Category Archives: numeracy

visitors!

Posted on July 22, 2008 by | Leave a comment

ok, i am going to alter the time stamp so they all appear right. amd i am prob going to add things, as TBH, my memory is a bit affected by the quantity of bloody migraine drugs ingested. i hate migraines. i hate their ability to suck away my life.

anyway, we tidied manically so kirsty and her family could see their way into the house. it still wasn’t actually tidy mind you! saturday was spent in eager anticipation of their arrival, so we did some home ed stuff to take away the constant are they nearly here yet chorus. SB and BB both eagerly did maths and handwriting – i think they thought if they did it quickly it would speed K’s car! SB also did a violin practice. no further memory of the day!! K and co arrived, so lots of playing and ds-ing! we had tea and wine. a v late night for the kids too!

the next day we went out to an rspb event to celebrate the opening of a new reserve. the worst thing about it was the prickles. they had just strimmed/mowed the field, and it was obviously v thistly, and k and i – and to a lesser extent the girls – kept getting prickles in our feet as crocs were really not the best footwear for us to have chosen! SB and A got facepainted. BB and M moaned at the lack of cake. we had fed the troupes before leaving, but obviously should have taken cake with us [we had loads at home!] as it was too temptingly on display, but ridiculously expensive. after a bit of discussion, we went towards the pond dipping and owl pellet zone. SB said it was owl puke, but he insisted it was not as the pellets were coughed up. i am sorry, but they still must be coughed up from some stomach affair rather than lungs! Anyway, SB and A were transfixed by the owl pellets, and found loads of bones in them. SB in particular found loads of skulls, and learnt the difference between field mouse and vole. the man was really friendly and knowledgeable so a great HE moment! we joined M and an extremely grumpy BB ponddipping, and found lots of damsel fly larvae,water beetles, water boatmen and a few fish. ALso a blood sucker – yuk!! We then played in some sand to find things, but most had been found already as it was getting to the end of the day, and then looked at loads of moths that had been temporarily captured the night before.

the mon i went to work, and BB and M got firmly fixed in matter/antimatter mode. mostly after rowing over the didicar we have. BB would try the patience of a saint at times, and M and her seemed to gravitate towards each other to shriek. not so restful! they also did lots of fab fimo-ing. i was so impressed by BB’s snowman – well, for a bit anyway, as she then overdecorated it into a blob! BB does seem to be v dextrous for these things. luckilly on the tues – when again i was at work – merry and girls came across, and all had a great time playing and bindeezing,

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Posted in art and crafts, Butterbean's HE, Cooking, daubing and making, early maths skills, General, language, music, numeracy, Out and About, pre reading, science, socialisation, Stringbean's HE

the trouble with brownies

Posted on July 9, 2008 by | 1 comment

BB is just a little too lark like at the moment, and SB and owl like her parents. i think this house prob only has 3 hours of all asleep inhabitants, so chris and i are a bit on the zombie side at times. i felt i had had a lie in by 9am, and went down to join the fray, actually, i think the fray came up to join me!! we did jigsaws on the bed, played imaginary games about frogs that hide in the duvet etc, until my imagination was worn out and we went downstairs. you know, i was far more imaginative with Sb more easily. i must work on this!! SB did piano whilst i was still in bed!
we did some ‘normals’ as it were, with SB enjoying handwriting practice whilst BB and i had fun with an ancient first alphabet workbook that sb had not done at the time. BB is getting to grips with at least considering what sounds might start a word. and she also has much more interest in writing – sb had none at all at this time, but bb is having a go writing letters and numbers – not often recognisable to anyone but her!. she has a runic signature that she does all the time as well, which has a near capital A in the middle.

SB had a bit more of a struggle with maths, so i sat her with me, and with prodding she did it all fairly painlessly. we thought of different ways to make a quick guess to see if the answer was right. i like singapore maths, as i think it makes manipulating numbers easier.she borrows and makes up to hundreds and tens in swirls as it were, and gets it right. ie in 4.25-2.35 she was quite happy to add ten to the 25 to make the answer 2, and then remember to take it away again for 1.90, yet at 6.60-4.90 she borrowed 1 from the 6 and did 16-9=7 so 1.70 . bb was playing quite happily with a bus, being the magic school bus!

we then did some more imaginative play, involving me walking the girls round the house on ribbon leads and pretending to feed the doggies. bb quite often needed to do a poo… i decided i didn’t fancy playing any more, so the doggies had to go to puppy school and listen to some french about a monkey wanting a banana!

