I have a plan to organise one Home Ed ‘event’ a month to advertise on the local list. The aim is to have something to invite the various new HEors I get contacted by on at least a monthly basis without having to necessarily meet them one to one, to ‘give something back’ as we got loads out of going to things other HEors organised (and infact still do), to keep a toe in the local HE community as we don’t go to any groups currently and to ensure the children and I are meeting new people regularly-ish.
So January was Tilgate Park. I’ll do another one there later in the year when it is warmer and Feburary is already planned for the local soft play place. I’m thinking about a trip to the lambing in March as I don’t want to open the British Wildlife Centre trip out to people I don’t actually know personally.
I’d had a fair few people saying they were up for Tilgate but as we have had such crappy weather and there is still so much illness about I wasn’t expecting a massive turnout and would have been just as happy if noone had come as we really like it there anyway. We collected Tasha, Toby and Vinnie at 10am and via the petrol station headed off. For some reason I managed to take a wrong turning and we had a short diversion and arrived just after 11am. There were already two women standing together and one other woman and her two children standing seperately. I knew one of the women in the group as she has come along every time I’ve done a Tilgate meet up – she has 5 sons but the oldest has returned to school and the second oldest attends a SEN school anyway so she had her 3 remaining boys with her – twins who are about 4 and a small toddler in a pushchair. The other woman just had a toddler with her and is not really local to us down on the coast although it’s always nice to meet people and she said it was reassuring to learn there was stuff happening for when he gets older. The other woman was Fi, who I’ve met several times as she lives near Julie and goes to lots of Julie’s events. She is very nice and has Jake and Sophie who are 4 and 5.
So the 5 families met and introduced we headed off to the farm area together. We walked a different way round to usual for some reason and missed out a couple of bird enclosures. Davies was off with Toby which was great and they had a fab time chatting and walking ahead of the rest of us but it did mean Tarly felt a bit left out. I kept her with me as it isn’t often Davies gets to enjoy one to one time with a mate and they were not being deliberately exclusive or mean but it did mean I didn’t get to chat so much to the other women. Lucy and The Rs joined us as we reached the toilets ready to wash our hands and head to the cafe.
A peacock resides in the walled garden and begs food from picnickers which intially freaked out some of the children but I crouched down and hand fed him which he took really gently and with utter caution so that allayed most of their fears and soon some of them had a go at feeding him too. They really are one of the most beautiful animals. I relented and got D and S each a chocolate donut from the shop which they both demolished after their sandwiches and then we all headed to the maze.
The children would probably all still be there now as they were having a whale of a time but eventually the adults got cold standing around waiting so we called them all out and we walked round the play area. Davies and Scarlett managed to collide and fall over each other into the mud – Toby had already had a similar wipe out earlier so we had three very muddy children. Tarly soon recovered when a friendly dog wanted to be petted and walked to the playground with us. They all had fun in the playground and gradually families started to drift off until Fi and Lucy left with Tasha and I. We weren’t there as long as I’d expected us to be really but it was very cold and whilst I suspect Davies, Scarlett and I could have gone for a walk around the lake the rest of the group probably weren’t up for that.
We headed for home, dropped Tasha and co off and got back to our house just before 3pm. The children stripped off at the front door and I ran them a bath to get straight into as they were filthy. All of their clothes, coats included went straight in the washing machine and we sat with the heating on (me drinking tea) until we warmed up. They did some DSing until their tea.
Ady came home and downloaded a new game onto Davies’ rumble pack – the lastest Ben 10 one so he and Davies were looking at that and I insisted that Davies had a go himself at reading the instructions. I think Ady was surprised at how much of it he was able to do – and the stuff he knew. At one point he painstakingly sounded out fifty percent and then when Ady asked him if he knew what that meant he said ‘yeah, 100% is when you have completed a game so 50% must be half of it’. 😆 Scarlett then decided she wanted to do some reading so I got 100EL off the shelf and she cracked sounding out straight away on some cvc words. She knows most of the letters by name but not so many sounds so she needs to decide whether to work through 100EL (which I suspect is not her style at all) or learn the letter sounds and then work out the rest herself. I think between her and Davies they could pretty much read anything, they have complimentary but very different approaches :).
I read a couple of stories from Orchard Book of Starry Tales
I love that 50% thing – “But Mum, playing my DS is educational!”.