Up with the alarm again this morning as we were off over to Bognor again. Thanks to a facebook group we have gradually gotten more involved with a load of Home Educators locallyish that we first met several years ago but lived just that little bit too far away from to see regularly. Having joined Book Club late last year we’ve seen more of them and have been making the effort to attend the odd other event too such as the May Day one last week. I really like the adults so I am very happy with this turn of events and Davies and Scarlett seem to be gaining some friends out of it too. There are several nine-ish year old boys and several sevenish year old girls who despite me not particularly worrying about the children not having enough friends are nice kids that D&S get on well with so more friends is nice :). We are meshing some other friendships in the process too as lots of them attend Etudeo where Caz and Bid are working and all of them know Julie so the children all know Jack and Maisie. I don’t *love* big groups of women and often feel quite out of my depth in some of the conversations about things prefering mixed company really but I am enjoying the diversity of the group particularly now the children are of an age and we are at a stage in our Home Ed where I am confident of what we’re doing and how we’re doing it and happy to sit about discussing it. The weekly get together at some venue or another with some incarnation of the group of other seems to be suiting us well just now.
So today we were back to Claire’s for Book Club art display making. Not sure if I blogged before but the book club is doing the Summer Reading Challenge display for Bognor Library. We’re doing a vast mixed display on the theme of space with all sorts of book inspired planets including factual planets with facts and figures (which we made last time), junk planet inspired by Iron Man, crazy Moomin and Clanger inspired planets, quilted cloth planets, collage planets inspired by Lauren Child, fantasy planets with Narnia and Alice in Wonderland spin offs and loads more.
Today Scarlett did some work on a blob-head planet alongside Poppy who has never really been on her radar before despite me thinking they should get on well really. Poppy is a good friend of Maisie though and had told Katy (her mum) that she doesn’t like Davies and Scarlett because they always hog Jack and Maisie 😆 I think as individuals they all get on well in pairs but the group dynamic simply doesn’t work. Today however Scarlett and Poppy really hit it off to the extent that we’ve arranged to go over there next week for the day 🙂 It’s been a good week for collecting friends for Scarlett so far and we’re only on Tuesday! :).
Davies and I worked on the Junk Planet which involved making different coloured cogs, making little 3d boxes and turning them into trashed white goods and other such metal junk. Really enjoyed creating tiny washing machines, microwaves and making them spew out wires and cables :). We had regular breaks for running out into their lovely sunny garden and bouncing on the trampoline (well I didn’t do that, I sat around drinking tea and chatting ;)) and Scarlett loved spending time with their dog Florence too :). Clare’s two daughters who are now 13 and 15 were some of the first older Home Ed children I met about 5 years ago and I remember thinking then what lovely girls they were and that if they were indicative of what Home Ed kids grew into then that was great. They are now much bigger but just as lovely and fab examples of just how lovely, relaxed, happy and friendly teenagers can be when you take all the crappy pressure of teenagerdom at school away (which isn’t to say you don’t get lovely schooled teens too because I know some of them aswell but Clare’s girls really shine with the difference that their HE lifestyle gives them :)).
There was a funny moment when we called the children back in after lunch to start on the next bit of the planets and they all groaned as we did so and I told Davies and Scarlett that was their first taste of what it’s like every day being called in from the playground at the end of lunchtime by the school bell :lol:. Fortunately it was to spend more time painting, creating plasticine and old electrical bits and bobs robots and generally being arty and creative so not too much of a hardship :). The finished planet was awesome and will look just fab as part of the display 🙂
” alt=”” />
More playing and then Clare had to leave to drop her oldest daughter off somewhere and we had to leave to get back to Worthing for swimming lessons. I had reading group tonight and still had the last 50 pages of the book to read so had to sit at the side and read rather than go in. This meant I sent the kids to the respective male and female changing rooms off on their own and got them to meet me poolside with their clothes having got changed, then back again at the end with their piles of clothes to meet me at the top having got dressed and dried. They’ve not done that before so it was good to see how well they both did and how quickly and properly dry they reappeared :).
Both had good lessons from the bits I watched and I finished my book just as Scarlett got bored on her own in the pool as it was almost empty and came to sit with me and watch the end of Davies’ lesson.
We got home just before Ady and he cooked their tea while Scarlett gave the ducklings some swimming time in the bath and some running around time in the lounge. Sploosh has started diving to swim underwater (although didn’t oblige to let me catch it on film) which is very cute. Their really quite large box that we’ve previously happily kept up to 7 bantam chicks in for weeks is already looking far too small so we’re thinking of bigger alternative housing ideas for the next 4 weeks or so before they are ready to move outside.
Book group was good, quite a long discussion on the book we’d read (William Boyd, Ordinary Thunderstorms) and some interesting general debate about CRB checks and databases generally. Back home for pasta and some taped Heston cooking crazily.
I can’t quite believe it but I seem to be snotty and coming-down-with-something-y *again* – we have had so many coughs and colds so far this year I really thought we’d seen the back of them for a few months through the summer. My immune system must be so crap :(.