Category Archives: music

Latinetc and Botanics

Posted on November 24, 2010 by | 6 comments

Today was a game of 2 halves day, which made me feel v much like the more outgoing home educators whose blogs i read blogs! very adventurous :) Morning was a compressed latinetc and pm was a CHEF event about Insectiverous plants at the botanical gardens. lunch was going to have to be in transit! I thought i had been v organised getting things ready, but unfortunately i forgot all the music stuff :roll:

anyway, we are continuing with our real science 4 kids. Having looked carefully through, I advised all the group to read level 1 and then only go onto Chemistry Level II Student Textbook (Real Science-4-Kids)
if partic keen. it was molecules, and the level 2 does a fab detailed discussion of s,p and d electron orbitals and how it all works before then showing you the sigma, pi and hybrid covalent bonds when it happens. a totally brilliant explanation, but past GCSE standard, and since we are talking predom primary here, seemed a bit far to go! we chatted electrons, protons, neutrons, atomic numbers again, to get more fixed in, and then our covalent and ionic bonds before making some molecules and using some rules. we made freestyle molecules with only CHO and saw what different molecules the groups ended up with, methanol, glyoxilic acid, ethylene, propanoic acid etc etc. If they hadn’t followed the rules, i was allowed to add and subtract the ‘fail’ bits. Still stressful doing the 3 groups, but worked hard on the middle group to redeem last week. this time i think the oldest group not so well balanced and looked like it might wobble over. on the ball this time tho, and i think the compressed timings didn’t help. Third time would be lucky, but just found out i have mammogram that week, so making me v v stressy already. [hate mammos, have had 2 so far, both ok, but now always expect worst and near sick with nerves by the time i have it, and it hurts!]

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Lots of other things go on at latinetc, I write more about the science because I am sitting there doing that! But i know SB did some recorder, and some music theory [i think] and def some latin but not sure about the french? [thankyou katy, she did do some french! ] BB did french and also art and she did bells for music with J and they loved it! We took iced cupcakes with dinosaur sprinkles and some candles to sing happy birthday to BB at snack, so she was v happy :) had so much cake that she only had fruit for lunch…

So on to the second half of the day, and mad drive to a nearby city botanic gardens for the middles and older children to learn about insectivorous plants whilst the littlies played outside. SB was with her friends and lecielrouge mum as a supervising adult. i gave her the phone to take ‘a few’ pics with so i could see some of what she did. she took 182 – in 120 mins. i am hoping she remembers something!! however, she did say it was fab. she enjoyed the ‘lecture’ and film, not so keen on the collecting part – so took loads of photos then, and enjoyed looking round the glasshouses – raking photos – and the insectivorous plants collection. She liked the sarrecenias best. great, cos i do too. for a while i had some pitcher plants whilst we lived in leeds, but they did die off. maybe we can start another collection in the conservatory :) She also took loads of crazy videos too !

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Meanwhile i had BB and J, and various other adults with their youngest. we went out and went through the glasshouses first, having a peek and a look at quite a few things and chatting as we went. loved the tropical bit and the fish :) i had planned to do some nature art with the children, but they were having so much fun exploring and racing around that we didn’t do that at all. finally made it to cafe for restorative cup of tea and cookie for the children. BB did some pics of some of the leaves we picked up and chatted to her friends. i suddenly realise what a ‘big’ girl she is getting to be, rather than my baby as she is proud and happy to sit with friends on own table, and that i can now be reasonably certain she won’t be crazy :)

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returned to pic up SB and chat to parents and thank A for organising. All families returned with a carnivorous plant – a sundew. easy drive home, but quick turnaround for SB with brownies, and then judo grading – she now is a yellow belt – woohoo!! i am baking this eve- banana cake

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Posted in Butterbean, Butterbean's HE, Cooking, daubing and making, investigating, language, little languages, music, noises and sounds, Out and About, science, socialisation, Stringbean's HE

need to stabilise the emergency medical hologram!

