-
Recent Posts
Recent Comments
- Iariorzhl on spontaneity and serendipity
- Sbobet on Upgrade to 2.0
- Richardset on spontaneity and serendipity
- fotballdrakter on Grrr Vendors
- Wilson McWhae on day 12 – goodbye banff, hello drumheller
Archives
Meta
home ed blogs
useful links
Pages
- why we HE
- 2005 photoday
- 2006 photoday
- 2007 photoday
- 2008 photoday
- 2009 photoday
- 2010 photoday
- 2011 photoday
- 2012 photoday
- 2013 photoday
- 2014 photoday
- 2015 photoday
- MS 2006
- MS 2008
- MS 2010 – BB
- MS 2010 – SB
- MS 2012 – SB
- MS 2012 – BB
- MS 2014 – BB
- MS 2014 – SB
- primary books/resources
- ticksheets
- bikes + kids
- camping list
- Christmas childrens crafts
- 10 Blessings
Global footprint/earth day
?calculate your ecological footprint
CATEGORY GLOBAL HECTARES
FOOD 0.7
MOBILITY 0.4
SHELTER 1.8
GOODS/SERVICES 1.2
TOTAL FOOTPRINT 4.1
IN COMPARISON, THE AVERAGE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT IN YOUR COUNTRY IS 5.3 GLOBAL HECTARES PER PERSON. WORLDWIDE, THERE EXIST 1.8 BIOLOGICALLY PRODUCTIVE GLOBAL HECTARES PER PERSON.
IF EVERYONE LIVED LIKE YOU, WE WOULD NEED 2.3 PLANETS.
Last year, my result was 1.8 planets, so we are getting worse not better. our food has improved, as we buy from farmers markets and local farm store as much as poss, and also grow our own. the car usage up as I live further from work, and use it more days. The shelter also up – as Leeds house more modest.
Chris would do better, using the car less. Our house is somewhat larger than our needs.
Posted in Daft Stuff, General
Books by women meme from jax
Just BOLD those you?ve read, ITALICIZE the ones you?ve been meaning to read and ??? the ones you have never heard of.
Alcott, Louisa May ? Little Women
Allende, Isabe l? The House of Spirits
Angelou, Maya ? I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Atwood, Margaret ? Cat?s Eye
Austen, Jane ? Emma
Bambara, Toni Cade ? Salt Eaters ???
Barnes, Djuna ? Nightwood ???
de Beauvoir, Simone ? The Second Sex
Blume, Judy ? Are You There God? It?s Me Margaret
Burnett, Frances ? The Secret Garden
Bronte, Charlotte ? Jane Eyre
Bronte, Emily ? Wuthering Heights
Buck, Pearl S. ? The Good Earth ???
Byatt, A.S. ? Possession
Cather, Willa ? My Antonia ???
Christie, Agatha ? Murder on the Orient Express
Cisneros, Sandra ? The House on Mango Street ???
Clinton, Hillary Rodham ? Living History
Cooper, Anna Julia ? A Voice From the South ???
Danticat, Edwidge ? Breath, Eyes, Memory ???
Davis, Angela ? Women, Culture, and Politics ???
Desai, Anita ? Clear Light of Day
Dickinson, Emily ? Collected Poems
Duncan, Lois ? I Know What You Did Last Summer??
DuMaurier, Daphne ? Rebecca
Eliot, George ? Middlemarch
Emecheta, Buchi ? Second Class Citizen ???
Erdrich, Louise ? Tracks ???
Esquivel, Laura ? Like Water for Chocolate
Flagg, Fannie ? Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
Friedan, Betty ? The Feminine Mystique
Frank, Anne ? Diary of a Young Girl
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins ? The Yellow Wallpaper ???
Gordimer, Nadine ? July?s People ???
Grafton, Sue ? S is for Silence??
Hamilton, Edith ? Mythology ???
Highsmith, Patricia ? The Talented Mr. Ripley
Hooks, Bell ? Bone Black ???
Hurston, Zora Neale ? Dust Tracks on the Road ???
Jacobs, Harriet ? Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl ???
Jackson, Helen Hunt ? Ramona/??
Jackson, Shirley ? The Haunting of Hill House???
Jong, Erica – fear of flying???
Keene, Caroly – the nancy drew mysteries
Kidd, Sue Monk ? The Secret Life of Bees ???
Kincaid, Jamaica ? Lucy ???
Kingsolver, Barbara ? The Poisonwood Bible ???
Kingston, Maxine Hong ? The Woman Warrior ???
Larsen, Nella ? Passing???
L?Engle, Madeleine ? A Wrinkle in Time
Le Guin, Ursula K. ? The Left Hand of Darkness
Lee, Harper ? To Kill a Mockingbird
Lessing, Doris ? The Golden Notebook
Lively, Penelope ? Moon Tiger
Lorde, Audre ? The Cancer Journals ???
