and then there was one

Posted on August 20, 2009 by | 2 comments

we are down to one child currently. SB had a playdate with someone met at sailing last week this morning. they live in the village, tho sailing was some distance away. it apparently went well. BB has continued to improve in her daily swimming lesson. other than that chris says they have done nothing particularly exciting. obviously SB has been dropped of with c parents for a sleepover. bb and i did some adding up, which she quite enjoys. then we watched jungle book. a somewhat shorter day blogged!!

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Posted in General

making it a habit

Posted on August 19, 2009 by | 3 comments

i have just finished a v weepy phone call with my mum. i still miss little nanny like a raw wound. today was a little nanny day, as some of the inheritance money has arrived, so i bought things for the girls with it. i bought some sylvanian things, knowing they love them, and that my nanny loved to watch the play with the little itty bitty toys and the imaginative games that they make up. the girls knew they were ‘from’ little nanny, but that i had bought them. so they spent a lot of time playing with them, and i spent time thanking my nanny for all the love she spent on her family and wishing for one last hug. if i try hard i can still feel her hug and her cheek against mine. i think i am feeling emotionally a bit raw at the moment with ongoing issues as well. where is the chocolate!!

[flickr album=72157620182571538 num=4]

lets rewind and start the day. we got up, messed about and then piled BB in the car to watch her swimming lesson. i was WELL impressed! she behaved well, tried hard and has so obviously improved and is at the just about swimming stage! they were doing front crawl today, initially with a board float [bb had to have an especially small one for her arms to reach the end] then with noodles for arms and legs, and then with nothing! she did at least 6 wild kicks before having to stand. and she was putting her face in the water to go further. i am SO proud!! she did a creditable face down star float for a few seconds too. go BB :smile: makes it even better that she can carry on with swimming lessons next term. they are at the same time as SB’s.

so back home to find that SB had been working hard as well. she had done a bit of galore park Junior English Book 1. i have to say she is not that keen on this, as the only thing she really wants to do with english is read. but we are asking her to do little tiny chunks every so often [if poss 1ce a week!!] and so today she wrote a poem about wizards wee :roll: but she enjoyed it, it rhymed and scanned so we are all happy. she also did a section on vertebrates in the galore park Junior Science Book 1 – not such a prob! so she was congratulated!

BB took exception to this, so we did some singapore earlibird 2a, which is suddenly seeming to easy for her! SB read 2 science story books

and

then we had lunch :wink:

and then we played sylvanians for pretty much the whole afternoon. i played too, as i felt left out, and stroking monsterrabs wasn’t the same. did pick kilos of runner beans which i have just remembered i was going to blanch and freeze :roll: never mind! i ran a fossil museum and tea house for people to visit, so there was quite a bit of looking at fossils in this game [reminds me to purchase some liquid resin - hmm, looked at ebay and don't understand what i am after - anybody used? its a craft resin i want to tip into a mould to look like amber?]

at 5-ish, the decision was to do craft and science, bb got some fingerpainting kit out, and sb a chemistry set i got cheaply from ebay [john lewis chem set, and i really rate it!!] we started with the does it dissolve or not for some chemicals, and bb also wanted a turn, so she got to dissolve salt, sugar and pepper!! sb then went on to separate out copper sulphate and pepper [we have done something v similar at latinetc at merry's with sugar and sand] and we are now seeing if we can recrystalise the copper sulphate. loads more experiments to do though.

dinner out in the garden. i put bb to bed , falling asleep myself, and was awoken by sb wanting me to play recorder duets. so we did. i think that was a fairly full on day, and i am now exhausted of all desire to interact.

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Posted in BB-PE, Books, Butterbean's HE, daubing and making, early maths skills, General, investigating, literacy, music, science, Stringbean's HE, writing

still blogging!