some point after this [o think] the girls went to get dressed [it is lunch time obviously!] and after lots of kerfuffling i went up and read riot act AGAIN about bedroom such that both girls wailed, bb inconsolable and i tidied half, bb made a slight effort and sb a reasonable one. so only 1/3 bedroom left to go…

lunch and i became reasonable again!! we did hand painting – because i really didn’t want my face painted. my left hand was done by bb, and my right was a poppy field by sb. we had a lovely time. i painted a rainbows rainbow on her cheek ready to go to said rainbows. it was her last rainbows today and she was quite sad. also because we had got some treats to handout, and she forgot. bless.

whilst she was out, bb and i baked some chocolate brownies, and though i tried and tried to get the timing right, this time they are raw in the middle – sigh. i just can’t time brownies. please, what should be the optimum moment for pulling out? they wer for the guests this weekend, and the mixture yummy!! so we watched magic school bus.

Cuddled sb on her return and more mSB before bathtime before dinner. after dinner she was searching merry’s website for aquabeads. i have told her that if she wants jobs to earn money, they will only count if playroom and bedroom tidy! and after bb going on, she has the same deal if she wants a longneck! i have to asy, i adore the anamalz range!

anyway, where were we?? oh yes, bedtime!!!!

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Posted in art and crafts, Butterbean's HE, daubing and making, General, language, music, numeracy, pre reading, science, socialisation, Stringbean's HE, writing

making the most of it.

Posted on July 7, 2008 by | 1 comment

i had a much needed lie in today. my head, body and soul were not at all engaged. whilst recovering, i heard sb do piano practice. when i came down, chris and sb had gone through those lovely anholt books around artists. we did some HE – handwriting, french. i have to say that SB’s handwriting is really coming on. She has struggled at writing, but in her own time and on her own terms she is getting there. She likes the getty and dubay, and does lots of practice with cards and notes to people. She also spent a lot of time doing the colour in doggy clothes she got from merry’s girls.

BB also did french and some early numeracy with singapore early bird and literacy from before the code and letterland red books – which i managed to find. BB was very impressed to get some books, its a shame i can’t get sb gagged quickly enough before she says they were hers first!

we did lots of imaginative play altogether today. i am trying to jumpstart my immersion back into these games, as i have sort of gradually faded out of being a pinky ponk, or a doggie or a vet etc etc. so i decided this was ridiculous, so i have been a pinky ponk [or whatever it is!] bought and cared for doggies, played with cuddlies etc etc and made my girls happy.

we also baked carrot cake, watched some how things work, nina and the neurons and magic school bus, picked peas and broad beans from the garden.
aargh how did it get to be this late?? bedtime!

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Posted in art and crafts, Butterbean, Butterbean's HE, Cooking, early maths skills, General, language, music, numeracy, pre reading, science, Stringbean, Stringbean's HE, writing

migraines and mischief

Posted on July 3, 2008 by | 2 comments

i didn’t have wed off, but had to work – with migraine. so missed on what seems to have been a fab visit to a firestation, and also meeting friends to talk to grrrr.

instead i had a suprise day off today – a surprise as i was going to a conference far side of london, but, due to raging migraine and out of migraine meds, that just wasn’t practical. retired to bed with cold compress and gp appt booked. so i now have meds again and at least spent half the day compos mentis with the girls. [well sort of] what struck me was that having got out of the pistols at dawn to dusk for a bout 3 days, they have returned to that pattern. aargh to the levels of bickerdom. it isn’t all bb, the split is prob sb:bb 40:60. just that bb is noticeably more unmanageably horrid. mind you the wailing was also stratospheric today, so i might have been better at that conference in london.

in between bickers and wails and time outs [for me] we did have a lovely time! SB and bB had done some beautiful hama when i came too, and we ironed them b4 they were scattered on the floor – so result! SB then finished singapore maths 2b part 1 [at last - we have been being quite slack on the formal ed front] and bB and i did earlybird 1a -which is v easy for her, as it is predom counting to 10, which she can do in french or english quite happily. actually in english she gets to 20, then starts going up in 10′s. the more/less, most/least is quite easy too. so a romp really, but she likes having done hers whilst sb is doing hers.

after that we did some french – farm and wild animals. much taken by the fact that lots of the african ones had the same names, but with an accent. and we read SOTW on australian aborgininal beginnings – sort of! we looked at aboriginal art, read some dreamtime stories, and thought about doing some painting. but sb and bb had a fight over this, so the offer was withdrawn in a fit of pique [and regretted afterwards - must keep mouth shut!]

