thoroughly lost thursday

which is what i was trying to find the venue for the snakes session on thursday! a slight disagreement with DH, and we made it! by the time we made it, i was feeling harassed plus plus!! but we were just in time for the littlies session, and i went down with BB whilst mum vaguely supervised craft with SB. we really liked the snakeman. and BB loved the opportunity to hold the snake and lizard, and said it was the best thing ever!! [we do know she has a thing about reptiles though!! both current and the extinct - well, i know dinosauria aren't strictly reptiles, but...] Any way, we really enjoyed our session. i think SB’s with mum was harder work as more people in the session, but she still really enjoyed the opportunity to touch and hold the snake and lizard, and would like to have had ore time. they both did get the chance to go back and meet some more of the reptiles, and also do some lovely lizard based crafts. Thanks to the organisers and enablers.

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i left early as still in somewhat of a dither from contretemps with DH, and parked in a short time only spot etc etc. when we came home, we did science – always soothes me!! SB and BB did some of the horrible science explosives kit, and i loved the lava lamp take on the volcano favourite!! Mum did more curtaining, and dad was still painting away [bless]

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we also did LOADS more HE, as the girls have been in a v productive mood! SB has loved her wizard whimstaff workbook – the first spellings one, and raced through. she is also enjoying the maths section on shapes and areas, and found chris’s tangram book, and had a lot of fun making the shapes with that. bB joined in with her maths and also pattern blocking. in fact, BB has been so keen on maths, she has taken the book to bed several times to do ‘bedmaths’ and is now on earlybird 1B. She has a much better pencil grip and easier writing effort than SB at a simialr age. most of SB’s maths was oral, but BB likes doing a certain amount of the number writing [within limits of course!] BB has also had something of a letter sound moment, and is more and more reliable in identifying the sounds at the start of words, and realising words are made up of sound sequences. she can’t recognise many letters yet, so we are still doing a bit of that, but she loves to hold books and look at pictures and say she is reading, and I have read countless books to her.

ANother thing we have done a lot of this week is french. we have done french conversations and read a lot of stories in french. i am not sure this is the best way in the world, but it suits us. it seems to mimic how we might pick up our native language, gets us comfortable with a foreign language all together, and doesn’t frighten me – who finshed with o-level only! SB and BB do it together. SInce SB only just getting comfortable with writing in english, i am obviously not going for writing and reading in another language yet! SB did piano with mum and then read loads of books, including stories to BB.

SB had gymnastics – which i haven’t got to watch before, so happy to do that! [and also chill]. i was impressed by the amount they work out, and clear to see what sb’s strengths and weaknesses are. we will work perhaps on headstands and poised balance!! [BB missed her session - oops]

wrong paint wednesday

we are racing through the blogging aren’t we! mind you, i am prob forgetting great chunks of it, and may go back and add!!we were having a lovely time, v happy to have my parents here. dad working hard in toilet [poor man] chris up a ladder priming the window with linseed, mum playing with kids and measuring for curtains. so today [as in wed] mum was in charge of morning HE whilst chris and i went to homebase to buy paint for dad to use. mum did ok with HE, sb did her maths and spelling, and a violin with mum. chris and i did not so well, after a lot of humming and hawing, we chose a lovely colour, but worried it would look dark, so did the paintmixing thing to get a lighter version. rather than a khaki green but lighter, it is, well, white wth hint of blue. not sure how that happened at all. oh well. we can get used to most things!

girls did lots of painting in the afternoon for the painting exhibition in the church. i had got some textured wall paper for them to play with as well, and i cut out some basic shapes to get them started. they both made v different pictures. SB organised the sahpes to make a village of house with qarage, flats and a windmill. BB used the textured pieces as sand, and then had dinosaurs running about at the seaside. SB decided she didn’t want to use her village as the entry, and did a very freestyle picture, building up layers of blue, anding with her tipping the palette upside down on it. she was rather disappointed the paint spread out, and it wasn’t fully dry on fri evening, but she was v happy with it.

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we then went through 2 art books looking at the different styles used, and discussing which she would like to try out. she then went on to do some more fantastic contraptions – which she is rather fond of, and BB watched some night garden. Mum near enough finished the curtains, and dad did the first coat of paint!

judo for SB – always a busy lass!!

