Category Archives: history

A post with some HE in it!

Posted on December 10, 2008 by HHaricot | 1 comment

it looks like it has been a while :blush: . luckilly, some HE has been going on!! SB has done a fair bit of maths, piano practice and handwriting, and a bit of spelling and music theory. she has read her new usborne books on samurai and aztecs and crusaders. She as also read hundreds [ok i exaggerate] of library books, done a lizard picture for sketch tuesday.
on Sat SB had her judo party, and really enjoyed the disco, and we have some fab photos at some point to flikr [well behind on helmsley though] and she has had a swimming lesson today and an HE playdate yesterday.
BB has carried on with loads of letter writing, some maths – she is considering how adding works at the moment. i really must remember her phraseology! she is deciding whether it makes sense anyway. but what if i add 2 things? will it still be 6?? [after 5 plus 1]. and also poisson rouging, jigsawing and crafting – an angel at library crafts, and painting all the animal picture frames she got as a birthday present. she wants to do recordering and music theory too now. there is no holding her!
we have as a family read some french books and had some french conversations – bb suspiciously asking – are you doing that in french again [ ] mind you, she has chosen to watch 2 videos in german – heidi and some crazy fairy story one.
As a family we have put up and decorated 2 christmas trees and got out the nativity scene. BB insisted the baby had to go in it as it might cry. i have been to a rather excellent planning meeting for the wednesdqay stuff, and chris is off to a planning meeting tomorrow. so, amidst the excitement of violin case buying, other stuff has happened!!

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Posted in Butterbean's HE, Dance/drama, daubing and making, early maths skills, history, language, literacy, little languages, music, numeracy, pre reading, SB-PE, socialisation, Stringbean's HE, writing

happy top post

Posted on November 21, 2008 by HHaricot | 4 comments

i don’t like the blog to look sad for long! today has been productive for the beans. SB has really got the hang of pas de basques and cifras, and done some tidying up of a number of other steps. feeling more positive! so thats good. she also has judo grading weekend following helmsley so stop over plans curtailed unfortunately. she has done some piano practice and finally has finished singapore maths 2b – woohoo! done spelling and handwriting. we have together read a book about castles all snuggled up [as i needed a hug!] and both girls have been to gym. BB has been mostly investigating all her presents happily.
and tonight i did some christmas shopping courtesy of M and S online 3 for 2 and 20% off. i only bought items that i would have bought anyway, as it is so easy to get sucked in [so i halved the amount of stuff initially in the basket!] i am hoping amazon does a similar sale at some point!!

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Posted in Butterbean's HE, Dance/drama, early maths skills, geography, history, literacy, music, numeracy, pre reading, SB-PE, Stringbean's HE, writing

putting your heart in it

Posted on November 12, 2008 by HHaricot | 3 comments

wellll…..
We had a fab [if knackering day today, i am always surprised by how tired a day in london makes me!] we got up bright and early to catch the first possible train to london – which we did [1st poss with railcard that is], and managed to meet up with Michelle and Chloe succesfully en route. We got to the RI in good time for a KS2 lecture on the heart, including a dissection display. we v much enjoyed it, and met up with Nic, monster and teeny there. it was aimed at the ‘higher end’ of KS2 I think, but SB said it was fantastic and she really enjoyed it. they all loved the dissection, and to be fair, the home ed contingent was far less unruly than the school – possibly because being squeamish wasn’t going to be so funny as with a room of classmates!! Will flickr eventually, though notice Nic has started… BB and chris went bookshopping and cafe hopping, as the site now says no under 5′s. i asked about that, and they didn’t seem bothered, but we thought it might be a bit testing for BB, and it was the right decision, as she would have lasted 5 mins! Walking there and back we went past an art gallery [the selling kind] and SB was much taken by the contemporary art there. thinking we should go to tate modern again sometime

Afterwards we went to green park to let of steam and have a runaround, meet up with chris and bB, and have lunch. the children had loads of fun with the leaves, throwing them all over the place, burying themselves in them and climbing trees [getting told off by a couple in the process, that we then speculated about as they tried to eat their lunch!], and eventually said goodbyes and went our separate ways.

we went to the british museum. we only had a bout an hours museum time, so we wanted something to just dip into, and neither of the girls had been there before. It is, of course, an old haunt of mine! I lived in london for 7 years, and part of that time was doing a psychology degree at ULU – we went past the psychology building, the ULU building [i remember the bar and orchestra practice!] and told SB all about it – eyes agog at the thought of the enormous ULU library!

