Category Archives: photos

10 Years ago.

Posted on August 15, 2007 by Daddybean | 19 comments

It was a beautiful, sunny,hot August day, and we got married. It was pretty much a perfect day really, we got married at Rogerthorpe Manor Hotel (though it seems to been taken over – it was an independently run place then) and had the place all to ourselves. Lots of family and friends around us, a nice simple ceremony, lots of merriment, lots of great memories. Just a lovely, lovley day.

If i hear the music we had as we left the room at the end of the ceremony (Overture from the soundtrack to Much Ado About Nothing), it still makes my eyes go all watery. Loving you as much as always Helen.

Amusing bit: The DJ got fed up playing smoochy numbers at the end of the reception, as everyone kept leaving the dance floor, so he finished up playing something (I forget what now) from The Prodigy.

What we missed bit: As it was a civil ceremony we couldn’t have any hymns.

Bad bit: Helen’s dad realising rather too late in the day that he hadn’t had a film in his camera

(sorry, poor photo, scanner not working properly, so I took a quick snap of it)

19 Comments

Posted in General, photos

flickr catch up

Posted on August 7, 2007 by HHaricot | Leave a comment

pool fun

Chemistry fun

physics fun

visiting merry
sweet frenzied mob Castle fun

Amberley working life museum
Weald and Downland museum

cool playpark

portsmouth historic dockyard

west wittering beach

we love camping

triclinium at fishbourne

CHEF Sports Day

Posted on July 15, 2007 by Daddybean | 9 comments

On Friday, we had a clash, Sports day with one HE group, or a visit to Sacrewell Farm with another. SB chose the sports day, as she really enjoyed it last year, and the farm will always be there to go again to. So me and girls (H at work :-(? ) went to the second of the local home ed group CHEF sports days that we have attended. Last years was very hot. Not so today, though the weather was fine, sun even came out eventually.

Plenty of classic sports day things, like egg and spoon races,

sack race,

3 legged race ,

tug of war etc.

and of course the obligatory ‘get the parents to do silly things dressing up race‘.

Finishing up with a ‘bash the watermelon’ game.

Butterbean wasn’t that interested in the sports, she just pottered about happily though

And lots of chilling, eating, chatting, running around playing .

Rounded off the day up with a play at the playground/paddling pool area.

Met a chap there who is considering home edding his currently in school
daughter. So he’d chatted about that with various of us. At least we
will have answered the ‘socializing question’ quite comprehensively :-).

His daughter is quite happy in school, though the parents have concerns
about the education being provided in school. Seems a harder decision
to make than if child is obviously having problems with school.

It’s all good fun, and like the camps, a good way to enjoy and celebrate being part of the home ed community.

9 Comments

Posted in Butterbean, Out and About, photos, SB-PE, socialisation, Stringbean, Stringbean's HE

Early to blog!

Posted on July 7, 2007 by HHaricot | 3 comments

Am making frog-in-the-bog for tea with home grown veg on the side – that is the life! would have own eggs, but perhaps not yet!

BB is being dreadful again at going to bed, and is then so tired that she falls asleep like the dead in the day. So today we haven’t let her fall asleep – she’s been dunked in a freezing cold paddling pool in the afternoon to make sure! Whether she makes it to the tea I’m not sure, but they’re having a bath upstairs at the moment.

However, she IS being gorgeous about playing animals. Mostly lions and monkeys, which we have played a lot today. She also demanded ‘diolin’ practice – duly done for 10 seconds! Painting - 2 minutes, reading a book – hours! We have played shops and also with bricks, and a ‘find the’ game with the letter cube thing that Jax gave us – rather a hit!

SB woke early and plugged herself in front of the TV. When I got up – at 9.30 – so not as late as I would have liked! We read stories together of brer rabbit. I suggested we did the next bit of first language lessons – the aesop fable narration, and she already new the story so happily summarised it. When I said that I could write down her summary or she could, we then spent the next hour happily writing it down, whilst doing other things – see below! [BB and I were being rather distracting though I guess, with falling down towers!]. I was very proud of her, and she was impressed too. Though she is keen to improve her handwriting, I don’t think she’s bothered by spelling as long as she can read it back.

She then spent ages getting dressed as a princess and cleaning her teeth, and BB did lots of poisson rouge – getting rather good at mouse control, but easily frustrated when she right clicks by mistake. I have stuck a hand sticker on the left click, which usually reminds her.

SB did some brick building with BB for a bit, and then we sat together as she read me various bits from the DK picturepedia on birds. We have also been watching the life of birds in the evening, so she remembered some of that to add in, as well as the other bird books we have read. Wanting to do some flying experiments, we went to the kitchen to make different shapes, but ended up doing mostly a craft session on birds with feathers! She is disappointed they don’t fly well, so we might to the experiments tomorrow.

