Category Archives: Stringbean’s HE

like the manor born

Posted on April 7, 2008 by | 2 comments

SB

HE group sports session [which she always enjoys]

ello

violin practice

swimming [when i had a dizzy moment and wondered whether i had come home from one workplace, but should have gone instead to the other, so had to ring them to see if i was late [i wasn't!]] oh, and her front crawl now recognisable, but breast dtroke still makes me giglle, and feet first sculling totally creases me up – and I am sure i saw the instructor giggle too.
finished the worst witch, played chess

oh, and we must take her to optician – she has gone yearly – because think there is a definite reduction in vision!

BB

magic school bus. i do hope chris did something fun with her at some point!

read a dinosaur book from DK, which actually has lots of tiny books stuffed in it, so we will lose them all [already anal - not a good gift for BB, but cheap at the book people!]

fell asleep in the sling whilst i was feeding her tea.

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Posted in General, literacy, music, SB-PE, socialisation

a ‘post camp’ day

Posted on April 6, 2008 by | 5 comments

rainbows camps obviously take a lot more getting over than home-ed camps! even if they last only one night!! SO SB been perk free. i have been reading the worst witch too her, as she initially wouldn’t read it as it was too scary. she has decided that after all it isn’t scary, but quite funny. she is mildred and i am maud! So when ever i do another amazon order [i am booked out now!!] then i may buy some more, buy hoping a few might be found in the library. At least we now have a range of books which she likes to read [animal ark, magic school bus, dk 4 readers, rainbow fairies, horrid henry] that she is happy with for this stage of reading. the next stage i have lots of them still from my childhood!

SB and I played chess twice. i really am no good at it, but chris has bought her a book, which she has been reading on and off all day, so she may beat me shortly. we are relaxed on the no touching rule, and i tend to say ‘did you check all my pieces’ fairly frequently. the book suggests games to get the hang of all the pieces, but SB just wants to dive straight in. fair enough!

BB and i made YET MORE fimo numberjacks!! hopefully she wont break these ones quite so quickly. we also glued the airdrying clay coil pots back together again!! We rang my mum and all sang happy birthday down the phone. she was quite overcome, as my dad had arranged a surprise gathering of neighbours to wish her happy birthday. amazing! she liked the digital photoframe, though hasn’t worked out how to use it. [giggle, that'll give my dad something to do!!]

we all bundled out into the garden as it was gloriously sunny [no snow for us!] though the wind was bitter, and we wrapped up well. we fed the fruit bushes and planted the blueberries into their pots. no sign of the broadbeans and the carrots out in the veg bed. fingers crossed that they will come up!

A bit of wailing and BB-ing, so i came in and read stories to them both, and there was some magic tree housing whilst I cooked ken hom for tea – yummy. As an aside, why aren’t all tins stackable?? chris has been hoping that i will see the pantry like merry’s old sotck room, and enjoy putting away the huge sainsbury’s shop [it wasn't enjoyable!] and it really annoyed me that not all tins are stackable! its nicely sorted out now though!

SB turned down chess for who’s who for our evening games session. chris is now reading her peter pan as her bedtime story

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Posted in Butterbean's HE, daubing and making, early maths skills, gardening, General, geography, history, science, Stringbean's HE

latin, science and haircuts

Posted on April 2, 2008 by | Leave a comment

we got up in good time, and then looked likely to get there on time, however at the last moment, BB threw sugar all over SB, so a shower in order, and… we were late! luckilly, our hostess is v accommodating. latin commenced, SB said on the way home that we need to remember to do more at home. since katy had had a chat about possibly accelerating the older few, i might see if sb can do the pace they may set as she seems keen. at least i have bought another copy of minimus. we did science on magnets, i tried to have a mixture of more complex for the bigger ones, and easy for the littlies, but BB was really not in the mood to let me continue on. however, we struggled on, and think it went ok, i might try electromagnets next time.

so then some yummy soup and general play and chit chat with adults. so very nice. SB had a number of accidents :roll: and BB perked up :smile: . Dressing up went particularly well. bB then totally lost it, we were about an hour later than i thought [body clock not adapted ] and in the end swept mine out when i should have helped a bit with tidying, as thought more prolonged BB howls might be less welcome than the tidying up would have been welcome. BB fell asleep on the way home [and has therefore taken for ever to get to bed tonight] and SB also had an early night due to the wailies once we got home.

we had an ebay parcel when we got home, so i thought it might perk bB up, but no, it didn’t work! aaarghhhhhhh. anyway, the seller will replace the pen.