Anyway, we had a wander in and out of doors of the ground floor, just really getting a feel for the place, and stopping at things that caught their fancy. SB most taken by all the modern works of art / statues there – gold kate moss included. SHe particularly liked the piece of the man and woman and all the medicines they had taken rolled out, and pictures along the side [birth to grave stuff]. BB liked the african section best.

we spent a bit of time with the assyrians lion hunting, making sense of the frieze and counting dead lions. i was totally struck by how in the past UK and other ‘booty hunters’ had obviously gone round hacking enormous pieces off ancient cities, and couldn’t help but feel something was irretrievably lost. how much more majestic must the assyrian door entrance have been in situ etc. deed done and all, and maybe otherwise they would have been lost with ‘robbing out’ etc, but…

easy journey back on the train as we had a flask of coffee, books and nibbles to keep all happy. as we were getting off, one of my work colleagues got off too – having been in first class all that time!! irritatingly, BB fell asleep instantly on the way home and was unwakeable, but woke up at 9. grr, and SB didn’t have time to eat properly before judo, so by the time she had had dinner and got into bed it was nearly 10. after a going out day, you just need them to fall asleep quickly.

chris gone to bed, as the grumpy virus has reached him, and i am not sure they will make HE group tomorrow! both SB and BB said lots of funny things i would blog all day, and i have forgotten them all, sigh..

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Posted in General, history, Out and About, SB-PE, science, socialisation

Sketch tuesday

Posted on November 11, 2008 by HHaricot | Leave a comment

well, its monday here, preparing for sketch tuesday there.

SO today i went to work, and found that for some unknown reason clinic was cancelled, so i decided to agree to a day off [well, sort of, because i am doing tonight!]. ANyway, i came home and surprised the family and we did a whirlwind of catching up with HE! infact, we did so much so that i am lost for starting points!! Well, i think we started with reading BORN WITH A BANG: The Universe Tells Our Cosmic Story (Sharing Nature With Children Book), having recommended it on the EYHE forum. And yes, it is totally fab, and it does have fab illustrations. we had a read of the scientific bits at the back. SB is developing an enquiring mind, as she wanted to know how people knew that was true, so we discussed physics and maths experiments that pointed to the likelihood, and rediscussed the particle accelerator at CERN, in particular the hadron collider. we then looked into a book about the sun and black holes, Space, Stars, Planets, and Spacecraft (See & Explore)
, and we both got quickly lost with considering string theory – well, it is a bit to advanced, but she liked the idea that it was called a string, and TBH we didn’t do much more than a brief skid across the surface of an idea [i am not sure i could go particularly deep in it!]

SB did a fab violin practice. She practiced slurring, and then saw how many notes she could slur and string cross, so in fact most of the violin practice was having fun with this new skill! the practice was more than double our usual because of it!

in this time BB was happily jigsawing away, with me giving her the odd hand, but after the violin practice was sure it was her HE time!! SO SB settled herself with singapore 2B [last few pages] and BB did earlibird 1B, and then did some before the code whilst SB did Magical Skills: Ages 7-8: Spelling: Ages 7-8 (Magic Skills)
. She is really enjoying this series, so we might buy her the odd one or two more on other subjects! bB then did some pattern blocks and playing with little things making stories, whilst i read SOTW to SB on the subject of knights.

And then we had lunch very late!

