Category Archives: SB-PE

Reminiscence

reading Jax’s brightkites made me peer back into this blogs history, and read our moving story. actually was moving, and i felt all forlorn again over leaving our circle of friends and family up north. we have a new circle here, and i would say we are settled, but it takes me a lONG time to actually feel fixed, and the future of where i work still isn’t certain!

i have been at work, and chris took the girls swimming, which they always love. we would get more of a weekend swimming routine, but seem to fill the weekends up! when i returned, SB was transfixed by the ds, playing super mario bros and then spore for quite a long time. BB and I painted some farm frames, and then bb took some photos and we printed them off. SB managed to drag herself away from the ds to make a flower fairy from the present from BB [Fairies: Petal People You Make Yourself (Klutz)] which she did really carefully and enjoyed. so good present BB!

they did some arguing over sylvanians they want to get next – :roll: i told them that it was even worse hearing them argue over something that wasn’t going to happen then their normal arguements! Chris and i [and bb] watched a really harrowing lion programme where most of the cubs gradually died from starvation… SB chose to do a really long piano practice instead!

Melrose 2009

well, where do you start? it was utterly fabulous. I have always been greatful to mrs muddlepuddle for starting out the melrose early years winter camp. this year was no exception. and we had snow!

we arrived just in the nick of time to put the pasta sauce on for the starving hordes, and well received! we met and gret [meeted and greeted?] new faces, old faces and firm friends, made from the very first muddlepuddle camp we ever attended 4 years ago [did i mention i was greatful?] then we got down to business, children playing elswhere and parents chatting, wine timing and playing games. the kids might call this ‘the snowy melrose’ but for us adults, it might well be ‘the games melrose’.

snow: oK, i am not going to do a blow by blow account – quite! we all had fun in the snow. the sledges [i got more off as it came to under a tenner for 2!] i bought at the last minute – and nearly sent back :roll: due to colour arguments – were well worth the pennies, and were used a lot every day by our kids and others – was pleased how well the sharing thing worked. the portico also brought sledges – rather cool silicon mat type thingies. so yes, snow was a key part of the melrose experience this year.

Gaming, was a v adult part of the experience! i really REALLY enjoyed stone age and Pandemic, and would be happy to play those lots. others played carcassonne and mission 44 and blokus, but i settled for those 2! lots of the adults got involved, and what with those stitching beside giving helpful commentary, it was all v sociable.

communal food was all delish. thanks to all the other makers. luckilly i didn’t over cater on the cooking front quite so outrageously. things to remember for next time 3kg rice is plenty. 5kg potatoes, 4 tins peas, 12 tins toms, 3 caulis, 1 tube garlic paste, 1 bag red lentils, 1 bag split yellow peas or channa, 10 onions, 1 tube tom paste, 1 spice pot bombay spices, 1 spice pot korma. only need 1 large yoghurt pot! with 1 little bag mint leaves and 1 cucumber.

crafts/activities. three cheers for nattyandplusone [avoiding google hits there!!] for providing felting and a computer gaming workshop. both my 2 got a lot out of them. i particularly loved the care and effort and significant attention bb put into her dinodoor scene [shh, its a secret present for daddybean], and they both worked hard on their ideas and looks for the computer game. finally they, courtesy of bead merrily, fimo-ed for ages, particularly BB as SB was off playing and practicing for the show at the end of the week. i also fimo-ed some aliens, and did a special one to one workshop with Jpie on fimo snowmen.I also did an ad hoc activity, and prepared skye boat song for the instruments available. in the end it was done when none of the guitarrists, or my children, where present. oh well! however, fran did a fab job with the sightreading of a lovelty cello part, various adults held the tune, and various children played d and e at mostly the right time. we heard e’s glock for the first time too.

