Category Archives: Stringbean’s HE

mum and dad

mostly a day talking tactics for the future and gardening. its nice to have some help in the garden. Dad gave the topiary a good trim, mum and i weeded, SB watered and BB pulled up to veg – sigh!

SB did do some obvious home ed stuff – she did some explode the code, read some raiders and rioters book, and then some history with mum – mostly mediaeval bits and pieces. She is starting to read words out and a bout – which is nice, even if it was predominantly shed [garden centre] and getting more and more proficient with mental maths of adding and subtracting over a ten. She did some nice singing for my mum, and lots of maze books.
Most of the day was playing though. I think my uncertainty is not helping the girls, as SB more waily at the moment, and mimicking BB for the attention.

BB also had fun today. pottred around, started undressing upstairs as poopoo – so we might start potty training in the good weather. she enjoyed the sandpit and the brio track the most.

Catching up

kind of day. did some trrying to sort the veg garden – weeding, a bit of watering where desperate. the peas in their entirety didn’t survive us being at kessingland – very sad!

SB read to me the 9th ladybird phonics book, and did some explode the code. We also did some singapore maths thinking skills, and read a book all about how the body works. Mostly we played out in the garden though. SB definitely turning into a trapeze artiste.

i feel the need to be expanding on her home ed with resources we have, but not quite doing it. Luckilly she is very good at finding things to read/do, but I’m not keeping up with the piano, and would like to do the getty and dubay, latin and story of the world more regularly.

BB and I did lots of shape sorting and jigsaws before mostly playing in the garden. lots of running under water! [no hosepipe ban here, though this is the first use of hosepipe as most water butts now run out – unfortunately noticed one was full after i had watered! [we are metered]

chris made flapjacks, but neither girl really helped!

i am finding it difficult to keep my head in one place at the moment. Need a haven of tranquility – rofl! No news yet.

Show and Tell Soup

The day after we had got back from Kessingland, so feeling mostly like just being at home, but got ourselves together to get out.

Monday was a monthly gathering of one of the local HE groups, CHEF. normally there is a theme with activities, crafts etc. This meeting was a bit different. Everyone brought some vegatables and we all sat down and prepared them together – which was all very sociable and cooked them up in a big pot into soup. Some bread rolls were also made.
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While the soup was cooking we had a ‘show and tell’ session, with a bit of prompting she decided to take stuff she had made at Muddlepuddle camp – the needlefelting, the basket and the kite.

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she did a good job of talking about them and showing them round, in fact most of the kids did. Kessingland Tie-dye was also in evidence,

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So some good plugs for MP camp. some people were quite impresed by the quality of the stuff produced.
Once that was over we spent the rest of the time eating soup, fruit cocktail and some cake , yum. Soup was fairly tasty, in a slighty nondescript vegetabley way, there was a good variety of veg in it, onions, leeks, courgettes, celery, peas, broad beans, broccoli, carrots, potatoes. Though these faces may not be a recommendation……
We like the soup - honest :-)

It made a nice change from the normal HE group stuff, i’d recommend it to other groups.

Came home via Sainsburys , where SB demonstrated why pushing a trolley a bit fast and then sliding to a stop is bad idea by crashing it – luckily into me rather than someone else. Oh for the little kiddie trolleys in Waitrose, just right for littlies, then summoned home by SMS as parents popping in, so got home to have a chat/play (as appropriate) with them.

Tuesday happened as well somewhere, filled with normal things such as storytime/library visit – which ends up taking up pretty much all of morning in the end, once we have got up, found books, read a few of them again etc. Dealt with lots of post camp washing, and other post camp sorting, some Explode the Code, got organised to go early to swimming lessons so we could go to the playpark near there for a bit first, quite a nice little park, with a few different bit of equipment – SB liked the little roundabout thing you worked by sitting on it like a bike and pedalling to make it go round. I’ve given up tryimg to watch the lessons, BB just wants to run about climb up and down the seating area etc. so I don’t really gte to watch so now I just go to the cafe stick BB in a high chair, and we drink coffee and nibble things, and I get 20 odd mins quiet time – which since on Tuesdays Helen is often lateish to very late home from work is very welocme by 5pm. Afterwards se wanted again to watch the Circuit Training session for a bit – she seems fascinated by this for some unfathomable reason. I think she probably fancies having a go at it.

