I should have week 9 and 10 somewhere tho week 10 we only ha 2 days at home but none for week 11 as a holiday week. So here is week 12 which was a 4 day week as Easter
Anyway bb did a good week and is quite happy with the tick sheet. Sb didn’t get there but what she did she did v thoroughly 
sb did a couple more practices after this a music theory and maths to get to 26 – oops. we are tailing off a bit! and know 2 weeks not so good ahead
Posted in Butterbean's HE, Stringbean's HE, ticksheet, Uncategorized
so, SB’s is absolutely 100% correct this week and she worked hard most days 
but still if we had a box for faffing… particular long time spent on science, geography and french. She did 29 things on her sheet [aim is 35] but what she did she did v thoroughly . friday and most of the weekend were out and about as well, so the bookwork mostly limited to first 4 days, so i think she did well. we had some nice companiable times in the conservatory working on our different things together. I do think 35 should be acheivable without trammelling the whole day to bookwork – there is a lot of being out, and playing together and reading books etc, i guess it is about reducing the faff factor. will keep a bit of an eye out!
BB has completed her target having done 22 items [she did a piano prac with me after I had taken the photo] . She likes have an acheivable target [tho pretty resistant to doing more than is required!] and she is very much liking getting the box books.
The next 2 weeks are going to be formal work poor weeks due to lots of out and abouting. So I might put up the sheets next weekend, or I might do a list of what we did instead
Posted in Butterbean's HE, Stringbean's HE, ticksheet, Uncategorized
well, I know for def BB did a good week and got all her 20 things, and has chose another ninja meerkat book from the box book she is really doing well with piano, half way through the book and coping well with 2 hands at once and the new note of f sharp and playing b and d with the wrong hand cello is still a bit difficult in that she till needs me to sing the notes using her 4th finger. hmmm! also she has decided that some things she only does with me – ie the collins grammar etc.
SB on the other hand apparently only filled out her sheet on friday and dh suspects that there may be positive memory bias for work done considering he thought she spent most of the week faffing about. hmm, so seperately we have told her this is supposed to give an accurate record of what done rather than an imaginative rendition . hopefully next week it will be definitely truthful . so anyway, who knows exactly… it prob isn’t too far off… She did move onto book 6 in sngapore maths – wahay the plan is to finish them all this year! and got out her viola again [because holiday orch coming up] and has been fairly reg practicing her other instruments. and has been on the whole lovely and adorable
Posted in Butterbean's HE, Stringbean's HE, ticksheet, Uncategorized
this week i have been off work and the weekend was given over to socialising, and TBH the week before to making DH present as far a SB concerned! also, she spent a long time on some of the things – the biology, geography and history, so not such a completed sheet this week. more of an outward flow to the week i guess! Noticed a trend of BB not really chosing anything mathsy, so will also try and encourage that. SHe has enjoyed her piano practices and has now got half way through her piano book. oh and thankyou to party goers for the doodles
SB made 24 and BB 19
Posted in Butterbean's HE, Stringbean's HE, ticksheet, Uncategorized
being ‘half term’ many of the girls activities don’t happen. However, SB still had a clarinet lesson, which she enjoyed, and both girls had swimming. we did our weds group with merry. a lot of playroom tidying also went on . BB has carried on being v v happy with piano, and less stressed as new things crop up. 4th finger on the cello has thrown her into a complete wobble, so we have decided that for now I will sing any of the 4th fingers. this is a less than ideal compromise, so if anyone knows of a book where you don’t have to use the 4th finger for quite a while…
anyway, here are both the sheets. BB made 18. SB made 36 .
Posted in Butterbean's HE, Stringbean's HE, ticksheet, Uncategorized
Both girls did a good week of home ed and really liked the new laminated version of the ticksheet. The crossing off doesn’t reflect the day things were done [and I didn't think that they would, the girls had wanted the days ] BB was happy to have done 22 things with 20 as the goal, and SB has done 40 with a goal of 35 with most bold done, tho not quite got the pattern. Both girls get to choose a box book
Posted in Butterbean's HE, Stringbean's HE, ticksheet, Uncategorized
obviously, BB has lost hers! SB did 42 items with a goal of 35, so gets a box book
planning to try and do this everyweek
Posted in Butterbean's HE, Stringbean's HE, ticksheet, Uncategorized
As soon as H had headed off to work this morning, BB was agitating for us to find an old top of hers and sock as she wanted to make and elephant cushion for SB for her birthday. After much rummaging in bags of old clothes, we found a suitable top that was near enough in colour to the sock to be acceptable.
So then she settled down to sew (no time to get dressed of course):
They had made sock animals at Wodensmeet the day before, and she had a plan in her head :-) And she pretty much did it all herself, bar a bit of help with tying knots onto the ends of the thread. And she shew me various ‘tricks’ she had learnt making the sock animals as well. I love that she was able to plan and execute this pretty much all by herself
BB is a much more focussed child with such things than her sister, and doesn’t like doing a bit and then coming back to it, so 5 hours later, with just a couple of breaks for food really, she had a rather cool sleeping Elephant cushion
Meanwhile, I had been prising SB out of bed (no mean task, that girls is hopeless at waking up and getting up) She did her normal morning faffing about. Did a couple of bits of book work - Collins Primary Grammar on Adverbs and the Spelling book. Something, else of which I’m blank right now. A decent piano practice and then she wanted to bake some cakes to take to guides as it’s her birthday on Saturday. After some umming and ahhing, settled on Banana Muffins as easy and we had a stash of very ripe bananas.