Posted on November 22, 2010 by | 1 comment

cos she keeps phasing in and out – rofl. went in today to sort out various personnel nightmares. one done, the other spiralling further and further… but managed to do what i needed to do and return home at lunchtime [and do more in eve as 'working from home' ] and then for daddybean and i to go and ‘choose a carpet’ . The carpet in the home ed room has progressed from manky to unhygienically awful. SO a replacement required. aarghh it is a big room to carpet, and doesn’t precisely have a carpet budget… we have, after 90 mins, come home with 2 diff samples to ponder until wed. think we should go with the more hardwearing but less aesthetically pleasing option [both are suitable for heavy domestic use]

i forgot to say that all this gadding to carpet shops [the excitement] was only possible due to my dad having driven up this morning to do some painting in said home ed room – coving and gloss, daddybean in charge of ceiling. the girls have been v good whilst this going on. SB doing lots and lots of the easier home ed options both in morning and then in aft whilst we were at carpet emporium. [11 ticks today!] she was somewhat disgruntled that i yelled c# up the stairs to where she was practicing recorder as my hello, rather than something a bit more, well, motherly! BB did some more of her lego house, and started the chicken mosaic and played with her new doll. A very happy girl there :)

On return from the carpet not-quite-decision-making trip, SB and i whisked off to ballet for the end of show open lesson, which i really enjoy. SHe is definitely improving at ballet, just needs to have stiffer arms i think, but the rhythm and concentration is there. We then did a good piano practice before she settled down to do some colouring whilst i read story of the world and BB having found all her old bricks made various buildings. BB also doing manic inline skating [with SB's old inline skates - there will be an accident there!!] and I tried to sort out the photoshop database a bit more – daddybean stayed up until 3am last night doing something or other to fix most of it.

unfortunately, we haven’t been able to locate skittles in our garden – it has lots of hiding places, but also a 6 foot wall enclosing it. So he isn’t safely in his hutch. grr, it is usually snowy we have to chase more, but skittles being black and now snuggled somewhere for the night is impossible to find. worried…

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Posted in art and crafts, Butterbean's HE, Dance/drama, daubing and making, DIY/ house renovation, history, language, literacy, music, numeracy, science, writing

Just another Thursday

Posted on November 19, 2010 by | 2 comments

Kids have got too used to lying in a fair bit lately (even BB, for whom it was unsual to sleep in past 8am), so they were soemwhat bleary-eyed and difficult to raise when I woke them up at 8 this morning :-)

Tots and Nots in the morning, which means a 9.30 am depature, which is early enough to be getting us all out in the morning thankyou very much. After prising them out of bed  1/2 hour later a bit of chivvying saw us leaving just about in time. (though SB thought she had found her missing music theory book, becuase she had found an orange book, if she had read the cover she might ahve noticed it was a science book ….)

SB did piano practice with Gina (G1 exam  in a few weeks). BB not feeling interactive and lay on my lap for the first  1/2 hour. After a brief play with the Tots and younger Nots who had spent ages with  a block of ice and some knive and forks (really, they spent ages just palying with this,) she then did soem recorder as well. BB warmed up by now, so she was having a play as well. After snack and a play, SB ffinsihed up with a Grammar book. Little ‘uns with stories and then songs, BB still loves to join in with the songs :-)

Bit oF  a run around out side , whilst I watched out for traffic wardens, as the car was round the corner on an expired ticket (they are pretty hot on the parking, so you need to watch out).

Into the car, drive home, listening to more French Songs on CD.  Home, lunch,  a bit of DS-ing and tea drinking. Then SB did something else, which for the life of me I can’t now remember :oops: Whilst I got dinner prepared. managed to be fairly efficient in the kitchen and got veggie shepherds pie made and Brussel Sprouts prepared in about 45 minutes. A quick pop into the garden to see and feed the bunnies.

