Category Archives: literacy

Manic Monday

Posted on January 24, 2006 by | 2 comments

Don’t know what the beans did at the start of the day, except that it did include some Singapore maths. They then went intio the city to have lunch [apparently a very nice pizza!] and try and find BB some shoes now she is walking. SB was very disappointed that her feet haven”t grown though.

When I joined them, they had so far failed to do this, as needed to go to the other clarkes across the city. So I had the pleasure of being there when BB got her first shoes – very nice. She soon got into tramping around with them, and was stunningly cute as she kept trying to make a break for it. For exceptionally good value, we Got SB a pair of princess slippers for ?2. Should have bought loads and ebayed them for ?5!

We then failed to decided what to buy with the Johns Lewis vouchers quite spectacularly – I hate shopping really. Shops should have comfy sitting down and thinking places, not feeling all hemmed in. SO vouchers are still intact.

Came home and had a very healthy chips for tea – oops. My amazon order had arrived – which ncluded the just so stories and britannia for Merry’s curriculum. We have already caught up on the britannia. SB thinks it is great doing British myths and legends – partuicularly as it kicked off with a reference to the trojan war. Also started the Just So which she rather enjoyed. SB cbeebied whilst BB tried on her shoes again and clumped around the house.

for her bed time story, SB read me most of the M and S enormous turnip book . She sounded out the long words, and I helped with some of the blends. She was great! So she got a new story cd – fairytales read by bernard cribbens.

I have belatedly watched child of our time – and not worried for once, as I think SB and BB do have a close bond. Folloed on with the first installment of Elizabeth.

Now for the first installment of sleep here! [btw, both beans went to sleep much more easily tonight]

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Posted in Butterbean, General, literacy, numeracy, Stringbean's HE

the weekend

Posted on January 22, 2006 by | 8 comments

actually, am feeling simmering at the moment, so blog should cool me down. Having spent 45 mins or so putting SB to bed, 15 mins later I spend 30 mins or so failing to put BB to bed. I just can’t bear my whole evening being taken up by getting children to sleep. [or not]. Have unceremoniously handed BB to Chris. She has – however – taken 4 oz from a bottle for me, so not all doom and gloom.

So to the weekend, lets see what I can remember? on the overtly educational, we have done explode the code – SB happy to do it, and races through the pages, so not bad. She has done loads of webland, going forwards and backwards through the ‘editions’ that we have. When we started with webland, I used to sit beside her reminding her to listen to the stories to do the games, where as now she flicks all over the place with great confidence. She also seems to remember a lot of it now. on the IT front, there was a fair bit of cbeebies as well – particularly the stories.

Seed sowing, and discussions around that. [and counting – she was particularly taken when I clumped the broad beans in multiples of 5 so I could add them up more quickly than she could count them, and I saw her later on having a go with this idea.] SB read some of the easier books to me. She is getting confident to try and sound out longer words – though not very good at blends. We have gone swimming, read a number of books – the theme has been loosely underwater/seas or the poles. So looked at the globe, a book on the poles, and her underwater jigsaw books. taking in finding nemo characters!

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A great hit of the weekend has been a buy from ebay – a snappit build a donkey and cart set. It was supposed to be part of her birthday present, but why not spread things out. She has put it together and taken it apart numerous times over the weekend – initially using the picture to get things right, and then just remembering.

a snappit make a model of donkey and trap - reusable

We have also done lots of drawing – and played around with chalks on dark card as well today. She has written bits to go with all her pictures – the last even spelled by herself – lov SB to Chris [asked me about the H] lots ov lov [she remembered love doesn't have an u anyway!] We have been having a chat on and off about silent letters – like w in write. She had remembered k in knee from a discussion over a month ago.

Our Jenga -alike has been used to make forts, castles and patterns, and she has spent a lot of time with the dress up flower fairies, making stories for them to act along to.