After bit of toing and froing to the shops – first for eggs, then for cake cases she settled down to bake:
And they turned out well, though I could notice the salt in them. We don’t tend to add salt a lot to cooking, certainly not into things like Muffins. But sshe had been following the recipe and it had had salt in obviously. Guides were a bit low in number tonight as some school event on so plenty came home again
She is a good baker, but not very quick. So by the time they were in the oven, and she had done a good tidy up on the kitchen I was desperately in need of lunch. So some quick beans on toast and then BB went off to get dressed and SB disappeared upstairs as well – either playing with Cindy/Barbie or reading a book – she is re-reading the the Stephen Bowkett The Wintering trilogy(that I read as bedtime books a while back) and is on the second book, The Wintering: Storm
I got on with cooking curry for dinner – including a very nice Moong Dall based on a recipe from a book I bought recently, Hansa’s Indian Vegetarian Cookbook
Got them back downstairs, SB did a Clarinet practice, BB pottered around a bit in the garden annoying the fish in the pond, and indoors with some Lego. And then before you know it, it was time to head out for BB’s gym. SB did a bit more book work whilst there, mostly Galore Park Science. I forgot to take in the collection of bits I have to pass back to the Deep Enders who we did see there briefly, as BB has moved up into an older class.
BB also received her Certificate and Badge for the proficiency award they did before half term.
Then it was home, for a 30 minute turnaround, quickly warm up the curry so that SB could have dinner before Guides. Back home BB settled down with Walking with Beasts on the TV, whilst beheading Lego people with a Lego knight. Followed by a bit of a late bedtime as SB not back from guides until past 9pm
Posted in Books, Butterbean, Butterbean's HE, Cooking, language, literacy, music, photos, science, Stringbean, Stringbean's HE
I haven’t really had enough of them in the last year or 2 due to one thing or another, and so today, a day off, i just chilled with the girls it was truly lovely. I had a lie in and woke up when their bath turned raucous we then did home ed in the conservatory – did i tell you i love our conservatory – with BB starting with painting her fruit pot, and SB with galore park science [she has finished junior 2, tho we have the orrery to make] and singapore maths 4b and then a quick fill in the missing bits of her colins fun french and a science workbook [neither had much to do]. BB by now read to me a songbirds book level 2, did a bit of getty and dubay handwriting 2 and explode the code1. Sb finished with a great clarinet prac whilst BB bounced on the trampoline.
And then we had lunch
In the afternoon [ok lunch was quite late, so we are talking 2-ish] SB made some vegan choc buns [using the recipe on le ciel rouge] and iced them yellow to take to brownies on weds for her last ever brownies. [she is growing up so fast - sob!] and then pricked out some of her seedlings, and has realised she has sown way too many! depending on how many survive the pricking out process , i might suggest growing them on in modules/pots and selling some on the drive for charity – perhaps the village library which is staffed by volunteers. Both girls did loads of bouncing on the trampoline and rabbit chasing.
Today I spent most of my time with SB, which was lovely. When I am at home, BB often clamours loudest for my attention, and SB is a daddys girl, so i have been known to feel sad that i can have a wobbly connection with my elder girl who i love v v dearly. Days like this remind me that actually we do have a great time together, and the worries are just me being silly wobbly . I also went to her open ballet session, which i loved watching. She concentrates now v well, and has great poise and attention. We went to the park briefly afterwards before coming home. I gave each girl a short piano lesson, but SB has a really nasty cut on her thumb joint which was putting her off, so dressed with germolene and a plaster and hope will improve.
Tomorrow they have a busy day, which may or may not get blogged
I have loved this day at home, and really am at that point where i need to be working part time. my job is v fulfilling, but it is also incredibly demanding, and i just don’t have the emotional reserves at the moment. The girls are growing up fast and i want to enjoy this time as much as i can. but even if part time was approved, we would struggle to afford it. it is that old conundrum about whether it is better for family for me to work hard and bring in the money to make us worry free [tho goodness only knows how pay is going to be squeezed in the public sector, so may not be worry free] or for me to have this time with them, and instead we are money worried all the time. They already have one parent at home, so it is just greediness on my part. ho hum!!
We went to the Big Bang science fair at the Excel building in London, and it was brilliant . we went down on the thurs and came back on sat and saw loads of friends whilst we were there as well as learnt a lot. the stands were excellent, a mixture of school science groups, industry and ‘others’ : some you asked questions to, some you made something at, and some had things demonstrated to you. SB asked lots of sensible questions, and really is getting quite confident at this, loved all the exercise to make energy places and did a fair bit of making, but mostly for her it was about finding stuff out. For bb it was mostly about the making, and the getting of goodies . the stands were well set out into different zones as well. I was impressed at how well thought out it was.