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Posted in art and crafts, Butterbean's HE, daubing and making, early maths skills, General, history, language, science, socialisation, Stringbean's HE

a blog filled day

Posted on April 1, 2008 by | Leave a comment

we are awaiting the ending of an ebay auction which we would have liked to have won. we have placed a max which is low, but reasonable, but is obviously lower than the reserve. i hate reserve auctions. i refuse to ‘bid up’ to see where the reserve is. And I think in this case it was obviously at something unrealistic, as we are nowhere near our max bid yet. grumble grumble moan moan!!

we had a playdate today with rainbows friend [RR for short]. she was obviously in a bit of a weird mood from the start, dropped off by her mum early in a tearing hurry [our girls stilll in pj's!] (Note From Chris: Early here was 10.20 :-) )they started playing ok, but after a bit our girls keen to go outside and enjoy sun, couldn’t understand why RR not so keen. but apparently she had watched a film on volcanoes. we prob live in one of the least likely areas for a surprise volcano in the world! it was oK if she wore S’s clothes though, and I went out too. fair enough, i sowed some seeds and interacted in minimalistic reassuring fashion. [a tsunami would be much more of a worry really]. SHe’s a lovely girl really though, just caught on an ‘unusual’ day – and no more off planet than SB can be. However, she did graze herself on slide, so i carried her in and settled her in front of magic school bus, and upset mine by insisting they watch it with her. pizza decorate yourself for lunch perked things up, and then after lunch i did an ad hoc weaving with scoobido fish dreamcatcher thing – which sort of went ok, BB and RR both gave up, and i finished theirs, but they tod me which colours and when to put pony beads on. SB did hers beautifully, but with a fair tension on it, so it is more of a tube fish!

BB showed RR her magnets, and a long discussion about magnets ensued, and a bit of iron detectiving. am planning to do some magnet stuff tomorrow. wish i had sorted out stuff to make an electromagnet, maybe next time. the older ones prob know it all already. hmmm

they went off and played happily for a bit, then a something or other, and I ended up hugging RR and chris SB whilst watching magic tree house and eating apricot scones [lovely] . so peace and happiness returned, chris and sb walked her home, and played for a bit there, as she was much happier back on home turf [obviously being about 200m away, no risk of volcanoes!]

BB and I did other bits and pieces together during the day. she was still wailing about lost dinodoors [if anyone goes to magna, or anywhere else that sells them, could we pay you for a 50p stretchy lizard?] so we made some about of fimo – a t -rex and 2 babies, that could also be eaten! we then went on to make the yummy apricot scones. mmmmm. We read alot of books together, and did some counting and guessing starts of words, and lots of singing. we also made a fish out of airdrying clay, whcih she insisted had a sad mouth [like prunella scales in that supermarket advert!]
Chris picked up BB from the floor at some point in the afternoon, and she really hurt her arm. not a dramatic pick up or anything, but she was really tearful, and held it as if broken. i checked all over and it seemed fine, so calpoled. after an hour of no mvt i decided we should go to have it xrayed, and she wailed and stormed she wasn’t going, and suddenly it was fine to push me away with it etc. yep, it isn’t broken!

anyway, relaxed bed time. chris has started on peter pan with SB, and we played battleships for our evening game.

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Posted in art and crafts, Butterbean, Butterbean's HE, Cooking, daubing and making, early maths skills, General, geography, noises and sounds, pre reading, science, socialisation, Stringbean's HE

bored blogging

Posted on March 31, 2008 by | 1 comment

though will no doubt get back into the flow. SB did some maths and handwriting first thing, watched magic school bus and raven, bB wailed about her lost dinodoors [she has only had them 2 seconds!], did a bit of earlybird maths and watched the same things. was going to do some music practice, but my parents arrived after my mothers hosp appt. chatted, sb played games, bb wailed about lost dinodoors, and wanting to paint her volcano.

so we started to paint her volcano, and SB started to do some brainbox electronics. 5 mins later, bb wailing as wants to do the electronics – do you see a pattern? anyway, i negotiated a settlement and we did lots of the whirring one until the batteries ran out, then a wild run about outside. read about the rainforest to BB. most of the rest of the day was spent outside, but we did do some messing about with a science kit on magnets and compasses. have left it out to have a bit more of a look at tomorrow. SB has changed all her box books to ones about explorers, and a couple of the new books.

we did actually have a lot of fun running about in the garden, and rescued the day really. BB and SB ‘helped’ chris by making manure cupcastles :roll: but ots of swinging, dipping feet into v green pond water etc. We refilled the bird feeders, and played games.