Posted on August 18, 2009 by | 1 comment

obviously i was at work today. bb had another swimming lesson, and was told if she kept messing about she would have to sit on the side. she apparently behaved after that. they were learning breast stroke. chris thinks she might be the youngest there, so i’ll give her some leeway! good news is that she is booked into regular swimming, and at the same time as SB! fab :smile:

they did some maths today each, apparently quite a bit. bB particularly proud of that! also SB did some recorder practice. Playing with monsterrabs happened, and also a library visit. following library visit was book reading.

my day at work slightly stressed by waiting for the outcome of my sisters appointment. it wasn’t as good as we would have liked, but also not as bad as we feared, so we are being positive. when i got home i implemented the engaged mummy plan, which involved doing some before the code with bB and then reading

with SB – her choice. this may not sound v interesting, but i like reading so that’s good, and it is a very structured activity, so ideal to a stressed mummy. after dinner whilst bB off to bed, SB and i played castle keep and rummy. finished the day reading some more of our roman mystery

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Posted in Books, Butterbean's HE, early maths skills, General, geography, literacy, music, numeracy, pre reading, Stringbean's HE

SO, trying the new leaf

Posted on August 17, 2009 by | 5 comments

BB again had swimming, and was doing backstroke happily [with buoyancy aids]. Chris took SB to GP as cough doesn’t seem to be improving at all. only a nuisance when she laughs or lies flat, but last night i found a stethoscope and listened, and heard a number of creps! SO has antibiotics. she is well though, so ‘pneumonia’ conjures up a bit more of an alarmist position, so i am going to call it a chest infection…

Anyway, this didn’t stop her doing things, and when i got home from work she was finishing some maths and had done piano practice. BB did some maths with me, and we all went outside. monsterrabs was petted and made a fuss of, i read about the black death from SoTW2, and we all declared interesting. think i have some other books around this to pull out for SB. also read the first chapter from

which seems to have a bit of crossover with our island story with some of the alfred the great bits, and SB loved it. and we also did read together the first few pages of Handa’s Hen, a bilingual french book from little linguist [link in sidebar to fabulous language resource shop!!] and have added morning, afternoon, evening and night to our vocab. the one prob with these french books is the past historic tense they are written in! this is as we are really after learning vocab for conversation!, but as we are not in the position of declining verbs or anything, when we look at the french, i tend to pick out nouns and then transfer the verb to present tense as we would us it to talk so that hopefully the girls get used to the stem meaning something. BB is doing some decoding of cvc words at present, but as yet refuses to remember all the alphabet, so a bit hit and miss!!

much playing on the swings and in the garden whilst this going on, honestly SB is well!!

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Posted in Books, Butterbean's HE, early maths skills, General, history, language, little languages, music, numeracy, Out and About, pre reading

space, the final frontier!

Posted on August 17, 2009 by | 4 comments

Anyway, so to the weekend, a little shiny jewel! We weren’t quite so prepared as normal, and the climbing frame wasn’t rocketty – so a bit disappointed – and I hadn’t got a treasure hunt organised, which I had originally planned to do. oh well. the rainedrops arrived the day before – which was lovely. we did loads of tidying and sorting, so didn’t get in a game of agricola – sob. [will bring when i visit!] and the next day actually saw us more or less ready! [well, for us!] ER wore what was going to be SB’s costume and facepaint, SB wore an alternative – which was v snazzy! BB wore her red catsuit and had a catty face – for about 5 seconds before dunking into paddling pool [ :roll: ], and RR had a flower facepaint.

People were arriving and welcomed, and the party swang [swung?] into action. We had a lovely load of local HE as well as muddlepuddlers, and the kids all got on well – a raucous lets empty the pool game seemed to be the focus of this bonding! Loads of yummy food, i sang into the arms of pimms, when my very own jean-luc wasn’t striding past looking manly. I think tim was more of a ds9! such a trekkie!! [tho i was rimmer!! - thanks to merry, in a slightly asymetric fashion :lol: ] I was v happy to have so many friends around, and happy to see them all. i do apologise to those i wobbled too. does help though. Baby O nearly tempted me… BB’s rather OTT meltdowns x 2 untempted me… bless her, she was overtired, as was SB, who fell asleep infront of the narnia showing! I did manage to paint a number of faces in a vaguely sensible manner despite pimms, and this ended up including lots of butterflied girls and an allstar.

a relaxed next day – good as jax and i stayed up waaaay to late!! and more frolicking in paddling pool from offspring and general fun, and sad to wave goodbyes. T-bird and aprillia decided that it was too sad, so stayed another day :smile: which was a lovely bonus.

contemplating animals for next year as bb wants to be a guinea pig. ? on safari??

oh, and i lent out a number of books, so for those of you who can cope with scifi…

and this rather excellent series


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Posted in General

pah, a weekly blogger!

