An at home day again today. Days at home are always the ones that have me fretting about my laissez-faire attitude towards the kids Home Ed. Is it neglectful? Would it stand up to scrutiny? We tend to have a pattern of getting on with our own things when we’re at home, which in the case of today meant I spent some time on the laptop, some time reading and some time baking. Davies and Scarlett both spent some time on their DSs, both spent some time snuggled up next to me, both spent some time watching stuff on TV (Evacuees, Worlds most dangerous animals, some cartoons) and some time playing together with the geomags. Oh and Davies played with his Ben 10 figures for a bit too. Aside from the odd ‘what does this say?’ or ‘I didn’t know that about crocodiles, did you Mummy?’ interjection I was called upon very little which either seems a bit too good to be true, or at the very least worthy of suspicion that I’m not ‘doing my job properly’ really.
I admitted seasonal defeat at both getting laundry dried outside and needing to put the heating on, which sort of ties in nicely together really as it meant I could do several loads of washing and get it dried on the radiators. I had planned to top up the water and antifreeze in my car, along with checking the oil and the washer bottle and maybe even de-craping the interior a bit but it needs to be parked on a flat bit of road and as both our road and our drive are sloping this means taking it somewhere else. I am also not keen on the idea of lifting the bonnet outside our own house for risk of neighbours, and yes I’m thinking David Thank-you in particular swarming over to offer a hand. I’d planned to take it to my parents after lunch, call in for a cup of tea and do it there but the relentless rain all day long prevented me from following through with that idea. Maybe tomorrow.
I made a couple of trays of brownies – one with and one without nuts and we had lunch.
A peaceful early afternoon and then off to swimming. I was feeling quite slothful and rather full of brownies and was very tempted not to swim but berated myself for such laziness and took what I thought was the right money in change with me. I discovered when I went to pay that I was 10 pence out and had to dash back to my car and collect 10p worth of rather green coppers to make up the money. Hurrah for not having tidied my car out I suppose!
A brother and sister who are also Home Educated and we know loosely from groups over the years go swimming on a Tuesday afternoon – they are older than Davies and Scarlett – I think the sister is about 12 or 13 and the brother is maybe 10 but they are big children and the lad particularly plays rough which when he towers over Davies by half as much height and size again slightly bothers me. It always seems very amicable and Davies and Scarlett are always pleased to see them but I feel conscious of keeping an eye on them all incase general horseplay gets out of control. As a result I was distracted and only managed 46 lengths today. I did change my stride to front crawl, backstroke, front crawl, backstroke, breast stoke, back stroke, repeat though as front crawl is definitely quicker and more energetic than breast stroke. I also kept a sharper eye on the time – I did the first 10 lengths in 10 minutes but by 15 minutes I had dropped to 14 lengths. At 20 minutes I was down to 16 lengths and at 30 minutes I was just about at 26 lengths. I was hoping to manage 52 lengths today so was about on track at half time but of course my second half of the hour tends to be slower as I get worn out.
Back home again I did the kids some tea and got changed before Ady arrived home and I went off to my course. Week seven of nine tonight so only two more to go. Today was all about Smart Shopping and included a talk from a woman from Love Food Hate Waste. She gave us loads of freebies including fridge thermometer, pasta and rice measures, bag clips, magnetic shopping list, foodsaver tub and recipe books. She gave a really interesting talk and infact we ran out of time so some of the other stuff about shopping we were due to cover is being carried over to next week.
I got home to find Davies hadn’t gone to Sea Scouts. He’d already said he wasn’t sure if he wanted to go and he wished it wasn’t the same day as swimming as he is worn out by swimming for an hour and always wants an early night. Didn’t stop him reappearing back downstairs at 1045pm with a robot spaceship transformer thing he’d made from a bit of McDonalds Happy Meal toy, some cardboard and a load of sellotape though :rolls: I can’t decide if he has lost interest, it’s because of the whole refusing to believe he’s HE’d or genuine tiredness really. I do wish it was me taking him each week as I suspect Ady hasn’t been as good as I would have been in easing him in and maybe having a chat with some of the boys who are giving him a hard time or speaking to the leader. We’ll see…
Other than that I am getting really frustrated with an online game I am desperate to get to level six on so will maybe just have one or more tries at that before I go to bed…