Martin, Ann M. ? The Babysitters Club Series
McCullers, Carson ? The Member of the Wedding ???
McMillan, Terry ? Disappearing Acts ???
Markandaya, Kamala ? Nectar in a Sieve ???
Marshall, Paule ? Brown Girl, Brownstones ???
Mitchell, Margaret ? Gone with the Wind
Montgomery, Lucy ? Anne of Green Gables
Morgan, Joan ? When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost ???
Morrison, Toni ? Song of Solomon
Murasaki, Lady Shikibu ? The Tale of Genji ???
Munro, Alice ? Lives of Girls and Women ???
Murdoch, Iris ? Severed Head
Naylor, Gloria ? Mama Day ???
Niffenegger, Audrey ? The Time Traveller?s Wife
Oates, Joyce Carol ? We Were the Mulvaneys ???
O?Connor, Flannery ? A Good Man is Hard to Find ???
Piercy, Marge ? Woman on the Edge of Time
Picoult, Jodi ? My Sister?s Keeper
Plath, Sylvia ? The Bell Jar
Porter, Katharine Anne ? Ship of Fools ???
Proulx, E. Annie ? The Shipping News
Rand, Ayn ? The Fountainhead ???
Ray, Rachel ? 365: No Repeats ???
Rhys, Jean ? Wide Sargasso Sea ???
Robinson, Marilynne ? Housekeeping ???
Rocha, Sharon ? For Laci ???
Sebold, Alice ? The Lovely Bones ???
Shelley, Mary ? Frankenstein
Smith, Betty ? A Tree Grows in Brooklyn ???
Smith, Zadie ? White Teeth ???
Spark, Muriel ? The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Spyri, Johanna ? Heidi
Strout, Elizabeth ? Amy and Isabelle ???
Steel, Danielle ? The House
Tan, Amy ? The Joy Luck Club
Tannen, Deborah ? You?re Wearing That ???
Ulrich, Laurel ? A Midwife?s Tale??
Urquhart, Jane ? Away ???
Walker, Alice ? The Temple of My Familiar ???
Welty, Eudora ? One Writer?s Beginnings ???
Wharton, Edith ? Age of Innocence
Wilder, Laura Ingalls ? Little House in the Big Woods
Wollstonecraft, Mary ? A Vindication of the Rights of Women
Woolf, Virginia ? A Room of One?s Own
as I said, got from JAX. Not usre why these particular books chosen, as can think of other great female authors – Sheri tpper, Julian May, and I don’t think necesaarily my favourite bokos by the author chosen. so maybe there should be an underline for read another book by that author!
Augmenting Reality
Well, don’t we all feel like our reality could feel like augmenting sometimes? Seems a bit of posh term for it, but me and SB spent a fair while after lunch playing with this trial on BBC Jam which we came across yesterday.You need to sign up for it, and be accepeted to get the username and passoword. Though by the looks of it they are generic ones that everyone gets.
It is very much trial stuff at the moment, a bit crude and clunky, and the interactive bits sometimes don’t work that well, but it was enterntaining and you can imagine some good possibilities once it gets more refined.
Basically, what you have is simple story, that you read/listen to. Interspesed are little scenes where you use the printed materials to produce animated 3D characters on screen. You print out sheets of paper, with simple little block patterns printed on them. each one correpsonds to a specific charatcer/object , when put in front of the webcam, the software produces a 3D image on screen, by moving the printed image around, you can move the image on screen, rotate it etc. simple little actions/animations can be triggered etc.? Worth a play, other than bit of fiddling about to get the webcam to work with it, it worked fine, though it is little camera on stalk, pluged into the laptopo and could done with being mounted higher..
Other than that, we didn’t do much this morning really, moslty pottering around, waiting for Helen to go of to her conference for a couple of days. BB insisted on getting up at about 7.30 after I gave in, and then fell asleep again in her high chair about 9 grr! Did some reading with SB, a couple of Red nose Readers, some Cbeebies. SB and BB played soem chasing games together, BB kept wanting to unload the dishwasher. By bedtime I was glad once they were both settled – BB took a while as she slept a bit too long while we were augmented.
Relaxed with a beer and The Apprentice? Quite enjoyed this one, I loved the way Ruth just basically ignored the lads in her team and just went and got on with it. Poor old Tuan, just never had it in him, he was going to have to go, though I can’t see Syed making it – to inconsitent. i wonder who would ahve gone if it had been the other team, which it could easily have been it was so close.
Posted in Books, Butterbean, IT, literacy, Stringbean, Stringbean's HE
Relocation, relocation, relocation.
