Category Archives: Stringbean’s HE

dementors on my shoulder

isn’t it so stupid being depressed about reminders of mortality. surely the response should be to get out there and enjoy life to the full. instead i have this gripping anguish. hmm.

i had a lie in, well, i am finding sleep near impossible at the moment. heard sb piano practice – she is practicing the bit before she started to find it difficult! will have a piano practice together more often i think! we did a good violin practice as well, but most of today was a lot of playing with train tracks, snuggling and watching roar, schools tv geography and walking with dinosaurs, and BB’s pod mission frenzy.

SB did do some zoombinis, with bb yelling encouragement – which is rather cute! Also she read the usborne beginners elizabeth 1, and tried to follow the quick links, they didn’t all work in firefox, so she went on to a go diego game isntead. a lot of playing outside.

BB and i read a fair number of books, and we looked at polar animals again, with the globe. which she enjoyed.she has spent quite a bit of the day being challenging. i did try and enthuse them on a science experiment, but was unsuccesful. before bed we played set and mastermind.
Chris has been trying to tame our veg patch – a job which may take a while! i beeswax polished all the wooden panels on the main staircase – that was quite a bit of effort! looks better for it.

my sister is home, which is good. i wanted to visit this weekend, but she would prefer it on tues, so the days i think are dragging because of that, and i have my own appt on wed.

candlemas

i should be at work this weekend, but a dear friend at work is doing my shifts for me, for my head and body are not fully connected. i was going to see my sister, but she would prefer i went down later in the week when she is out of hospital. I have arranged the time. Also workwise, i have had my continuing professional development record checked. i have to accumulate 250 points in 5 years, this was a 3 year spot check, although they discounted all those i had lost the evidence for, I still end up with more than double the points needed over 5 years, so they have attached a warning that they don’t expect me to stop for the next 2 years!!

erm, yes, so home ed. we seem to have a bit of a flow going on at the mo. SB is doing her violin practice and lots of reading pretty much every day. Also lots of science things going on, either with reading or experiments. The k’nex has seen alot of play, as has the train track. BB on the challenging side of 3 today, possibly because i have worked all hours this week, so that she hasn’t seen me at all some days. Neither of them wanted to share me today. Since my headspace messed up already, i found it stressful, but mostly negotiated and pleaded.

BB and i played train tracks, we all read the candlemas and end of while the bear sleeps today, and had a cursory discussion about imbolc and candlemas, and a rather longer one on what we think means spring is here. SB did a violin practice. BB was very determined to show me where we lived on the globe – so we looked at the UK, she told me the polar bears lived in the top cold bit, and the penguins on the bottom cold bit. I was quite impressed!
SB and BB painted spring pictures [well, SB did, BB experimented with putting colour on paper, and mixing] whilst i made some jelly [grape and plum] that hasn’t set well, SB doesn’t like and chris prob wont eat, so will bring it all to Melrose .

SB read to me then I took over a book about pasteur and his microbes. we then looked in a microbiology book, but i had no coloured pictures – well, the virus pictures were electron microscopy, which din’t have a colour version then! [it might do now] but we looked at my cold virus, verucca virus and the rod bacteria talked about in the book. We think when we get a microscope we are going to look at yeast cultures budding. We also had a look at the cell in her usborne science flap book.

more traintrack playing with BB whilst SB read born with a bang and then we all looked together at from lava to life. I really love those books, thanks em for the recommendation. We moved on to a bit of an embryology discussion, but i resisted the temptation to hoike out another textbook.

the sun was shining, and Chris was outside doing some garden tidying. So the girls went out and played whilst I got some sense of proportion feeling shrieked out by BB! i went out and joined them, and we looked for signs of spring – snowdrops, hellebores, primroses and one crocus!

eventually back in for hot choc and popcorn to warm up. decided to slob infront of downloads, so it was pods mission from schools tv [well i think thats where it was from!], tea in front of timeteam, and then bed. SB is having alternating stories from chris and I, he is reading gullivers travels, and i am reading ballet shoes. She says she likes the variety, and it stops chris and i getting confused!