A lot of the time SB has been quite self-contained, so that I have had a lot of 1 to 1 time with BB. She is being giggly and silly at the mo – so quite a laugh! Though she does try and feed me all sorts of rubbish as we go along – plastic pigs were todays menu, and specks off the carpet – lovely! She has her lower molar on the left rhough, and the upper one is nearly though. She is always keen to play with SB, and I loved watching SB try to feed her tea. It seems that although there is quite an age difference, they do get a lot out of each others company.

No doubt I’ve missed lots of stuff out. It seems that mostly I have juggled 2 children’s needs fairly well – for a change! That we have done more educational things than I though whilst having fun. They do just slip in don’t they!

Next week we reall must take down the Christmas tree, and tidy SB’s bedroom before Barbara visits.

Oh, and I have calmed down. It is past 10, and my evening will start with Sir Robert Winston [I wonder if BB is asleep?]

Edited to add: AH, flickring and I have rememerbed what I had forgotton – my friend Katrien , who used to live in Ely with her family, popped in on Saturday, as they are moving their final things – to Belgium. Somewhere nice for us to visit one day! And I have promised SB a barge holiday one day – like angelina ballerina. She does wish she had the box set of the books…

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Posted in art and crafts, Butterbean, gardening, General, geography, literacy, numeracy, SB-PE, writing

Dare I go to bed…….

Posted on January 17, 2006 by | 2 comments

BB is alseep at last I don’t want to disturb her.
Yes I know I should have been in bed but I’m not. Though Helen was in bed at 7.30pm and asleep before the girls – some sort of first I think. Butterbean enterntained me this evening by not wanting to go to sleep…… :roll:

Left her having a feed with Helen while I put SB to bed, hoping she would drop off . But she was as perky as, well, a very perky thing afterwards so I took her off downstairs got coffee and blobbed on front of TV while trying to convince her to sleep. She dropped off ok after a fuss, but wouldn’t settle into a proper sleep, but whinged if just put down to potter about. been in and out of sleep a few times, even ahd a bit of milk from a bottle, had another feed from Helen, fell asleep but then woken by SB wailing on the landing becuase she had woken up. But has finally been asleep on the sofa near me for the last 30 -40 mins or so. so I haven’t done the tidying I needed to do (playroom and kitchen a disaster zone), haven’t gone to bed as early as I intended, etc. etc. – But I do need my post child-gone-to-sleep time before bed. Lay bets now on the first waking time of BB, how long I can put up with the woailing before I crack – or Helen does.

Enough of that, a quick summary of today, then I am off to bed. SB was up with me first so she sat and watched some Milkshake on Channel 5, packed Helen off to work which was a bit sad. We slipped into a different routine really and I was quite happy with us both being here, so missed her once she had gone and felt a bit lost as I’d sort of forgotten how we did stuff.

So drunk tea and sat with SB for bit while I woke up properly. Then breakfast. BB then woke up once we had had breakfast so got her up, and gave her breakfast whilst read bit to SB, then she did some drawing, experimented with different effects with crayons, some Hama-ing:

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BB came up with a new game with Hama beads – popped them in her mouth then looked at you expectantly, you put your hand out and she spits it out into you hand she thought this was great fun. so we pottered like this for a couple of hours, whilst I looked for afew different recipes to cook and made a veg list. WQe were then goign to take the Beanmobile (aka tandem and trailer) up to the farm shop but BB decides that 2 hours was enough and she needed some more sleep – so deferred that until the afternoon.

Did a bit of Maths 1A weekly revision book, it was about spotting, working out patterns of numbers going up and down. bit slow to start with, but was better by the end.

bit vague after that, lunch happened, Helen came home, some more Explode the Code got done , me and SB did the veg run – they were technically closed as they were putting a new shel unit thing, but he let me in and I got most things, there was some Cbeebies website going on, some rather nice saucepans came (Ebay of course…) – a couple of medium largish ones, decided that all we need for now is a proper steamer as that is how lots of the veg get cooked (or stir fryed) I took too long cooking the rather tasty dinner so BB fell asleep before tea (probably leading to the problems later….)

