Writing in my head.

 

Stringbean was talking about doing mental arithmetic last night. she desicrbed the process  as ‘Writing in my head’. Which I rather liked.

Back to Earth

we have done a fair bit of earth oriented thinking today! Unfortunately the beans conspired to make it a very very early start. Though SB did read me 2 books in bed, as I was refusing to be awake [chris just pretended to be asleep]. eventually I told him via SB that he needed to make me a cup of tea, so then had a catch up nap!

Urmmm, well I think we started with looking at the worm world thing that was picked up from the charity shop whilst looking for gists on thursday [rofl!] We duly all went out, filled with alternate sand and soil and liberated some juicy worms from the fruit bed to put in. BB was devastated that she didn’t get to play more with the snakes, but since at least 2 were put back on the garden as we were unsure whether they were really not working [her phrase] or playing dead, we felt the sooner out of her grasp the better. Later a ladybird also stopped working – she is a menace to our beneficials!!

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We had a look at our previous sowings, and a few broad beans have germinated, and we have a very thick row of radish seedlings – hopefully marking some carrot ones to follow! We also harvested loads of early sprouting brocolli – yum.

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it was a lovely day, so we did general playing in the garden, swings, playhouse etc etc until lunchtime, and I also pottered about with some weeding and feeding.

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After lunch we did simultaneous crafts [always slightly hair-raising! SB did a mosaic kit that Merry gave her for her birthday, BB did painting and stamping, and I lacquered the only bit of made fimo I could find from Melrose – the pendants and dragon appear to be awol.

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Hmm! then came a bit of awkwardness – SB and BB did colouring and then head over heelsing, and I asked that the felttips should be lidded and tidied – time to gloss! BB and SB did some violin practice [must get a shoulder rest!] , SB did some more area stuff with cuisinaire rods [from here to there] and BB and I read books and did pattern blocks and then had another gloss moment about being mean to SB!

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Daddy returned, so I took 5, they helped him find seed trays, and we reconvened to sow peppers, tomatoes and sunflowers. Watered in very well!! More playing outside and the SB did some piano practice, and BB fell asleep mid wail on my lap. have wound down with dinner and robin hood since then.

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Chris nearly managed to set fire to the house [sigh], luckilly I know if I think I smell something hot, I should immediately investigate [frying pan with oil]. Can’t get laptop keyboard to work either. Oh well. Early night tonight. Feeling much more whole – though frayed at the edges!

the balloon thief AKA grumpy old man!!

Honestly, he was about to put them all in the bin!! the girls love the balloons, BB will pop them soon enough! Rescued for now!

The Disappeared

That’s what I feel like as a working mother at the moment. Rather similar blog over at Jax’s as well. I have worked solidly since SB’s party day and am consequently well and truly knackered. All the days have been exceptionally long, and there has been some exceptionally stressful moments. I have had brief views of my children – so brief that I am not sure that they know who I am – but have [as is my style] been as manically interactive as possible – thus making me more shattered, but marginally less guilty.

SO today – my day off – where am I? In work of course. But did eventually leave – hopefully with a bit of a job plan thrashed out, and we hot footed it to Merry’s. SB was delighted to see the last part of her birthday present – the very delectable new member of our famly – a corolle doll lea. Merry had to buy them in 2′s so there is one more to go on the website, and if I were you, and you’re in the market for a trilingual talking and utterly adorable dol [it is too!] then I would be the one to buy the matching pair [even if BB and all Merry's children think they should be the proud mother!].

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I coo-ed over the other dolls in the range, and we lost the children to protracted mums and dads, and other games.

We were going to do science, but both Merry and I have had tough working week and both feeling the need to r and r, so the children played. [fran did french though]. BB and Josie were adorable together, and playing more and more. The cake SB and I made yesterday before bed was scoffed quickly [i said I had used my time to the max!]. BB is such a jumping girl at the moment, and does lovely ‘kiffs’ and cuddles. The older children fimo-ed as well – but we left SB’s there, and she forgot to bring home her camera – sigh!! Hopefully we will be reunited in Hunstanton.

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Back and more doll playing, SB is delighted with it, and played beautifully with BB being the big sister and helping – aw it is just so lovely that they play so nicely together – this is a real home ed achievment. And then we did playing in the dark with a glow stick, and more head over heels frenzy!