It’s a Chris catch up post

Never seem to have the energy to get a blog out of my head to the ‘puter by the time I settle down of an evening.

Friday, a bit of Milkshake/CBeebies TV before breakie. Over breakie BB got me to help her make a ‘man’ with some wooden sticks. Then they have made cars (well SB’s was a trike) using their K’nex – Sb made one mostly herself following the plan in the booklet, I helped BB with her Kids K’nex – hers of course had to have eyes – she likes her creations to have eyes. SB’s car used the friction motor unit which is very good – the cars is quite speedy and goes a long way – good to have a nice long wooden floored hallway.

K'Nex Bug Eyed Car K'Nex Trike

SB has done some Getty and Dubay handwriting, some Webland and reading and an online page of Exeter maths, I finally found the missing Singapore “B maths book – hiding underneath some other books. They went outside to run a around for a bit, and feed fish and birds – rather cold and windy – though sunny. In between times they have played with the wooden train track, that has been out on the playroom floor for the last few days (it has managed to move from one end of the room to the other whilst staying in the same layout) BB kept asking SB to play, but then wouldn’t let her have any trains :roll: – SB – “she wants me to play but only lets me have the turntable…”

This afternoon we cycled (it’s not far) up to the farm shop for veg, cold and windy. I did suggest the tandem, but SB wanted to take her bike. She was fed up with a headwind on the way home though – she’s learnt that lesson now though. Home to warming hot chocs and cups of tea. Watched a couple of episodes of Pods Mission – about food chains and temperature sitting on the hard drive. One of them had some character is wearing a space suit or something speaking in a funny voice saying they needed to go to the loo – BB thought this very funny and wanted to rewatch it a number of times. Me and SB read chapter of SOTW – on medieval India, looked at the gloe to find India, and where the Byzantine Empire has been. She then coloured a SOTW picture of a Roman soldier – complete with blood on his sword – he’d been in a battle and hadn’t cleaned it yet.

After dinner, while Helen put BB to bed I sat down with SB to read to her – i was reading Fairytale News – but I kept stopping and dozing off so she gave up and read it herself :-)

Other bits of the week:

BB has had a couple of half day sessions at a local playgroup. She seems to be enjoying it – she especially likes the trikes that she gets to ride outside. First time we stayed for about 30 minutes, and then she was happy for me to go – though when i picked her up she said she had cried a few times – though she seemed to have done plenty as well, so I don’t imagine it was anything major. Second time she was not letting me go anywhere at first, but we sat playing, and after about 20-30 minutes she was happy for us to leave her. Seemed fine while we were away.

We’ve told her it’s ‘her group’, as we think she feels she misses out a bit with SB going to Rainbows, ballet, swimming etc. So she is pleased to have her own group to go to. They get given a playgroup t-shirt, which BB is very pleased with as now she has special shirt like Sb has for Rainbows – she had fun posing with it once we got home, and went to bed in Thursday and wore it most of Friday as well.

Showing off my new playgroup top Showing off my new playgroup top Showing off my new playgroup top Showing off my new playgroup top Showing off my new playgroup top

Other Thursday things, – having to get BB to playgroup for 9 am means we are up and at it nice and early. Was funny going to playgroup as it coincided with the school run for the local primary school so we wandered down the road pretending to join in – kids causing havoc madly scootering down the road.. SB glad we don’t have to up and down the road this time of the day every day.

On way home went into bakers. Most of them in their know that we home educate, but someone had obviously missed it, as they asked SB about not being in school, this wandered into a conversation about home ed, primarily about how we do it – tried to explain how we approach it, but i suspect that most people never really grasp it as we have the whole school model so ingrained  that it’s hard to imagine anything else. Back home (it’s so quiet when only one of them is in the house) helped SB do one of the reduced Science Museum kits – the magnetic calendar:

Magnetic Calendar Kit

Carefully does it. Almost there
One tiny bit was missing, but not crucial, and i can make one if necessary – doesn’t seem worth contacting the makers. I think these Science Museum kits are good value as they do seem to do what they say on the tin, unlike some others.

