Category Archives: General

September Soundings – 1. Socialisation

I will prob come back to this and re-edit a number of times. However, shal start as a mind-dump.

Although I don’t worry about socialisation as in the skill of being able to socialise and interact with peers, and I’m not convinced school is the best place to learn about being sociable, I am very keen to make sure that SB has plenty of opportunities to make friends, and see them regularly. I am prob a somewhat antisocial bugger – due to inability to learn social niceties at school – but am going to grad dip toes into local wed meets. I think if chris not working, he may do the fri pm. if he is, I may occais. get to do it instead [work rostas permitting]

added 1:I do worry that if we don’t get it right she will have the same difficulties as me. I also worry that she will regret/resent as she grows older the lack of friends and confidantes if we don’t get it right. i also worry that after school clubs not well suited to friend making – though if she goes to rainbows and ballet in the village, maybe there will be others doing both. At least if we try to be active or at least attend a certain number of home ed events we may have a better chance of a circle of friends – its a shame none are particularly close to get to.

More realistically, I would like to have an open house for home-edding families travelling around the country to drop by at – so take this as an invite. [although we aren't the most exciting of the home-ed community, and our housekeeping record one of worst on blogring]

AAAARRRRGGHHHHHHHHHHH

I have hit the limit for flikr with 2 days to go [in fact had to take 4 photos out!]
What will we do????

Daisy, Daisy…..

I’ve just bought (well put down the deposit) one of these, for me and Stringbean :-)

No we can’t really afford it right now, but the bikeshop was selling it significantly reduced as he has had it in stock since the beginning of the summer and wanted shot of it really. Pretty cheap, and nothing fancy for a tandem, but for the tootling about we will do it should be fine. With BB hitched up behind in the trailer, should look good.

96%

96% being the amount of our Flickr 2GB monthly upload allowance we (moslty H) have got through so far……. (Not I hasten to add all taken this month)

The whole tagging/sets etc. thing has really appealled to Helen’s organising/list making tendencies :-)

concede to convenience

i’m not sure i can bear even one more night of multiple feeds. BB not slept properly since we moved, and I am truly shattered. Have gone so far as to buy tin of formula, but not managed to bear to use it.

i feel such a failure for even considering bailing out, but if I could get some sleep at night, maybe I would have a bit more perspective and not be knocked about by every passing squall.

There and back again

Our flikr importr playing up – in fact sitting to the front of this posting, so I am just hoping the spelling etc better than usual.

Antoher parcel day from the great ebay book hunt – DK picturepedia set of 12 – fantabulous!! So we started with the dinosaur one straight away. Also the DK eyewitness native american.

We had a rush on to get out, as driving to Norfolk – never the easiest of destinations , to see little Nanny and Aunty Peggy. Aunty Margaret was also there. the drive wasn’t so bad – for a change. Little Nanny welcomed us at the door, and is walking ever so much better – even if mostly with a frame. She has lost over a stone in a month, and I didn’t have many empty cartons returned, so told her to do better for next time.

We had a nice time, it was raining, and SB really needed to rampage around, so i was a bit stressed, as Nanny’s house full of treasured fragile ornaments. Mostly kept under control with workbooks, reading and distraction, though a few words were had on and off. BB also a bit uneasy, so perhaps making me tighter with SB. She did showcase her new ability to pull herself up to her feet and look very smug.

Aunty Peggy and Uncle Robert came round. She is looking so different – steroid effect mostly, but also tremendously aged. She did well though, getting SB’s name right and BB and talking sensibly to them. You can see her body as giving up though, weeping sores up and down legs, and terribly bruised arms [again probably steroids]. Although she has brain mets, and they were obviously effecting her – as not the Aunty Peggy of 6 months ago, enough of her was the same so that I felt I could say a real goodbye in my heart to a woman I have seen as an extra grandparent all my life. It is hard to predict when the sands will have stopped flowing, but not long it seems. since my Aunt noticed a dramatic deterioration even from 2 weeks ago, i’m not going to kid myself that even if I get to see her again that she will be anywhere near herself. This really is a year of loss in our family, and I just don’t have my usual strength to manage. They [as in with Uncle Robert] popped by only briefly, and even that was a strain for her.