In the event, Heklen didn’t get home until 11pmish, so a beear infront of CSI once they were both alseep in bed was very welcome.

quick today

at the moment I am trying to seize the moment with the girls, and banish the dark side as it were.

so today we watched some cbeebies together, played imagination stuff, geomagged, read books – SB read 2 red nose readers and an apple tree farm with a bit of help. i then read why the sea is salty, and we discussed beaches and seasides. SHe then spent a while on jump ahead maths while I played allsorts of toddler things with BB.

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when bB slept, Chris set up and experiment for SB, and we watched how cooling gas in a glass makes the water level rise – well I’ll show a picture. We used the DK picturepedia explanation of molecules – really good – to help her understand what was happening, and she enacted molecules in various states!!

science - molecules!

BB and SB have both made plaster of paris foot and handprints [well, C and B's respectively at Kessingland were so good!]

When BB woke up, we did a great deal of sorting out of the hayloft, as someone locally is putting a few boxes of hers in there. If my future becomes less than pleasant, I guess we could rent that space for storage… BB played in the car, and I rescued my box – see previous post!

we played outside a bit, and then listed to little toe whilst eating tea, and discussed real vs totally made up stories.

Rebalancing

Life at work goes from worse to, well, thoroughly awful. It looks like there are going to be redundancies. I am last in…

O today I chilled. After all, if the worst is going to happen, worrying about it for the 6 or so months before I know, will just make them that much harder, and not actually make it any easier then.

SB spent half of the day doing jump ahead maths – its the easy one, and she is desperate to get to the giants birthday, as she gets it to 90 odd candles, and then the computer goes funy and the hard drive replaced etc etc, and she has to start again. So today she got 50 of the 100 candles. [reminds me a lot of me on games such as civ...!] Anyway, well impressed by her ability to stick to a task!

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other than that, we were mostly playing in the garden.

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I did get to play a lot with BB so we read, shape sorted, ran, cuddled, tickles, and whatever else a mummy and an 18 monther could think of! As Chris mentioned, her continuous monologue on the world is rather cute.

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oh, and I think our bees swarmed again. there was a huge buzzing noise, and a veritable ball of bees flying near the chimney, so I tooke the 2 girls in, and got distracted, so I think the main lot must have flown off before I got back out a couple of hours later – so the photos are of perhaps the remainder going back in? there has been a lot of flying activity, and also a fair number of bees dying on the lawn, so i wondered whether it was a swarm or a mating flight??? i just don’t know that much about bees. There’s still a lot of bee milling about going on anyway. They arrived May 9th last year

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Arrr beee chur be durrp

And so says Butterbean, or some such thing anyway, endlessy throughout the day. I love toddler pre-speech (well more than the odd real word) babble, it seems so full of meaning for them – as they point and wave at something, or give you something and then chatter away. No doubt about when she want’s you to read a book as she plonks it on your lap and says ‘book’ repeatedly :-) Her fave as the moment is Ten Little Ladybirds which she seems to BE endlessy dragging around, followed by That’s not my dinosaur . We were reading this earlier this morning and she was rather cutely getting my hand and putting it onto the textured bits to feel them :-)

Monday we went to the monthly sports session for one of the Home Ed groups, which Stringbean seems to enjoy. It’s only an hour, and starts at 9.30, which given it’s a fair journey for us, means a prompt start, but just about made it in time. We never leave in hurry though, SB likes to have play afterwards with other children, and i’m happy to sit and drink tea and natter so it makes the journey sem more worthwile anyway. So by the time we got back home, stopping for a bit of shopping) and had lunch and BB had settled down for her nap it was well into the afternoon.

Can’t really remember what else we did then – SB did some of the old DK World Explorer CDROM we have ‘New Version two – fully updated for 1998…….’, She needs a bit of help with where the places she needs to look for are, so it is probbaly helping her learn the continents etc.

Sspent some time in the garden, SB investigated the pond with a net we found – she was trying to catch the ‘pond monster’,

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but when Helen got home from work she came bearing gifts of a couple of water pistols, so we all had good fun trying them out in the garden in the sun.

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Had the Panner that SB and Helen made for tea in a curry. It wasn’t quite firm enough to fry, as it just melted and started to stick tot he pan, but was nice pooped intot he curry at the end, though did start to fall part then. Probably need to be pressed with a lot more pressure to make it firmer.
Yesterday was an long one for all concerned, SB was awake, waking up Helen before 5 am, BB was awake again (after waking at 3 ish) at about 5.30, neither really went back to sleep and me and the girls were all up early. Not good start when you are going to have a long day and possibly night at work :-(

Did mean i had two lots of washing on the line by about 8 though.