SO thurs saw an easy drive and park at the excel, just in time for a building evacuation, so was a bit wierd! however, soon back in and to the desks, who were being totally clueless about registration and we had to go back again to get something put right. not a long wait tho, and only needed to do it the once. we never needed the big number we had to print out tho – not entirely sure what that was all about? we had a short wander around some of the v many stands and then went to our first thing – amoeba to zebra. TBH, I loved it. it had a feel of edinburgh fringe about it, was pretty surreal and made me want to giggle, and prob wasn’t exactly what it had been sold as. [well i might not have gone! but i carefully tried to chose things with both bb and sb appeal]. perhaps i should have looked at their website before booking – but then we would have missed something we all enjoyed [bb ran out at chapter 8 of interest, and sb got to 11]. we had our packed lunch and then moved onto the stands some more, and enjoyed some more areas before going to our headline show of Bang Goes the Theory – which SB adores watching. It was really well done, and both girls enjoyed it a lot. we wandered around the purple zone with maths and found wallace a gromit looking empty, so went in earlier than our booking. our lady not v good, thick spanish accent, and couldn’t get the demonstration to work [now bb has made her kit, it is obv that the demonstrators kit joined up all wrong!] but still, got a pic with wallace and gromit and a really fab kit. i think other ppl had better demonstrators and a far better experience. After this we collapsed at the little coffee stand, tried texting the portico again, looked up and saw them! [obviously in the maths section - lol! ] chatted and SB and buttercup went off to do the wellcome institute olympic challenge – which they both loved – measuring leg length against ability to jump far… a well as a number of other stands. BB and i pottered about the maths and physics, she really liked the bernoulli wooden cups and also the v simple stand showing potential energy [it is a long time since we did that at latinetc] . finally we wandered back to the car with a nice breezy walk along the dock front and drove to docklands travelodge – v cheap and parking . got kids all in bed, and kirsty family back from the eye, so we got them up again
Next day kids were suffering from late to sleep early to up, but we got going and met v quickly deependers, rainedrops, biff and nattyem as the checked in, so arranged to sit altogether at the front for brainiacs. kids really loved it, and i think extra fun to be sitting with friends. lots of capers and explosions and use of fire extinguishers . we then went on to have a fab time round the stands. i went round with bb, and DH with sb. BBs highlights was blowing up a nuclear power station the lego stand [she was there ages!] making snot, doing the yeast experiment – tho she loved the penguins, and we looked at lots of other things too. SB loved asking ppl things mostly, i think. but also liked the cpr vest, energy challenges at various places, and was complimented on her knowledge. We went for a film workshop with the BBC, which, for one reason and another didn’t suit BB, so i took her out. We had thought it might be a gamble, depending what they did, but it was unfortunate really how it panned out. However, BB had a great time at even more stands – particularly the stick one and the windmill one but also the chocolate one- being told she was clever and adorable and having her photo taken lots . I managed to blag 2 solar kits [without instructions] for me, and 1 for thebabs from the dyson people, which was nice SB really loved the film workshop, which she did in a team with nattyem and co – also something she loved – and was proud of what they had done, and the things they had learnt. so in the end win win . When she came out i took SB round more stands [my poor feet! ]whilst DH had a coffee and BB fell asleep on the table – aww. we swapped for him to have a final look at the stands and had a comedic moment of thinking he and SB would have to roll under a closing hatch to get out as the exhibition came to an end.
It was really worthwhile doing. We had a fab time, and currently plan to attend the one in birmingham next year. Home to the travelodge with kirsty and co, a failure to get chips in, so more expensive pizza option but tucked into heartily and happy kids showing off their goodies. BB realised she had less pompom things, and A v kindly gave her one of hers. BB continued stropping [as v tired] but given short shrift by the rest of us!
We finished off our time away with a great museum day at greenwhich with kirsty and family, and also the porticos joining us for the maritime museum and some general running about. It was great to spend more time with kirsty and family, our kids all got on really well this time [not a given with eldest and youngest!] the royal observatory was excellent, with really good info and displays and interaction. SB spent birthday money on a fab bag as well . Also enjoyed maritime museum, but by then could have done with more chairs, as feet were beginning to think i had changed profession . nice talking to adults, really enjoyed the science of the seas, not so sure of the kids interactive room, but they loved it and by the time we decided to have coffee, i was def in need of restorative . nice chatting with adults as kids raced around on lawns, and felt we came to natural end of day before BB completely lost it. I was wrong, of course, and after complete melt down she fell asleep on DLR – obviously what she completely needed and remained asleep, even when DH put her down by car to get everything in it. Am amazed she can sleep squatting really.
We popped home via manorborn for some v v nice fajitas [well, how could you turn down an invite like that!] said hello to their new french daughter, who played the piano beautifully for me. We chatted, the 3 older girls played a game, and BB was just not right as tired 
. got home after midnight to a bit of a crisis in part of my life. hmmmmm
so hooray for a lovely time away, with my lovely girls. children who are enthusiastic about learning, meeting and talking to new people and have lovely friends as well