Petits Haricots

As all home educators know, you have good days, you have bad days, and you have wibbly wobbly days!! I was thrown into a wibbly wobbly panic by the combination of texts, brightkites and other communications of people looking into schools for their children of SB age or a year older. My nephew preparing to sit his 11+ doesn’t help either.

So, Key Questions:

1. Do I think we can home ed to GCSE standard. yes I do, but whether we know the ‘tricks’ that would turn a B to an A or an A to an A* I don’t know. i guess we could get tutors near the end for that…

2. Do we WANT to do GCSE rather than IGCSE or IB? ermmm

3. If her friends school, would SB want to school anyway?

4. What are our schooling options then?

well, need to ponder 1 and 2, 3 is currently unknowable, so lets look at 4

State Schools:
a)our catchment area comp is dire, there is no other word for it, and offers single science only. This is a no
b)The next comp does a bit better, but not sure whether it offers double science and def not triple [SB fav thing is science, she wants to do something science and sea like at uni she thinks... so we are currently thinking 3 sciences and geog required to give her whatever] It also has currently a bit of a reputation for bullying…
c) the third comp better still, but 10 miles away, we are out of catchment does do separate science for top stream. If we chose anywhere this would have to be it. But it isn’t an enthusiastic proactive choice. Rather an, well, ok…

Alternative state schools
a)there aren’t any selective schools in our area. If we had, then I guess we would consider working towards the 11+ ‘to see’ Argh, why can’t we have a school interested in science in our area!
b)There is a sciencey one near a friend of ours, so can see why she is considering it for her son! But we are looking at a 40+ min drive each way, and also way out of catchment!! No transport, and really, taking 2 1/2 hours a day to commute not really an option.

Private
well, there are a number of really good private schools in the area, each costing approx £15,000 per year! and all prob about 30 mins drive away, tho those south east rather than east have transport links. but think money! and entrance exam! [spelling!!! maths and NVR no probs i don't think]

SO, having looked at the above, and wibbled greatly, and discussed [a bit] with DH!

PLAN!
1. AIm to go down the home educated to the bitter end route! research 1 and 2!! ie what exams are there, where can they be sat, can we resource them, how best to do it.
2. look at working so that if we need/want to consider not HE cos not satisfactory for SB’s needs we can consider entrance to private at 13 [less years to fund, and if really feel that is best option, BB may be suitable for school and Chris work to fund - does this sound ideal?? i think not!]
3. when we know what we can do, talk to SB about how this all works, how it affects her future, and then see what she thinks.
4. move!

arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!! [please comment!]

the first 5! i do wonder whether the girls will associate this with me as much as I associate this with mum

SB didn’t sleep well last night, so snuggled in our bed, and was most reluctant to get up in the morning! But get up we did! unfortunately raining so my plan for science scuppered, so we made cornflour gloop and played with that instead. the deependers away, but the rest all met up at ours, and the kids had a fab time, we adults drank lots of cups of tea and mutual support was given. Z brought a really great easy craft of colour collages, and the big kids did some fab ones whilst the littlies did science and then played sylvanians. General play went on, SB had a clarinet lesson – must get her clarinet fixed! bigger ones did science, and then all had the chance of autumnal fimo in the conservatory – tho not all did! BB did a fab tiger. i loved the leaf ideas tho.

have felt all unsettled and wishy washy today tho, don’t like that! SB had brownies and judo, and BB swimming. the brownies are doing a bob-a-job equiv, and SB done nearly £7 worth of jobs, but was saying some brownies got £10! for tidying a room!! we must be really mean. torn between not actually wanting to go down that route, and also not making her feel embarrassed. don’t really think they should be encouraging the girls to show and tell tho. ah well! SB gorgeous as always, i really love that girl [obviously!] for the sparkle in her eyes and her whole heart in her hands approach <3 and I had a lovely snuggle from BB, who spent most of today being a dog oh, and we had a break from david attenborough, and watched walking with monsters instead!

and feel like a complete failure and fraud about it, rather than making the most of it. i guess if i was in the position to enjoy it, then i wouldn’t be having it, perhaps. Went to GP with headache, dizziness and nausea, and got on to all the other bits and GP felt that perhaps i needed some enforced slow down time.
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

whilst i was doing that, and then going back to bed to sleep, as left in a far more topsy turvey mental state then went to the GP!, the girls went to nanna and grandads with chris. they baked a cake, bb read a book, and sb did some maths i think. home in time for ballet.