girls went out to play, i had a time out by hoeing – i have to say we have done the best so far with the veg and fruit beds. earlier this week chris harvested 3 1/2 lb strawbs!! we are harvesting peas, broad beans too, and the pots are prob ready to have an exploration!!

i then brought out some books on weather and ponds, and a pond dipping kit from ebay – which turned out fab [never linked to an ebay seller before, but actually the magnified tank is v fab] and this rescued the afternoon. we have quite a lot of pond life in our goldfish pond. unfortunately loads of mosquito larvae in the waterbutt, but we have lots of waterboatman – who eat them, a water spider, and pond skaters. we have a plague of large pond snails [oh dear!] and on one lily pad stem was the empty shell of what was some kind of dragonfly we think. so we all enjoyed this. BB liberated loads of pond snails, and then both girls played unhappily in the paddling pool until riot act read. SB had violin, and BB sitting on step… then BB made a card and SB and i played an alphabet game and then we played shops.
i redressed SB’s foot and put BB to bed. and there we are.

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Posted in art and crafts, Butterbean's HE, early maths skills, General, geography, history, language, music, numeracy, pre reading, science, Stringbean's HE

Getting on with it

Posted on May 19, 2008 by | 2 comments

Which is pretty much what the kids did today.

Up, a bit of screen time (Pingu and Magic school bus) before getting dressed so we could go across the road to buy bread, milk and marg to have breakie with a bit of Hama beading on the side.  After breakfast SB went off without the smallest reminder and did some maths (subtracting things like £6.13 – £4.85) and piano practise – though had to be reminded a bit how to borrow when subtracting. BB moslty played with the Geomags – she is really into them at the mo, we finally need to get some more I think. That and random 3 yo games with random objects, checked on the mushrooms in the mushroom kit – does;’t like to eat them, but fascinated by growing them.

Then SB started on some more Hama-beading, with BB also doing a bit. Whilst all this was going i was assisting in various ways, and being domestic – washing up, and cleaning out the fridge, cooking chickpeas etc. Sb then moved onto finishing off her T shirt that she was decorating for Amelie (late birthday present) . finished off the design on the front. Decided to write on the back – i wrote it down on paper for her, she spaced it out ok and then finished it off by writing Birthbag instead of birthday ! :-) – it was funny, but I tried not to laugh as she was really upset by it. Helen laughed even more when she got home which didn’t go down well. Will try to rescue it – it hasn’t been ironed to fix it yet. Helen was trying to convinve SB that Ams wouldn’t mind, SB not convinced. all the morning passed without too many arguments
They both went off and did some bits on the Starfall website until lunch was ready.

After lunch I sat down for a ‘five minutes peace’ cuppa and to write an email in my role as Merry’s tech support ;-). BB wanted to do a craft kit she found floating about – making bugs out of pom poms or some such. I said I’d do it once i’d had my tea, but then SB said she would help, so they went off to the kitchen to do it. Not sure how much BB did and how much SB, but they were both happy when I went in to see how they were doing so left them too until they stopped.

They both did some skating about for a bit at some point, so maybe that was now, then Sb helped me start to cook dinner – cutting up the Paneer and onion until H came home.

They played a Dinosaur ludo game – Sb didn’t like getting sent back it seems. Before long it was Ballet, more cooking, home from ballet, playing in the garden, feeding birds, Swimming, home to eat the curry that H finished off  – a treat of cookies that SB bought from the shop (with her own money)  when we got home. Bb to bed, while Sb and h played a game I think. Then I weeded the fruit bed, then time for coffee, chocolate and the last episode of Heroes Series 2 (a bit odd as it was cut very short by the writers strike.

and I’ve even blogged ! :-)

I’ve still got to blog my photo meme day from Friday, maybe tomorrow?

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Posted in art and crafts, Butterbean, Butterbean's HE, Cooking, Dance/drama, daubing and making, gardening, IT, music, numeracy, Stringbean, Stringbean's HE

ahh, hmm, ohhhhhhhhhh

Posted on May 19, 2008 by | Leave a comment

yes well, sunday.

i was at work for a lot of the day [and lets gloss over that shall we!], but did get to spend the afternoon and early evening at home with the girls. Although it was yesterday, my brain a bit weak on what we did! i know there was a lot of geomagging, kids k’nex and pattern blocks. SB did an excellent violin practice. we read some books together – and did some french simple words and a lucy chat. i think she had done some maths earlier? not sure!!