I took SB to swimming – her new speedo goggles far better [thanks all], and also i can see a v definite improvement in her stroke, she doesn’t appear to be drowning half so often.

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Posted in Butterbean's HE, daubing and making, early maths skills, General, geography, literacy, numeracy, SB-PE, science, Stringbean's HE, writing

ISQ

Posted on March 29, 2008 by | Leave a comment

well, SB reading loads- we got given some animal arks, and she has loved them, and read loads of them. also she has read the sonlight third grade detectives, all the magic tree houses, and all the magic school bus chapter books i had so far, and also horrid henry. these are all nice easy reading books for her. she has stretched herself with reading ballet shoes again, but 21 balloons was a bit difficult [well, its language is quite ornate!]. so i have bought some more 3rd grade detectives and magic school bus from amazon, as well as a couple of other things…

SB has done an enchanted learning booklet about african animals, [nearly a lapbook!!] and continued to read the ‘box books‘ about them [she chooses something to be interested in and we together find books around that and stick in the box for her to find and read as and when she fancies] she also wanted some explorer stuff, so a couple of explorer books threw themselves into the amazon basket too [all that disappointment from non-tent buying as we can't find a khyam ridgipod porch, and geting the rest without doesn't make sense for us]. She has regularly done her maths, still a fair bit of webkinz. oh, and although short we have done a lot of violin practice together, and she has done piano independently, and some with today. i think she prefers the piano at the mo, well, there is no setting up to do.

BB has continued her dinodor fest, and with chris has started to make a papier mache landscape for them to live in, she got 2 more from Merry as part of my bonus spending. SB bought herself castle keep, so we have played that every evening, and she is getting very good at it. in fact, if you click on the links, you can see my order at the mo! SB and BB have obviously got a bit more of a surprise coming! BB also been entirely fixated by watching magic school bus, though have persuaded her to let me read her lots of dinosaur themed books [katie and dinosaurs, picturepedia dinosaurs, various dinosaur fact books]

they went on an egg hunt today – as chris twittered, it wasn’t entirely successful…

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Posted in art and crafts, Butterbean, Butterbean's HE, General, geography, literacy, music, numeracy, pre reading, Stringbean's HE, writing

Latest in a (very) occasional series.

Posted on March 27, 2008 by | Leave a comment

Yesterday

After a late-ish return home on Monday it was a bit of a slow start on Tuesday. Kids started off on a bit of a Magic School Bus fest since I managed to finish acquiring all the rest of the episodes over Easter. The girls love them and they have decent science content.
They spent ages decorating the eggs they got in a ‘decorate your own Easter egg’ thing at Easter. Well SB spent some time. BB wasn’t so interested, she’d rather just eat them :-)

What else? SB did a fair bit of maths, and piano practice. BB playdoughed. I was looking up somethings for SB on African Animals as she had said a couple of weeks back that she wanted to learn some stuff on that. BB wanted me to find somethings for her, so I printed off a few Dinosaur pictures from Enchanted Learning. She painted one of those and did a bit of colouring on another.

On the African theme, I sat down with SB and looked at the the globe, the nice big atlas we have, as well as the DK book on the Earth. We looked at where Africa was, the names of some of the countries, what was a Continent, what the other Continents are. SB was able to say that it would be hot in Africa because of it’s place on the globe.

Whilst looking at the Atlas Sb noticed that some of the maps had curved edges, rather than being just a rectangle. so we wandered off onto a chat about how you have to change the shape/size of things when you translate a from a globe to a flat map. Demonstrated by trying to convert a rectangle of paper into a globe and comparing Greenland on the map with globe. I would have gone and looked up some different projections on the web, but by then we had had a powercut so couldn’t . wondered where my Peters Projection map is, but haven’t seen that for ages.

We looked at some of the different maps in the atlas – showing countries,communications physical geography etc. We looked at a good map of Africa which showed the different types vegetation cover – rainforest, savannah, grasslands, deserts etc. and looked at some of the pictures in the DK book to see what these areas looked like.

