chatterback

I wanted to take the jeggings back today. I felt slightly embarrassed about having bought them at all so wanted to reclaim the cash and pretend the whole sorry incident had never happened. Women of a certain size of a certain age should really get over themselves as far as following fashion is concerned, particularly when they have both economical constraints and ecological ethics about buying stuff they don’t need in the first place.

So, breakfasted, dressed, chickens dealt with and a minor diversion in the form of Zoombinis we dashed into town to return them. I did reinvest the money in some deodrant, having done long and fairly scientific testing into different types of aluminium free deodrant I have a definite favourite in Tisserand. I never sniffed under my arms or the armpits of my clothes before and suspect I have even become slightly unhealthily obsessed with whether I stink or not but I am aware that the claim of ‘slow release’ on Tisserand is indeed true and when reaching out to put a book back on a high shelf even in the late afternoon at work I get a waft of lavendar or lemongrass on days that I have used that. So having checked online P&P charges and checked the nearest stockists I was able to combine a trip into town to remove jeggings from my life and pretend they never existed (I won’t admit to it you know, if anyone mentions jeggings in my presence I shall snort with derision and ask ‘what’s a jegging?!’ as if I have no idea) with collecting anti-reek potions.

We also got some batteries for Davies’ Cube World which he’s been asking for for weeks and Scarlett persuaded me to buy her this really rather lovely book from the Works reduced from £17.99 to £3.99

We bumped into The Thankyou Neighbours (all three of them, David, Joyce on her mobility scooter and Annette / Jeannette in full on sparkly jeans finery) who insisted on kissing us in the street, apologised for not bring our wheelie bins back in to our back garden and asked me to pass on the message to Ady that David has a tenner to donate to Pompey should they need it (they do). The kids later berated me for not mentioning the highly amusing rear windscreen sticker in David’s car that had me crying with laughter when I noticed it last week ‘get off my ass’. If ever there was a person least likely to say such a phrase it is David. It’s become our new family motto it amused me so much.

We had discussions about choosing what to spend money on, investment purchases rather than ‘for the sake of it’ or instant gratification purchases and I used the sorry tale of the jeggings to illustrate my point. They have almost come in handy now.

Back home again for lunch, further Zoombini-ing, Cube World re-birth and plenty of looking at Scarlett’s new book.

I remembered an event at the local cinema I’d tried to book online last night and failed and after a final asking Scarlett changed her mind from definitely not wanting to go to actually really rather liking the idea so I booked tickets for all four of us for the Mad Hatters Tea Party Gala Event on Friday night. It includes fancy dress competition and parade, tea and cakes, eat me, drink me taste testing, Pixar mini-films and the premiere of Alice in Wonderland. We’re all quite excited and think it will be fab :).

Much googling for images later I showed Davies and Scarlett the 2010 incarnations of the Mad Hatter and Alice. They disappeared and Davies re-emerged with a magicians top hat, wig and waistcoat as a start. We talked about what we’d need to get them fancy-dressed up accordingly and headed into Lancing to raid the charity shops. We got a blue nightie for Scarlett which with a sticky-out dress underneath, a scarf round the middle and some stitches in the shoulder will pass very well for 19 year old Alice’s version of the blue dress. We’ll plait her hair the night before to get the crazy wavy wiggles in it. For Davies we found a crazily patterned adults shirt which will make a perfect jacket, a scarf of mine will make a bow tie and we just need to die the wig orange to have him looking like a Johnny Depp mini-me (steady girls 😉 ).

And so to Chatterbooks. I’ll document it all here for my own reference. My plan was rhyming stories and books today with the idea of a group poem about Chatterbooks as the activity. I’d already printed off various Dr Seuss worksheets, got in loads of books including some of the titles helpfully suggested by friends on brightkite and facebook that I’d familiarised myself with in advance.

I was expecting the children’s librarian today and was hoping she’d arrive early enough for a briefing you do that, I’ll do this type chat as the session was going to require a fair level of support in places, having 13 children of very different abilities and personality types. But no one turned up. Ady said to me tonight I should have just cancelled it which didn’t even occur to me as an idea.

So I ploughed on. We started with a catch up of books we are reading; this doesn’t really work, as indeed few of the group chatting ideas seem to, possibly because the group is that bit too large so some children are happy to chatter away while others are really daunted.

Then I talked a bit about poetry and rhyming in books – Dr Seuss who makes up whole stories around rhymes, Roald Dahl who’s done some great retelling of stories in rhyme and made the odd song or poem in his books (the centipede in James and the Giant Peach was one of my favourite bits of poetry as a child), limerick style such as Lear’s nonsense and stories written in verse. I read some of Lear’s work and we talked about how limericks work, which lines rhyme with which and who often the same word is repeated to rhyme in lines one and five.

