Home Education. At home and everything

We were supposed to ice skating today but best laid plans and all that… last week we didn’t go because Davies and Scarlett weren’t up to it, this week I had a phone call last night to say the rest of the people we were planning to meet weren’t going. We will make it before it closes at the end of the month but it won’t be next week during half term.

It’s been a very curious weather day with intermittent snow and sunshine so we didn’t feel too inspired to travel very far really. Scarlett woke me at 8am to say she’d slept in her own bed all night, then she woke Davies and they went off downstairs while I turned over and went back to sleep, having been roused at 5am once again, this time by the cat sharing my pillow with me.

When I came downstairs Davies had booted up the laptop, found google, copied ‘Simpsons hit and run’ off the front cover of the xbox game he was playing and found a page of cheats and he and Scarlett were working out between them which ones they wanted. Am always quite shocked by his sudden leaps forward at such things. I know I shouldn’t be and I’m sure for the average 9 year old none of this would be particularly amazing but given all of these skills are self-taught with no instruction I was pretty impressed :).

Sorted out the kids’ breakfast, was most taken aback by the chickens already being out and scratching around (Ady had let them out as the mornings are lighter now). After breakfast Scarlett got out her bath bomb making stuff and carried on creating while Davies and I looked at Cartoons and Animation (Art and Craft Skills) from the library and talked about the various ideas in it. We then looked at makemovies.co.uk which has some excellent step by step animations on it. We studied that for quite some while and Scarlett came over to look every so often too.

Ady appeared home for lunch as he was passing so we stopped at all had lunch together. Then Davies and I looked at doing some animation on the animationstation and I showed him how to use tracing paper and marker pens to slightly change one drawing to the next and he copied a couple of the examples on the website and created some animations on his animationstation. His first attempt wasn’t great as he’d failed to notice positioning and sizing of each seperate picture in relation to each other but he quickly realised where he’d gone wrong and we looked at in in more detail and his next two attempts were really good. Not able to upload them to share as they are on the memory card in his animationstation still but will look at doing so later.

While Davies was doing that I was reseaching bath bomb ingredients supplies and after lengthly looking I ordered some from an ebay seller for Scarlett to top her up as she’s run out of the basics. I was also still looking for some sort of cosmetic making or perfumery workshop or session for her as I think she’d love it and could do with that sort of learning rather than from a book or kiddie kit but could only find perfume making for hen nights and other adult groups. I did get a very speedy, if not helpful email reply back from Lush giving me some links to look at but saying that regrettably they don’t offer tours of their factory which is a great shame as she loves Lush stuff and that would have been ideal. I’ve also had some email contact with fizzpotzz (beware link opens noisy website!) which looked ideal and had me wondering if I could find enough local children to make it worth booking but I realised there is no local rep. I briefly pondered applying as they leapt on my initial email but it’d be too much weekend commitment and I really do need to remember that I don’t actually like children rather than take on any more activities involving them! :lol:. Will keep researching as I’m sure I can find some sort of chemistry with a leaning towards cosmetics and perfumes for kids somewhere, or go all out flakey and find a local aromatherapist who will talk to Scarlett about stuff like that ;).

Yesterday Tarly and I had been talking about whether her oils were poisonous and I’d said that you could use some essential oils in cooking so we’d talked about what would taste nice in various things and agreed that you could use lemon or lavender in snickerdoodles. So her and I made a batch of snickerdoodles, split the dough and she added lemon oil to her half and then mixed lemon oil with caster sugar to roll them in, while I carried on with cinnamon as usual. She christened them lemondoodles and they are actually very nice, although the commbination of lemon and sugar on the outside puts me in mind of pancakes so much that they just taste of pancakes to me.

While we did that Davies did some fantasticcontraptions and got straight up to the last level really quickly. he’s still experimenting with finishing that level but clicked on the ‘make your own levels’ and saw that you could upgrade and buy it to do more for $10. I said that if he completes the free levels I will get him the full version having spent similar on bath bomb supplies for Scarlett today so I think that is his mission / intention for tomorrow :).

The kids had tea and then it was time for Badgers. We learnt last week that they only have to wear uniform for the first meeting of the month. Scarlett, who hates uniforms of any description was delighted to go in her jeans with unbrushed hair. Davies who says he quite likes the novelty of a uniform once a week (I suspect he is also rather proud of his follow me Badger epilets) wore his. After some consultation I also cut his hair a bit – still very long and messy but it was starting to look a bit 70s cop show so we’ve cultivated the unkempt look he was actually aiming for again ;).

I felt much better about Badgers tonight, the group I was with was bigger this week – 8 of them and they decorated frames to put photos in. I managed to chat to about 4 of them and help them with their frames, encouraging them to all go for very different approaches and getting them to think about what they wanted to make rather than copying each other. I do have some concerns about my ability to fit in with the expectations on a Badger leader, particularly with regard to crowd control but I guess I’ll have to cross that bridge when I come to it really. The kids and I are going in for a couple of hours on Monday morning to tidy up the resource cupboard and plan next terms badge so my issues may come up then, if not I’ll coast along until they do.

Davies at the moment thinks he won’t do Badger camp this year as it is going to be further away than last year and a big part of his comfort was in only being 10 minutes or so away from home – as indeed was proved when I went up there on the second night. That could all easily change of course and Ady is going to chat to him at some point to make sure he isn’t saying that to appease me ;). Davies is pretty good at testing himself by doing something, enjoying it but being able to say ‘right I’ve done that now, it was fine, but I don’t need to do it again!’ though and I suspect Badger camp could well be one of those instances.

Home for stories – the last three chapters of Tales of the Early World which if I haven’t already done (and I suspect I have) I heartily recommend. We have the third in the series to start next but have loved this one and ‘How The Whale Became’.