I worked this morning. It went pretty quick even though it was a quiet Saturday – I assume the lovely weather and the fact that loads of people are away on holiday meant that the library wasn’t a destination for most people today. I did bring shame upon my people though this morning for which I must repent. I let myself down, my children down, hell I let you all down. I must bow at the feet of the god of Home Education (it’s Mike Fortune-Wood isn’t it? 😉 ) and confess my sins and pay the price of my crime. For I cannot be truly called Home Educator any longer. I must give back my hama beads, recant my rainbow and no more must I take out free trials of education city using different surnames and postcodes to trick them into thinking I’m a brand new potential customer. I was tasked with using the laminator at work and I failed. It’s a big laminator, that much is true – not the simple A4 capacity only type home use one I am proficient with, having been A Home Educator for some 4+ years now, but it is still one of the most basic items in the HE kit – one of the first things you are required to have in your home, along with the map of the world (gulp) and of course the table to do work round (ah, fuck). So there you go. It’s time to come out once and for all and confess that actually I’m not even very good at being a Proper Home Educator. And I did once have a sonlight catalogue but I mostly just ripped it up to make papier mache with so that probably doesn’t even count. And sometimes when my children show an interest in something – for example Doctor Who – I don’t sit down with them and make lapbooks about it. Anyway, I was laminating today, having smirked a bit when I was asked if I could use a lamintor and assured my boss that I could. And then it all went wrong, and it chewed up the sign I was laminating (one about how the library could not be held responsible for any damage caused to audio visual equipment by playing items borrowed from the library such as cds, videos, dvds and audio books) and I had to get someone to help me yank it back out again. Oh the shame 😳
Other than that it was a fairly uneventful morning. 😆
I got home to find Ady and the children in the garden, playing with the hose pipe, having barbecued sausages for lunch. Ady’d heard about a car boot sale on in the big park in the town centre so we decided to head down to that and see whether it was any good. But before that Davies’ tooth came out and we got all distracted by looking at the childrens’ baby books to see when he’d cut his first tooth and then looked at all sorts of other information and pictures in there, I wish I’d been a blogger back then, it would be great to have more records of that sort of stuff.
We parked the car near my old secondary school and walked to the park. The car boot sale was somewhat oversold, with no more than 20 cars and most of them traders selling new stuff rather than genuine car-booters. Me and the children sat on the grass and watched some belly dancers do their thing (Scarlett was describing the dancers to me – one was fat, one was young and one looked like Alison! :lol:) then we walked round the rest of the stalls. There was a fire engine with firemen giving safety advise so we chatted to them awhile and then there was a load of chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, rabbits and other small creatures all displayed. The children wanted to hold the chicks and having done their usual charm offensive of telling the birds’ owner all about themselves and the chickens we’ve got at home that we hatched out of eggs ourselves, she very happily plonked all sorts of creatures in their arms, including the 4 day old ducklings that she said she’d not let anyone else hold :). We had a long chat to her about all things fowl and when she told us that the 4 week old rooster there would grow to be really huge I said to the children ‘Oh, like that massive cockerel we saw at the South of England Show’ to which she replied ‘ah yes, that was his father – we were there too!’ and it turned out that the chick today was indeed sired by the massive bird we saw at Ardingly in June:
which was pretty cool :).
We left there and had a little play in the park before walking back to the nearby CoOp for some barbecue stuff. They didn’t have much so we walked back along to the car and then drove to Sainsburys for food instead. We got home around 6pm, I made various salads, which the children even tried 😯 – a real surprise to see them both eating rocket and watercress! It was really nice sitting out chatting while the children played and the food was cooking – I think it was our first barbecue of the year here at home. The children are also old enough to do stuff like go to the freezers in the garage to get the ice creams too, so it’s lovely being able to direct them to do stuff while we carry on sitting down too :). We came in just after 8pm, Ady showered both the children while I cleared up and they both went to bed at 9ish and fell straight asleep, which is also nice.
Tomorrow we’re planning to go along to a rock pool beach combing event in Chichester harbour, which sounds fun so I’ve bought the children a net each from the local pound shop in Lancing and an early start to get there for the meeting time of 10am is required, hence an earlyish night for me.
Oh Chickens! It’s a small world.
Comment by Lucy — 05 August 2007 @ 4:22 am
Sounds a nice day – LOL at the laminating difficulties and the fact that you don’t make lapbooks about anything at the drop of a hat – mind you, how could you possibly, without a table?
Comment by Ali — 05 August 2007 @ 8:35 am
ah, you see Nic is an *autonomous* home educator, she’s excused from Lapbooks AND tables 😉 Far too much like hard work all that autonomy though, give me detailed instructions to ignore any day 😛
Comment by t-bird — 05 August 2007 @ 12:51 pm
a laminator is a basic requirement of the HE kit??
oh nooooo, i’m a failure. must quickly register my son with the nearest crappiest school i can find.
(can i go and buy one first thing tomorrow morning and just pretend i’v had it since day 1? pleeease!)
in my defence i do have a map of the world and a table….map is not displayed and table has a mountain on laundry on it….oh gawd i really am the worst home edder ever!
yeah i know you’ve heard enough to have judged me an unfit HEer but i have a question…..*whispers*….what’s a lapbook? *blush*
Comment by Liza — 05 August 2007 @ 5:32 pm
*laminates a map of the world and tacks for legs on it*
Ta-dah!
Comment by Ali — 05 August 2007 @ 6:41 pm
pmsl at all of you, love the idea of laminated map for table 😆
Liza – I’m not sure, but don’t tell anyone, I think we are all supposed to get lapbooks as lesson four in How To Be A Home Educator when we first register with the LEA – lesson one is Laminators, lesson two is world maps, lesson three is tables and after the lapbooks at lesson four, lesson five is how to spell cusinere rods which comes with a complementary set of them. By lesson ten, (having covered autumn collages, home made playdough, maths through baking, bicarb and vinegar volcanoes and a trial of education city) you get a set of hama beads and then there are optional montessori modules with things like sandpaper letters and pink cubes in sizes 1-10.
Comment by Nic — 05 August 2007 @ 7:06 pm
right i’m phoning the lea first thing tomorrow to schedule my lessons, actually on 2nd thoughts it’ll have to wait till after i get home from buying a laminator (iv already picked one out!)
Comment by Liza — 05 August 2007 @ 11:46 pm
They are called “C-rods” in our house 😉
Comment by t-bird — 08 August 2007 @ 8:20 pm