All out into the garden to make the most of the sunshine, having pasta for lunch outside [v late!] and the then SB did some sudoko, BB tried to catch the fish in the pond, and then they both spent ages splashing about in the paddling pool or helping me pick broad beans and pod them for tea.

They’ve argued over helping me make batter for the frog-in-the-bog, so lets hope it still rises! Chris doesn’t appear to have drowned them yet, so I shall quickly flickr. oh, and no chris, I won’t be doing different colours!!

edited to add photos and say, frog in bog a success, BB fell asleep the instant she had finished chewing the last mouthful. SB went on to custard and banana. We are about to play a game. We played Amazon arithmetic and happy families.

3 Comments

Posted in art and crafts, Butterbean, Cooking, gardening, General, literacy, music, numeracy, photos, science, Stringbean's HE, writing

a typical sight through the week

Posted on July 4, 2007 by Daddybean | Leave a comment

a typical sight through the week

Originally uploaded by nicgee.

Photo borrowed from elsewhere. Thanks to all the friends who made moving possible!

and thanks to the friends who put me back together also. [picture courtesy of beyondmywildest]

cropping

Posted on June 13, 2007 by HHaricot | 4 comments

I am now cropping 438 photos [see number approaching 400!] to 4 by 6. I know photobox will do it, but I will do it better manually. Boring as hell though!

4 Comments

Posted in General, photos

Yet Another Chris Catchup…….

Posted on May 12, 2007 by Daddybean | 3 comments

Tuesday wasn’t very exciting. Didn’t go to the library since awaiting DHL yet again trying to deliver something – they failed again, something about the van maybe (it appeared the next day on the doorstep, so much for signing for it…..). This was another wodge of the Magic Tree House Books – so we seem to have plenty of those now for SB to read. (we also have some spare – Helen managed to bid on two lots on Ebay, and there was a bit of overlap with some other we had).
A long bath with lots of bubbles for the girls.

Some housework – not that it seems to show really. But we did put loads of washing away and tidy up the girl’s bedroom.

A bit more Maths. The girls got out the Happy Mais. Butterbean had started the other day spearing the bits onto cocktail sticks. They sat using up most of a box of cocktail sticks skewering Mappy Mais to Happy Mais Kebabs, then they set up a Kebab Shop yum yum, tasty. some reading was happening at some point as well, but then it normally does. cooking dinner for later whilst they did this.
Swimming lessons rounded off the day. Not entirely convinced of the worth of this at the moment, doesn’t really seem to be a lot of progress, though I suppose it’s happening – we haven’t been swimming much lately so don’t get to see her in action much I guess.. Lack of feedback I suspect. Thing is, last year at the end of each term, they would tell you if your child had passed the next level, you got a card with the various criteria marked, on whether they had passed, needed to practice it a bit more etc. and then move onto another class the following term if necessary.

Now they have a rolling process. Once a child passes the appropriate level, then they move onto another class (assuming there is a space), but until you do, there is no arrangement for feedback (well not yet anyway). It’s feeling somewhat unsatisfactory.

Late finish for Helen today, meant BB in bed when she got home and a long day for everyone.

Wednesday we went off to visit the Fitzwilliam Museum with a local HE group – no Helen, she had to work today . They had a session of about 1 1/2 hours with the museum staff, looking at pictures, amour and other things. apparently enjoyable, I didn’t get to see it as I had BB. Had coffee with a couple of other parents until the little ‘uns got restless and then took BB outside to run about. Climbed steps a lot (ekk! , got to the top, realized there was a sheer drop to the side….), played chase and boo around the sculpture. Wahted the lift for the building works which fascinated BB.

I like the detailing on this little shed hidden behind the main steps, someone had made the effort to cut a nice little ventilation holes, not just drill a few holes

Afterwards we lunched on the grass and then went for a visit to the Botanic Gardens. so I didn’t actually get to see inside the museum. Tried to do a bit of shopping but then it started to rain, so got the bus back to the Park and Ride. Girls had a bit of a picnic in the back of the car before coming home.

Thursday seemed to mostly disappear into BB’s Toddler gym followed by shopping – nothing exciting, Tesco’s , cat food (cue lots of looking at the fish), DIY, Staples – where did the time go?

Home to a bit of playing, dinner cooking, maths, ballet lesson (see below re the cycling) dinner eating and another late finish for Helen.