After lunch we thought we would do some art, BB was v keen to make a rocket, and SB to do sketch tuesday [though a bit late!]. SO SB and i first investigated watercolour washes. [i must buy some more nice watercolours for us to do this properly!] and then over the arctic colour she hummed and hawed deciding which icy creature she wanted, initially thinking plankton, and working her way up to penguins. it meant she read a fair bit of Polar Wildlife (Usborne World Wildlife)whilst her wash dried! She did 2 versions of her drawing, and we emailed her favourite version off to be added [hopefully] to the group! We did a short bit of french altogether Bonne Nuit a Tous: Goodnight Everyone (I Can Read French) showing that SB does actually know more vocab than i thought she might!!

Gah, can’t get flickr pics to come here! will try again

BB meanwhile was doing some fab painting of her own, of a v colourful house, and then multicoloured butterfly prints. finally we made and painted her rocket whilst SB was at ballet [see below!] and then BB watched some 6 zoo lane whilst SB was at brownies, and we read books together, snuggled and tickled. oh, and she did a recorder practice – a couple of a’s and b’s!!

tea was curry in front of saturday’s merlin. A nice and full day i think! Keeping it so full, gave less chance for post weekend fallout day! 2 more chapters of pirates of pompeii to go!

A Triangular Day

Posted on November 7, 2008 by Daddybean | 1 comment

Unlike Monday, children managed to get dressed etc. quickly enough and early enough without too much faffing for us to get away almost on time, with me not to grumpy ;-) to head to City 1 for Tots and Nots. Quite a bit fitted into the session – some crafting – making little rockety things from foam sheets & sparkly pipe cleaners, wax crayon on card over painted with black paint – then scratched through to make patterns. Though SB proceeded to scratch all her paint off which I didn’t quite see the point of.

Someone else did a little session showing how a tune can focus soundwaves so you can hear things better, and both girls did some recorders (SB did two sessions) with our tame HE-ing music teacher. Rest of time filled with random playing.

Headed off promptly but at what I thought would be slighty late time to head to Town 1 for gym. BB has started pre-schoolers gym session at the same place that. It’s just a free play type session – they have structured sessions as well, but not at a time we can do. They have various soft play type things out, ladders and benches to climb up, but they can also go and clamber on the gym equipment, jump in the big foam pit etc. Slighty odd to have all the littlies runniung aruound whilst Louis Smith or one of the others their in the British Squads does their stuff at the other end though.

While BB and me do this, SB sits on the side (though grumbles a bit) and reads, does something out of a workbook or whatever. Today she was moslty reading the Castle Diary: The Journal of Tobias Burgess I think.

After that headed into town for a modicum of shopping – picking up a new phone from Argos (being able to check and reserve things online makes it all so easy) though of course BB wanted to ‘buy something’ and they both decided they liked the ideas of remote controlled cars. Treated the girls to a cake in Starbucks on the way back to the car as we had a bit of time spare.

Then back to the gym for SB’s gym session. This is much improved for me as they have found some volunteers to run the tea bar, so I can get a cup of tea whilst waiting. Buy the time it finished I was glad to be completing the last bit of the triangle to get home.

Chips for tea whilst catching up on the second series of Robin Hood. Before bed, SB wrote her letter to a child from a school in Kenya that one of the local Home ed groups is rasing money for. One of the parents is from Kenya, the school was set up by the headteacher for children who cannot aford to pay for school, many of them are orphans and live at the school as well. At the session a couple of weeks ago, they reported back from a visit to the school earlier in the year and brough letters that some pupils had written, so we all took one to reply too. So SB has written a nice reply, Helen said she made a really good effort with it. Will take it with us when we go to the group to morrow (in City 2 for a change, though hope to get back to City 1 for a HE group Celidh in the evening)

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Posted in art and crafts, Books, Butterbean, daubing and making, history, literacy, music, noises and sounds, Out and About, science, socialisation, Stringbean, Stringbean's HE, writing

Christmas is coming

Posted on November 3, 2008 by HHaricot | 5 comments

and the mincemeat is being made.