Time for my bed I think……

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Posted in art and crafts, Butterbean, General, literacy, numeracy, photos, Stringbean, Stringbean's HE

A game of 2 halves

Posted on January 15, 2006 by | 2 comments

I know, I’ve used the title before, but it was.

had a migraine on waking – actually almost certainly stress induced about returning to work – wondering what the chaos will be ike, and the penalty for being away.

So, CHris took beanies for a swim while i took the meds and slept it off. At least it worked! on returning, I could hear Chris doing the ulysses story, and perhaps a few fairy tales as well.

So i got up at lunch time full of resolve! So we had a fun afternoon. In no order, we face painted - rofl! me as Im not quite sure by SB, and her as a piggie and CHris as a bunny [mpre rofl] by me!daddy rabbit!piggies go oink oink

did some drawing and colouring and sticking. Read various story books, played with the fuzzy felt faces, did 4 pages of explode the code [in under 10 mins as allowed her to choose which writing bits to do, but she had to do all the rest - she did half the writing]

fuzzy felt madness

She then told us her present best friend at nursery lives in this village. Now I’m not sure exactly how best friends they really are, as you don’t hear loads about her like we did about rosheen in leeds, but… we have decided to see if her mother would allow her to come to tea after nursery one day, or around to play – so the mum can meet us, or mett at the park etc. Seems a logical place to try for a village friend who she can meet up with perhaps when stops nursery. May well not work out as time so short, but worth a try. SB doesn’t really want to stop nursery, so we may well keep her there until Easter [last possible] – particularly if cements some sort of local friendship.

So SB then wrote a letter to the girls asking her if she would want to come and play, and we will write a more detailed one for the parents. if i’d have known they were local, I’d have made an effort to say hello at the nativity.

over tea SB keen to do some mental maths as well, so we were exploring the concept of adding in tens for the first time, as she seems to be getting there with her understanding of tens and units. Otherwise I told her a few stories and then she chose some cbeebies rather than playing a game, having tidyed p without any fuss. We had a lovely and easy bedtime, both are currently asleep, so Iwill watch the videoed child of our time. Missed the stephen poliakoff thing though as forgot about it – grr.

BB as pootled about quite happilly today, highlights are always the ramming things into the wrong holes with increased frustration until she puts them in the hatch – in fact she would go for this option first if my hand wasn’t there! A bit of drawing at the same time as SB – though a fair bit of crayon chewing too. She loves the mini keyboard toy, and is very certain of which buttons noise she likes the best. She also makes a special sound for whiskey cat – if i was truly besotted I would say she is saying whiskey, SHe isn’t but…

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Can’t find id card for tomorrow, which includes the carpark chip. Unless i find it, I will have to pay ?10 in the visitors carpark!!!!!!! [over 4 hours you see] they prefer you to park and ride, and i might do that if actually get out of the house early enough = always a problem!

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Posted in art and crafts, Butterbean, General, literacy, numeracy, photos, SB-PE, writing

Not so bad in the end.

Posted on January 14, 2006 by | 2 comments

Just a few moments of teeth grinding [see both posts below]!!

Started well [after a poor show of a night, but not our worst] with Chris bringing me breakfast in bed – croissants in fact!

i got up, after reading the guardian magazine cover to cover, and pluged into reading Sb archeologists dig for clues, and persephone again from usborne’s greek myths. We read this earlier in the week, and she got the night and day stuff with the globe, but had to be reminded of seasons. Today she did both straight off after the story. We agreed that the persephone one sounds nice, but not so nice for persephone!

meanwhile BB was quite happily playing with the maths cubes, bringing them to me to be joind up, and having some incomprehensible sprinkle and collect game! So SB wanted them, and did a bit of number bonds on them, so we got out the singapore maths… We are supposedly slipping into the routine slowly, and this bit of singapore maths 1a doesn’t challenge her at all, the whole idea is she whps through it, feeling very good and gets the hang of doing it without it being a struggle. She has always liked match and sort books, and what we do here is far less complicated than the mental/verbal maths she likes to play all the rest of the time. sigh. Oh well, BB was pottering with the aeroplane from the porticos, so SB learnt a new word – aviatrix. [my father wnated me to be called Amy, but veto'd by my mother!]