Bedtime for SB was with the new doll, and we read some more Britannia, and she read to me the usborne robots book [saw Merry's Alexander the great usborne book, so very tempted when finances next allow]. I feel much more whole for a day at home, spring has sprung [always improves the mood] Kessingland organised. Now just to make sure i have a life! Yippee for the weekend [le weekend of course]

One day…….

I’ll get the hang of bloggin every day…….

But as Michelle has been nagging me in Merry’s comments :roll: I’d better write something – can’t be doing with more extra women nagging me.

OK, Monday was our mothly HE group sports session, so we went along to that and SB ran around and did sporting things, BB pottered and I drunk tea and chatted :-). Followed by a trip to the park with the Katy and the crew from In at the Deep End. After that the plan was to head off get some lunch and go show shopping, plus a few other things. Went to the shopping centre where there is a decent sized Clarks, only to find that it was shut for refitting or something and wasn’t going to be open for 3 more days – so waste of car parking there then. Since we were there we got lunch and a few things, got back to carpark – it’s one of those get a ticket on the way in, pay on foot places. Realised I had no cash and it didn’t take cards, so had to traipse off to find cash machine etc. which meant of course we were welll over the hour, so that cost even more…. sigh.

So eventually escaped from the car park, headed off to the independent shoe shop we got SB’s last ones from – it’s out of the city centre and easy to park by. Got SB some shoes – a bit boring as she is now well into school age shoes, though they had better options last time, but SB really likes them so that’s fine. BB didn’t need any, though did discover that she has had a sock stuck in the end of one of them for who knows how long – it was squashing back here toes a bit and made it seems as if one fooot had loads more toe room…. :oops:

By now needed more tea – so took up an invite by Katy to pop round to theirs which is just down the road. Enjoyed Earl Grey (but no tea pot….. ;-) ) and admired the birthing pool masquerading as a family size birthing pool filling up the dining room.

home to, well not sure really – ISTR some computing stuff goign on with the girls.

Tuesday went round to my parents house for most of the day, did do bit of HE stuff here before we went – moslty more of the Singapore maths – still the money bit, and some reading.

Wednesday

Helen was doing job interviews today, so not at home as per usual. Helen got a Learning Resources book about using Cuisenaire rods to explore Area/Volume and Perimeter from Sonlight last week, so Sb wanted to have a go at that. She spent ages with it, not so much on the book activities as with all the pattern making and general playing around with them that ensues. also got to practice drawing straight lines with the ruler (in the right place…) . Funny how simple thing like that isn’t a simple as it looks – getting the pencil at the right angle, holding the ruler firmly, in the right place, lining it up etc.

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We sat and read a couple of the Anholt Artists books – Picasso and Van Gogh ones, and then spent some time looking for different pictures of their on the internet. There was some more Webland-ing and a bit of Ed City.

We finaly got some new swings seats (Ebay) to go on the swings, so we put one of those on so SB was happy to be able to swing again and spent some time on there. and generally playing outside – harvested some of the Purple Sprouting Broccoli which we have lots of right now.

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Never understood the whole ‘kids don’t like green veg ‘ thing, cabbage, broccoli, brussels sprouts, whatever it is out love them all.

Watched a bit of the Life of Plants DVD before bed.

Thursday

BB’s toddler gym thing, so that’s a 9.30 start. SB took her camera with her and snapped some photos, haven’t had a look at them yet and sat and moslty read some Letterland books she found in the cupboard this morning. She is such a good advertisment for a HE-ed childthere, sits quietly with her bag, reading, or drawing, or writing etc. :-)

Went into town after to do some shopping of various sorts. Noticed the stationers shop in town is closing, which is a shame – it was always useful for various bits, and very helpful in there as well. It’s our nearest town, and has survived pretty well with a range of indpendent shops as well as the normal high street places. But gradually the independents seem to be going.

There is a shop which sells gists etc. that has lots of stuff from different parts of the world – they tend to have little changing displys of stuff in one window. It was Chinese stuff for chinese New year last time. This week they had some Native American stuff on display, so looked and talked about some of those things, the photos they had etc. bought a few things in a charity shop, including a kit to make a worm observatory thing, so will hopefully be putting that together soon.