music: i got to play the violin some more with em. always a joy. we snuck off and remained hidden for a fair while until required to be parents again! next time, if fran there, may simplify the continuo and see if she is interested…

escaping the hostel. well, we didn’t do dynamic earth this year, and though i planned to visit jedburgh and mary queen of scots house, a migraine put paid to that. and somehow – prob due to the snow, we didn’t swim in galashiels either. However, chris, SB and the manor borns walked up to a trig point, and then scudded down on their bottoms in the snow! i had an amble around Melrose with merry and 2 of her girls, and that was about it for us as i failed to persuade SB to walk to trimontium.

playing: well, the girls appeared to do a lot of that. Seemed to be mostly very smooth as well with little flouncing and bouncing – always good. BB also packed in some TV watching. There was a cabaret at the end put on by the kids and compered excellently by gwenny – nice to see the portico holding on to their traditional roles :lol: SB did a fab gym routine and also a leaping lunatics dance, and finally a bit of recordering. after some rather good clowning act moments – including heckling by small – BB also did some recordering. lovely acts from all in it i thought.

challenging moments
: well, i thought i had better before BB was outed too!! ‘i’m not tired’ wail shriek and full tantrum. lovely! I saw you all giggle, particularly Marcus! to say that BB was challenged and challenging whenever she didn’t get what she wanted from her parents is an understatement. Luckilly no more than 25% of the time – :roll: but am wondering what she was doing when out of our view…

So there was melrose. do you wish you had gone? you would have enjoyed it!!

raising the dead

well, that was the home ed lesson for today. quite a good one really!

it was a latinetc today, without the puddlegirls though. SO we had combined latin and games were played there, and the littlies did winter french – drawing pictures and then discussing what you could see in french. both language sessions were enjoyed by my respective daughters!

for the science bit today, I had loan of a resuscibaby from c’s badgers. so we did that. the younger group were v attentive to how to do it, and all had 2 goes each at remembering – the most vital bit for them being call for help! i wouldn’t really want to be in the position of them or no-one [but research shows really only 11+ or 13+ have the strength to actually do cpr on an adult], but I think learning about it, and coming back to it every so often is important. The older group were WAY more dramatic. for a minute I thought I was Merry asking them to act out a scene from casualty!! once I had persuaded a toning down of drama, we got on with it, and each of them successfully did cpr at least once, and practiced finding landmarks on each other – though we did A LOT of discussion on how you can’t actually do it for real on someone unless they need it! We did all the safety, calling for help, defibrillators and associated stuff. SO I think that was worth doing, and they did it well – all be it with ‘style’!

the other half of the science session was starting on bones. [thanks again sarah!] and we drew our own hand bones using an xray to model. we named and chatted about the different bones, and how we got our hand mvts. They decided not to label in chalk, so here are websites with the ‘real names’, so they can be labelled at home. Next time we are going to do the bone in vinegar thing, so will need LOTS of vinegar/ jam jars and chicken legs…

of course, a friend currently residing in the states had to go for a bit of one-upmanship, and their hE involved looking at strawberry DNA! luckilly she put out the ‘recipe’

1. Pulverize strawberries down to goo in a blender.
2. Mix 25ml strawberry goo with 50ml of water.
3. Add a pinch of salt.
4. Centrifuge for 60 seconds.
5. Strain out solids.
6. Add 15ml of liquid soap.
7. Centrifuge for 60 seconds.
8. In a test tube, mix 50-50 goo-you-have-made and ice cold isopropyl alcohol.
9. Gently mix (tip it back and forth a few times) and allow to separate. Broken cell bits are at the bottom, DNA is in the cloud at the top.
10. Pipe off a little of the top cloud. Put a drop or two on a glass slide.
11. View under microscope. DNA!