Library day/storytime today, so morning passed in breakfast, some reading of the library books some tidying up, watching a bit of the kiddies Springwatch on CBeebies. Off to the library – they both took Teddies there for soem reason, so both looked cute/funny carrying these teddies up the road, nice that BB is giood enough at walking places now that she can just trot along with us and doesn’t need a carry (to short a journey for the pushchair). Tried to get soem books out for Helen, but not sure how successful that was really, at the same time BB was going round pulling books of shelves (just such a handy height you know…) and re-arranging them. SB wanted to choose a couple of books, so not quite sure what she choose or on what criterion.

After that, lunch – including more Little Toe Radio Show, napping BB, some Explode the Code, some more of the World Explorer CD, I’d cooked loads of beans earlier, so made some up into a nice Bean Salad to go with dinner later. finally managed to get the playroom back into some sort of order, havng been a mess for days, read some of the library books, played out side for a bit, went to swimming lessons

(via a shop, got to the checkout and didn’t ahve my cards, so could only pay for little bit of what I’d got….. Very grumpy woman had to take all my stuff off and put in a trolley to put back on the shelves- yeah like I really wanted to waste my time getting a load of stuff and then not being able to buy it….)

- SB insisted that we watch the circuit trainers for bit afterwards – not sure why they are so interesting, home again, dinner finshed and eaten. I dozed off when putting each of the children to bed, and was dozing off again when H finally got home at about 10.30 :-(. so evening was a bit of right off.

So of course we went to bed at about 1am….

Simple Pleasures

sitting in garden with laughing children running about – ahhhhhhh.

thats mostly what we did. SB did some computer games and the whole of the new webland as well. She helped me plant out the runner beans – as did BB. Hands off to those of you who regularly garden with two such avid helpers! mostly she climbed, swinged and jumped. we played a lot of hide and seek together – BB usually gives my hiding place away though! Chris found the very old pop up tent and tunnel – so a lot of fun with that. Oh, and we read half of the usbourne greek myths book.


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SB and I had a practice run at our Kessingland craft – see below and leave feedback.


IMG 5180Our paneer has worked well, and plan to eat it tomorrow – we were too tired to cook anything inventive this evening.


IMG 5176BB is singing and doing the actions – she likes twinkle twinkle, wind the bobbin and peter perkins
We have a ‘pond monster’ It was flailing in the shallow muddy bit, and I went to investigate – i could only see the tail end, which seemed long for a fish, and wrong shaped – @ small eelish? broen coloured. disappeared fairly sharpish, but don’t think long enough for eel – I wonder what it is? Maybe its the culprit for the declining goldfish numbers?

Polyfilla craft

is rapidly undergoing a rethink. Polyfilla taking ages to harden being thought 1 – so prob plaster of paris instead. It looks nice tinted, so will bring some paint for colouring. Making a mould out of playdough [whether home made or not] was not something SB skilled at. took me ages to get her to understand, she pressed things in half heartedly, and then wailed she wanted to stick shells in the top – so prob not doing that. [i want something relaltively simple as a number of the crafts are definitely with a fair bit of adult help/supervision.]


IMG 5113So, at present polyfilla is in margarine tubs [have piccies will flickr] Sb found it easy to mix the water and paint in, and then stick shells in without me doing anythng at all. She enjoyed it. As I said, polytfilla taking a while to dry out much!

So I think this is what I’m going to do – bring plaster of paris and apint and stirring things. Suggest people bring a margarine tub or 2, and collect shells/stones from the beach and bring them. It might be as cheap as 50p a tub.

if enough fo you think your children would prefer making moulds then either I can bring playdough and charge a bit more [or alike] or you can bring it.

thoughts please?

what a scorcher!

suntan lotion – tick! hats – tick/cross/tick/cross etc!!

So today was an enjoy it while we’ve got it day! The MODHEU was put up again for some shade, and the girls whizzed and poddled about in the garden, climbing, swinging and sliding. Lots of giggles, laughter and ‘mine’ could be heard!

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Chris did a fair bit more weeding of the main veg bed, so when the temp drops a bit, I am going to go out and plant out squashes and sweetcorn [actually temp OK now, but bath and bedtime, so if I was outside it would cause mayhem!]

We did some home ed type stuff, when not running about aoutside, and some of it was simultaneous. SB made some more circuits with the brainbox primary plus kit – in fact she went and got it out and started without any assistance. It is a real hit. She has done half a hama butterfly and drew a lovely birthday card for my Aunty Margaret – writing and spelling herself on the back [except the aunty margaret bit] so slighty alternative, but no worse than my typing! She also did a wodge of explode the code 3 - this bit is about y’s and vowels at the end. SB was found reading a read nose reader as well – yay.