Posted on August 17, 2009 by | 1 comment

OK, so a new term is coming, and with that fresh leaf HE feel sweeping around parts of the blogring, not only will we try and do some HE and blog it [and chris, this means you too!] but also be positive and invigorating!

We have actually done some stuff this last week! SB has been on a level 2 sailing course. This wasn;t an unqualified success, as she had some major wobbles with swapping from side to side brought on by a head dunking on falling in. She has had a dreadful barking cough, and this made it worse. Anyway, the brave lass did carry on with the course, going back out onto the water to try some more, but on the last day just did fun sailing, so didn’t get her level 2. she knew she wouldn’t, but was still disappointed.

Meanwhile BB has been on a 2week learning to swim course [well, she is still on it] and is really enjoying it. they have even been in the deep end! This was obviously with a number of flotation aids! She is very proud

other excitements were visiting merry – always lovely, but this time with the added bonus of picking up a rabbit called monster. we will be calling it monsterrabs or mr to differentiate from friends’ child’s blog name! it has settled into life here, and is rather fetching!! as bb puts it, ‘i am rather keen on rabbits!’

We have done some arts and crafts – mostly with a space theme for the upcoming party, and some baking. Unfortunately, with SB under the weather, we have done far too much vegging in front of the tv watching dr who, narnia and assorted rubbish!! My general feeling of only just holding things together, and then not always quite is not really helping. Not quite sure how to improve this as surviving on willpower only really. hmm.

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Posted in art and crafts, Butterbean's HE, daubing and making, General, Out and About, SB-PE, socialisation, Stringbean's HE

i guess i could blog again…

Posted on August 9, 2009 by | 2 comments

today we were going to go cycling. i am v keen to go on lovely new bike. SB still too rough though. she got up at about 5-ish and slumped in front of tv pretty much all day, apart from a few bursts of rummy playing and a mega vanilla cream [aka peppermint creams without peppermint!] making session. she even slept a lot of the afternoon- bless.

BB was much more active. she got her face painted – i have done that one before for SB – didn’t make me any more competent! and then she fiddled about abit before i interested her in some painting. sb looking unwell, so fell asleep on me. bb therefore did some electronics kit and watched some tv and generally pootled about until i snuck out. we then painted some alien faces, ate blackcurrents and made up silly stories. back in and a long soak for both girls and sheepdip affair for me! if the arrive, girls and chris will be costumed for the weekend!

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Posted in General

wild children

Posted on August 9, 2009 by | 1 comment

IMG_3922

IMG_3908

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Posted in photos

good books from klutz

Posted on August 9, 2009 by | 5 comments

i bought my nephew 2 klutz books for his birthday
this

and this

and had prev bought sb this one

having prev bought

so i thought that i would do a sales pitch for the series.l they are all ace. m was fixated by the lego one every eve, and then also the planes. sb has loved the fairies. these books really are good kits and have everything in. so if you are looking for a present…

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Posted in Books, General

and so to today

Posted on August 8, 2009 by | 3 comments

i did a last bit of fun with my niece and nephew, and face painted them – e again a butterfly, and m a bat. think they looked roughly right! bb was a sunset scene and desert island :roll: sb wasn’t interested as feeling rough and snivelly – bless. they all did a bit of playing but sis keen to get off so we waved them goodbye. sb immed collapsed into a heap, so we watched ice age 2 and then went out to paint pictures that might be vaguely spaced themed. and i mean vaguely! both girls being flopping, we watched some /bang which wasn’t so successful, and then robin hood and finally numberjacks. they were parcelled off to bed as exhausted!

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Posted in General