They used a kid’s science kit centrifuge [gulp!], and it didn’t seem to be going all that fast.

and now I am on the hunt for a cheap centrifuge!! This site also interesting! hmmm. It feels all exciting doesn’t it!

hermmm, well where was I before sundry flights of fancy??? Ah yes, after lunch, SB and chloe were keen to do some music, with G, but got started all on their own, and were being so fabbly autonomous with an EE mark :lol: that we left them to it. the were using the colour coded bells, and using felt tips, writing music for them [felt tip corresponding to bell!] we were v impressed!! Unfortunately we were all haring off, so i don’t think they realised quite how impressed we were!

home, SB did some piano practice, and drew some traffic signs for the next harmony arts assignment, and then did some sewing. BB watched some mona the vampire and then did some sewing also. SB had brownies – and we saw her make the promise, and she seems much happier in brownies than she ever did in rainbows, so that seems good. [maybe she is just a happier girl] she had judo, and a new boy is apparently a bit too rough, but the sensei seemed to have it in order. SO there we are!

in the rest of the week, apart from thinking about the future of HE in this country and getting depressed, political and activated, the kids have played – in snow, a lot with sindy/barbie and sylvanians. SB has done some maths and piano and is really loving reading her encyclopaedia of knowledge and coming up with odd facts all over the place. i have worked silly hours – must do something about that! Chris has baked cakes for Melrose.

Smokin’ Science!

today was rather busy, another latinetc day, and i had 2 ‘speriments up my sleeve. katy was a bit worse for wear with a migraine [and merry got the start of something too] so since michelle and i were migrainous last week there is something in the air!

latin for the big ones to start, and science for the littlies. except i couldn’t get experiment one to work! it is from sarahs young scientist kits, and i know i need to search through her blog to find it![gotcha!!] as i was trying to use ballon over the bottom as well, and then used a plastic bag far more successfully! so the younger group got to see it work, but didn’t have the fun in it. luckilly merry to the rescue, and they all loved doing her sticking craft. i heard a great deal of fun happening in the music section too, and SB loved playing the bell tunes.

the big group used my model diaphragm/lung and did it. and due to chloes exceptional amount of hot air [i mean puff!] she inflated the balloon fully inside the bottle, and demonstrated the mvt of the diaphragm. not quite the way the speriment is supposed to demonstrate, but actually they all got far more out of that than seeing the little bit of mvt from moving the diaphragm! we chatted all the while about lungs and function and muscles, and then moved onto smoking. i had decided a sprinkling of health messages would be good, and had googled for smoking experiments, and abandoned that route!! so looked for anti smoking science fair, which was more successful, and adapted some recipes. so i made a pretend lung and it smoked a cigarette [outside] we talked about various illnesses, looked at a packet and a cigarette and smelled it unlit. interestingly, the only child that didn’t think it smelled dreadful has a smoking relative. then outside it burnt away and we saw our lung filling up with yellowy smoke, and our cotton wool around the cigarette was convincingly yellow and black. the children were most offput! when i catch up on flickr, there will be a set! a number of them thought, said or wrote some reasons not to smoke. SB did a flip book but on 1 page to cut and arrange of a lung getting more and more damaged.

lovely lunch, chat and separated to our diff afternoon events. merry and girls came here, and the girls played tho fran not so well, and did reading. and merry and i chatted about this and that, including the books in the post below! we also thought we might do a relaxed art activity here in the afternoon, as fran is spare parting at the mo, as SB plays down prob, with a love of barbies/sylvanians etc. in a fun relaxed way anyway!!

had a bit of a thing from work, so have been in once this evening, and might need to go in again. but hoping not.

SB had her new brownie pack this eve, and says she misses the old one, but we’ll see, and then judo – a firm fav. BB watched some numberjacks.

hearting

today i took my first and second anatomy classes ever! and no-one managed to accidentally dissect off their own fingers either. no fainting, and i think they all did well. we did have some ground rules – if you stopped wanting to do it, stop doing it and tell me. if you want me to do it and show you, tell me, and when you’ve ‘found something’ let me tell you what it is. so we found lots of things. I just managed without gloves as there was only enough for kids by going ‘in role’ and that way i could also block out the smell of the abbatoir! not that i have ever been in one, but still… since the majority of the kids were veggies like me i think we all have a pat on the back. but they did all seem to v much enjoy it, and they found everything. we only had one leaver, and that was after everything found, and i think the smell was becoming a bit much. hopefully no nightmares… the littlies did other stuff as well with listening to hearts etc, and i must listen to one of them again, as well as getting the biguns to do it. this is a rather fab website with various sounds on it, as is this one, and i will revise before next week!.