Then I said I’d like us to come up with our own poem about Chatterbooks including all of us. We talked about words that rhymed with our names, if none did then other words that rhymed with things about us – eg girl or boy, where we lived, what our hobbies were, how old we were etc. As a group we came up with loads of rhymes for names, girl, boy, seven, eight and nine (the kids ages), Lancing and so on. This was the point I need support really as I had a couple of kids who totally got it and went off and wrote very credible rhymes and limericks about themselves and some others who were totally capable but needed more support and guidance. I had the usual toilet run issue with about five of them who all decided they needed to go ‘right now’ and two sets of boys who thought it was fun to scribble on each others work.

I did mention once again that noone had to be there, it was not school and my requirement was that they were there because they wanted to be and if they wanted to be there then I expected them to participate, cooperate and not be disruptive otherwise they could bring their adult to me at the end and we could arrange for them not to bother coming again. I hate tarring school and schoolchildren with any sort of brush but I really do see the difference with this group of kids who either by dint of pushy parents or genuine love of books are there after school but can be hard work with the home ed kids I know who just love these sorts of event and squeeze every last drop of value from them.

I then read -amazing how all 13 children are suddenly quiet and enraptured when I start reading, maybe I should just do that for an hour each week? while they all thought about a few rhyming words before going round the circle to see what they’d come up with.

We had a perfect recreation of a limerick which was then uncovered to have been one learnt in school rather than one made up there and then (like I care!), two very good poems doing precisely what I asked for of including the child themselves, several good lists of words that rhyme with names, a good poem about the days of the week that was no use for the exercise we were doing, a picture of ponies from pony obsessed girl who rarely does anything other than draw ponies, a couple of rhyming couplets from Davies, some silly rhymes including poo and smelly from some of the boys and that was about it.

So we talked about about what I wanted- some words that rhymed about or to do with each child. I made one of the more difficult children feel uncomfortable (and frankly good!) when all he could come up with were words that weren’t even words.I then said that was fine as long as if you were going to make up a word you also made up a meaning and read them a big chunk of Dr Seuss which perfectly illustrates this idea with made up words (or letters) and their definitions. So we then all guessed what we thought the words he came up with might be – creature, vehicle, noise and so on for him to guess. I noticed Davies and Scarlett being particularly good at this.

We broke out the biscuits and I talked to all the parents about the book and dvd loans -I’d paired up films and books for loan and got clearance for free one week dvd loan vouchers to give out so did that while making clear the films need to be back next week otherwise will incur fines, got the parents to have input in kids choice of book / film and explained we will be talking about them in 2 weeks regarding the differences between book and film as I really do want to foster greater discussion in the group and the kids sharing stuff about books and reading.

I was incredibly cross about there not being a librarian, spent nearly an hour putting the library back together, left the washing up of the juice cups and came home to fire off a fire shirty email to various high up people along the lines of having been disappointed to not deliver as good a session this week due to being alone and needing to know if that would remain the case for subsequent sessions as I would have to replan accordingly if so. I suspect that will have got people into trouble and pissed them off but I was pretty pissed off myself. I got a speedy reply from the most senior person to say she ‘d not been aware there would not be a librarian there and had emailed them to find out what was happening and if need be would support the rest herself!

Am calmer about the whole thing now and quite philosophical about my own slightly ambitious ideas and how feasible they are. I definitely have a skewed view of 7-9year olds. Literacy wise my children are way down the bottom end of the ability range but free thinking, creativity and the ability to voluntarily participate and get something out of the sessions they and most of the other children I know are just streets ahead.

The teachers pet, showy off types probably antagonise me more than the ones who don’t join in at all and a definite error, even with a second supporter has been that the group size is too large. I have a plan for next week though and hope that might mix things up a bit.

While I did all this and then got dinner on for the kids they played Zoombinis and then ate – mild versions of the tacos and fajitas Ady and I had later as they have expressed interest in global cuisine.

We don’t have anything suitable for bedtime reading as the most recent borrowings from the library are slave related thanks to a reservation frenzy after reading Michelle’s recent blogpost, so I read some picture books Scarlett had brought home instead.

Bedtime was very protracted as both kids joined me in the bathroom while I was in the bath to talk about what school is like, whether I thought being a parent was better or worse than being childless and the pros and cons of both. Interesting stuff.

Ady and I finally had dinner, watched Australian Masterchef and now I am very yawny indeed.