AArgh to christmas coming. why do i get so behind with christmas thoughts! pressies to get etc etc. its at our house again this year, we were going to have a break, but i’m working boxing day, so no point going to my parents to come back late on xmas day!

ANyway, I digress – well, i don’t really digress, as i haven’t started. I just am not feeling bloggable. I want the blog to just write itself, i like a record of what we do to look back on. i am barely using the camera either. obviously something is not quite right!

SB is more cheery these days [ or else i have got used to her wails and abrupt emotional changes/fragility] she is more stroppy as well. perhaps this is an age and growth thing. i do love having my mostly happier girl back again. She is talking ten to the dozen again, it is often like being in a wind tunnel! [and yes, I do know pressure of speech is a psychiatric term!] SHe tells me her ideas, what she has done, how tshe thinks the world works, and is alive again. phew. I am sure we are not out of the doldrums completely [as her wail about not going to the shop to buy a magazine shows, she is v quick to be desolate], but i no longer have her tell me she doesn’t see the point of being alive. BB is a squirmy armful of self confidence, bounciness, determination and joy. she is grasping the world around her and making it work her way! i love how she has such a clear way of describing things, and using her older sisters vocab to strengthen the emphasis on what she wants to say, and also the gestures and facial expressions! nearly 4! how time flies.

SO this weekend i have been working, but not too busily. The girls have done a fair bit of playing and also HE stuff. we are castle reading in our history at the mo – always a fun thing to play and recreate! SB is doing lots of spelling practice and maths – she hopes to finish her 2B book in time for when the MPAH 3A arrives [she prefers the MP as opposed to the primary maths which i prefer!]. She has also done music theory and 2 violin practices with me. BB is really grasping sounding out words as they are said. she doesn’t know the alphabet and scanty letters, but is good on the sounds and joining them together. we have done a fair bit of the before the code book 1, and today when we were going to do it together she told me she could do her home ed stuff by herself, and did!

thurs was a divali day at nots and tots, which they enjoyed. SB mostly played with L and E, and BB mostly did the crafts. they went on to a fun playdate afterwards, which both were v keen to tell me how much they had enjoyed it. So that was good.

fri was already blogged by chris – SB was v scary i think. she had been desperate to buy the mask, and I agreed as long as she made the costume to go with it out of an old sheet – she had the idea to bespatter it with blood. Was so excited to have the costume and rarred at lots of people in it, and was most impressed with the squeeze the heart thing. BB got fed up with her costume, so we tore the eye holes so that she could poke her whole head through, and then she was a much happier little ghost.

SB got this book from the library.The Magician of Samarkand
i would strongly recommend it [as would SB] and we will look for more books by that author. it is one of our favourites on junior jackanory, and the book itself is written beautifully. we love!!

we have done some french reading and conversation. following a recommendation on another blog, i purchased some more french resources, and we are doing the l’art de dire. I like it. i guess this bit could easily be made up and done with someone confident in french – which I am not! and there may be cheaper alternatives [luckilly i bought before all the currency turmoils through canadian relatives!] but actually i think it is deceptively simple, in that initially i wondered what i had spent my money on [ i bought the lire ones at the same time, and they are more obviously a good buy for that kind of thing] but as i use it to formalise our conversation, both SB and BB seem to be getting on well, and I have more confidence to extrapolate and experiment. you know, by the time i have finsihed home edding, i might be able to speak french! i did suggest to deepend Katy that she could prob write a home-ed conversational french package and have a market ready! I think she may be lacking in time though!! we are still using a various books and reading lots in french.

today we started making mincemeat using Delia Smith’s Christmas
. it worked well last year, and smells gorgeous! unfortunately with the nutmeg grating, there was a small amount of SB grating… never mind!!

what else? ermm, both girls have done lots of playing. BB loves her little things to play with, so will no doubt love her sylvanians – though still tempted by those rather glorious anamalz for her birthday! am thinking what to get other children for presents as well, and yes, christmas is coming!! [i think that may be where this blog started!]