Anyay, we bailed out into the garden and played in the tent, and hama beaded. i watered some of the potted veggies. ermm, i think there was more, but the day at work proved stressful, and i guess i have just got a poor memory! i do know that when i got home at nearly midnight both girls were back up again, so i went to bed with sb, and chris with bb. i do believe i would have had no sleep at all without the reassuring presence of a child.

today i have been told SB has done maths and piano. she also has hama beaded, pompom crafted and made ams a t shirt, and we promised not to blog what she wrote on the back [bless her spelling mistakes] but i believe chris alluded to it in a twitter. since that bit wasn’t ironed [fabric pen] might it come out in the wash??

BB also did her t shirt and hama-ed, and happily geomaged and k’nexed. oh, and starfalled some alphabet stuff.
when i got home we played dinosaur ludo, SB to ballet, then to swimming. me and BB just pottered and played on the swings mostly, and collapsed in front of pingu and magic school bus. i must go to bed now as shattered!!

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Posted in art and crafts, Butterbean's HE, Dance/drama, daubing and making, General, language, literacy, music, noises and sounds, numeracy, pre reading, SB-PE, Stringbean's HE

hmm an atypical home ed day.

Posted on May 14, 2008 by | 8 comments

i am going to nominate today as the home-ed day in photos meme [please see previous in sidebar!], and will hopefully get the photos up! it is atypical, because i was at home, because i bailed out of a group today and declared duvet, and rainbows was cancelled. maybe chris will do one as well! thing is, i prob need the photos to remember what we did :smile:
8:00 they were both up with chris, so they prob watched something! had breakfast

9:00 I’m up! BB is doing alphabetting [using alphabet stencils to write the letters] SB is colouring in a rainbows picture, and then looking at the difference between the roman alphabet and ours. i read some dinodoor books with BB, we all do family members in french.
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10:00 getting dressed and cleaning teeth. i look round at house and decided to spend the day in the garden! [ in fact t-bird gave me the idea with her tent-ed] SB makes a great go at putting up mini-tent [with BB being not too unhelpful, and even nearly helping on occasion!] . I shew them my bag of selected options [not exclusive, they could have gone and got somethig else], and both started with colouring. BB with crayons in a bible book [bought by chris's parents] and SB in pencil on nice paper. She drew the garden first, and then started drawing my portrait.BB did some before the code.

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11:00 sees us discussing the weather in french – well, learning some of the weather words and popping them into saying it is hot and sunny. we read part of a book about food chains, and then had a fruit break. SB chose the ladybird book about the spanish armada [no I'm arder!] for me to read to her. BB liked the guns, and then went off to play in the garden. [I am concerned about her!]

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12:00 sees SB doing singapore maths 2B [halfway through] and BB and i looking at the extremely greedy starlings eating all the fat balls, and deciding to have a go at making our own. with a break for a who has the silliest face competition. SB finishes her maths and does it with us.

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13:00 mostly lunchtime. SB made lunch whilst i put lard [yuk what a truly awful smell, but the birds have never eaten them when made with veggie fat] over our nut, fruit, seed and mealworm mix. SB made peanut butter sarnies for BB, avocado sandwiches for me [using same knife, so slightly unusual!] and cheese for her [fresh knife!] and we watched some nina and the neurons. About now i thought, ooh, we have done alot today, lets make it our photoblog day! luckily i always take a lot of photo when i am at home to prove i was there. BB did some fab geomags – she wanted to make a square [cube]

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14:00 BB did a short violin practice – mostly just enjoying making noise. chris and BB went off to get some pallets from the orchard down the road to use to make an ad hoc empty compost bin [we have filled all of ours] . SB was going to do violin, but took rather a long time getting organised about it! we did do a violin practice too.

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15:00 has us back out in the garden. BB in the sandpit and SB drawing with fabric pens on a white t-shirt. both then did lots of playing in sandpit, with water, on slide etc. chris made compost bin, i played hide and seek, and took some flower photos.

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16:00 children happily playing, SB did some pot watering and had an icecream. i potted up the yard long beans and put into greenhouse [oops, forgot to say that in the garden blog - must put that right!]

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17:00 no more photos. both girls in desperate need of a bath!! after that some tidying up in the garden by me, whilst they watched pingu. a recap on french words we have looked at today.
18:30 judo for SB, i read bob the builder books to BB, we had tea and I put BB to bed.

19:30 SB home and fed, a short look at zoo tycoon for DS and then also to bed [by chris] whilst i potted up toms and cucurbits.

21:00 with the binging of the church bells, the tv switched on and we watch the apprentice and blog. the end of atypical home ed day. with thanks to katy for being understanding of me need to duvet, as we should have been doing science and latin in the morning, which we do all really enjoy. i just needed some home time.

photos to be sourced and added [of course, to make it actually a photoblog!]