Touristy Tuesday – ely

whilst dad started with the diy – thanks dad! decorating our downstairs loo, and chris got sorted to do some windowing, mum said she fancied going to ely. again the girls raced through home ed stuff, violin prac with mum, maths, handwriting, and wizard whimstaff spelling books that i had got and SB loves and is racing through. Also some french story and conversation, and reading of a castle book.

so off to ely, and the girls got strict instructions on how to behave in a cathedral. so we were totally shocked to open the door and find 800 screaming primary schoolers!!! at least it was free entry. they were having a day on the victorian restoration – which was interesting. SB had a bit of a wobble [well, it was a wobbly day for her] because the children had worksheets and she didn’t – and they were the most boring worksheets imaginable!! oh well, on walking around, whilst the kids had their lunch break and were like wild animals chasing around, we noticed all the brass rubbings out and about, so the girls spent a happy 30 mins brass rubbing, whilst mum looked about more. we went and had lunch at pizza express and wandered about, including cromwells house.

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home in time to take SB swimming – she is getting really good, particularly at backstroke.

Appley Monday

my parents arrived on monday, much anticipated and looked forward too! due to their likely early arrival we were up, and the girls v eager to see them! lots of cuddles and getting settled in. SB and BB showed the maths they had done, and SB did a piano practice with mum. Actually, all week they have been keen to do a lot of the HE ‘normals’ which i hope reassures my parents a bit!

in the afternoon we went to a local tour of an apple orchard with the owner. it was delightful. we were near the front of the tractor, so SB, mum and i plied him with questions between stops, and he told us the history of farm and family, planting and varietal changes, beekeeping etc etc and was charming. SB took a lot in, and both girls and adults enjoyed sampling the fruit!! he has planted lots of apricots, and is hoping potentially for a small crop next year…

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back by skin of teeth to ballet and then brownies – what a busy day!!

Musical Monday – i love you mum, mozart

and here it is. this is the music that IS my mother to me. i knew it was mozart, and thought it had a country name in it as well so i just searched piano and youtube! [since there is no singing facility] isn’t it absolutely fab. you can imagine it played to show sheer joy and fun. Thankyou mum for my wonderful musical childhood. love you.

still not doing tax return

getting into a habit – but planning to ring and harass about doing it online when their offices open. i can’t work out the self employed bit. i will obviously need to make up some ‘books’ will a word doc do?? luckily i can put total expenses in a box as earnt so little. had bloody tax returns!

anyway, today we had another lazy day, with the girls watching way too much tv in the morning. must kick myself going sooner tomorrow! SB did a good violin and piano practice too, and she made up a tune for me very merrily on the violin – which i encouraged. i think her perfectionist streak makes both violin and recorder difficult for her at times – ie when the notes don’t come out perfectly. the piano isn’t as stressful in this respect. as promised, i did a piano practice too. that fast hunting songs without words.

we did some quick maths – well allegedly because sb was somersaulting and back bridging longer than doing the maths, so it took a while!! BB was quite focused, as she is v happy she has nearly finished earlybird 1A. SB nearly finished 2B. we did lots of making train tracks, and when they all got shouty, we had enforced book reading on my lap :lol: so we looked through the farming through time book, as they both enjoy that, and sneakily did animals in french!! we then did some french – lucy chat a la plage before SB went off to read one of her own books, and BB and i read kicking king.

then we went outside to feed fish, enjoy the sunshine and inspect the veg. we were desolated to find thaat something had been nibbling too much at our biggest and best pumpkin – aargh, so picked all the others, as well as plentiful sweetcorn. we also picked and ate lots of grapes in the conservatory.

finally collapsing in front of the tv again [naughty] to watch first merlin, and the house on the prairie. just SB and its the baby dies one, so lots and lots of discussion there. SB then chilled with fantastic contraptions

i should be doing my tax return!

but i hate doing the buggers, can’t use their website – i used it when first set up, forgot password, and somehow can’t be re-entered… and i have never filled out the self emplyed bit before, and it has all sorts of questions i can’t answer! i earnt about £1500 self employed over a year, and spent about £800. but the form has all sorts of weird bits in it!!

so i’ll blog instead. got up late, girls watching monsters inc, had shower [took ages to brush hair], did violin practice with SB – haven’t practiced for ages so lots of wails and gnashing of teeth there. read some books with BB, then lunch, and both girls did some maths and SB handwriting whilst BB did some french story with me. SB then did french conversation. i realsied what she actually got upset with on wed [or so she says] is that she couldn’t spell to write car experiment on the paper and thought j and chloe would laugh at her. no idea why, and chloe had j spell experiment for her. i will print it next time though. She does have entirely dire spelling though, and absolutely no way of working it out. since her reading is so fab, i am a bit of a loss as to why she can’t spell car… but we will make an effort to do diolch words spellings, as we let them slide a bit. i’m not overwhelmed by the fact her spelling is so bad if it doesn’t bother her, but if its going to make her wail and be miserable, then she has to learn!!