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Posted in art and crafts, Books, Butterbean's HE, Cooking, daubing and making, early maths skills, General, geography, history, language, literacy, little languages, music, numeracy, online resources, pre reading, socialisation, Stringbean's HE, writing

where is that blogging muse?

Posted on October 30, 2008 by HHaricot | Leave a comment

ermmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

yesterday chris did some windowing – wahay!! and his parents came over, there was a bit of home ed stuff [sb maths, handwriting, spelling, piano and a castle box book, bb b4 the code and earlibird maths] and baking.

today was science and latin group, but we did french instead of latin. we nearly got to the deep end in time, but traffic and road works were against us, gina was later though. for science we made anti grav devices. this was fiddlier than expected, but worked more or less!! we learnt a gravity magic trick as well and discussed failures and bodges – aka the melting of the hadron collider. in between the science and french, the children made tickets and membership cards for a show that they put on at the end – a musical variety act i think! also at the end katy shew them doodle art, which the def enjoyed.

SB and BB had done lots of baking the prev day, which turned into a nice end of session treat for everyone, and i have to say that i thought her choc and orange cake was rather successful. She pretty much made it on her own, so looks like a baker -vgreat!!

back home we chilled with merlin and robin hood [maid marian has died!!!!] and then sb and i played games whilst bb took a long time to fall asleep.

smiling through sunday

Posted on October 19, 2008 by HHaricot | 2 comments

cos I STILL have a migraine. just so not fair. had a lie in to try and shift it and meds ++. hmm!

well, BB did some more violin prac today, spurred on by yesterdays musicality, and is def v keen on this reading thing, bringing me book after book to practice on. wish i knew where we had stuffed before the code. you never know, she might be a whole word reader at this rate! though we are sounding out. SB did a piano practice and then had her head stuffed in a book – one about a roman fort, one about why castles have moats, and a storybook.

after lunch the girls went to have their photo taken with their pictures, and then can back to do loads of fimo-ing. we are making halloween ornaments [BB says to put on xmas tree] i am wondering about having a small season tree that we can decorate as the seasons go round at the moment. not entirely sure where we would put it though. had to buy LOADS more fimo from my favourite fimo supplier. Both girls did some general playing, and then we did a little bit of the french conversation book, and SB and I did some SOTW

we then snuggled, with both girls having a go at fantastic contraptions, and then watching merlin and robin hood. i think that might be it. back to work tomorrow.

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Posted in art and crafts, Butterbean's HE, daubing and making, General, history, language, literacy, music, noises and sounds, pre reading, Stringbean's HE

finally friday!

Posted on October 19, 2008 by HHaricot | Leave a comment

hey, I have remembered more of the week than i thought i would!! and i still haven’t done tax return – thanks for advice joyce. i have used a tax person before, and so am claiming already for enough! but it was doing this minimal bit of extra. and i have left it a bit last minute too. bugger!! I am also not convinced i am going to go back to work on monday relaxed and refreshed, but hey ho!

so, dad was doing some final touch up bits, and i was chivvying him to instead play with the girls. we did usual home ed things in the morning. a book order for BB’s birthday had arrived [and squirreled away] but in it was an usborne dictionary/thesaurus for SB, and she very much enjoyed looking for words in it, and asking us for words to find – kept her busy for ages. i think this and the spelling books are being so enthusiastically greeted at the moment, that she is obviously ready to begin this next phase! her reading is way ahead, and she was reading beautifully a barefoot mother and daughter story book to mum. she tries to put in the phrasing and voicing as well. maths by both, and we read some box books on castles, and she read also a book on forces. [i will at some point go back and link all books!] as well as countless library books. a final piano with mum. BB was playing wild games with her animals, and is v set on sylvanian family things for birthday – more little bits!! but she loves little bits.

