Summerhill, Swimming and Science

Day two in the Goddard house and the housemates are starting to get on each other’s nerves!

We really do struggle to be home more than one day a week without clashes around here. This morning I had an altercation to deal with before I even made it downstairs with Davies insisting Scarlett had pushed him off the sofa and Scarlett most indignant that he’d fallen off and was blaming her. Neither was going to back down and they were getting increasingly upset and adamant that they were telling the truth – Davies even more crossly than Scarlett until he lashed out and kicked his legs. He wasn’t actually aiming for anything but he did kick the basket of make up that he was next to so I sent him off to calm down for a while and then went to talk to him about it. We talked about being angry and that being fine, but lashing out not being such a fine way of dealing with it. I can never quite decide whether Davies has always been very self controlled or whether I’ve always been very controlling of him but ever so often he does or says things that shock both of us as they are out of character. I’m sure others would think I totally overreact to what are probably very small incidents but emotions and reactions are tricky things to deal with so I think the more we talk about stuff and try and work out how best to manage them the more chance they stand of being balanced adults. Or something :lol:.

We watched some TV and decided that it really was too rainy to venture out anywhere today. D and S got the lego out and played really nicely for a while. D built an excellent plane while S played with horses and lego men with the two games sort of combined, sort of side by side, sort of amicable with odd fallings out :roll:.

I went and picked out a couple of science experiment kits we’ve got from Tesco which I think were about £1.97 each or something ages ago so I bought a load of to pull out when they caught their interest. I picked the two most interesting, least technical looking ones and we tossed a coin to decide which to do which was musical instrument making. I was rather surprised by Davies’ very poor manual dexterity skills. I know he has always had a funny pen grip and seems slightly awkward with other tasks but his drawing, gaming and other skills requiring steady hands and good control are fine so I’d never really thought much of it and certainly never corrected him. He holds scissors with both hands, one on top and one beneath, but is very accurate with them too and I remember my brother always been told he was ‘cack handed’ with his knife and fork when we were kids so all the time he’s not struggled with anything I hadn’t been worried. He did struggle with meauring a length of cotton, cutting it and then knotting it today though – none of which are probably essential skills particularly but did make me wonder if I shouldn’t try and do something about it. I did get him to hold the scissors ‘properly’ which he did for a while, managed very well with and then went back to his two handed approach again, so maybe I should just let him do it his way after all!

So we made chimes, talked about the different pitch and length of chime bars. We made a drum, a guitar, some pan pipes and some windchimes. Not a bad little kit for 2 quid although not really very science-y and with no explanation about them being experiments particularly. We put the finished bits in the instruments box when we’d finished.

In looking for some plasticine to plug the ends of the pan pipes (the little bit that came in the kit had dried out and was no good) I had one of my regular ‘this playroom is a tip!’ moments so Davies and I spent some time sorting that out too.

And then we had lunch :lol:.

Davies and Scarlett spent some time playing DS, some time playing a dvd extra game on the Willy Wonka dvd and then got distracted by the fire. We’d put a HUGE log on the fire last night which had only about half burnt when I went to bed. It was still smouldering this morning but suddenly caught alight properly again and burst into flames, surprising us all. I chucked some of the rubbish from the playroom on the fire which flared it up again so they started experimenting (in a very controlled and fully supervised manner of course ;)) with various materials including wet and dry things and reporting back to me on their findings. Without realising they were doing all the proper experiment things of developing a theory, testing it out and reporting on their findings – and all without bunsen burners or conical flasks and test tubes! Ah well, where the tesco kit failed our own fire and bits of wet and dry loo roll succeeded! 😆

I was on a declutter roll and finally went through the bottom two shelves of the bookcase in our hall weeding out all the books which are too young, too replicated with other books we have, too workbooky or too phonics systems I spent money on once but am clearly never going to use now. That resulted in a pile of ebay / amazon marketplace listings to do so I sat and did them.

Finally I put on the Summerhill drama that I’d downloaded last week when everyone was talking about it and have been waiting for a clear hour and a half to sit and watch. Scarlett dipped in and out of it but Davies and I watched the whole thing, pausing it sometimes and talking about it all lots as it happened. There are a couple of examples of children losing their tempers and lashing out in various ways which were interesting for Davies to watch after this morning, and they both got very into the bit of the storyline where someone lies and gets someone else into trouble they were yelling at the screen for them to tell the truth! Davies had the idea of miscarriages of justice and false accusation illustrated beautifully for him which was good ‘but what if he’d been punished for that and he really hadn’t done it? If he was a grown up he could have gone to jail. Do people go to jail sometimes even when they didn’t do something because someone else said they did?’

Funnily enough nothing on the show was groundbreaking or new to Davies and Scarlett, it’s what we do anyway. Davies did lots of ‘well yes, obviously!’ type comments and plenty of ‘that’s how we do things – learn about stuff when we want to if we want to and get on with playing and living the rest of the time’. What was shocking to them was the concept of boarding school ‘what you *live* there? for how long? How many days?’ and even more shocked at the parental contact discouraged bit. I can actually understand that bit personally – if they are working so hard to build a flat structure where everyone is equal and has a voice and freedom then to have that compromised by parents who don’t buy into the whole idea totally could prove difficult. What is odd is that if parents do buy into it, which you sort of assume they do given they are sending their children there why they are not just doing it at home really? We decided they are home educated at Summerhill – it’s just that Summerhill is their home and the other children and teachers are their family… It was interesting though, I watched with a lump in my throat almost from the opening credits – I think if something happened to me and Ady that would be a great place for Davies and Scarlett.

It was swimming lessons tonight and Ady managed to get home just in the nick of time to come with us. They both had a good lesson, Davies is getting the hang of swimming on his back but is still much better underwater than on the surface. Scarlett has really bonded with the other little girl in the class but is coming on leaps and bounds suddenly and armbands seems to be really helping her. She has very strong legs so when she is able to concentrate properly on kicking rather than staying up she gets across the pool pretty quickly.

Home for pancakes for everyone. Both the children had a go at tossing them and Ady had to make a second batch of batter up as we decided to have pancakes at the same time instead of tea tonight. Then I read the whole of The Otter Who Wanted to Know – partially because it seemed to move along fairly quickly, partially because I was begged at the end of each chapter for ‘just one more’ and partially because I can now add it to the pile of books to go back tomorrow :).