lots of running abour wildy, playing with kids k’nex and bb doing counting buddy blocks with the maths manipulatives and they wanted to go out roller skating. we got about 20 m and had to return for a wee stop :roll: but the next attempt far more successful. beautiful day for it too, and the churchyard has lots of slopy pavements to practice on. also a bit of gravestone investigation as well. should have taken the camera, as the light on the church was gorgeous, oh well! its not as if we don’t have a few photos tucked away!

returned when girls worn out, snuggled and read books – including a bit of SOTW as we have slipped a bit in it – it only takes a few seconds, but somehow… and a quickie recorder practice as well. watched a quite dire spanish lyrical video – bought ages and ages ago. but girls liked it, so i face booked!! yummy tea, and then bedtime. i am enjoying the pirates of pompeii reading to sb at the mo, and she read me some arthur in return.

PS, i am bolding again. i really miss it when i don’t do it!
:smile: oh, and BB bought me flowers :smile:

In the paper.

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Well, I’ve been meaning to blog on and off, but some how haven’t.

Last Saturday I took the girls round to the library to get medals and certificates for the Team Read summer reading thing.  Quite a few there, as well as a couple of bods from the Library and the Parish council there was Fran Williamson, who won Bronze and silver medals for swimming in the Paralympics this year. So kids got to handle proper Olympic medals as well. It was combined with a gather to celebrate 5 years of the library (it used to be a county library, now it is run by volunteers). So there was cake and stuff as well.

Real Olympic MedalsCakeTeam 'Team Read'

Presentation was fine, except that once  they started to call out the children to collect their certificates a lot of adults there started chattering. So much so that you couldn’t really hear the names being called out clearly at all. It also seemed to show lack of respect to the children, I though it was very rude. If the tables had been turned and the children where seeing adults being presented……

As always with our library, they manage to mess up the simplest of things :roll: :-) They had some bits and bobs (hats, bags, T shirts) to give out to some children, so they drew some names out. They had 2 T shirts to give away to teenagers who had completed it. There were 3 teenagers who had done so, they had 3 cards with names on, one teenager was actually there. They managed of course to select the two cards for the two who weren’t there…

SB and BB managed to get picked to be 2 of 5 kids photographed (above) with Fran Williamsonand the cake and where in one of the local papers this week, which SB was excited about seeing. BB managed not to pull maniac photo face which was good.

The youngest boy in the photo has a 4 yo sister (children of the Homedad who had the occasional mention on the blog a few years ago) who has just started school (August born, so only just 4 at that) seems very little, I can’t for one moment imagine BB at school in a couple of months time. It just seems much too young. It seems that the girl isn’t actually liking it much and would much rather be at home with mummy, to which of course I responded that that seemed perfectly I understandable.  Of course someone did say that ‘well, they’ve got to get used to it’ etc. So that of course had to have an ‘Oh no they don’t’ response. Mostly I only really mention HE if someone brings it up, but sometimes you just need to challenge assumptions and remind people there are other ways.

School just seems like such an odd thing really.

desperate DESPERATE for my annual leaves

starts on sat with a lie in – bliss.

do have to do tax return though…

blogging early to go to bed early

we are having a run of dreadful nights with the girls, and its not doing their mood much good either. cue exaggerated behaviours from us all! And having negligible sleep, i also had a migraine – grrr. luckilly i caught it so early that by mid morning the meds were in full working order.

wed group at deependers we were slightly late due to migraine, but not bad, and the big’uns got started with their latin, and the middlies with science. they were wild but happy making cars race about. snacks and then middlies french and big’uns science. i was really pleased with how the science went today. they had so much fun making a force meter that TBH it took up most of the session. they were v good at doing it, and appeard to have much fun! then we looked at making an experiment up to look at friction, and rather than using a slope, they decided to blow the cars – and we measured how far they went on sandpaper, carpet and table. next time we will make our antigravity devices and have fun with slopes.

lunch came just in time, as SB was emotionally flagging, and remained a bit up and down for the session. she had baked cookies all by herself for the meeting, and they had all been eaten up. Some french was looked at, and then free play before coming home [all wailing!] i decided some r and r was required, so BB chose german muzzy after i veto-ed mr men, and then toy story 2 after tea whilst SB and judo – which she still loves. she now has her head in a book and soon bedtime for her, as i think todays upsets related to disturbed nights.

busy day tomorrow. beans have group, then BB has a gym session, the after short gap, sb has a gym session. BB is ecstatic at having gym again after this break. we decided whilst singing loudly all the way home in the car that we need to do more family fun swimming, and SB would like to try perhaps the odd horseriding – something i think chris has been planning to organise.

BB is being a doggie a lot of the time at the moment. she is often either a dalmation called spotty, or a little red dog called… clifford!!