Much fiddling and general playing about with magnets afterwards. Then it chucked it down with rain, so SB put on her waterproofs and went out to have a splash in the puddles:

Rain is fun :-) Splash !


Then it was time to get BB – luckily the rain had mostly stopped by then.

in the afternoon, Sb spent ages making a birthday card:

Birthday card - outsideBirthday Card - inside

Me and BB wrapped the pressie, she put a few a stickers on the wrapping:

Just a few stickers here then.

Posted these, then not sure what happened after that. There was some piano practice at some point.
On the topic of Science kits, we did a very cheap from Yellow Moon Horrible Science heart kit on Tuesday – which wasn’t so successful, though entertaining . It had round tubes which go into square holes so leaked a lot of ‘blood’ , and it has small valves, which unfortunately once they got wet stuck open due to the surface tension, so the blood didn’t really circulate.

Best bit was when SB first squeezed it and we had jets of blood squirting out all over the place.

IMG_3235 IMG_3233 IMG_3238 IMG_3240 IMG_3241

SB is reading loads at the moment -forever has her nose in a  book. Been polishing off various Rainbow Fairy books lately from the library, and some other things about Unicorns, or magical ponies or some such. In the library at story time on Tuesday she was complimented by one of the other Mums on her reading (she’d been sitting reading something out the other week) – said she thought she must have been about 8.

Saturday morning – Nice and sunny, but I guess cold day, must get something done in the garden this weekend – no snow :-(

A day of 2 halves

We had one child each for most of the day. Not my ideal, but seemed a good idea at the time. Chris took SB off for a drama taster session. She really enjoyed it. they celebrated a friends birthday there too before coming back.

BB and i meanwhile, played with the k’nex building aeroplanes, did some painting – actually most impressed by her use of colour, read books and went outside to play in the sun for a bit. We got cold as scantily dressed, so leappadded indoors and had lunch as she was too hungry to wait for chris and SB.

when SB came home they had lunch. SB then did a fair amount of reading, BB and i played with a traintrack, then did SB’s violin practice. I took SB to rainbows and was helper for the session, whilst BB stayed with chris. i enjoyed the helpering actually. they did a great puppet colouring in craft, and i was rather bossy in enabling the girls to share the pens [oops] but 4 of them had piggies, and there were 2 pinks, and initially the all wanted all pink – so we thought of other ways to do things!! Chris and bB were out in the garden.
back home, and we had a watch of some magic school bus, but something went wrong with the server connection, so instead have had a walking with dinosaurs fest! [AKA a nice snuggle on the sofa!] i have started readign SB ballet shoes as a bedtime story
Sis has surgery tomorrow, so fingers crossed.

science is fun!

making a clock

yay, we made a clock!

making a heart

IMG_3240

If i don’t blog immediately i forget everything!

I am having a problem with yesterday! SB did some violin practice and something else home-eddy [not sure what!] we read french books, looked at some barefoot stories together and we all did duplo. ermmmm….oh yes, BB and i had a go with some maize pictures. we are nearly out of happy maize and will have to look for something else. oh, some more leappadding and SB curled up with a book.
Mum and Dad arrived, as she went to # clinic for her plaster off today, so stopped overnight. cue much excitement from girls, running around having fun, being read too and lots of games! We also fed the fish, pottered outside, and did the RSPB birdwatch. Whiskey chasing a mouse around, SB crashing her binoculars against the window, and BB ‘popping out to scooter’ probably accounted for the poor show!

today i think chris has been quite busy! Sb practiced violin, did some handwriting, did the horrible science heart kit [which was fun although not a huge success! chris was impressed about how much SB remembered of the heart – 4 vessels, valves, lung thing etc. i have got a very accurate model heart that periodically she looks at, and she is always peering at one of the many body books we have. She also did some DK science cdrom [though a lot of cbeebies as well!] BB had obvously done a lot of duplo-ing! as well has watching nina and the neurons and magic school bus [obviously a science day].