Was just about to go and sort out camping lamps, torches and candles before it started getting dark when the power came back on – which pleased the kids as they could watch some more Magic School Bus :-)

Chippy was busy though with lots of people who decided not to cook dinner (power came back on at about 5.30)

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Posted in art and crafts, Butterbean, Butterbean's HE, daubing and making, geography, music, numeracy, Stringbean's HE

surprisingly productive duvet day

Posted on March 26, 2008 by | 3 comments

after a really lovely, but emotionally challenging easter, i have found relaxing and sleeping difficult, so having overslept this am, i declared duvet day.

[oh, just in case chris doesn't blog, he and sb did loads of map related things yesterday, as well as library and a power cut]

so, when i got up, they were breakfasting [and SB was reading at the same time] BB and i did jigsaws, read books [with a bit of alphabet and number recognition] and tickled. SB did some maths and made and wrote in a birthday card for my dad using paintshop. crafts was a clear request from BB, so i got out an easter craft we hadn’t got round to at my parents, and painted easter window decs. still having glass paint, we then painted some of our takeaway boxes – bb plans to put dinodoors in hers!

BB and i read about birds [another fascination of her is eggs], and SB read a ‘box book’ about why tigers have stripes. SB and i played about with violin practice, and then a viola that mum has given me so that i can play a lower line than before. i realised that although i have messed about with a cello, i have never played the viola before. BB baked scones with chris, and we enjoyed them as a snack afterwards.

we all looked at our science growing experiments. the ones in the dark had grown very tall to try and find light, and had pale leaves [but still tasted ok], the ones in the fridge had only just started to sprout, the dry ones hadn’t done anything, and we have topsy turvied the bean, and discussed the effect of gravity. we also started our grow your own mushroom kit. they decided the spore and straw smelled yukky. chris and i rather liked it! lets see if it works [our previous mushroom forays in leeds failed totally]

since it was duvet day, we then watched numerous episodes of magic school bus back to back [thanks to some friends oop north]. i really recommend them. yep, they are in the all pervasive american, but there is a lot of science in there, they use the proper words, and it is still enjoyable rather than worthy. i had BB trying to tell me all about the crabbity zooey ones [zooplankton] following one about food chains in the sea. and i learned something in the how hens eggs are made one!

SB did a bit of education city, and then a lot of webkinz, which she has really got into and enjoys. we also did a good tidy up. so, all in all a very productive duvet day i think! [oh, and we did lots of my favourtie things - like snuggling, cuddling, tickling and laughing]. oh, and chris set fire to the rubber seal on our pressure cooker, as he lit the wrong gas rig – sigh!!! [also cue much choking and spluttering]

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

easter loveliness

Posted on March 25, 2008 by | 1 comment

was lovely and difficult at the same time.

loveliness: children playing together, easter eggs, family, weirdness of snow, dad taking children out to loose energy!

the first day we went to the park and got hailed on! then realised bb had gone out in slippers!!! lots of games playing, rummy, dominoes, ludo, word yahtzee [with some help!] landlocked, and hiss. also built a lot of things with k’nex and my nephew fell in love with both it and the maze ball!!

the children enjoyed the chocolatey goodnes that is easter, and i had bought yellow moon crafts [remember!] that we did a lot of whenever the moment required it. i think it went well, and kept everything ticking along, and hopefully all the kids will remember it as fun. the dinosaur eggs were particularly cherished.

difficulties: my sister’s diagnosis, and the effect is it has had on her and her family already. She was just tired btw, nothing dreadful in the end on her emergency admission, and thanks for all the well wishes. she had plenty of rest this easter anyway. magic wands would be nice.

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Posted in art and crafts, Butterbean, daubing and making, early maths skills, General, literacy, noises and sounds, numeracy, science, socialisation, Stringbean's HE, vivien, writing

hmm

Posted on March 19, 2008 by | 3 comments

i think i must be tired. have found today v difficult. want to wrap in a duvet a hibernate!

chris took sb to drama, which she loved, bb and i played with bricks and blocks, went into garden for a run around, recovered the veg patch where wind had blown off mulch, looked at spring plants and played hide and seek. we watered our seeds in the propagator and looked at how our science seeds were doing.

chris’s parents popped by to drop of easter eggs, and stayed for lunch and afternoon until sb off at rainbows. we did do some violin in that time, and bb did some of her ‘match and sort’ both girls looked at a road safety thing.

i cooked nasi goreng for tea, and realised i was temper challenged when bb wouldn’t eat it as she doesn’t eat rice – since when! so i have taken myself off to the naughty couch, and will eat chocolate and have an early night

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