Sp after lunch, I thought I would rescue the day while BB was asleep by making the much wanted lemon curd. After all, Jan promised home made stuff tastes nicer, and not lemon crud at all. She is right -n my opinion. Will get SB to try eating it for breakfast!

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However, as I needed to regroup, she and chris went outside and ended up making lovely sandcastles and decorating them with things from the garden.

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I got BB up and had a play with her. BB is finally starting to follow a pointed finger now to find things, so we were sort of playing this game. When SB came in and helped we changed tack!! She is so vocal, and very easy to understand, even if her only word is OOK – shouted, and a pointed finger if you are in doubt what to OOK at. Child of our time is on this evening, and I will watch. Reminding me to find the wooden bricks again for building with.

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Finally SB and I did something easily without a fuss! We told stories around her hama glow in the darks in the pantry – taking it in turns to make up alien stories. She then did a lovely sticker picture for me, and wrote on the back of it. I think for us, not doing much of the writing int he workbooks, and just doing it as required outside of them is working well. It means she is happy to do the explode the code, and will sometimes volunteer the writing, and is happy to write SB mummy and daddy [even if mummy had no y]. Her pen holding skills have always seemed a little behind her peers, and since she can do this much, i can’t see any reason to try and push her forward until ready.

As a final regroup. we made from the usborne fairy cookbook mini fairy slices – well, nothing like when I had finsihed adapting! but rolled out puff pastry with pizza type top. Yummy though. SB and BB both hoovered up all the spare ingredients – mozarella, frozen peas and sweetcorn, and the ever popular olives. i have promised SB that I will have a recipe pages bit on this blog.

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They are now in the bath, and we will again try a cot experience early as poss for BB. might work one day.

oh, and we finished off with a bit of the yoga DVD as well. Sb quite likes the salute to the sun. I can’t weightbear on broken arm yet.

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Posted in art and crafts, Cooking, General, history, literacy, numeracy, photos, SB-PE, Stringbean's HE, writing

Bloody hell

Posted on January 14, 2006 by | 3 comments

had just tapped out ranty post, and mouse did that going back a page thing, and I have lost it!!!!

AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

won’t bother doing it again suffice it to say, the lemon curd making has tested my patience, and now it appears she doesn’t like it [when it is all done] as it is too sweet!! oh, and it was half the sugar – nicely mixed with the wet floor from previous spill, and had to again work out how much gone.

Other head banging moments are 7+3. took about 30 mins of sulking and wailing as I said 15 and 13 and 9 were wrong! After calming down she then did 6 more pages singapore maths 1A unprompted [cos I had had enough!]

I think this is running out of time syndrome again

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Posted in Cooking, General, literacy, numeracy

still shattered

Posted on January 10, 2006 by | 6 comments

and must flickr!

quick blog then – as will again try for an early night! We hve a plan this time, that if BB wails after a reasonable feed, Chris will sleep with her in spare room, and just bring her back if he really does think she is hungry – controlled feeding – sigh. We are both sad to resort to this, but I just can’t go on with a maximum of 3 hours sleep, and also incessantly feeding. The last 2 days I have tried to stuff food into BB at every opportunity to make her less hungry at night. We’ll see if it works.

So today, having incessantly fed last night, I had a lie in. SB and BB went to the library, both to change books and for the story telling and crafts session. This itme on the senses. BB getting into it now as well. SB loves choosing books, both for herself and for BB. I was up when they returned, so did the usual reading marathon!