Michelle kindly took all the pictures this time, as my hands were somewhat too mucky for the camera – though actually they didn’t make much mess at all [to my surprise]. hopefully i will get a juicy big email of them, or something!! ANyway, the piece de resistance came at the end, as one had a lung attached and most people had a go at inflating it with a straw. [ady mr health and safety prob wouldn't think this such a good idea, but they each had their own straw!] anyway, c and SB inflated one side fully to everyone’s delight. i def did not want a go – yuk!

we cleared it all away and opened windows and doors, and maybe i should have taken a scented candle, but the smell did dissipate, and thanks katy for hosting something that wasn’t particularly pleasant! the biguns did latin – sb said it was chapter 4, and v happy with that, and the littlies did french – bb even stayed in the french, which made life easier for me.

J had made a fab cake to celebrate gina’s birthday, so we sang to her and enjoyed the cake! some playing and we came home to find the loft insulators leaving – hoping to cut down on a few bills. must put up the curtains for doors as well.

SB had a brownies party and then received her judo certificate. I have to say the judo cert is fab. i must photo and flickr. it is a work of art [and free]. i am still migrainous, but settling, so back to work tomorrow, so i must do some stuff for work [hence early blog, as a distraction!]

A post with some HE in it!

it looks like it has been a while :blush: . luckilly, some HE has been going on!! SB has done a fair bit of maths, piano practice and handwriting, and a bit of spelling and music theory. she has read her new usborne books on samurai and aztecs and crusaders. She as also read hundreds [ok i exaggerate] of library books, done a lizard picture for sketch tuesday.
on Sat SB had her judo party, and really enjoyed the disco, and we have some fab photos at some point to flikr [well behind on helmsley though] and she has had a swimming lesson today and an HE playdate yesterday.
BB has carried on with loads of letter writing, some maths – she is considering how adding works at the moment. i really must remember her phraseology! she is deciding whether it makes sense anyway. but what if i add 2 things? will it still be 6?? [after 5 plus 1]. and also poisson rouging, jigsawing and crafting – an angel at library crafts, and painting all the animal picture frames she got as a birthday present. she wants to do recordering and music theory too now. there is no holding her!
we have as a family read some french books and had some french conversations – bb suspiciously asking – are you doing that in french again :roll: [ :lol: ] mind you, she has chosen to watch 2 videos in german – heidi and some crazy fairy story one.
As a family we have put up and decorated 2 christmas trees and got out the nativity scene. BB insisted the baby had to go in it as it might cry. i have been to a rather excellent planning meeting for the wednesdqay stuff, and chris is off to a planning meeting tomorrow. so, amidst the excitement of violin case buying, other stuff has happened!!

Not where we planned to be!

i was thinking that we might be in yorkshire, but a number of events changed our plans somewhat, and we will be wending our way up on mon. not least is the total exhaustion i feel at the moment, and a couple of chilled days with the family seems to be a good plan.

hmm, thinking back to thurs and fri – obviously chris days as i got back from work v late both days. the normal things i think, the nots and tots group thurs, with crafting and recordering, but too late for frenching. then some gym for each in the pm. i think SB did some spelling and maths and maybe a piano, but not entirely sure! BB has done quite a bit of geomagging, and also making long neck dinodoors from the maize packing fillers in one of the boxes we had. friday they waited in interminably for my phone, and unfortunately meant a missed visit to a monks event, which sounded great. the phone came and had the back of it missing anyway! of course, when it arrived, chris nearly instantly found my old phone! after a great deal of fussing about – and i have complained via email re customer service – i now have a working phone – my old one on the old number. other than that, i think the whole day was spent tidying up, and it does look better for it, and the room of doom is a room of gloom instead as it just needs a bit of cleaning, but chris has organised most of it!