Once home had lunch, together me and SB read through a set of Quentin Blake books she got for Xmas and then Hellen got home early from work. There was somejigsawing – BB really getting into them now, head over heels practise, Sb did soem more of the Area etc. book before ballet class.

Like being a toddler again.

 

Stringbean’s reading has really taken off, I guess she is now at the pretty  competent, but not fluent stage. She is dealing very well with the Usborne Young Readers and their ilk. It really does remind of that thing toddlers do, when you can pretty much see them learning things right in front of your eyes. Everytime she picks up a book she seems to have moved on a step, and she is endlessly finding things around the place to read. It’s really quite wonderful.

And finally her reading is catching up with her maths, so she can now read some of the maths questions for herself.

On the topic of maths, are approaching the end of My Pals Are Here 1B, we are doing the money bit. Which sort of feels unnecessary as it’s basic stuff that she is picking up anyway from day to day life. But she wants to finish it off, and it won’t do any harm. In fact it’s required extra mental manipulation, as the book is the Singapore version, so the currency is Singapore Dollars and Cents, so we have flipped between calling them that or just pretending it’s pounds and pence, or calling them pounds but writing Dollars. All entertaining anyway. Will be moving onto Primary Mathematic 2A books after this, which follows the same curriculum, but presents it in  different way. Be interesting if it makes any difference to SB.

Other than that, today me and the girls went swimming. Poor old BB doesn’t get to go anywhere near as much as  SB used to at this age, and she really loves it. Whilst paying, she was sort of doing an excited little jig, pointing at the pool and going on the behind-the-desk person about swimming, going splash, splash!’ :-)

After lunch we read one of the Science Stories books about Pasteur, and looked a little bit at pictures of microbes, then did most of  jigsaw of a Roman town, where SB regaled me with various bits she new about Romans, she seems to get particularly excited by the Legionnaires.

In between times lately she has been doing loads of Webland, and some bits of Education city.

Later on, she did some Violin and Piano practice with Helen.

There has been a bit of black hole really here lately, SB’s birthday seemed to take out most of a week, with family visits, then preparing for a party, recovering from her party etc. Hopefully get back into normality next week.

totality

remembered to look at the moon. it certainly does look weird when it is the wrong colour! When I got home from work, SB and I read some of our new books – marie curie and the search for radium and eric the red and leif the lucky. She had lots of questions after the marie curie one about science and elements and atoms, but decided we would look at another book ‘tomorrow’

she has done a fair bit of webland today while I was out, and chris has done a grand job on sorting out this years propagatory – time to sow some seeds! bit late with peppers already – oops.

SB and BB both did some violin practice, and SB some piano. otherwise mostly chilled and did pattern blocks altogether. tonight before going to bed, I read SB some britannia and she read me clumsy crocodile from usborne young readers. Her flow at reading is really coming along, and she reads things all the time now during the day – fantastic.

I must make sure worries of work don’t eclipse the joys of home.

Fed up with Wikipedia?

Don’t like the liberal, anti-Christian, anti-American bias of Wikipedia, then maybe you should look to Conservapedia.?

Under the Examples of Wikipedia bias I thought that the one (no. 7) ‘uses foreign spelling’ amusing, as well as inaccurate – search Wikipedia for colour for example. And -’ise’ and ‘ize’ are both considered correct spellings in British English. Anyway, many of the alleged examples of bias seem to be just general criticisms of Wikipedia, (and there is plenty to criticise) rather than bias.

One of the criticisms is about the article on Feudalism , reading the insightful Conservapedia article which summarises Feudalism in Europe as ‘In the feudalism system everyone wins but some win more than others‘ I know which I’d prefer.

Home Ed on Radio 4

 

I caught the end of a piece on on home ed on the Today programme on R4 haven’t time to go and find and listen to it at the moment, as children want feeding, so this is just a reminder for later as much as anything. It was on around 8.40 – 8.45.

The bit I caught was the end of an interview with what sounded like a Home Ed ‘inspector’ or something.

Wuendvul :-)

On Thursday, for my birthday, Stringbean spent ages doing a picture (of a church) and then writing on the back, then putting it in an envelope with 60p she got out of her piggy bank. Except for asking me who you spell ‘er’ (of all the things) she did it all herself
It really is Wuendvul, and I was very touched.

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