We followed about 4 books with 2 pages of explode the code 1, with me agreeing she didn’t have to do the writing today. After lunch I had a phone call from a friend who is happilly on maternity leave with her 4th child, and also contemplating work life balance. I had promised SB we would do some baking from the usborne fairy recipes she had got from the library. While I got out the stuff, instead of finishing the page she had left of explode the code, she did 2 more fresh pages. She has decided that without having to do all the writing, it is quite easy! She is also being funny by trying to work out how many syllables things have [though she is sure she means sentences!]. So dalek speech all over, both for letter sounds, and for syllables!
We baked some biscuits [vegan] for tomorrow, but haven’t iced them. I am debating whether to ice them first thing, or have that as an icebreaker [so to speak!] when Merry and girls and Kris and girls come. During this, SB did lots of mental maths unprompted, as we do things in cups, she was trying to keep a hang of all the cups we had used, and how many ingredients etc. Just simple counting and adding, but growing confidence to just do it.
We failed to get the christmas decs down though – may make a stab at it this evening, though planning a very early night!

SB had her first swimming lesson today, and was very happy with it. only 2 of them were without armbands, and they seem to have done lots of things and she thought it was great. so thats good. I stayed at home with BB, and had a good hour of solid, uninterrupted interacting and playing – we both found this a lot of fun.

girls in bath, but I hear a lot of wailing, so imagine BB about to come down – oops chris not happy. Must go!

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Posted in art and crafts, Butterbean, Cooking, General, literacy, numeracy, SB-PE, socialisation, Stringbean's HE

Whirl of a weekend

Posted on January 8, 2006 by | 6 comments

katy and B arrived for the weekend friday lunchtime, which was great. we were disorganised as usual and grabbed the little beans from nursery. Cue the girls disappearing smartish! SB gave a guided tour which involved redressng both of them as princesses and off they went. Much, much later on the resurfaced to listen to the twelfth night story from while the bear sleeps and some apple tree farm books.

A few other standoffs were eased with colouring,games: hungry hippos and don’t wake dad, but actually they got on extremely well, and the standoffs were low key affairs. What amazed me totally was that after an exceptionally rowdy baths they had fallen asleep by 9.30 – what a result! It gave me and Katy plenty of time to natter, discuss wish lists etc etc.

Next day – to our shame, Katy was up first to accept a parcel before either of us had surfaced. In our defence it was cos BB had been absolutely appalling at sleeping! however, it was our seed order = hooray! SB and I pored over the packets, and she decided which were her favourites – in particular the popcorn sweetcorn!

big girls ran around, and BB pootled at our side being adorable. She is definately saying an approximation of look -ook, and pointing at the same time. SHe is a very inquisitve girl, and loves pressing buttons, and also the wacky wiggler cogs. her dancing also improving, with bobs down as well as wiggles, swaying and head shakes! quite the mover and groover. She was also doing lots of drawing – at one point joining in with the big girls – and this was great! Funnily, B kept calling BB ‘Small’ [from making it up] for the first evening.

After lunch the big girls made carrot cake with me, with all the labour absolutely divided equally – I do love using cups! Amazingly it rose as well!!! i must finally be getting this cake making busines [Merry, I need a prairie muffin badge before I ruin it!]. They did some Hama whilst it was cooking and then iced the cake [rofl - would you like some cake with that icing?] and ‘decorated’ it with sprinklies. At some point the playdough came out too.

What else? well, more demonstration of their imaginations, a start at a wacky wigglers robot, hide and seek, excellent 10 number bonds with hungry hippos [ha ha] and some attempt at the 5 times table using all the hands available [maths then!], a show performed by the light of some of the wackly wigglers for us too. Lots of singing of christmas carols in particular.

they went to bed eaily enough but not straight to sleep, they weren’t particularly noisy, but certainly shattered the next day. BB not quite so awful at night – thankfully. Poor katy, spending her weekend with zombies in a shambolic chateau!

Next day SB voluntarily got out explode the code – amazing!! Though she did tell B it was boring. We finished the wacky wiggler, and then did Yoga for children – as Katy had brought the DVD. Thanks Katy, just what i was after! Lunch, some violin playing and the home time. SB was gutted when they left to go home, and wished they lived next door. A few melting moments due to extreme shatteredness! I had a great time nattering as well, so a succesful visit, and looking forward to seeing katy and family in feb.