Relocation being the phase Butterbean is now in.? She is endlessy finding things, picking them up, investigating them dropping them all over the place, emptying things….. You know it is.? I’d forgotten tiresome it is to have them endlessy scattering stuff about. and I suspect with Stringbeans stuff all around there is much more for her to scatter. But she is just so cute at the moment as well, so she gets away with it 
She is very much in the midst of the learning stuff everyday phase as well, so all the time you can almost see her learning about the world.
Anyway, apologies to those wondering where we have been – we have been away at Helen’s parents over Easter. We had? a lovely time. SB spent ages playing with her cousin M, they get on so well. BB had fun ‘Rarring’ around with everyone and trying to join in with the bigger ones. I got to read lots of the paper. We all had good time. Though as we ended up going on Friday morning we got stuck in lots of slow/non-moving traffic on the M25.
Back home BB was up woth me this morning by 6.30 so we had? a good start. She almost dragged me out into the garden after breakfast . She went and got her wellies, and shouted at me until i put thme on her, then wandered off to find her coat, got me to put that on, then pulled at me to come and pointed at my coat on the hanger -? knows what she wants that girl She loves getting outside. whenever the door is open, whoosh – she is off. We spent ages outside in the garden while she pottered an explored. she particularly likes finding the odd bowls/buckets of water around to investigate. She helped me hamg out the washing too – picking up the clothes out of the basket and giving them to me – she is growing up and developing so fast. Rather nice pottering around in the early-ish morning sun
Eventually went back in – I think she was getting too cold once she got wet.
after that the day got? bit frustrating actually, one of those days where time seems to disappear and it seems hard to get into things. SB got up her and BB played together for? bit, more breakfast, Sb did some maths ( a bit more of of carrying on from last week) – she asked why she didn’t get a holiday like the school children When I pointed out that at school she would have to sit still at a desk fro a lot of the time, she’d have to do what she was told? most of the time etc. etc. she seemd to think the amount of? ‘work’ she has? to do isn’t so bad :-)? She did? bit of hama beading, started with? star board, she was working on a pattwer, wwhen she discovered sh could make a hexagon pattern ‘inside’ it as well, which she thought was exciting. After lucnch she spent ages on the BBC Jam site, be better when they get some more content, but she was happy.
Had to go out to get a Freecycled stereo/CD player thing, and to the farm shop for veggies, where SB did her cute, helplful, chatty girl thing.? Forget what else, but Sb watched? a bit of the Clangers DVD. Which did spark a conversation about Earth, the Universe, about he concept of ‘sky’ as SB had the idea about earth being ‘ in the sky’, though she also has the idea tht the ‘sky ‘ is all around the earth. Bit of a tricky concept sky really. We all spent some more time out in the garden, i did a couple of jobs, B got wet again.? SB triesd climbing in roller skates. BB sulked cos she could climb on the climbing frame. Then we had dinner and then tidied the playroom beforw Helen arrived homwe (rather late)
Wil try and get up todate with flickr? soon, but Helen away from tomorrow to Friday
Posted in art and crafts, Butterbean, gardening, literacy, numeracy, Stringbean, Stringbean's HE
Daft things.
1. Someone posted on a local Freecycle list an unopened bottle of Cherry Coke.
2. The other day after managing to phone me twice in succession, ‘the cold caller with 2 brain cells ‘ rang back because he had heard what i’d said when I said I wasn’t interested! – so why did they think I put the phone down?
Posted in Daft Stuff
our blogs are getting confused!
chris’s wednesday blog was about tuesday! I’ll make this one about wed shall I!!!
lovely day, some nice weather. SB and I got stuck into some singapore maths – adding to go over the 10 – ie 8 plus 4. It took a while, but she got there [and consildated it today] some she just knew, but some she had to work out how to think about them.
She also did her explode the code easily [or, as she put it, exploding codswallop!], and we read I wonder why the stars twinkle, and assorted bits about dinosaurs. She’s quite knowledgeable about stars and pointed out that there are blue giants on webland. it must have been ages since she looked at stars on webland!
We all sowed some seeds – nice big’uns so that BB could do it too. She was soooo rpoud of helping out. As I explained to an anxious SB, it didn’t matter she put loads in the wrong place, I coulsort that out later [and I did!] I obviously missed excess assistance from BB with the butternut squash, as some cells have 8 in!! – may well have an offer on butternut squash to grow to any visitors we might have in the next month!
BB is totally gorgeous, her speech is well behind josies [no, I shoudln't compare] but she is very close to speech. rather funnily, she has started to wag her finger back at SB, when SB tells her no. She is very considerd about her actions, and knows where things should be etc. She totally adores SB.
We all went into the garden for a play, some weeding, and SB helped Chris chop up some branches. [very ineffectually!]
the a gradual winddown and games playing – mostly snakes and ladders and UNO – before bed. We also read all the stories in the barefoot book tales of wisdom and wonder!
Not on our way
Chris’s dad had an accident and in a and e. seen him, and i think he’s fine, but another xray to go. Hopefully he will be set free soon, and we will have them both to stay the night – keep my beady eye on him!!
Posted in General
In and out
Both Beans slept all night in their own beds, which was rather nice First bit of the morning was housework time – various bits a bit of a disaster zone. So I got on with that , SB started off with a bit of CBeebies. Apparently her favourite show is Lazy Town – she likes the girl – Stephanie – the main character with the pink hair It’s a bit of an odd show it seems to me, but then I’ve just seen that it’s made by an Icelandic company – everything out of Iceland seems a bit weird.
Once BB was up she did some more Hama whilst having breakfast. BB has got very good at using spoon to feed herself, so does seem to actually eat stuff like Weetabix, which she used to turn her nose up at. After breakie managed to tidy vacuum around/asisted by children. got fed up again by all the random ‘stuff’ that collect on the flat surfaces in the hallway – we’ve 2 radiator covers, a shelf, a couple of small tables and a shoe cabinet, so there is plenty of scope for stuff to collect – I just went around with a carrier bag and put everything in it that didn’t belong. I think I’m going to make a weekly habit of it. Either eventually,most of our belonging will be in carrier bags , or it’ll have to be be put back in the right place.
Sat and played for a little bit whilst waiting the arrival of the chap from the council. Just clarifying whether we would need to apply for Listed building consent for the repairs we need to do to the conservatory various bits of rotten timber and repainting – a good summer project.
Then it was off to Nanny and Grandad’s. Pick up a couple of Easter Eggs, return the computer I had been tinkering with for my mum. SB ice some little cakes, played bingo game with Nanny, read some books, played for ages with the farm. She likes that becuase she doesn’t have that at home. They are all our old plastic farm animals, tractors etc. from when we were kids. I got the ‘pute back up and running, went to the Builders Merchants with my Dad (so he could put some timber on the roof bars on our car) Had lunch – with BB being a total pickle/PITA becuase she wasn’t strapped into a chair at all. BB failed to go to sleep – so was grumpy later on. SB got a little daytime fix of CBeebies on they Sky TV – which she always thinks is such a treat Came home.
Both Beans of course fell asleep straight away almost. When we got home BB was a pain becuase she didn’t want to be put down and sleep, nor did she want to be awake. SB just slept away in here dead frog postion but I could really get her awake whilst BB was being a pain. Rescued by the arrival home of Helen. Surprisingly, whilst not in bed early, both Beans did get to sleep at a reasonable time, considering the long ‘nap’ at the wrong time.
I was reading a post by Doc about goal setting, which has got me thinking about our broader educational goals, but that can wait for anothe post (as it happens I got to that post via Becky at Farm School who has a Homeschooling Country Fair – becuase of the Home School Blogger boycott)
Posted in art and crafts, Butterbean, Cooking, Out and About, Stringbean, Stringbean's HE
The bit before the bit before.
OK, here is my bit of the day.
Not a good night with BB waking a wailing for bit because I wasn’t mum. At least we had plenty of space on the double bottom of SB’s bunks as she was in our bed…. Eventually got to 6.30 so I could take BB though to Helen for breakfast. I went back to sneak in 15 minutes more in bed before getting – 10 minutes later Sb appeared ‘cos she had wet the bed – our bed- on my side – grrrrrr!
So we were up and going early. She started of with a bit more Hama on the Princess, then decided that she wanted to watch a bit of Cbeebies, so she did that for a bit while I pottered around the kitchen etc. Helen off to work, SB came back for more Princess hama-ing. while I sorted out washing. BB woke up after quite a while. so we all had breakfast, once SB had finished the Princess, she went onto doing some of the Singapore maths. IIRC it was the practice book – it was quite easy stuff really, just some addition – but I reckon you need to keep going back and practising it sos that was fine., so she did that pretty quickly.
took too long to get organised and then we went out to enjoy the spring sunshine. Realised that we not been getting out and about just exploring etc. as we used to, so went for a lovely walk in the woods (had to drive a little bit to get there, not really any decent woods near us.) Had a lovely time wandering about with no aim in particular, though SB a little disappointed – ‘ Why aren’t there any trees’ to climb’ ? Did find some bits to clamber about on though. BB, got unhappy because she kept falling over on the uneven paths/ground. Chatted away about this and that as we went, why were all the leaves there, what sort they were, why some bits were fenced off to keep deer out, coppicing, fungi, what happens to the trees when they die and rot down, noticed how the roots on an blown over tree looked like branches. Should have taken a picnic lunch as by the end we had had all the snacks and were hungry. so home to mum and Baked Beans on toast.
I’m not going to Flickr, must tidy up kitchen before bed.
Posted in art and crafts, Butterbean, numeracy, Out and About, science, Stringbean