Then it was into chivvying the girsl (well moslty BB) into getting ready for Gym. Having told her to put anything she wanted to take whilst watching SB into a bag, 5 minutes before we went she had one thing in her  hand and didn’t have leotard I’d told her to get in the morning as she said I’d had it, which I’m pretty sure I hadn’t. But, chivvy, chivvy, chivvy and we out the door again.

With H at work, it means an almost 3 hr session at the gym whilst they both have their sessions. Supplied with Gruaniad, flask of coffee and snacks the first half is bearable, but it begins to pall after that. SB did some singapore maths whilst we watched BB.

After the swap, luckily H picked BB up on the way home, so I didn’t have a tired and grumbly BB as well. Anyway, they both got slips to say they had got BGA badges and certificates, so paid for those and then headed home. Shepherds pie was nicely cooked (I always worry I didn’t set the oven timer to come on properly), so just had to cook sprouts. BB declared she doesn’t like sprouts, but seeing as she’s eaten them a number of times, and she likes to seemingly  randomly pick things she isn’t going to like, this sort of thing gets resisted – she likes to complain about potatoes as ‘they don’t tatse of anything’ :-)  (SB tends to the pragmatic approach to such things, saying  that ‘she might as well eat it as you will tell me to eat it anyway’ ) So I  poo-pooed this. In a spirit of believable parenting I told her that there was a law that said you aren’t allowed to not like sprouts, but I don’t think she believed me :-)

Dinner and next episode of Edwardian Farm to finish off the day

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Posted in Butterbean, language, literacy, music, numeracy, Out and About, socialisation, Stringbean, Stringbean's HE

Latinetc wednesday – exploring the periodic table

Posted on November 17, 2010 by | 12 comments

cutting out electrons, protons and neutrons about 250 of each] took way to long last night, so to bed v late and hard to get up and out this am. However, I had got everything ready apart from SB’s minimus which i asked her to add… yep, she forgot :roll: !!

We trialled the 3 groups today, which TBH I found quite stressful as a lot to say and do in a small time, the dynamics will take a bit of settling down, the middle group got a partic raw deal and i was just ready to cry. Lack of sleep on my part prob didn’t help, but I now have migraine. Will give it a few more tries as it works better for everyone else, and I really want to keep latinetc going as a strong group as it is fab.

That said, all the children had read or had read to them chapter 1 of real science 4 kids chemistry and we romped through the periodic table, protons, neutrons and electrons and then atomic mass unit and moles. I do think the 3 levels of the chemistry first chapters are all really great, and so far like the text. we did pre-k and 1 with BB and 2 with SB at home. We then shuffled my deck of elements and chose the ones to make a window decal each. For the first and last groups we read up about the elements in my periodic table book, but ran out of time with the middle group. I have suggested they might want to do that :) . i think the decals looked really good when finished. Unfortunately my camera had a flat battery, and the spare also flat. :( partic as when i checked last night there was allegedly 2/3 battery power left. Luckilly le ciel rouge took some photos and we plan to nick them from her flickr stream :)

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[tho not periodic table view :) ]

edited to add at kirsty’s request :) to make the decals we got some of that bookbinding clear stuff [loads of it] and had an a3 size each. i cut out old 10p piece size protons out of yellow see through sweetwrapper plastic that you can buy, and the same with blue for neutrons, then 1/2p size in red for electrons, which we placed in shells, but talked about the unplaceability effectively of electrons and this was just for ‘display’. we put them on one a4 side, with the protons and neutrons clumped in the middle but accurately counted, and then folded over the other a4 side, and it worked :)

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SB did clarinet [with g's as hers is in service, and sounded quite good from the kitchen] minimus, tesselating art and skoldo french, all of which she enjoyed, tho she said the skoldo now too easy for her. K’s plan tho is to race through it looking for gaps in knowledge, so hopefully a fast consolidating race will work well for her and then move on. It is nice to hear her say french is easy tho :) . BB didn’t do french – no such get out again – but really loved doing z’s tesselating art.