After they had gone we unwound, did some explode the code, lots and lots of painting, read loads of books together – SB remembered she hadn’t had her 12th night present, so we did today as 12th night read the story again, and got the little token present to go with the story. [another dressing up dress 2nd hand from ebay]

she has had lots of bumps and accidents, so ether drop down exhausted or expecting a growth spurt. BB ecstatic that SB playing with her again, especially when she read BB 2 of her books. Both have been lovely and cuddly this evening. BB coughing at rattling a lot though, so have given her some ventolin that gp gave us a while back but wasn’t sure whether to or not. hmm, wait and see.

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Posted in art and crafts, Books, Butterbean, Cooking, gardening, General, literacy, music, numeracy, photos, SB-PE, science, socialisation, Stringbean's HE

double trouble!

Posted on January 4, 2006 by | 12 comments

I still have migraine, but chris doesn’t like to be left out, so got a caustic soda burn on forearm and hand from finally unblocking the drain – full of animal fat crud -yukkety yuk. Obviously a present from previous owners! Anyway i dressed it, and it should be OK. told him if he gets compartment syndrome I get to slice open forearm – wicked gleam!!

We obviously had a rather shite night, as BB didn’t settle, and SB then joined us in bed, so a Mummy sandwich as 2 little beans had a competition on who get the closest!

So a slow start to the day. Infact, I may have to come back to the beginning – rofl! [Edited to add – SB shrugged and sid mostly Sindy’s and doing mazes] Anyway, slightly later SB cut out piccies of fruit and veg from the catalogues that she would like to grow, and stuck them on some paper for her file!! [i like self directed] She did 4 pages of exeter maths – first 2 she did some of the writing, but the second 2 she just gave the answers. this is once we got past the problem of 2 less being the same as takeaway 2. Once translated into sweetie maths she was away!

She then had a haircut – much needed! And Chris bought a tool for the drains to attatch to pressure washer. We read the Ulysses story from our usbourne greek heroes and perseus from ladybird famous legends. The ladybird one has a handy map of greece, so wee had a peek where places were – including Tiryns! I have been to lots of these places interrailing as a student, and really recommend the pelopponnese for the equally ruin addicted – and cret for that matter! mycenae was stunning. Anyway, I digress! following on from this, we jumped ahead in the story of the world to read the crete bit, as I had been talking about bull dancers. We have read the theseus story before, but SB loves them, so not unhappy to hear it again. Susan Wise Bauer doesn’t abandon Ariadne. I think part of the greek mythness of these stories is the casual dropping of women and children, and also the casual attitude towards cruelty and homily free status. BB feeding and the napping for this marathon!

After this she had a bit of a bike ride, but soon abandoned as I wouldn’t come outside with her, and instead worried over Chris, who had just had caustic soda incident. SO a smidgen of fresh air! We did a bit of recap on the piano - she had pretty much forgotten, but did find D. she enjoyed the ‘lesson’ – all of 5 mins and then pootled around again doing her own thing. I’m going at this in the ‘you want to make music, is this useful?’ Approach for now.

Sb and BB played together a bit with the shape sorters and the hammer shape toys, SB abandoning this in favour of the leap pad for a bit, until BB’s interest got too great to be distracted by Mummy reading books and playing! SB read to me a whole red nose reader – trying hard to sound the words and doing very well. She seems very keen on Maddy’s word flower thing, so maybe try that out.

She was also very good assistant at dressing Chris’s burns [made him go to the chemist!] so we had a discussion on being careful with chemicals even though they don’t look very dangerous – she could clearly see why! Also on dressings and bandages – minimal obviously! So red cross ticked too.

Whilst cooking tea she wanted to write the names of everyone who was here over Xmas, so with some spellings prompted she has done just that. Chris is supervising tea as BB a bit fretful, and if she sees me she will just want to bf. We will play a game or 2 of whatever takes her fancy before bath as well.