anyway, today SB complained that all she had done all day was home ed. SO i said good, well done! cousins are coming at the weekend, and I thought some whip cracking in sept would hopefully make us productive, as when we get near xmas… so we story of the worlded this morning, SB still wants to do book 3 – so we had fire and plague, then book 1 with SB and BB on the egyptians [still on catchup!] since we all enjoy snuggling and doing this, i can’t see it as a reason to complain! she then did some more of her scraperfoil rabbit, and BB her window mosaic – this is home ed, but is this a reason to complain??

we went out and sorted out skittles hutch and run whilst at vet, and discussed his snip – BB entirely intrigued! and then the portions of snowy’s that won’t disturb new babies – as still doing well. the bigger babies adorable, tho snowy a bit nippy currently – new baby nerves no doubt! think flopsy a v well mannered soft and strokeable black with perky ears, fudge and longhaired lop – may end up being a lionlop [possibly colour a frost point? no idea], dora a perky eared adventurous one, may be blue magpie or broken blue looking at other pics, v lovely!, and shadow, is def a lionhead, you can see the rufflies around his/her neck! sort of dipdyed, as gets darker towards head!![hmm, might be sort of a sable marten] the new babes are balck bodied and pink bodied currently, so need to see what they become! ANyway, we did a bit of on the hoof genetics with ear floppiness. i have no idea, but looking at ours and knowing the grandparents, we surmised there were 2 ear genes – l[lop] and p[perky] and since a lop plus perky grandparents gave perky snowy, and lop gave lop skittles, and amongst all the kids 1 lop, we thought lop may be recessive, as all the kits must have an ‘l’ from skittles and a ‘p’ or an ‘l’ from snowy. is this some home ed to complain about??? [colour genetics! lol!!]

SB did some galore park english – OK, she is not fond of doing the english, so we do this in tiny small chunks! and today, i suggested she now needs to start writing the answers in sentences – did NOT go down well! fair enough, complain, but it was only short! the she did the 2007 primary maths challenge paper [first time she has had a go at these] and only got 16, but she did make some silly mistakes, and a couple of things we haven’t done for a while or not at all, so think she should do a bit better. we entered her anyway, and she hopes to get between 18 and 20 if possible. [ie she would like to get a bronze certificate like chloe did!] so i encouraged her to do a bit of maths prac. she did the whole thing in about 15 mins, so perhaps going back and taking time might have helped. At this point we were also in the bathroom, as BB didn’t want to have her bath alone, and SB didn’t want to be in the playroom alone as we have painters doing the windows in the sittingroom… so the primary maths challenge paper liberally sprinkled with bath water!

ANyway, next we did piano prac together, me and SB, and we have to decide this week whether to work hard and do grade 1 this time, which is do-able, partic if i have more time at home, or whether to do next term? I am tempted just to do it, as she has remained disappointed we didn’t do the grade 1 clarinet. she may get a pass rather than a merit, but i am not sure that she minds. and then she went swimming, and BB and I baked a cake. I do have to say, that there was lots of playing, whizzing about, dancing, singing and cuddling in amongst this strenuous education!

Skittles returned, tea was had, watched the fish episode of the free david attenborough dvd‘s and then the girls played ‘sperming’ eggs i think obviously the rabbits have caught their imagination, and there is always loads of procreation on natural history dvd’s!

I tend to do my grieving process through music. I am currently onto enjoying the music we shared as children. This, with the original St Anthony chorale embodies for me the time at the music centre, which i very much shared with my sister. happy and simpler times. I thank my parents for our great childhood. missing you always sis.

well, ok, it was mostly drizzle! but pretty chilly, and some serious gee-ing up of BB had to occur to keep going. AND we didn’t find the geocache! but I should start at the beginning!