We had a further chat about whether we could work into the afternoon whilst G and K take children to cello some short while of something else, either a bigger craft, a bit of music theory or perhaps some singing or group music. Whilst the morning stressy for me, i need the afternoon to be a bit less intensive, so it kind of depends how pans out, but really love the group, and it would be lovely to get a good working balance. SB and L shew each other their piano skills :) , poor J got *really* attacked by a thorn bush and i drew out a thorn of nearly a cm. He was *very* brave.

SB now at brownies, and showing off baby rabbits – one of the owls would quite like a rabbit she thinks – that would be good :), we are going to have a chippery tea shortly and then SB has judo. My imigran seems to be doing a good job on migraine and planning an earlier night tonight :)

Latinetc was brought to you today by:

also edited to add, with the chippery tea we watched the wallace and grommet inventions prog, BB and i played ludo before bed, and SB played with geomags after judo and before bed. I am having an early night i think :)

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Posted in art and crafts, Butterbean's HE, daubing and making, General, investigating, language, music, science, socialisation, Stringbean's HE

Out of Phase Tuesday

Posted on November 17, 2010 by | 3 comments

Having worked Monday [and then nagged daddybean to blog about his day at home :) ] i had a phased day off today. feels nice! part time work if and when financial woes to public servants decreases a bit and therefore makes it safer is def something i would much like to do :) 3 day week would be perfect :) .

And so to today, the girls started off the day with making more christmas cards, they are really beautiful, if not necessarily christmas themed ;) SB has done a fab tree and present one that she spent some time on. BB spent a long time on one with a lizard on the outside, and you open up to a laptop inside. daddybean and i are hoping this isn’t another version of the capri sun ds trick :) . Lots of humming, singing and chatting as these got done in a very ‘isn’t this lovely’ kind of way.

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We did some story of the world 1 - middle egypt this time, and nubia. We do try and do the questions and narrations as per the activity book, but BB often gets carried away by her story telling… BB looked at the realscience for kids chemistry chapter 1, we did the pre-K and then I read the level one but simplified it a bit for her. SB and I just had time for a really good piano practice before she went out to her last bikeability session. A lovely sunny afternoon for it anyway :)

BB and I read a book and fed and played with rabbits and then watched some starwars prequel 3 before going off to swimming, where i took charge of SB and watched both their lessons before getting home. Here SB looked at her level 2 chemistry whislt sitting snuggled up close to me, and we did the questions at the end together. I think we have got moles and atomic weight and numbers sorted, tho at 9, doesn’t really matter if not. I do like the text book bit of it tho, as nice and straightforward, and being for a ‘classical’ education, has 3 levels of ability to choose from. The ‘lab’ experiment for this first chapter is a bit dull-as-ditchwater, so think can be done at home with own families, and instead we are going to do an element treasure hunt [i think] and make an element window ‘decal’ [concentrating on the first 20] which unfortunately has left me cutting out loads of blobs this eve, and therefore late to blog! I do wish the most common isotope of them had the same number of neutrons as protons, would make life much easier! Have made a list to make the decals easier to do.

we finished with watching a sarah jane on iplayer with the girls and roman mystery for SB. And all evening spent prepping for tomorrow!

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Posted in art and crafts, Butterbean's HE, daubing and making, General, history, investigating, music, pre reading, science, Stringbean's HE

Daddybean, with added Bolding :-)

Posted on November 17, 2010 by | 1 comment

Monday

None of us have really got used to H being back on work time yet. So it was a bit of a struggle getting up this morning. Even BB slept in a bit longer than normal, and SB took multiple wakings to get out of bed  by about 10 !

