Category Archives: Uncategorized

SB started with the christmas cake yesterday, soaking the fruit. Today she made it according to st delia – 5 hours in the oven! we all had a stir and made a wish since we aren’t making a christmas pud. certainly the smells were wonderful

Today she also made a start on her arts award. she has decided to redo bronze and submit it this time but do photography, with a theme of movement. We had a bit of a brainstorm on different ways to do photos, show movement, looking at a variety of sources for ideas. However, she isn’t used to using an slr camera at all, so today was all about using the slr and getting some movement photos whilst laughing with BB in the garden.

Still focussing on our igcse prep, and SB did all but classical civ today. SHe has had some feedback from the classical civ tutor. He was pleased that she is good at handing in all her work, and her short answers are fine. However she needs to work on spelling [this is going to be tricky] and putting more detail and maybe pictures etc in her longer answers. Things DH and I had suggested [cf prev post thinking about scaffolding] She has already done her next classical civ work tho, so will put into practice the time after. She is really loving doing this with C tho . also did some clarinet prac and then some piano with me. so a good day of both work and fun.

BB did her home ed without fuss today, even the english! She has finised her science workbook on animals and plants, which she had enjoyed doing. SHe and i did the animal care today, sorting out rabbits and tortoise and we had snuggles and giggles. At judo she has been asked to tie her hair back… so today I cut her hair. Always tricky as she is a bit of a moving target! Result is not to bad, and luckilly her hair has some bounce to it, so the straightline not so critical!!!  we did piano together.

Off and on we caught up with the  Rosetta/Philae space rendevous with the comet. BB wanted a joss stick holder, so i made one comet shaped to commemorate the event. SB was slightly down mouthed, so I made her a joss stick holder too. SHe is totally out of the pink girlie phase, and asked for skulls and hearts! goth it is then .

so BB and SB have last practice judo before grading, and we are now sitting watching masterchef before bedtime.

still putting the work in, as hoping the room will be functional for xmas! at this stage it is all about the fittings! DH has put in some better wiring [he is good at electrics] and so at last we have light in the dining room! 2 lights in fact from the ceiling so we can see – hoorah! He has also been working in the loft for lighting for the bedroom. Also he has put in a soil pipe from where the toilet was to going through into our box room which will one day be another diy project turning into an en suite! So, it is still moving on!

as well as the bathroom to bedroom conversion, DH has had time to winterise the bunny palace. Not completely, but it is looking good. When we upgraded it, we used aviary panels for a full height ‘yard’ of 6ft x 6ft attached onto the 2 story hutch. currently every day they get taken out to a 6 by 4 run on the lawn to nibble. We have taken the advice of rabbit welfare, and a hutch is not enough to try and get it right. our double hutch isn’t quite to their sizing, so preparing for winter, we are hoping to make most of the yard run useable. In it we have another ‘secure’ area – it is a bench for us to sit on [or them to hop up onto] with all 4 sides closed, and a rabbity entrance. it is snug inside with hay. our aviary roof has polycarbonate on half, and currently mesh with a plastic waterproof top on the other half, tho considering polycarb there too. the mesh between hutch and roof is also covered with polycarb as is also the whole side next to the wendy house, and the single panel on the door side. this is leaving enough uncovered for fresh air to go through on the least exposed side. hopefully tho this will take the edge off wintry cold, as well as stopping most of the rain [snow] getting in. We will double layer the hutch when it gets colder [draping over the defunct paddling pool making an air trap] so with loads of hay should be snuggly, and the bench tempting us to sit and take a while. Later plans are fencing off the wendy house area for the grassy run for next summer…

hopefully that will be good for the buns over winter. will move the water bottles so they are more sheltered too. [we always have a minimum of 2 bottles to make sure that even if one fails and leaks, the rabs will always have water.] and if it is a truly terrible winter, we will move them into the conservatory, like we have done before.

Nearly go a minus!

Lol! I do sooooo love her

These ticksheets are showing us at our most worky oriented, as with sb in gcse mode and bb always reluctant to go out, we are doing our best!
Sb this week stayed with friends having fun for 2 days, so perhaps less worky after all! And it was quite a sociable week.

yesterday was a catch up on home ed day – a bit like homework! SB had been with friends monday and tuesday and then had had multisports and clarinet on the thursday and conservation on the friday – though she often takes some work to do there, and this time did chemsitry with jfish, which she found very companiable. Might be a nice thing to do regularly really as they get on well together.

so saturday was mostly a home ed kind of day, snuggled in the conservatory with me helping one and then the other and chatting and some games playing breaks thrown in. SB lost her retainers – argh! though luckilly we found them today. BB enjoyed doing her piano prac in the dark. Dh is currently doing work on BB bedroom-to-be, which is above the gloomiest dining room imaginable, so he had switched off that lighting circuit so that he can add 2 pendant lights from the ceiling. [he is v good at electrics]

we then snuggled up and watched the second brian cox programme and then doctor who [which i thought was a bit of a let down TBH]

