posted in art and crafts, Butterbean, General, geography, history, literacy, numeracy, Out and About, photos, science, socialisation, Stringbean, Stringbean's HE
I am Oscar the Grouch, bear with a sore head. Its the first day of hols and I can barely interact with the beans. I need a well placed kick.
we have packed – including tent poles this time. no onion picking, but might just bugger off and do it considering the blackness of my mood.
Made worse by both girls wanting to be my shadow, so that I know how dreadful and spoilt I’m feeling.
I think I just need headspace, and don’t get a great amount of it – either at work or home.
Good hols will clear things up!
oh, things we’ve done – watched finding nemo, happy street, read some books, new webland, hama, colouring and music.
I have been barely interactive in anything despite SB trying her best. Crap Mum Day. Chris has taken over.
edit – slightly redeeming, we have actually completed and for the first time ever, ironed the hama. SB very impressed. I then perked enough to do the full bedtime thing with cuddles, snuggles and tickles, so prob forgiven. Still feel crap about it. Must have earlier night – and sleep the other side of the bed
second edit – actually, looking at the pictures, we also caught a butterfly and discussed lifecycle – moving on to dragonflies, where I have forgotten what their vicious waterlings are called. We watered in the greenhouse, and think we might even get fruit from the sweet peppers that SB collected seed from when cooking, chitted and insisted were all potted up. I don’t think day absolutely dreadful, but not good. Bad Mummy mark for them both wearing yesterdays clothes as well.
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Posted in art and crafts, gardening, General, photos, science
just dug up some more potatos and an onion and picked runners and sweetcorn. Apart from the eggs, the whole lunch [fritata and corn on the cob] were free food.
’bout time we had some chickens isn’t it!
i think we’ll prob go for the Spring [time to save for that nice swallow coop as a joint xmas, birthday etc pressie!
Well, that was the theme of the day, colouring really. She did ages this morning, found a colouring book we bought in Italy earlier this year, sat down witht he pencils quietly and coloured away. This book had coloured pictures and matching blanks, she seemed to really like that, as she copied all the colours (and made a fuss when she didn’t quite the right shade of yellow etc.)
She has suddenly really developed the pencil control here. For ages colouring wasn’t one of her fortes, she didn’t really seem to make much effort/be interested at all and it was typically quick scribble of colour ‘ done’. Now she is much more controllled, keeps teh colour moslty inside the lines, is much more careful, concentrates much more on and spends much longer doing it. And seems very pleased witht the result.
So , other than colouring, we went swimming later on, SB wanted to cycle, but the pool isn’t very near (nearest 6 miles, this one 8 miles), so bit of big round trip just yet. SB easily managed to kick a width with a float in front and she almost managed to swim/doggy paddle a width as well, did about 80 %. sdo she was on about swimming lessons again – Helen had said that she could have them once she could swim a width, BB bobbed about, gurgled, almost floated, kicked her legs and chuckled at SB. There was only me, which frustrated SB a bit, as she likes playing with in the pool, and it’s bit more limiting when i Ive got BB as well. At the poolwe went to in Leeds it was at private gym and was lovley, there was seperate kids pool with squirty water things, slide etc. so she could entertain herself more a lot as well.
I guess it is an under 5 session so they just ahve variosu floats etc. around. What she’d really like I guess is one of those big inflatables (or visit to Centrparcs….) We all had fun though.
On return BB slept for about 3 hours solid – bit worn out I think 
So me and SB had nice easy lunch together. After that there was a bit more colouring, then we went and gave BB’s high chair a good wash We used the pressure washer as it has too many nooks and crannies and is a pain to clean, hence it doesn’t get done properly often enough, so gave that good going over, cleanest it’s been I think since we bought it.
Then she wanted to get the Happy Street out, I did want to go and harvest all the shallots and onions, butr she wasn’t having any of it. So we built a nice Happy-tropolis and played with that – every time I tried to sneak off she complained.
BB woke up when it was almost her dinner time, so sat on the sofa feeding her, and doing more colouring with SB. I was just about to start dinner when Helen came home, so she spent time with the girls while I did dinner, a little bit of Hama-ing went on, but SB not entirley ahppy, and tipped what she had started back into the bowl. she doesn’t like Helen working so much (well none of us do) and then sometimes gets frustrated when BB gets in the way as well. She even commented at dinner time on why Helen was at work more – and the last couple of weeks ahve not been good workwise time anyway.
She fell asleep quickly though once in bed
Posted in General
to remove Chris’s awful blog from the top! He might as well have gone the whole hog, and Jax style put some photos up!!
mind you, our room not much better than Jax’s and hurricanes SB and BB have ripped up Happy Street – well mostly BB – and the floor is in uproar – add to that cratefulls of pencils,armfuls of books, some tops I got from ebay, sundry pages of the guardian and some hama beads…… well, you get the right impression.
I am on call, was in work until just after 6, so lucky to get back tonight. Greeted by an enthusiastic SB and a ravenous BB. Fed BB and told SB a story -after picking my way over happy street. We hama-ed while BB tore up happy street – chuckling and raaaring as she went. SB getting much more careful of the hama, but too impatient yet to complete anything on the midi bead size. they are fiddly aren’t they. I doubt I’d want to do the small. Lots more books and the macaroni cheese for tea – yum.
SB told me about her day – and as chris blogging better, he will prob add, but in summary, she was too attentiony for him to do anything seperate – and these jobs were pick the shallots and onions, and pack for hols. Upshot is that we wont be going on holiday tomorrow, but tues. Will text you sarah re wed if that OK. Maybe SB and I will pick tomorrow, as the shallots and unions really need to come up. They did go swimming, and she has done loads of really beautiful colouring, as well as play with the happy street. Anything else he’ll have to say.
Shame about the hols, but we are chilling, and it is better that we start a day late rather than get all twitched up to get there tomorrow night in dark and rain!
Special thoughts from this blog to Jax and Layla and families for tomorrow and the rest of the week, when I will be starved of knowing how things going on.
Posted in art and crafts, General, literacy, numeracy, SB-PE