THe first bit of the morning  after I saw H off to work (first morning to de-ice the car) is a bit vague, having breakkie, houseworky bits (which don’t really tend to stick in the brain) I guess. Looked at stepladders on the web as going to paint the playroom ceiling and woodwork next week and we don’t really have one that reaches properly to that height (being  rather higher than our old house), which means being balanced a little bit to high on the one we do have. Other then the girls room a ffew years ago, we haven’t done any  decorating since we moved in really. Alos need a deeper standoff for the ladder (well, borrowing the Deependers ladder) as the one I have isn’t  deep enough for our wide eaves. So perused, but didn’t decide.

BB mostly played a game with the chess pieces (not chess, some imaginary game). SB got up at last after much poking, did piano practice,  I cooked boiled eggs for not long enough (I normally use method one that Delia gives here ) but forgot to turn off the stove at one minute, so carried on letting them boil for longer. But not enough, so  weren’t cooked quite enough. will stick to my normal method, which looks more complicated than neccessary, but isn’t , and is reliable.

After breakfast, they both contrived to go upstairs to get dressed and then both ended up coming downstairs complaining that the other had poked them in the eye, or kicked them in the head (!!) and various other complaints. I didn’t really have patience for this, so told them to take it in turns to get dressed so as to avoid conflict.

Then it was outside into the garden, into a lovely sunny, if a little chilly day. Playing with bunnies, cleaning out Skittle hutch, a bit of playing etc. The kids disppeared back inside after a bit, and I carried on with my gardening plan for this year. Which is to try to do at least  1/2 hour in the garden most days (well those that I’m around, and when it isn’t horrible outside) and to gradually work at getting tasks done. So today I cleared an over grown area behind the greenhouse and put some of the black  woven sheeting down, I can now move some other stuff onto their, throw away the rubbish, and then clear the rest of the area behind the sable, where at some point we plan to grow a fan trained Apricot or something. I’ve already cut down the fig, so that it can regrow from the base and we can hopefully try to train it against the wall, rather than have it grow up 20 feet and shade the greenhouse. I’ve also  cut back some of the holly bush that had grown out so much it was getting in the way. Will need to cut back the top as well, but right now it has lots of berries on, so will leave them for Xmas stuff and the birds for now.

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The pile of stuff in the RH picture to be sorted stored  by the greenhouse, then clear the stuff at the end and the ivy along the walls. No idea what to do with the great big roller, hide it soemwhere else in the garden I guess. It’s been there for years I imagine, feels like it belongs in the garden. There is also a path down there as well, probanbly the middle is roughly where the edge of the black plastic is.

Was getting  hungry, so warmed up with a cuppa in the conservatory and then got lunch.

after coming back inside, and after lunch, SB did maths, DS French game, DK project book and Art de Lire French and played recorder.  BB was in best pottering about mode. She decided to make an xmas card, found the card, the colours and sat and happily did that without any input from me.- it ended up as an interesting xmas (outside) and Halloween (inside card :-) She made a couple more later on in the day. They are fab :-)

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She also drew out the design she wants for her birthday cake (a Tiger this year, she managed the first 3 letters of Tiger, but needed help on the ‘er’ .

SB also played a bit of some imaginary game with the Chess pieces, and then it was time for Ballet class. Cold, getting dark to early sort of day, we rushed there and me and BB rushed back, to find H home from work in the mean time.  Cups of tea, retrieving SB, BB settled down to watch a Star Wars film again,  tea cooked, and we watched Edwardian Farm on the trusty iPlayer.

Interesting to see Morwellham Quay. I rember visiting there on a school trip around 1975/6. It must have been in the early years of the restoration, I remember the quays being full of squelchy mud.