and so today . the big thing, i guess is SB’s grading for judo. it is her first ever grading, and she enjoyed it. i hadn’t realised you got to sit in, so BB and i stayed at home and chris took her. he snapped a couple of photos. After the grading they did a bit of shopping – including wellies and some christmas card making supplies – and had a treat lunch out to celebrate SB’s new white and red belt. it does seem to be enormously long ? adult size?

i have had insomnia most of the week, with a standard to sleep time of 5-ish and a get up of 7-ish. so am feeling in desperate need of sleep. i am also quite considerably grumpy – so another reason to try and get some sleep before being sociable! anyway, i was wondering how i would survive the morning with BB as i just didn’t have enough energy to power a biowatch. luckilly BB had some ideas! we made cuisinaire rod patterns, read books and then sorted out my 2 sewing boxes, which BB had great fun in dong, and is now the proud owner of the sewing box i was given when a child, and the pin/needle holder book i made whilst at infants school! following this BB chose to make happy maize pictures, and we have now run out of happy maize.

she then was v keen to do baking, so we did that, and made pink sugar sprinkles cupcakes, which were then iced with various greens. hmm! anyway, loads to take with me to yorkshire. we had a more boring lunch and i did a short violin practice which she danced to, before we read more books together all snuggled up. At this point chris and SB came home and mayhem ensued!

SO with a few card supplies, and the brass rubbings we did a while ago, we made a start on making cards, and between us have made 12 – so not bad! then a bit of grumpyness tidying up, followed by a bit more work on the secret santa things from the girls, as both decided they needed more paint. and actually they both look better for it. i think SB’s really is fab [even with one upside down zebra] and BB added some detailing to hers, which elevated it from looking like a paint accident to a design! SB did a piano practice with me, and had a go at a christmas carol she thought would be too difficult in a different book. SHe was very impressed she could play it [we 3 kings] so that was good. then she is making fudge [rather than tablet, which i prefer] and it is currently in the fridge. So more tidying and then bathtime, and i red meg et mog les oeufs de meg [or something similar!] which is Meg’s Eggs (Picture Puffin)
book in french from the little linguist shop that was fab at delivery times etc and comes recommended! and also hurry up molly, this subterfuge makes me seem interactive, yet doing something easy [reading] educating [french] and ensuring that for once the majority of the bath water stayed in the bath rather than cause further damage to dining room ceiling. fab!
dinner and the bedtime. i think i shall hope for sleep tonight. i feel i should be able to sleep for centuries! SB also at somepoint today fitted in some music theory.

shaking off the rain and making the most of things

as you can imagine, after yesterday, my black dog on the shoulder seems to have turned into a clydesdale horse! so i decided to be as computer free and child available as possible, with my facilitator hat on. it has actually meant we have had a v productive yet fun day, but i am totally bushwhacked from being so engaged! in reality, i think disappearing off to an alternate reality with a book might help my weariness, but not my heartache.

having fallen asleep [wayhay for actually sleeping] playing civ 4 last night – a go at alternate reality, but actually i prefered the earlier civs – i was woken up by bouncing children at 9.30. managed to keep them bouncing in a mole game, rather than having to get up straight away! On coming downstairs, SB and i started with piano practice together. now she isn’t playing the violin [and i v much miss that] we are making a concerted effort to practice the piano daily. this is already paying off! bB was a bit grumpy that i was doing piano practice with SB, so once she had got going on it i played the most dificult game of hangman with BB. she was in charge of the hang, and the only letter of the alphabet in her 17 letter word was 1 m! so i lost.

BB then leappadded, and chose the phonics series. being BB she chose number 7 rather than actually look at some of the letters of the alphabet! she is def going to learn to read her own way. she wants the dinosaur leappad book that sb has but never looks at. SB meanwhile was doing maths. they have got to thousands – woohoo and all! so she raced through that, as having grasped hundreds, tens and units, thousands is really just more of the same. SB then insisted on more ballet practice whilst BB said she was doing her ‘writing practice’ – ie squiggles on a white board! SB settled into some spelling – she enjoys these wizard whimstaff, and BB and i did a bit of piano fun. I then did some violin practice [faint!] as have strings. boy am i rusty!! i think i now have finger strain – rofl!! WHilst i was doing that, bB was quite happily following instructions on the brainbox primary electronics kit to make a ‘whizzer’ with only a little bit of support from SB.