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Some mental maths today – mostly on number bonds for 10, and some ‘lumping together’ [aka multiplication] of 2 and 3 lots of … under the guise of running a shop, and how many egg boxes did I need etc. She suggested this btw!

Actually, we had a proud daddy moment in the shop when she added 12 and 12 and got 24. It seems to have been the only good moment of the shop as the post office queue was apparently hideous, and SB went into I want mode. [its also the 1 stop shop].

Last weekend, the grauniad had a recipe for paneer – 1 litre full fat milk and 1 lemon juice heated – so today me and SB made some. it is now wrapped in muslin in our jelly bag, and the excess whey dripping out. Cool! SB liked watching the curdling process, and we saw how little curds there were to whey. SB also helped me cook tea.

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We did watch the rest of Sound of Music. I am def depressed, as I tried hard not to cry as I discussed why they were running away. SB actually missed most of the overtones, and really didn’t understand. So I didn’t do that much explanation – war we can do later. She does want to see the sequel film, of them getting to america – i explained there is no film, I just read the book of their life, but to no avail! We’ve listened to little toe – now a daily occurence she is so fond of it. Before tea, as we had 2 exhausted little beans, they have been watching the blue planet – well SB watches, and BB dances to the music [cute]

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BB and I have mostly cuddled and shape sorted, chased, swung and built towers today. I do try and get a bit of as near 1 on 1 as I can – but SB not entirely amenable! [this is usually when she is match and sorting or hama-ing!] However BB is such an independent thing she is quite happy to have short bursts – as long as she can feed whenever she wants, and has prime control of lap time!!

Argh moment of the day was a thrush flying in, and then not flying back out again, ut being frantic by a non-opening window [eside a wide open door!] I psyched myself up to try and catch it in a tea towel, when finally it flew back out again.

Sunny day – AT LAST!

What a lovely day. We got right out into the garden and tried to catch up. so at last a garden blog!

We didn’t do any ‘match and sort’ today, but a fair bit of mental maths and spelling – SB and her teddy were playing at schools with me today outside. She insisted she had hard questions and the bear easy [cos he is 4!] I was weeding and hoeing at the time, and BB poddling about the garden – mostly climbing.

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SB painted her tile she made at the Abbey, nicely with black, yellow gold and silver at her choice, It looks very nice. And it was then lunch time. We listened to little toe and classic FM. SB very taken by house on the prairie and tom’s midnight garden. We had a spin off discussion on landgrabbing from Indians, and how to make a firebreak.

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After lunch we decided to ring a history book – so she chose a picturepedia book about the body! Anyway we went all the way through the book. She is fascinated about the body. It lead onto a discussion on oxygen, and how it was neede to make energy in the body, and how it was needed for things to burn. So we did some really cool oxygen experiments. we lit candles inside jars and watched them go out, and chris remembered a really cool one where you lit a candle floating on water with a jar over the top, and the water gets sucked up. Her Xmas tree crystal is looking good too.

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BB awoke, and so she read me a stack of books. SB went through some red nose readers, and the went into garden for a ‘school break’ while BB and I had some 1 to 1 with the fun blox and some wooden peg teddies. The all back into the garden. BB to run about wildly and giggle, and me to read Ulysses to SB [a firm favourite!] Actually BB and Guinness were doing a fair bit of bonding too.

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We all made the dough for pizzas tonight, and then more fun outside. BB loves the little car we got from Merry, and SB is totally wild on the swings – particularly the trapeze bar, andging from her legs twirling around. My Aunt lost her 2 front teeth that way…

Hmm, what else, well we ate the pizza outside [incorporating home grown asparagus, and in the salad home radishes], with the girls running around the garden thinking it was great fun.

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Sb went to bed listening to 5 children and it – at last she likes the more grown up story CD’s – though Winnie the Pooh still her favourite.

it has been a very relaxing day.

My Little Nanny not had such a good day, as her next door neighbour [since they moved in after the war] and closest friend in hospital to die from her breast cancer. Although late 80′s, their friendship has spanned half a century [more], her husband and Nanny’s brother were prisoners of war in thailand together [building infamous railway, and against all odds both survived] and they’ve seen children and grandchildren grow up. So wishing a peaceful crossing there. She is heavily sedated and not really ‘there’ due to brain mets, but even so, lets hope for diginity and a gentle passing none the less.