Cos you can buy my favourite cheap and nasty chocolate liqueurs anywhere and everywhere for abotu a quid a box! Normally I would plump for your classier chocolate (green and blacks over cadburys every time!) but I do love a nice dark chocolate filled with a nip of alcohol, and best of all Ady doesn’t like them so they are mine, all mine (ha ha ha ha!). But I digress….
Educational stuff has happened today here in vast amounts. I am model of how home education works for the under fives in a child led kinda way so I am! So lets get all the educational stuff out of the way first. Today we have:
done Hama beads, which has involved design and art skills, colour matching, fine motor skills, patience, science (understanding of the application of heat to the beads and how it changes them), pride in one’s work oh, and identifying a well known character from a fairly dodgey bead interpretation:
.Someone could anyway!
We did some Christmas designs and Davies actually finished his first ever design of a car without getting bored and giving up halfway through:
I can hardly believe it myself considering how long I have had the beads and thought they would never be used for anything other than scattering round the house and then being tidied up again. Such was the success of the activity I am off to Bead Merrily later to stock up a bit and maybe try some midi beads.
We also spent the afteroon with Rachel, E and baby A which involved socialising, negotiation of who was going to sit where and next to whom in the people carrier, some educational distraction games such as ‘count the red vans’, ‘count the dustcarts’ on the way there and a rousing singing session of Old McDonald had a Swiper (with an Ohhh Mannnn here, an Ohhhh Mannn there etc), Twinkle twinkle little star, the alphabet song (which I then told them was the same tune as Twinkle twinkle and we proved by Rachel and I singing abc while the boys sang Twinkle twinkle), the Dora theme tune and ‘I’m the map’ in a bid to keep Scarlett awake on the way back. We covered all sorts of educational stuff walking round the dinosaur place and the gardens and playing in the amusement area, we did loads of physical ed / running off of energy running round the outside area and tonight we have done a bit of literature with our bedtime stories of Aesops Fables, which also taught some morals and some maths (I will read you three stories, how many will be left to read after one? How many after two?).
So there you go. Actually it’s quite boring doing it like that isn’t it. Well we did tick lots of boxes anyway (maybe I could just stick some more categories in and be done with it). So we had a nice time doing hama this morning, both children really enjoyed it – definitely one to do again and more regularly. Rachel and co arrived just before midday and we shot over to Paradise Park for lunch (which none of the children really ate but never mind!), a walk round the dinosaur display, a play in the indoor amusements, a walk round the outside dinosaur display, more playing inside while Rachel fed A, a look round the shop where both of mine behaved dreadfully – Davies had a total meltdown about not being bought a really expensive dinosaur book which I had drawn his attention to as it was interesting but was not suggesting I buy for him. He never normally does this which made it even worse, then Scarlett started running about everywhere, chased by E which made her run more, we ended up, in some of surreal way in the middle of a group of about seven nuns who were having some sort of day out with me trying really hard to fight the urge to yell ‘for Christ’s sake will you two behave’ before turning to them and asking for them to pray for my children! Just about managed to herd them away from the nuns when a further meltdown happened when I said ‘Yes’ to E’s request for all the kids to have a lolly before realising he meant ice lollies. I then had to backtrack as although E is very tidy with ice lollies both of mine need a bowl to catch the drips and there was no way I was taking three children in my car with ice lollies. I finally got them out, with much grabbing of arms and collars, shouting, talking in a low and menacing tone and threatening all sorts of things and by the time we had them all installed in the car again we were fine. The funniest moment was Scarlett having a total fit about being picked up, struggling and bashing me until I snapped and said ‘what exactly do you want Scarlett?’ and she replied ‘a cuddle’ and sunk back against me – strange child!
Everyone came back in for a quick play and a cup of tea and a lovely day was had by all really. Oh also forgot to mention yesterday that I bought the JP video when I was in ELC last week and Davies watched it twice yesterday. Although I don’t think it has all sunk in as such, he has started to talk about words rhyming (which he was already familiar with as a concept but didn’t grasp why exactly before) and about sounds of letters joining together. I am not going to go mad and buy anymore of the stuff as we already have more than enough Letterland stuff around the place and I am sure I can pick up where the video leaves off with all the other resources we have in the house, but it does seem to have been the catalyst for him getting the idea which is fab 🙂
we haven’t bought any more JP stuff yet either. Actually, that’s a bit of a lie. We did get a couple of things last year for Christmas, but only cos we thought they would be a good idea (and I needed to add stuff to the ELC online order to make it £75!). They were the jiglets and the wall frieze. The frieze seemed daft though cos we didn’t know why “r” had a pic of a dog and then said rag underneath, but now they can look at it and it makes a bit more sense.
Alex recognised the hama bead pic as Dora straight away would you believe! So it must be good :o) Don’t worry yourself about the educational stuff, sometimes it just sounds so crap at their age. I know I’ve had wobbly times and I have to remember that a lot of other people have much older kids and so the educational stuff is just different and possibly what we want to be happening as it sounds better. Does that make sense?
(((hugs))) anyway, we’re at a similar stage. I have noticed that Marcus is getting more interesting lately and he feels like he’s taking in some of the stuff we talk about. Hope it seems better for you soon too :o)
bloody smilies, I never get them right!
Aw thanks Kirsty. TBH I don’t tend to dwell too much IRL on educational stuff – I feel (aside from my odd forays into workbooks, which I always run back from with my tail between my legs) I am confident that the way we are doing stuff is the right way for us. It is an odd limbo to be in though isn’t it when the children are not of school age but you *know* you are HEing them.
Looking forward to meeting you actually Kirsty – and Marcus and Davies meeting each other (along with Lije and Josiah they will be the only non pink skirt wearing offspring!)and of course Scarlett and Alex will be joining the already well established group of minx females! 🙂
Loved your Dora!
We have a couple of those snowmen and Father Christmases somewhere that Lijah did last year – Layla had to do a mercy mission to deliver some more white beads! – must make sure I find them again this year 🙂
There’ll be Karen O’s boys, little B Raine, and Buzz too at Melrose 🙂 (And of course Small, if he’s not too small 😉 ) Still more girls though!
Oops, forgot to add Feely-Peely! And there are a couple more bigger boys too 🙂
yeah I was thinking that earlier too that it will be nice to finally meet you and see how the boys get on with each other. Hopefully Alex won’t cling to me like a limpet this year, but if she doesn’t I might not know what to do with myself!!
Even though we don’t have Nick Jr it was obvious to me that was Dora!
See, Nic, you can do educational!