we all went outside, and a prolonged play of football and then golf practice with grandad. sb enjoyed the golf instruction, and grandad was impressed with bb’s ball skills. i was glad they all did some playing together! it all fell apart a bit with the wails then and we went in and snuggled reading books [always a good fallback] and room tidying before playing games of ludo etc altogether. mum was amazed SB didn’t have a club to go to, and we finished off with a good home made chinese – thanks DH!

i had a migraine all day – presumably through gloss paint grrr. [and still have today]. i really really hate having migraines.

hmm!! nearly forgot, that SB and BB took their entries to the local painting comp to the church in the evening, and were v impressed with the grown up entries. SB decided that she wouldn’t be likely to win a prize, but both girls persuaded that having their work displayed in the church with all these others was rather fantastic anyway

thoroughly lost thursday

Posted on October 19, 2008 by HHaricot | 3 comments

which is what i was trying to find the venue for the snakes session on thursday! a slight disagreement with DH, and we made it! by the time we made it, i was feeling harassed plus plus!! but we were just in time for the littlies session, and i went down with BB whilst mum vaguely supervised craft with SB. we really liked the snakeman. and BB loved the opportunity to hold the snake and lizard, and said it was the best thing ever!! [we do know she has a thing about reptiles though!! both current and the extinct - well, i know dinosauria aren't strictly reptiles, but...] Any way, we really enjoyed our session. i think SB’s with mum was harder work as more people in the session, but she still really enjoyed the opportunity to touch and hold the snake and lizard, and would like to have had ore time. they both did get the chance to go back and meet some more of the reptiles, and also do some lovely lizard based crafts. Thanks to the organisers and enablers.

i left early as still in somewhat of a dither from contretemps with DH, and parked in a short time only spot etc etc. when we came home, we did science – always soothes me!! SB and BB did some of the horrible science explosives kit, and i loved the lava lamp take on the volcano favourite!! Mum did more curtaining, and dad was still painting away [bless]

we also did LOADS more HE, as the girls have been in a v productive mood! SB has loved her wizard whimstaff workbook – the first spellings one, and raced through. she is also enjoying the maths section on shapes and areas, and found chris’s tangram book, and had a lot of fun making the shapes with that. bB joined in with her maths and also pattern blocking. in fact, BB has been so keen on maths, she has taken the book to bed several times to do ‘bedmaths’ and is now on earlybird 1B. She has a much better pencil grip and easier writing effort than SB at a simialr age. most of SB’s maths was oral, but BB likes doing a certain amount of the number writing [within limits of course!] BB has also had something of a letter sound moment, and is more and more reliable in identifying the sounds at the start of words, and realising words are made up of sound sequences. she can’t recognise many letters yet, so we are still doing a bit of that, but she loves to hold books and look at pictures and say she is reading, and I have read countless books to her.

ANother thing we have done a lot of this week is french. we have done french conversations and read a lot of stories in french. i am not sure this is the best way in the world, but it suits us. it seems to mimic how we might pick up our native language, gets us comfortable with a foreign language all together, and doesn’t frighten me – who finshed with o-level only! SB and BB do it together. SInce SB only just getting comfortable with writing in english, i am obviously not going for writing and reading in another language yet! SB did piano with mum and then read loads of books, including stories to BB.

SB had gymnastics – which i haven’t got to watch before, so happy to do that! [and also chill]. i was impressed by the amount they work out, and clear to see what sb’s strengths and weaknesses are. we will work perhaps on headstands and poised balance!! [BB missed her session - oops]

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Posted in art and crafts, Butterbean's HE, daubing and making, DIY/ house renovation, General, history, language, literacy, music, numeracy, Out and About, photos, pre reading, SB-PE, science, socialisation, Stringbean's HE, writing

Category Archives: history

A post with some HE in it!

happy top post

putting your heart in it

Sketch tuesday

A Triangular Day

Christmas is coming

where is that blogging muse?

smiling through sunday

finally friday!

thoroughly lost thursday

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