After lunch it was baking time. SB chose a recipe of chocolate marzipan biscuits – something nice and complicated! and through the afternoon did it pretty much on her own. BB and i opted for the simpler peanut butter cookies. SImpler in recipe, but obviously complicated by BB’s desire to lick things all the time [so i have a series of spoons that are single use licking spoons to keep the biscuits edible!] and her sometimes idiosyncratic weighing and measuring :smile:

SB’s mixture had to rest for a while in the middle, so we all read one of my french books from the little linguistberthe makes a pizza – which we loved. [here it is on amazon] and SB did a recorder practice. the new outerwear from muddypuddles arrived, so SB now has some camo trousers, my pink girl really has vanished! BB got a free glove puppet, so equally happy.

SB finished her biscuits whilst bb and i had a romp and read a book together, then we all had tea before SB went out to Judo. BB off to bed, and SB watched some nina and the neurons when she got back.

SO there you go, a busy day in our household! flickr pics of the day

oh, and any advice on trampolines. still humming and hawing. jumpking ovalpod oval vs bazoongi deluxe 12 foot with funring [ouch for more money, but ? its worth it?]

happy top post

i don’t like the blog to look sad for long! today has been productive for the beans. SB has really got the hang of pas de basques and cifras, and done some tidying up of a number of other steps. feeling more positive! so thats good. she also has judo grading weekend following helmsley so stop over plans curtailed unfortunately. she has done some piano practice and finally has finished singapore maths 2b – woohoo! done spelling and handwriting. we have together read a book about castles all snuggled up [as i needed a hug!] and both girls have been to gym. BB has been mostly investigating all her presents happily.
and tonight i did some christmas shopping courtesy of M and S online 3 for 2 and 20% off. i only bought items that i would have bought anyway, as it is so easy to get sucked in [so i halved the amount of stuff initially in the basket!] i am hoping amazon does a similar sale at some point!!

penguins dropping from the sky

today was busy busy! after such a late bedtime, i am surprised we all got up, as sb also had v late bedtime, and bb woke up as we went to our v late bedtime! but, a fianl tidying push, stuff set out for science and sort of party food! BB opened her presents, and was particularly ecstatic but the sylvanian stuff from both sets of grandparents was a clear winner [as anticipated], and the mp3 from my sister. however, she is now working though the pepa pig set with great keenness! SB and i did some MORE pas de basques, cifras and clappy dance practice – and she has really got the pas de basque thing. just the rest to go! SB’s my pals are here 3 and 4 arrived from singapore and she was very happy!

the latinetc group arrived and we kicked off with science. i thought a fun session of dropping and consolidating the things we had learnt was in order, so we dropped crumpled vs tightly packed paper, and then made parachutes with different size and weight material squares. the children are getting better at making a hypothesis and thinking why they chose that, even if wrong! they certainly enjoyed all the dropping, and were confident with the concepts. then we made paper aeroplanes, which stretched me some, as the origami instructions were complicated! at this point merry arrived, so hers also had aeroplanes which whizzed about a bit. SLight mayhem and chaos later, and a latin session. i was v giggly to here amo amas amat [amamus, amatis amant] from the living room!

finally the ravening children were fed – we had missed out snack time – oops! and fully satiated went on to head shed loads of cake. though my pingu cake looked good, most children ate icing only. i tasted it and thought it was a lovely sponge! BB v keen on the full dark room and lit candeld cake being brought in and all, so we duly did this.

so mostly an afternoon of playing for children – inside and out – and chatting for adults. thankyou to Anne and A who also attended, and chris’s parents. we had a lovely chilled day. BB fell asleep pretty much as guests left, SB did some maths and the judo. BB is awake and playing again :roll: