01/02/06

HE: muffins, fingerprints, explode the code, sticker time book, fuzzy felt, dance mat, action songs, assorted library books, seeds grown and snowdrops, hama starfall first 3 books, cbeebies, bbc jam St David in britannia book and Thors hammer and the ivory Wand from Usborne Stories from around the world.

guess it was very educational, but was fun too. Hama flower and hama patterns started the day with breakfast [in the middle I went out to get antibiotics for raging sinusitis - and feel much better for them]

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IMG 2969?IMG 2976 edited-3??Did some sticker story books and time books – not much though, as I was playing with BB, and SB not feeling entirely autonomous! Read 3 library books and then played skittles and catch, and then when BB fell asleep made some muffins – choc chip of course. While lunch finishing, SB whipped through 4 pages explode the code – I think she rather enjoys this now.

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After lunch we did one of those tescos science test-tube kits on fingerprinting. Cheap and chearful, and yes, could be replicated for near as dammit free, but we enjoyed getting it out of its testtube!! So we made and lifted fingerprints and talked about them non-stop for quite a time, BB woke up and ate muffins.

IMG 2991?We made muffins

in the afternoon, we decided to try and play all together mostly – so with the dancemat, doing action songs and with the baby dolls – BB really getting into hugging and loving the baby now. We checked on our germinated aubergines and broad beans, and looked at the snowdrops and cyclamen in the garden.

yeah, they should have been in roottrainers!?

As the late afternoon arose, and the wail quotient increased, SB sat down and did the first 3 starfall books back to back without a hitch. The plugged away at cbeebies – with Chris in attendence. Noticing a link to BBC jam in UKHE early years [or whatever its proper title is] we had a scout around, but not played with it much yet.

After bath a bit of a book marathon! BB asleep, and Chris putting SB to bed. I plan to turn in early too.

Protected: I don’t want to… talk about it, how you broke my heart.

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Quick today

felt rough going to work still from migraine, but gradually settled. BB went off to docs as raging conjunctivitis – so eye ointment and antibiotics – fingers crossed no passing to little raindrops.

SB did lots of painting today, and then CP’s came on a drop by, so played games together.

When I got home, SB did some explode the code – very nicely, def getting quick at it! Whilst going to be we did pattern singing -i sang a short tune and she mirors it. She’s getting very good at this now. Her pitch is improving, and her rhythm is spot on.

BB permafed. I was supposed to be going out for a meal with work friends – which is at a great indian – but with a permafeeding poorly BB, i felt I was better staying at home and made my apologies.

oh, and I liked this photo from the weekend, of them listening to stories
listening

Playhouse

Nanna and Grandad want to buy SB and BB nice playhouse for the garden as a joint birthday/xmas present, been having browse, as you do. Me and Helen like this one, though SB said ‘Phew’ when we said it was to expensive as she didn’t want it. Not girly enough I suspect and she wants one with stairs.

Pirates and Princesses

Which is what we have had here this weekend – well pirate singular I guess really.

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We of course have been ‘Rained on‘ – (sorry, or should that be Raine-ed?)) with a visit from Home Ed friends Barbara and the kids – sadly Chris wasn’t able to come as well. It was a lovely visit, Stringbean already had herself and Butterbean prepared, she insisted on the BB outfit :-)
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Her and E spent pretty much all weekend in the Princess outfits, they just swopped outfits the second day for a change. B spent most of his time in the pirate outfit. They all played beautifully, hardly any contretemps, much of the time we didn’t see them as they were playing upstairs, with those endlessly convoluted and ever changing kids games. SB did get sulk once because the others ‘were being horrible to her’ – or some such. It transpired that they weren’t doing what they were told :-) I did wonder how B would get on, but he was great and he and SB had good fun playing together. When we’ve been away together with them at HE camps they’ve not played together much as B has been off playing with other boys a lot, so it was nice to see them getting on so well. So apart from coming down to eat, read the odd book

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or play the odd game,

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Or just prance about,

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that was their weekend really, and a good time was had by all. There was even a bit of education when they used the stethoscope to listen to their heartbeats

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Meanwhile R and BB did some bonding , it was so cute to see them playing together.

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R showed great ability in the food scavenging stakes, appearing with oranges, apples etc. that she found in the fruit bowl, or just wandering into the kitchen to blag some more food with a hopeful look :-) she is very much at the ‘Cheeky chimp’ stage. So her and BB did the toddler poddle about to great effect.

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And the grownups sat and drank tea/coffee/wine as appropriate and chatted about HE and this and that, and that was about it. Barbara drooled over our Story of the World books. We would probably have gone out some where for bit today, but Helen wasn’t feeling up to much with a migraine, so we didn’t. And that was all jolly nice as well. The nice grown up evening in the sitting room, sans child clutter with wine and a nice log fire was a little spolit by BB waking up after 1/2 hour asleeep in bed and not wanting to go back to sleep until we went to bed. She did then sleep all night though.
It was lovely to have them stay, and everyone (adult and child) pretty much ate whatever they were offered, so that was probably a first as well :-)

Suppose I’d better go to bed before BB decides to wake up….