when I got home, we read some lucy chat – actually SB had a stab at reading the french – impressed, moi?? SB went off to ballet whilst BB and I played bob the builder duplo, and a sort of snakes and ladders! [i mostly do what i am told] and we started decorating a wooden spoon.

i took SB to swimming. She seems to have great confindence in the water, but often near drowns herself by huge movements! her rbeast stroke legs are the funniest i have seen, as she gets tangled up, and when it goes ok, she lifts her whole bottom out of the water somehow. SHe has powerful legs though, and however amazing the stroke looks, races through the water. I think we need to go swimming as a family more oten, and have some stroke practice. I think this is why she is worried about the deepend ocasionally. The swimming instructor [steve] has managed this really well, and she gets to swim the width by the edge of the deepend, but i only saw her reach for it 2ce [though she crashed into it going backwards a number of times...]

BB fell asleep nearly the instant we got back, so SB and i played games, including a lot of rounds of uno. BB has her first session at playgroup tomorrow afternoon. SHe waned me to go with her, but I will be at work. This working mum thing really does feel crap a lot of the time. I am with Joanna on the best for family vs me thing.

crafting and relaxing

coming home is always a bit of a downer. luckilly, i had a couple of things from yellow moon to tempt the girls! Both happily painted a piggy bank – well a hennybank for BB and bunnybank for SB! Some more painting from both girls. SB did some stamping and blow painting, and BB did some waterlife stamping.

we read a lot of books together – lucie chat, i can read french, daughters of eve and other barefoot stories. BB and I played hisss and various other games. in particular we did some maths – counting and adding on one. looking and recognising numbers. [she thought it was a froggy game]. SB looked at her leappad for the first time in ages, has kept 3 books, and says the rest are for BB. so i need to find her a leappad to play them on. but both enjoyed the dinosaur book. SB also looked at a body one as well

erm, we didn’t do the horrible science heart thing – maybe tomorrow, but we did a lot of cuddling and being together. BB also glued a pompom animal – she has a real thing for pompom crafts at the moment, so i indulged it.

i am hoping that BB doing lots of things she loves will help, and after lots of talking with people in real life and online, we are ramping up her education – i did think she would be entirely autonomous, but maybe she needs a bit of a push of stimulation, so we are getting singapore earlybird and the before the codes, and will take it from there.

centreparcs

we had a lovely time at centreparcs, sharing an 8 person villa with making it up residents! both families were not at peak due to outside stresses and strains, but we had a fabulous time anyway. I have never been to centreparcs before, and would now thoroughly recommend it as a winter break – particularly with friends. We not only shared a villa with some, but were happily surprised to find another family there which we know, who’s daughter and ours has great fun playing together, and i enjoyed having other adults to tallk to as well.

We obviously spent a LOT of time in the pool complex, for 3 days we did a late morning across lunch and late afternoon swim [going for the least busy times] and on the middle and last days went for the long swim and lunch there option. i guess we pooled for about 4-5 hours a day. BB was absolutely ecstatic about her ‘swimming holiday’ it [I think] was absolutely what she had hoped for. She loved the swimming, progressed from wanting to hold on a bit, to wildly throwing herself into deep water [the salt pool shelf] and swimming back with her ring on. She has got faster and faster with her swimming, using a ring and doggy paddle. Just so confident in the water. she was very happy to dunk under the water, get absolutely soaked, pop under to pick up diving rings [within standing depth]. it was lovely to see. Sb also had a ball. She is a water baby anyway, far more comfortable swimming under the water than on top [though her stroke there improving] and fearless. she enjoyed the rapids, shoots and slides, waves and diving for rings, and just generally loved being in the water. She loved having friends there to play with as well. i liked the tubes and the hot salt pool best, though the ‘river nile’ [named by SB] was good beacuse we all pootled round that together. the rapids at night were good – in fact swimming outdoors at night was generally good, as something i haven’t had much opportunity to do. chris thought they should have some wilder shoots and rapids!

