the nice stuff!
And there was plenty of it so it deserves a blog to counteract my two rants.
This morning we built a Drusillas again (think that might start to become a favourite!), both kids seemed happy enough to entertain themselves for various periods of time while I got dressed, checked emails etc (although Scarlett did join me while I put my make up on – she has this beautician act where she likes to put moisturiser on my back, arms and legs, which is very cute and my skin is silky soft too!), I got three loads of washing done, some on the line and some more tumble dried – a nice morning with no shouting or tears.
Julie and the twins came over around lunchtime, and despite my earlier blog we did have a bit of a chat and she is going through typical toddler hell with the twins at the moment – which is hard as she has thus far found it all pretty easy. I shared a bit of toddler wisdom, recommended a couple of books and assured her it does all get easier when they hit three! Then we set off to HE group.
We arrived on time but the keyholder was not, so as it was too cold to socialise outside we stayed in our car and I read a couple of stories to the kids from the books we keep in the car (hence they are quite fresh stories as they don’t get looked at apart from long journeys) which was nice. We need to do more reading together really, they could probably both be held by some of the books we have with bright pictures for Scarlett and some storyline for Davies (veryhungry caterpillar sort of thing perhaps?)
Then inside and as I have already blogged about that we’ll leave that there although it was not awful or anything. Julie left before us so we got home and the kids watched a bit of TV while I googled about Five in a row – something I had heard mentioned in HE circles but actually knew virtually nothing about. Then Davies and I had a bit of a chat about school, friendships and so on, which went well although I cried 🙁 but it served my purpose of ensuring he doesn’t dwell on anything. *which is something he does do otherwise. I stupidly told Ady about a bad dream I had had the other night while Davies was sat on my lap – apparantly watching TV and not listening, when I put him to bed he started asking me more details about it and I played it down but sure enough he was in our bed at 4.30 this morning having had a bad dream, almost a replica of the one he had heard me describe 🙁 Little ears and all that…
Then teatime, bathtime and they are both asleep already so despite my moaning all the running about being chaotic did them some good anyway!
We also made a start on the little animation kit I got him yesterday as a result of his interest in the Bat Cave thing at Drusillas – the outside packaging had a flick book to cut out and make so we have done that and will maybe do the main project tomorrow (one of those wheels with slits in it and a series of pictures inside which when you spin the wheel and view through the slits looks like a little movie).
Tomorrow is going to be a good day – it’s Friday, we have a nice weekend planned (Bluebell Railway on Saturday with Chris and Julie, lazy day at home on Sunday), I have a couple of small educational activities planned and I think my mum is off work tomorrow so I’m about to ring her and see if she wants to come over for lunch too – she is always good for a walk to the park to push them on the swings outing which I wouldn’t even consider doing on my own!
ooh, spooky – was just watching Adam Hart Davis local heroes on how the wheels with slits thing works…
Wish we had a park with swings in walking distance. We’ve got a rec, but it’s usually full of broken glass and dog shit 🙁
So what did you find out about FIAR?
you reminded me about the reading I di with my 2 today – I posted a little about FIAR on my blog for you.
Glad the day wasn’t too bad. We don’t have a park with swings here, well not since they got taken down as they were vandalised all the time. 🙁
I’ve never actually ventured there – we walk past it on the way to the Aldays store sometimes and I always promise ‘one day’. It is in the middle of a less than desirable area and I do worry it may be filled with truanty teens smoking and swearing though :-0
FIAR – looks pretty interesting, if a bit Americanized and perhaps religious??? I like the concept though, it’s the natural progression from HE I guess, or the way we HE with things tangenting off into other things and yet more things with all being discussed, I guess it just formalises it a bit.
I just wanted to add something about the table we got that enabled us to do sitting at a table stuff. You mentioned that it seemed a good idea to do half an hour or so after breakfast. Well, that’s what we started with. We bought the table, then instituted ‘table time’ where we would go to the table after breakfast and do _something_ , be it drawing, sticking, workbooks etc. Then when C was 4 1/2 and all her friends started school we got a little more formal about the 3Rs.