Ed over the weekend

i know, but it is a home ed blog, and I like to see what we have done!

B4 the randrops we did some explode the code, and also looked at the DK a street through time [fabulous book!]. SB read a red nose reader.

Whilst the raindrops were here, we read a book about the human body, and had a quiz on it, and used the steth to listen to heart and lungs. Did a bit on healthy eating as well.

my ed ok then!

You Passed 8th Grade Science
Congratulations, you got 8/8 correct!
You Passed the US Citizenship Test
Congratulations – you got 7 out of 10 correct!
hey, science and american history!!

Fastr, Fastr, more Flickr timewasting

From the Flickr Blog, it’s Fastr a game where you have to guess the tag of a group of pictures before others do.

breast feeding in public – a reply!

Thank you for your email of 24 December to Caroline Flint about breastfeeding in public places. As you will appreciate, Ms Flint receives a large amount of correspondence and cannot respond to all this mail personally. Your email has been passed to me for reply. The Government is fully committed to the promotion of breastfeeding, which is accepted as the best form of nutrition for infants. Under the NHS Plan, we have a commitment for ‘increased support for breastfeeding’ and a target in the Priorities and Planning Framework to increase breastfeeding initiation rates by two per cent a year. Local Delivery Plans require the NHS to return local data on breastfeeding initiation rates for the planning period 2005-08. The Department is keen to support women in their decision to breastfeed and to continue to breastfeed. Since 1999, the Department has undertaken several activities to promote and support breastfeeding. The commitment to the promotion of breastfeeding was demonstrated with the successful completion of the three-year Infant Feeding Initiative supported by the Public Health Development Fund. This included seventy nine best practice projects on breastfeeding, which have now been evaluated and published. This report provides an important contribution to understanding ways in which women in communities least likely to breastfeed may be supported. An Infant Feeding and Child Nutrition resource pack has been produced and distributed to all practising members of the Royal College of Midwives and Community Practitioners and Health Visitors Association. This pack contains, amongst other things, the publication Good practice and innovation in breastfeeding, which is supported and endorsed by professional and voluntary organisations and by the UNICEF Baby Friendly Initiative. This publication aims to provide a practical evidence-based resource for health professionals to support good practice and innovation in supporting breastfeeding. It is also recommended as a minimum standard of practice for NHS Trusts by the National Service Framework for Children, Young People and Maternity Services launched in September 2004. The Commission for Health Improvement has now set an indicator that will look at progress towards meeting the target. In addition, the Department also supports the annual National Breastfeeding Awareness Week, a public health campaign to promote the benefits of breastfeeding. The last campaign was held from 8-14 May 2005, focusing on increasing support for breastfeeding. The Department is keen to provide mothers with information and to support health professionals. A pictorial leaflet has been made available to mothers and health professionals through the NHS, aimed at communicating the practical aspects of ‘how to breastfeed’. A range of promotional materials is also available to use throughout the year that support and promote breastfeeding. The Department also works in collaboration with voluntary organisations and professional bodies to promote and support breastfeeding. A representative of each of the voluntary organisations sits on the National Network of Breastfeeding Co-ordinators (NNBC) group. Other initiatives also demonstrate our interest in, and commitment to, breastfeeding. As announced in the recent White Paper the new Healthy Start Scheme will provide vouchers to low income breastfeeding mothers to exchange for fruit, vegetables and milk. Healthy Start will provide greater opportunities for pregnant women and young children in low-income families to receive advice on diet and nutrition, including breastfeeding as well as other health issues. Health professionals will have a more visible role in the Healthy Start Scheme. A communications and training programme for health professionals will be introduced in parallel to the new scheme. As set out in the NHS Improvement Plan, prevention of disease and tackling inequalities in health will need to assume a much greater priority in the NHS. The White Paper on improving health sets the framework for action to improve diet and nutrition. We have also made a commitment to review the Infant Formula and Follow-on Formula Regulations (1995) with a view to further restricting the advertisement of infant formula and will continue to press for amendments to the EU Directive on infant formula and follow-on formula. I hope you find this reply helpful. Yours sincerely, Kalpana Chauhan Customer Service Directorate Department of Health

has absolutely nothing to do withe breast feeding in public laws at all does it!!

Tears before bedtime

mine! I read SB the boudicca britannia story and cried over them dying. I obviously need a strong dose of sunshine. Or something.

before that she Joe the dragoned – tangrams and spellcatcher. We also had a look at Google Earth

SB now being all waily in the bath – perhaps my blues are catching.

She had a great day at nursery. BB is also shouting – such a rarry girl these days.