Today was all about remembrance. we had 3 parades/services to attend. SB is in air cadets, so they had the main one in town [outdoor] and then they wanted volunteers for an outlying village one in the afternoon, so she volunteered. BB is in cubs, and was one of the supporters of the standard – quite proud . SO I went to this mornings with BB to take photos and go to the service, which we get to sing hymns with the brass band – very lovely. The service was a bit disjointed and the main sermon not really drawing in this time, so not quite as moving as previous years. Very lovely to see BB being so proud tho. DH said SB marched beautifully in hers, but was dischuffed that loads of people didn’t sing, and no brass band for him in town. The afternoon one was unusual, as in the afternoon, and my first baptist remembrance. i think it did very well, clearly the minister had thought very hard about what he wanted to say and how best to put across this message. Having the availability of showing short war clips clearly was helpful. probably the best service, though having a piano recording to the hymns is definitely not the same as a brass band! i had never been in that baptist church before, adn thought all the wood panelling stunning [tho did prefer the saxon/early mediaeval church of the morning.

lest we forget.

and back, we have finished off some home ed things, will play a game and snuggle up in front of the tv!

On friday we went to meet the exams officer where we are hoping SB will do her igcse exams this summer. Unfortunately she was off sick, but I have to say it caused me to have a fluttering of panic! Not real, real, panic, but that – OMGsh what have we started! We are first timers to these exams. Obviously DH and I went through the UK system, but we did O-levels – that dates us! – and we were in school, so the whole curriculum and prepping for it etc was outsourced. now, we are ‘in charge’ of helping, scaffolding and encouraging SB to do the best that she can, and it is a weighty responsibility.

Deep breaths really! However, it did make me pull an Arnold Rimmer and redo the schedule as we had run a bit behind on the geography, and hence we ended up with the new ticksheet below. Also, although we have ‘outsourced’ classical civ, I realised that I was feeling anxious and out of the loop about the plan and progress.

SO then SB, DH and I discussed this, and the plan is that most weeks she will do an exam questions with one of us on each subject [bar French - also outsourced!] where we help her plan the answer and format and she says what she knows and we look it up to craft what we all think is a good answer before looking at the mark sheet. Gradually we will do less of the planning / crafting and hopefully she will need less looking up.

By the end of Feb she will have finished both the geog and biol books and we can then be doing revision and paper practice. This makes me feel more confident, although there is a huge amount to learn! French I am not so worried about, as she has a tutor, and her basic french is good. Classical civ I still feel exposed over, but we will see!

The bottom line, though, is that we are taking these early to see if we can do them successfully at home and to spread the exam load – especially since she might want to do en famille again next year. So if it really doesn’t work out, it isn’t a disaster. I think it is going to be OK tho, SB is a clever girl, who although she has inherited the doing it tomorrow gene sees she wants to do this, and i am sure she will.

My 13 year old has asked for an upgraded tick sheet. She wants to have stars or stickers

trying to blog contemporaneously

It is hard to know what my lovely girls will remember of their childhood, and whether this blog will alter that. I hope they remember the love, laughter, crafting and hugs, and book reading! more like they will remember the nagging and that i always have a migraine. i don’t really, but it does often feel like that, and i had one all weekend, monday i managed to carry on tho speech slurred and stuttered by it, but poleaxed again on tues, and missed a day at work/study in the smoke which v sad about as 1) good to go to, 2) cost a fortune and 3) argh to work ramifications of sick leave

Hopefully they will remember days like this, where we had fun, laughed and learnt something. Weds4ed science is coming to the end of the plants – cos my lab assistant hasn’t quite cracked a working home made potometer – has 2 weeks to deliver! So we looked at structure today, both the stomata, and the vascular bundles. We chatted a bit again about plant respiration, how it works, what the plant needs, and set off the colour experiment and then did the stomata. Most of us have done the colour a lot – but celery/carnation etc in coloured water and look at where the colour is. We contemplated the properties of a successful dye to look at this, and did quite well, and then used methylene blue on dead nettles. Whilst this was doing the works, we plunged geranium leaves into boiling water. air in the leaves interstitium expands with the heat and is driven out – the only place to do this being through the stomata, so we could see loads of air bubbles on the underside and none on the top. v effective! we then put clear nail varnish on tops and bottoms of fresh leaves, peaed off when dried and looked for the stomata on the peelings – luckilly visible. finally we cut up the stems of the deadnettles, having had some conversation about what we might find, to anounce we were wrong I love a good microscope session where it all works as planned!

SB and jfish did some french, and then we all did some more of the degas modelling project. some are painting, some still wiring with modroc to do! plan is to then dress with material. SB’s is gold – of course! and afish no longer has a horse, but a dog!

other things this week – BB has v much enjoyed another wizards academy kit. we have made batteries from coins ages ago with wodensmeet at zoes, but i thing bb to young to remember, and loved doing again. SB has returned from SOTP where she spent the weekend celebrating a birthday. SHe successfully managed the 2 train changes on her own – v proud! [tho she chicked out of asking train trolley person for chocolate frogs]. She also got back in time for her offical entrance to air cadets – which she is very happy with.

this eve i played games with both girls – yahtzee with SB and bieberband with BB, which she loves. we finished the day snuggled up watching dr who