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

summer is here – now official!

Posted on May 10, 2008 by | 1 comment

well here anyway, as SB and BB had a row about it!

before i start, why is it that as soon as i friends ans family flickr due to an overly persistant re-contacter, chris links to our blog from an everone view photo!! sigh!

anyway, it was another hot one today! started off in the cool with piano practice with SB. she wants to do more piano than violin at the moment, so i am hoping to facilitate that, but keep the violin ticking over. certainly her piano playing is coming on in leaps and bounds at the moment, and i guess this increases the enthusiasm. i’m going to try and find an easy duet book as well for that. [actually if i did more violin duets with her that would prob be a good thing too!]

SB then got on with some maths and handwriting whilst BB and I made some cheese scones [had to hide some so we would have some for tomorrows picnic!!]. we then did some lucy chat books at the beach – v helpful i now know the word for shark! and BB did some alphabet recognition.

All piled out into the garden under the gazebo to do some more crocodile making. SB has embellished hers so much with papier mache that hers is more of a thorny devil. bB’s was more minimalistic, and then she wailed because it was too wet to play with :roll: general outside play. chris and i both did bits of hoeing fruit bed, chris weeded some veg patch, i planted and SB watered. we have started hacking at the yew trees as well.

had some camping pancake mix left, so added cocoa powder to it for a chocolate pancake treat [bB's idea] we all prefer plain! Then put up one of our tents in the garden for the girls to play with [the cheapy 2 person 'festival tent']

cooling down now – phew!

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what a beauuutiifullllll day!

Posted on April 26, 2008 by | Leave a comment

it is rather fabulous to be at le weekend at last. its also rather typical that where we wanted really brill weather – last weekend and next, it was cold and will be [don't tell michelle!!] and this weekend of doing nothing it is so fabulous we have even put on suncream!

got up nice and early. merry had stayed over last night, which was also lovely, so we had got to do some gossiping and general chatting. she left pretty early this morning [well for us anyway!] so we were at least up with the larks. BB was anyway, SB stayed asleep and was much put out to find our guest gone.

no time for slacking though! a quick whizz through maths on her part, and BB doing dots to dots on poisson rouge. then piano and violin practice, then some crafting outside. we seem to have rather a lot of unfinished crafts, so will perhaps attempt to finish some before we start new ones!! There are the crocodiles still in progress. today we used 4pt milk to decorate up as animals – gleefully nicked idea from the pig at the manor borns. BB has done [drumroll please] a dinodoor!! SB is in the process of making liz the lizard from MSB. we sat outside on a rug. oh, i do like the outdoor HE!
a picnic lunch outside – woohoo!! then to the church where they were doing a bit of history of the village. more interesting for me and chris, moderately so initially for sb, and minimally for bb. they all liked the aerial shots, and spotting our house in photos though. on return we did a bit more french words – this time la maison book. TBH, these are v basic, with little context, but we pop a sentence around them and think the french sounds, so i am sure they are going to help! BB did some alphabet work as well. We also looked at a DK 4 book about dinosaur bone hunters.
Back and chris sorted out the paddling pool for the girls and they had a splash around for a bit. rather cold water though, so not enthusiastic for a great length of time! then a bit of tv whilst they warmed up – charlie and lola made a comeback! when I went outside, the pool seemed to have half emptied, and yess, huge hole!! it is the first time it has been used. grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

we had tea infront of dinotopia, which both girls really enjoy. i think it is confusing the extinct thing for BB, oh well! she has been pretending to be a meeteater dinosaur and grring from behind furniture – rofl!

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blogchen

Posted on April 24, 2008 by | Leave a comment

just a little one as i am seriously on edge – management meetings. i am just not the right type!

Anyway, the girls had a busy day, going to nots and tots, with a bit of french and a bit of latin amongst other things. SB did a piano practice as well.

when i got home they both wanted to do a craft, so some cards for fran are half made! Sb has used a stamping kit, and bB and i have done wax splodges so far. we had candles out for a bit of demonstrating that there was air and you can use it up.[bb is particularly keen on speriments] SB also did some maths. we all read a bit more of these baby french books [they are v much for 2's but they are quick, and we try and do a sentence with the words, today we were eating or not eating various foods!] SB and BB watched some how things work based on the DK books, which they both enjoyed [and yes, some MSB] . Sb playd some chess, and read some 3rd grade detectives books.

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Posted in art and crafts, Butterbean's HE, daubing and making, General, language, literacy, music, numeracy, Out and About, pre reading, science, socialisation