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Posted in Butterbean, Butterbean's HE, Dance/drama, daubing and making, gardening, language, music, numeracy, photos, Stringbean

quickly blogging

Posted on November 13, 2010 by | Leave a comment

my parents here, which is always lovely :) they arrived last night after being eagerly awaited by the girls – who then took ages to settle down! the girls had spent yesterday morning playing with Jax’s children whilst i was at work, and then in the aft and eve when to their serial gym lessons, except that SB forgot her leotard, so after all she didn’t :( . Piano prac and then some home ed galore park english and we watched the edwardian shops on BBC as my parents arrived :) . BB still insisted on trying puerto rico, but it is too hard for her.

Today we were all a bit late up. SB the latest again, she def has got into not liking getting up :lol: but she did her piano prac really well, and then played for mum, also did some DK project book on minerals [me looking at it for the blog below reminded her!] some of a rather too easy murderous maths workbook and then a bit of revision of the french done last time at latinetc. Mum and i did some of the dialogue with her, so that was fun :) . BB did some explode the code, and listened to SB reading Story of the World 1. we all played ticket to ride [sb won] and then BB, mum dad and I played blokus. BB and i drew. we did a fair bit of dsing alltogether – must remember to charge mine – and general chatting and bb being rather wild. finished off this eve playing ticket to ride again with dad. he won! chris and i did dreadfully :blush: lovely day :)

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Posted in Butterbean's HE, geography, history, language, music, numeracy, pre reading, Stringbean's HE

Historyetc Very Early China and West Africa

Posted on November 10, 2010 by | 5 comments

Still following Story of the World, we did the Anansi Spider stories, African ‘tribal art’ [re-imagined] and shaker instruments and from the early china we thought about the discovery of silk and chopsticks, ate a rice dish, drank jasmine tea and made a ‘silk’ bag to store our ‘jade’ pictograms in :)

It was a rather fabulous day! obviously, having had such a killer migraine yesterday, i did far less planning than i had thought i might, and after all, i was at work [as blogged, woohoo, by daddybean] . I think we were 2 crafts short of an ideal number, tho we did have 1 of them, but at the point ppl were mooching around, i had forgotten about it. An Jax has come up with the fab idea of doing a costume pegdoll at each historyetc, so we should end up with hundreds of them to have a clothes timeline washingline!

We started with the early african crafts, doing tribal designs to make a variety of shakers. All the children seemed to enjoy this, and less mess was made than anticipated :) the children were also excited by the fact that this also necessitated buying some more pringles which were on a buy one get one free across the road :) Whilst they did this, i read some stories from these books

We also made little spiders to be Anansi and hung them from the vine – which did look rather fab :) Lots of giggling and laughing and chatting amonsgst the children. Too many adults had headaches, so we smiled and chatted and drank tea :) as well as educating, found the oboe to lend out, hopefully still in working order more or less ;)

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We had lunch and in the afternoon I explained about this time of the chinese dynasty the story of the empress ‘finding’ silk and then we mde ‘silk’ bags to put jade pictograms in to tell each other’s fortunes. the children pretty much chose loads and loads of hideous fortunes :roll: so in the end we adults were not so keen to have our fortunes told any more. We made some papaya fried rice and drank the jasmine tea and ate lots of cake. J and M read us further stories, and that seemed good too.

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Jax is staying overnight, so we have a yummy curry and are trying not to hear the kids screeching upstairs whilst we serially blog [or are we in parallel??]

SB has also done some piano prac, been to brownies [and is going to be walking with the flag bearer on remembrance day] and judo. BB and Big have also had great fun on the wii.

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Posted in art and crafts, Butterbean's HE, daubing and making, General, history, literacy, music, socialisation, Stringbean's HE

Better blog or else…..

Posted on November 10, 2010 by | 5 comments

there will  no doubt be all sorts of complaints from readers used to H’s output :-)

Problem is, on the whole my days don’t seem very interesting, but here goes.

