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……
, 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…..