Re Merry’s chore thing, and we have also been gradually introducing chores – SB has to tidy her things away before lunch and tea, and if requested without a fuss, including BB’s things. She also lays the table for us. Not too onerous, but having a blank canvass after the meal frees the mind! We are also going to try and keep the main living bits tidier as a rule, so that we can actually not feel there are loads of jobs weighing us down every evening.

Mind you, I feel weighed down today, as this evening I am collecting together everything needed for a tax return, and will do it tomorrow, sigh!

www.flickr.com

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Posted in art and crafts, General, geography, history, literacy, music, numeracy, writing

relapse…

Posted on January 3, 2006 by | 2 comments

…mostly as i have a migraine, and it becomes quite clear that my children are far more charming when I am being charming!

Anyway, still had a reasonable day, but I had to work quite hard at it. Chris had made a wacky wiggler with SB – this was and ace pressie! And also jointly they read some apple tree farm books.

Me and SB did morefiddling with the wacky wiggler to make something for BB, as she is very interested in cogs/wheels etc.

SB then got out the sonlight word bingo game instead of a match and sort book [AKA explode the code], so we did the blends and the words. she was actually better at the words. I think she really isn’t a phonics girl – reading out the word with wild guesswork seems more her thing! She got a bit stroppy as I got 3 bingo’s before her, but what can you do?

At lunch I did a kakuro game, i usually do sudoko with SB, as she likes doing it with me – i spot what to do, and then say things like the number 1 in that big box, and she will work out which of the 9 it goes in. She is gettin rather good. I thought I could do the kakuro in peace and quiet, but not really. They’re not that diffiuclt, but require more addition and number pattern skills than SB has, so I wrote out the strings and pointed out why 3 in 2 boxes has to be 1,2 ; 17 in 2 boxes has to be 9,8; 6 in three boxes has to be 1,2,3 and 24 in 3 boxes has to be 9,8,7. She got these patterns but i had to do a bit of explaining over the other fixed strings [3,1: 4,2,1 etc] so got in some number bond practice and why maths is still interesting to adults, as well as then the logic in putting them in the boxes and her writing in the numbers. She stuck it for the easy bonds and the first 4 or 5 where deduction used – so not bad on concentration really.

After lunch whilst BB slept we did giant shape snap, read some usborne stories from around the world. BB didn’t sleep long, so we got the lego out for the rest of the afternoon. they mostly played together. BB and I read some of her board books, and i trimmed her fringe slightly. [first trim!]. So a bit low key really!

We did, however, manage to do some piano – which Sb and I had agreed on, and she asked for. We did patterns of keys and their names, and then mouse-walked up and down thumb to 4th finger trying to keep our hands flat [didn't have a rubber] from middle C. we searched for all the A and D’s as well. Finished with this is c middle c from gbdf and ace. After this she played on a mini keyboard making and recording tunes. BB did quite a good dance and jig, clapping her hands, so SB felt very proud.

I have just put in the tea – unispired at chips quiche and sprouts! [I have a migraine!], and suggested to chris i needed P and Q. He is reading some of the usborne greek myths – prometheus and pandora so far. Drives me wild, as he is tired, so is being an exaggerated tony blair – seems like hours gap every few words! BB is playing with the click clack caterpillar – excellent present from aunty shaula.

Merry, did you want us to jot down the weird tangents we spin down with these stories for your puddleside curriculum? or are you not planning to have some FIAR type suggestions? i know the idea is to follow where child leads [and that is what we do] but wondered whether a one liner would be good?

btw, I think i may have to take over as Chris mixing heracles with hercules to get heracules and driving me up the wall! does he do this on purpose? Sb correcting his pronounciation of tiryns [go girl!] and cross referencing to our other book where there are pictures. She *really* loves these books [maybe cos i do too?]. She is now correcting the book, as the hydra grew 2 more heads, and it only says 1 [rofl rofl]

Feeling better as tablets kicking in. Sb requesting i take over. Will see you later with my ponderings on socialisation and group joining in!

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Posted in General, history, literacy, music, numeracy, science, Stringbean's HE