Other things – well, SB went to the roller disco, except there wasn’t any disco to it at all. however, she did get to try out inline skates and fall over a lot. She def wants some. Good, as i have bought her these for when she finishes her swimming term [i find it hard to believe my wildly confident girl of the last week needs a bribe for swimming bravery mind you!] Must get some padding for her! All children had fun at the playpark. SB was daring, and BB and I had fun. BB did lots of scootering everywhere, which she enjoyed, and SB cycled. we were actually one of the closest chalets to the complex [by luck] so I think SB was disappointed not a longer bike ride. However, it was much easier for the little ones coming back at nearly 8 after evening swim!

A fair bit of crafting was done in the tiny gaps of schedule! both Jax and I brought some craft kits to do, BB was mostly keen, making pompom things, and a pencil craft. Small painted his aeroplane, and SB and Big scoobied, drew and beaded. Big did some fantastic facepainting. [even if a nightmare to clean off!]. An assortment of games had been brought and were played. Sb and BB had broght lucie chat and the other french reading book, which we read a number of times, and big and small also seemed to like. SB had brought her music theory book – and even did some of it!! we adults fed, watered, read stories and provided intervention breaks as appropriate in the day, drank a modicum of wine at night whilst setting the world to rights, and also played scrabble [tim won twice, but it was a close thing. jax moaned about the lack of refreshing screens - rofl!]
So, last day, last swim and meal and home – to loads of yellow moon boxes – rofl. bought ‘a few things’ in the sale. oh and my new swimming costume!! [too late but never mind]. great break. real world submerged me now, but nice to breathe if only for a while.

to pack or not to pack

well, we mostly have! BB was so excited she immediately found all the swimming things, but on a swimming costume, sunhat, and some toys in a backpack. she was ready!! in fact was far too ready all days! I am having a small wibble with the cut of my cossie after eating much to much in my customary stress release. aargh. anyway, clothes all packed, have 2 meal options ready.

we did lots of mucking about playing, SB rattled off some handwriting and maths. she also did violin practice, and we read about the byzantine [buyzantine or bizantine?] empire and emperor justinian out of SOTW. we all enjoyed another of the i can read french books. BB and i read a fair number of books together as well. more block building, hide and seek and simon says. SB watched the ice dance competition, but all the talking bored her. Chris did some baking with BB
remembered to pay for the cars tax disc too – fantastic! little nanny not so well at the moment, and this is a hard time of year for her.

Well, I'm all set for Centre Parcs :-)

Burnt offerings

Well, late back yesterday from work, and work has been so stressful this last week, that it seemed the week would never end. however, at least got back in time to see both girls before they went to bed -BB has been consistently asleep. So we did some playing [tummy ache], read more lucie chat books – these from the book people have been a total hit! Read another usborne dragon story, SB and I read some more saxon stuff when BB asleep.

today I had a late start. BB and SB up with the larks watching kids terrestrial tv. I dragged myself out somewhat later… however, SB and I did a violin practice, leading to the post below! all 3 of us read lucie chat, this time all having a go at saying the french and the english all the way through. we also enjoyed a same kind of idea i can read french book. SB and I read about ALfred the great, BB and i did some stickerbooking. We all played various games on the floor, made block castles and towers [with BB rather keen to knock down] hide and seek, tummy ache etc. I did some piano practice [shock horror!]. Girls rampaged about a bit, SB settling on cbeebies website [she doesn't ever seem to grow out of it] and BB and I made a chocolate cake. SB then did some CIMT maths and BB bathed [necessary after making cake!] Dinner and BB to bed – sigh of release. SB and I made peanut butter cookies to share next week. unfortunately, i left them for CHris to take out when took SB up to bed… [yep, burnt offerings] she is going to be VERY unhappy. we read some knight stories, and she read to me a DK reader children through time.

having felt suitably educational, i am prepared to slump infront of the opium of the masses.