although it looked a bit on the drizzley side, we decided to cycle and geocache today. went out to check the rabs, and was concerned to find snowy was building a new nest, guessed that more babies on the way so they did mate again straight after childbirth [ouch!] the current babies adorable as ever. fudge is def a long haired lion-lop and is nice and snuggly as long as you don’t roll her onto her back – which i was doing to try and sex her, thinking girl!, dora might be what is called a magpie and has more uppy ears and is such an inquisitive monkey! always first to investigate, again easy to pick up and love, but really doesn’t like being turned over. Flopsy [the black one, now named by incipient owners] just doesn’t care, totally laid back temperament and just likes snuggling, and will tolerate being put into pocket etc. think will make an easy house rabbit, thinking girl. Shadow [can't remember what potential owner's name was??] is also an anyway up rabbit, and has such beautiful dipdyed markings, making him [i think] most ppls fav. but i am so surprised at how gorgeous and v individual these baby rabs are, in colourings and temperament. Hoping they all find good homes, as they are currently used to soooo much loving!! SInce thought potentially some sibs for them [arrghhhhhhh, one mistake litter i can cope with, 2 is too many!] i made up an outside snuggly haybox in the run for them to snuggle in, and also another one inside the run hidden behind the litterbox [where the babies do like to huddle and snuggle anyway] and upped the amount of hay and sweethay in the nestbox area.

SO, SB having done some galore park science, we set off for stanwick lakes, realised we had left the trailgator at home, about turned and then set off again. it was cold and wet when we got there, so significant powers of persuasion were used to get BB ready, but off we set on a multicache trail, and actually did quite well. in the end BB did get trailgated most of the time, as she was in a bit of a funny mood. we stopped off to enjoy all the activities too. lunch at the cafe at half way, and then round the adventure trail. a diversion for a successful microcache, and a bit of bird watching from the hide. woohoo to sb climbing the rock unaided, and woohoo to BB climbing with a bit of assistance from me – luckilly she is light enough for my shoulders to be additional foot points! chris, crazy – as is customary!! SB got an injury on the rubber tyres, when chris swung them a bit too wildly but we carried on ok.

i had a hitch at the final clue as an in memoriam bench, and this one had a card recently added, so got a bit sobby and cycled on. then we realised either an answer was wrong, or the maths, and so with girls both loosing the will to live [though had been having a fab time eating elderberries raw whilst we did the adding up!] we cycled to the cafe for restorative tea and icecream. SB had a bit of a pout over something, still not sure what. oh well! have to say their new exporation room [well new since last time we were there] is v nice, and i got to look at some new usborne history books which looked good. In fact i am still tempted by them even tho we must have a gazillion books now!

Anyway, the girls weren’t keen to cycle back to where we thought the cache might be, on an offchance, so they played in the rather fab park until time to come home! We listened to french cd’s there, and italian on the way home, to increase the home ed experience

I checked on rabs, to find snowy lying on the nest and perhaps a hint of squiggle underneath her. she moved a bit and confirmed babies, so i gave her more sweet ha, built up her box to be warm with mormal hay, and also made sure all the food well topped up. fingers crossed that litter 2 doesn’t effect litter 1, and that litter 2 survives and thrives also. poor snowy! skittles neutered on tues, and hasn’t been near her since the day the first batch of babes were born, so hoping this is it! my girls *still* excited!

we watched some more trials of life – this time lizards etc whilst having tea, SB did some clarinet and BB some more mosaic, and then bedtime. phew!

i survived my first week back to work, more or less! there was the odd bit of lachrymal seepage, and not all discretely. girls did home ed type things. SB made a fab present for cousin E for her birthday [today] bless her, first birthday without her mum she apparently still had a great time. Perhaps birthdays are so exciting for children that they don’t do that if only thing.

today, to celebrate getting to the end of the week, i had a lie in. unfortunately i had an early awakening by an accidental phone call! never mind i did drop off again and got up later. SB keen to play a game with me, the girls had been playing various board games earlier. we played ‘coins’ [3 mens morris, without flying] and BB was intrigued and played it too. they both started to spot my trap! i loved it when BB lost to herself tho . I did like the way that BB sat there and tried to work out in advance what moves she could be making – another gamer in the making! some rabbit playing and sorting. the babies so cute still. we have homes for 2 [well, def one and pretty likely another] and the other 2 also so gorgeous that if no friends come forwards, sure that we will have an easy sell. fudge is def lop and also longer haired and v fluffy, dora is a really inquisitive one and white and grey. both really handled a lot!