Got up a bit earlier then we have  been lately, as H had to go off for her first day back at work, so that was abit of shock to the system, Had an unexciting morning, waved H off. Drunk some more tea and enjoyed a quiet breakfast as neither of the girls had woke up.  BB got up and sata t the table playijng little games with whatever odd items she could fine handy, I pottered around the kitchen, put on washing, that sort of thing.  tried to wake up SB for the first time. (It would take about 3 goes and  1  hour to get her out of bed (she isn’t sleeping well due to her cough, and woke up last night and came into our room).

Me and BB went out to see the bunnies, and let Skittles out for a run about, explored things a round the garden with BB for a bit. She has collected all the used fireworks up from Friday, and played various games with them, whilst gradually dismantling them, disppionted not to find any gunpowder left in them :-).

Nice, but cold and windly outside, so nice to come back in into the relative warmth, and finally prised Sb out of bed. She had breakfast whilst reasding some more of her Yes Mag, and reprised me with interesting facts from it.

SB then settled down with some Singapore Maths, I did half an online order, so that I can book a suitable delivery time, before I ahve to think of all the rest of the things we want. Then I braved to cold again, to sort out bike carriers and SB’s bike onto the car to take to her next Bikeability session. Sorted out various other bits like snacks to take with us, Sb wrote a bit in her journal about fireworks night, a quick pasta lunch, and then we had to head out, pretty much on time. SB took her Galore Park Science to do a bit of in the car on the way.

Which is where the rest of the afternoon went a bit pear shaped…..

About halfway to Bikeability, I realised we had left the swimming stuff behind, which we needed for swimming lessons, well it was to late to go back for, so left the decision on what to do till we had dropped of SB, Parked car, met up with the Deependers outside the car park, and sent the cyclist on their way.

Decided to see if I could get some cheapish swimming cossies and a couple of towels so they could do lessons. Now we were right outside the swimming pool, which does have cossies of course, but Zoggs,a nd Speedos etc. so not cheap., decoed we’d walk to a nearby shopping centre (about 10 mins walk).

Tried, Primark, BHS and Debenhams, and a couple of charity shops on the off chance. The only things were some  (left over from the summer I guess) farily horrible bikinis on sale in Primark which I passed over. Not the time of year for cossies I know, but did hope for some. Best bet would have been to have gone to the big ASDA, or the big Tesco, but that meant driving around which I didn’t feel like. So bought a couple of towels in BHS (which BB loved for their fluffyness). Stopped for a quick very cake and sandwich in the cafe (no tea, not enough time :-( ) as I’d promised BB we would do that (when it was goign to be a nice hour or so me and BB pottering about….). By now time was running out, so I shoulder carried BB back to the car walking very quickly.

Went in the Swiimming pool after all to see what they had …….  feeling very hot and flustered as we had about 5 minutes. Managed to find some reduced so not so bad in price. But BB fussy, as she doesn’t like ones with the cut away backs, which most were. Found one that was acceptable, found one thst might have been ok for Sb, though probably to big  (I can never remember want ixn size she is for things like cossies and leotards) But then noticed the signs saying they could only take cash payments as the card system was down or something :-(  Only enough for one, so BB got it, seeing as she was the poor lass who had had to do all the traipsing about, and it was cheaper.  Buy this point

Rushed outside to see the cyclists just gathering up the road to cross over to the park, ran up to retrieve Sb and the Deepender boys we were giving a lift to.

Head back to the carpark, carried bikes up a flight of stairs , got to the car, managed to laod all the bikes on the rear rack – a bit of faffing as not used to those bikes and it’s always a bit of a fiddle getting them to fit together, strapped down ,lighting board on etc. So much easier using the roof carriers (though not in a car park with a 2.1 m height restriction…) . Ran downstairs to find a pay machine, payed (at least it didn’t charge me for another hour as we were about 5 minutes over the time), back upstairs, into the car, gave the kids a bag full of random snacks and drinks and headed off. Just over 35 miinutes to get to swimming lessons in annother town, it was going to be tight.