SB and Nanny enjoyed cutting up runners to go with the pasta bake I had brought for tea, Aunty Margaret played with BB, and I was domestic. It was nice seeing Aunty Margaret again, as we met so often in Leeds. Also nice seeing Nanny approaching her old self. Though she is obviously frail, and more frightened about the future. Managing for now, though I worry about the winter, and she doesn’t actually get out of the house.

Fantastic cloud formation on the way home. Poor photo as had to wait for a layby, and wasn’t as good by then.

www.flickr.com

I will not dwell

on things I can’t change.
reading Jax made me howl over things I can’t change, so nipped to Ros to remind me not to obsess.

It obviously isn’t getting particularly easier

Miquon rules

Or at least seems to in our house. Got home from work to find maths type books - singapore and miquon liberally scattered over the floor, a magazine from nanna f as well, where she had written out a crossword, and filled in lots of puzzles.

I think SB going through a very dynamic autonomous era at the present, and really diving into learning spontaneously. Oddly, it makes me feel even more disorganised that I haven’t got things at my fingertips for her. Writing and maths are the flavour to savour, though a lot of read aloud history and stories going on. The usborne farm series are proving to be a bit of a hit, with SB just quoting the first page. Certainly a lot of processing is happening.

Through ebay got lots of books coming through in a steady stream, so looked at the usborne through the ages homes and houses, and also barefoot animal stories from around the world [4 of] which we do a fair bit of talking around – geography, beliefs etc. Am trying to have a rest a bit on beliefs, as noticed when swimming that SB said of the life guard to herself ‘she has a cross, she must be a christian’ and felt that this was seeming a bit labelling, and don’t want her to think she has to attatch a label to herself. Sticking to gods and goddesses as plurality therefore, and mostly ancient. Science also a bit of a back burner – Chris has loads of Krampf experiments tucked away, and I really need to get a resource box organised so that we can experiment like mad [sb likes!]

After tea she was again desperate to do some miquon with the cuisinaire rods [which for a year I wondered why I bought them, and now I know!] and was not keen to go to bed until she’d finished a page… and another one!

I used to read the autonomous ‘trust to the process’ type posts, and panic and have deep suspicions, but I see it in action, and it is working. However, I am a queen of listmakers, and somewhere high on the anal retentiveness scale [a former boss recurrently threatened to list me for an anal stretch], so I think Chris and I need to come to agreement on recording the broad brushes of home ed, and perhaps develop my ideas for a broad brush story arc for things such as history, with points for incorporating geography along the way.

Basically trying to predict tangents to go down, and facillitating the resources rather than ‘today we are looking at france’ type arrangements! lso with the piano in another room, we are forgetting about it [like the tv] so I want some kind of game that we draw cards for activities [games, music, crafts, experiments as well as a few readers/workbooks] and then do them [cheating allowed so actually get one she wants to do!] at those lulls, so that it again sparks off using some of the hidden away resources.

Also Chris needs to BLOG! After all, this is his blog [and the flikr is his account too, that I seem to have overtaken. born to organise, thas me!]. cos when she is 5, i want to start some way of recording what we do as we do it with comments on the other things you notice – like increased attention span, and processing info thoughts etc. Like Jan, so that if ever we become known to PTB [and this area strong on that, so anticipate it will be near instantaneous] we can at least be confident in our body of evidence – even if we decline to show it.

Other ponderings, I think i’ve swapped my desires from an eglu to a swallow now where is that fairy godmother???

BB walking!

Just now! not shuffles, but holding my hands walked towards daddy and then he took over – the full works – voluntary lifting of feet and moving them forwards in a purposeful manner! She was very proud of herself.

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