Some recorder prac, mathletics and maths from SB and a tinsey winsey bit of music theory. i have suggested to SB that it would be nice if she read one of the easy fact books to BB once a week as one of her ticks, she and BB really really enjoyed reading Homes then and now together, and really lovely.

then we made cinder toffee – a bit like the honeycomb in a crunchy, but tasted more treacley. BB finished her zebra puppet whilst we did this. unfortunately she had a melt down as our thermometer determined we were at ‘hard crack’ and i only noticed when we got to ‘caramel’ so may account for the taste… SB took it in v good part though thank goodness! She also finished her spaceman puppet. hmm, from that linking i see there is a giraffe puppet, BB really likes the idea of one, and we were imagining customising a zebra one. BB painted some more of the yellow moon animals left from the party, and SB and I sorted out our toffee – which i think did work reasonably well. we would use white rather than muscovado sugar next time, and cook it for the right amount of time SB struggled with some maths after that, so will sit down when not late and look at that area. partly with estimation she reads this as a cue to take a number out of thin air – but actually i thought one of the problems was quite genuinely difficult for her to have to work out. so we did that together. i think knowing tables would help… BB meanwhile did some more craft! she has been absolutely desperate to do some more mosaic craft, so this, also from playmerrily [to your surprise!] went down really well.

We finished with watching a David Attenborough about the Ocean Deep which we all enjoyed. SO a good day all round. planning to cycle tomorrow. B-I-L and kids hopefully visiting next weekend

well, we already have latinetc! We are hopefully following The Plan for History! Though, as always the way, we are a leetle bit behind! SB is half way through chapter 3 of galore park junior history 1, and we had read the first 2 not 4 chapters of story of the word 1. oh well! and i was a bit poor on the planning due to recent events but, despite all of the above, i think the inaugural meet went v well.

Rather late in the night before I sorted out some crafts that went with the first 4 chapters and sent them out as ideas. we were joined by lecielrouge, deependers, the biffs, merry and co, and as a special treat from a greater distance, liveotherwise! So a goodly number of attendees!! We started with bunny adoration whilst waiting for a quorate number, and got half the crafts out in the morning. most children did most of them, some being more suited to younger and some to older. Gina brought some too, which was good. in the future each family will try and bring 1 or 2 ideas with them [ideally 2] as we prob need 4 things going on at the same time as kids were having to queue and wait around great that they were so excited and enthusiastic!! Also then, each family can perhaps think of 1 thing their kids would most want to do, and something else general, so we would get a really interesting spread. i do think it worked well that we used different media. Gina brought a thinking station with coins and the heiroglyphics was supposed to be codebreaking! we sewed a stone age food bag [with appropriately furry fluffy material!], we did cave paintings, and had a go at painting with the blueberries gina brought. we also did some early egyptian crafts [well, ok the heiroglyphics!] but made some egyptian perfume with oil and spices, and then SB judged which was the nicest – turned out to be the one with the most cinnamon – BB’s! the choices of ingredients included fenugreek, bay leaves, black pepper, cardamon, cumin, cinnamon and coriander.
less was suggested to be more, but i think most put in everything!

A break for lunch -pasta! some more rabbitting, drinking tea, adults chatting and then we started the afternoon! some more bag making, egyptian sweetbread making and fimo tooth and bead necklaces with merry. all went v well, and some books to read on a rug. the afternoon sped by tho, and whilst we shipped our kids to swimming and brownies, everyone bar jax disappeared. bit of creating order out of chaos and jax and i cracked open the wine to celebrate a day well done

everyone seems to be keen to repeat, so we will do that all again in 4 weeks, with a theme of egyptians, babylonians, assyrians and some judaism. yay! I think maybe an archaeology based one as well would be fine too. looking forward to seeing all the ideas

the kids all had fun, take-out pizza for tea, much chatting amongst adults! today i unfortunately was crashed out with a migraine for most of the earlier part, gradually coming too. thought i had better take easy as mammoth shift tomorrow which have to do well, and todays work was a trade union day, so good to go, but not dreadful to miss. a ray into today [as being off work always brings out my negativity, as does migraine] was the arrival of a lovely rainbow bracelet with dolphin and music charms that i ordered to remind me of my sister. it is absolutely lovely! i am not going to go overboard on rainbows – it was her thing after all, but i think this is a little reminder of her. At some point i may well give it to my niece, but that is some way off. it is really lovely.

the girls both had a good home ed day, also doing some fimo crafting – obv not all crafted out yesterday! posting a variety of things that got left here yesterday, and then gym for both girls. now watching bang goes the theory, and i think time for me to take more meds.