Friday. Bad start, SB came into our bed crying about something I’ve since forgotten, at about 5.30. soon followed by BB, who drunk milk and then was a total pain, jumping, climbing around the bed, wiggling and kicking, so gave up and took her down stairs where I dozed in front of breakfast TV and BB fell back to sleep

Umm – lots of time doing maths, she had a bit of mental block re place value and how once you got ten units/tens etc. then it carried over onto the next column. So we played with cuisenaire rods and things . Did a bit more of First Language Lessons (well lesson 2 ….), it focuses on a poem Brown and Furry about a caterpillar, so we’ve read that a number of times, and talked about what it’s about. SB made a present for Mummy – an old container, wrapped and decorated and filled with M&Ms

We had an impromptu experiment outside to do with pendulums – aka the swings. she noticed that BB in the baby seat was going faster than her (the ropes are much shorter on the baby swing), so we investigated what happened when we changed the length of the ropes on the swing (shorter = faster if you wondered). They ran around and played for a bit whilst i did a few garden jobs. Greenhouse is looking good at the moment.

Another lateish finish for Helen, glad it’s the weekend now

3 Comments

Posted in art and crafts, Books, Butterbean, history, literacy, numeracy, Out and About, photos, science, socialisation, Stringbean

A typical home ed day? Photomeme thingummy

Posted on May 5, 2007 by HHaricot | 2 comments

Actually, in many respects it was. We forgot about it to start with [fairly typical!] BB woke up way to early [fairly typical] Chris eventually went down with her leaving me to have a lie in [fairly typical for the weekend!] An brought me breakfast in bed of croissants – not at all typical! Bored now with saying the typical bits!

Errr, its amazing how much you can forget. Have got flickr uploading wildly. Honestly Chris P, I put up too many photos even for me, but its much quicker than sorting them out! One day I will, I promise!!!!

Anyway, at sometime after 11 we started taking photos, and not at all sure what went on before that, as that was with Chris whilst I was reading the paper! But when I was surfaced enough to remember we were taking photos and also to interact, we played who’s who. BB insists on playing, so not exactly to the rules, but enjoyed! BB and I then spent some time hammering baby toys and playing with the rainbow blocks to make lots of noise, and then constructing brio and making the trains chug around [always a baby train and a mummy train with BB!]. We also did a bit of looking after and watering the plants in the conservatory.

I had suggested to SB that she might do some education city as we have paid for it and she hasn’t done any for ages and ages. SHe fancied webland, so whilst chris got the next edition downloaded, I read a story from the barefoot book of mothers and daughters - the persephone and demeter story which SB knows well, having had a mad love affair with greek myths and legends. SB then spent HOURS on webland! Not very interesting to photo! We had also missed april’s edition, so she did all of May followed by all of April. BB also did some poisson rouge. In a moment of pure inspiration I have put a hand sticker on the left click of all our mice! She now knows which bit to click – hooray! Also getting more controlled with the mouse movt. Does have her mother’s patience though. wiggling it wildly when it didn’t go where she wanted.

Had lunch and SB returned to do some more webland. I was bored with this, and checked the mail – hooray her new sports sunglasses arrived. [should stay on as she twizzles about on swings and cycles]. The low start of ebay price was completely overmade up by postage – 6 times the cost!!! i did factor that in though.

BB desperate to do some painting, and SB wanted to make a princess hat, so combined the 2 activities. At least half our paints were put into pots though – gradually getting SB to take responsibility for setting out and tidying away crafts. hmm She did sort of set out, I totally tidied! Anyway, she and BB painted the hats, and then carried on with further painting. SB did a particularly beautifully coloured handprint. Eventually they declared themselves painted out, and a quick hose down and they went outside to play.

SB and BB scootered/triked about for a bit, but SB hurt her poorly knee, so I re-dressed it, and she read a book about food through the ages with intermittent waily patches. I made them some popcorn to eat. BB played Bob the Builder, moving dirt around the garden, and generally enjoyed rampaging about, playing hide and seek etc.

SB got fed up reading the book, and wanted to make the egyptian breads we have made in the past from the 120 history projects book. it was sold to BB as a snail cake – the word cake enticing her in from the garden to join in! SO we added mess onto mess in the kitchen, and all enjoyed making the egyptian sweet bread. BB and SB enjoyed competitive flour and butter rubbing, so there was a fair bit of loss!!

Daddy had been to the shops btw as we were all out of food. He returned as the egyptian breads were put in the oven, and didn’t blanch too much at the appearance of the kitchen. BB being up for over 12 hours was swept off to a bath, and SB has been outside again while I have done this and put flickrs onto the uploader. We do plant to perhaps sellotape the hats up before bed, and SB has promised a violin practice of frere jaques – she will moan when she has to do it after tea, but it has been the only non-negotiable thing to do today! SO since we have done all the autonomy, its time to do the violin! I will obviously be adding photos after the girls gone to bed!

follow up! Well, I had set that up, but chris rebooted ‘puter without checking whether I was doing anything! SB did the violin with enthusiasm – and very pleased that a nearly recognisable tune coming! read britannia, and she read a young usborne readers book [and is in fact still reading it]. Joining up the hats will need to wait till tomorrow, as will eating the egyptian breads!

Links to the last 2 photomemes in the sidebar, and this one will join it now the photo’s are added. Look forward to seeing others’ photo days.