Traffic heading out of town was frustratingly  slow, but luckily the main road was very busy , but moving ok and we made it to the leisure centre with about 2 minutes to spare.  Rushed BB into her lesson jujst about in time and then wentback to help Katy transfer bikes to her car. Bikes and children transferred me and SB went back inside to flop down for 20 minutes whilst BB swum. Domino’s Pizza have a 2 for the price of one offer on Tuesday’s, and the kids like their Pizza’s so decied to get some for dinner. I tried ordering them online using H’s iPhone which I had with me, but it kept falling over  at the last bit on the Verified by Visa, which was a bit annoying. Would have been mcuh easier just to ring them :-)

Once BB was out, and I’d prised her out of her nice new fluffy towel and into soem clothes :-) we headed down to dominoes, ordered them in person, popped into the Waitrose next door for a few bits and were back to find the pizza’s ready :-)  Headed home finally, to find H with a migraine :-( ate Pizza, drunk soem much needed tea and I moslty dozed whilst the kids watched a couple of Sarah Jane Adventures on iPlayer (The Wii makes a pretty good way to watch iPlayer ont he TV easily)

Felt pretty knackered this evening, so haven’t done the jobs I should have done for having lots of people here for  tomorrows History group, but at least I have blogged :-)

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Posted in BB-PE, music, numeracy, Out and About, SB-PE, Stringbean, Stringbean's HE, writing

Once More into the Breach!

Posted on November 8, 2010 by | Leave a comment

Ok, so i just did some emails and admin type stuff, as due to phased return, the actual ‘first day’ is tomorrow. but i did open a number of the emails without that cartoon palpitation business going on, and managed to sort out a bit a long term reduction in my job plan. This is a 2 edged sword, in that although it gives me what i need – more time to do the things at work i need to do, so less bringing it home, less stress – it also gives me a far bigger pay decrease than the proportion of time change, and when there is all this public sector/pension stuff going on, it might turn out to be far too big to afford. However, if it keeps me sane…

The girls played dollies all morning [while the cat's away...] and all the giggling and laughter is a tonic in itself :) dreadful weather tho. In fact i am actually now too hot, as i have overdone the layers thing. [3 jumper layers, thick socks and slippers and the sofa 'comfort duvet' ]. I have to admit that a whip was cracked ;) and SB did some of her gruesome grammar book – sighing when we got to nouns, she has never really recovered from our abortive try at first language lessons for the well trained mind. we never got beyond the 6 billion chapters about nouns :lol: She did some music theory with me – on harmonic minors, that actually did take far longer than i thought :blush: and consolidated the last chapter of minimus . I meant to do Story of the world to get us up to date for the next historyetc, but completely forgot.

BB wanted to read yesterdays 2 books again, so we did that and played the bean game, and then she did a bit of subtraction in MPH 1a and did some more of her dolphin window mosaic. SB also did a piano prac. BB and i baked a chocolate cake, and I made the mixture for some fruit scones. BB then wanted a reprise of Settlers of Catan, so we played that together.

When SB came back from ballet she cut out and baked the scones, and then played Puerto Rico with me. Neither of these games work so well for 2 adult players, as 3 + players, but settlers with bb is a ‘friendly’ consultative approach, and actually with SB also at puerto rico, i am much more about the game being fun and encouraging some thought about strategy rather than proving I can beat a 9 year old ;) so again friendly and me not going for the jugular, and having 2 goes per ’round’ tends to make this work well as well, partic if you only get the bonus with the first thing you choose to do in the round… We do love playing boardgames in this house.

BB, meanwhile, was being an excellent street musician with a cardboard tube wiggling and singing. She is a great little performer at home, just has no intention of letting anyone outside home see :) but she has a great ear for rhythm and perfect pitching, so we shall see.

Now, having blogged, I plan to flickr, shower and have an early night in preparation for tomorrow :)

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Posted in Butterbean's HE, Cooking, early maths skills, language, literacy, music, noises and sounds, pre reading, Stringbean's HE