One word? When seven would do…

well ok it’s not likely to be but it is my intention 🙂

Bad night last night, Tarly is suffering nightmares. Mainly they seem to consist of ‘peoples taking my dummies’ but they sometimes contain real ‘peoples’ she knows such as Grandad, Elliot or a shark! Not sure what all that is about but she is genuinely upset by them and not really awake. When she started at about 3.30am this morning we lasted til 4 and then brought her into our bed, which is probably a really bad move but she did manage to snuggle down and sleep til 7ish.

Davies woke at 7am and when I told him to go and play and come back when the big hand was pointing straight down he went off and made a fab art attack / big picture type thing on the lounge floor with bits of coloured paper. Should have taken a photo really although I don’t think it would have done it justice. About 8 A4 sheets by 8 A4 sheets sized he had used blues, greens and turquoise paper to make a sea, yellow to make an island which he had put some real shells and some beads to be pretend stones on, a boat and then ripped up small bits of paper to make fish.

Scarlett got a scoubidou out so she could ‘go fishing Mummy’ in it and they started on the strawberry mountain for breakfast!

A quick dash to the bank prior to TT1 having packed sandwiches to bring with us.

TT1 was probably the best it’s ever been today. There are additional older children now, I think there were 7 altogether today which was much better. Davies had taken on board everything I have been nagging him about there and behaved really well. Tarly had an altercation with the helper woman’s little girl (not sure if I have blogged my issues with her being there or just whined at Ady about them…) pushing her about – which is bizarre as she is about half Tarly’s size and my beloved girl is not known for being pushed about. She just looked down at her, then at me and then back at her again and didn’t react – I was proud and said so loudly 😉 She (Scarlett) then managed to totally accidentally (I didn’t see it but it apparantly was a complete accident) wallop her in the mouth with a maraca and cut her mouth so she bled all over her mother – oops! Scarlett was totally bemused by the whole thing and when the mother brought her back in all mopped up she said ‘ah well what goes around comes around, she nearly knocked a little girls tooth out with that maraca in the earlier class!!!!!!!’

Still totally undecided about continuing with that class come September but I think we’ll see it through til the summer holidays break.

Lunch in the baking hot oven of a car and then TT2. Scarlett did really well today, every week we talk about it in advance and every week she gets slightly better at sitting down in the middle of all the activities to listen to the women telling us what to do next. Gave her stacks of praise today and it really paid off 🙂 In the 20 mins between the two classes her and Davies ran around playing with all the other kids. It seems to have sorted itself out with the rougher kids and it possibly helps that Davies is clearly the oldest and tallest so he gets targeted less. Someone had brought along a ball and they were playing a bastardised football, handball type game with it. D was soo sweet as S was way too small to run fast enough to ever get the ball every other time he got it he stopped the game to hand it to her to have a go 🙂 Bless!

As we left the leader called me over to say that D will need to move up to the next level (school age Gym Bobs) in September and the class time will change. This leaves me with a few dilemas about which of the two classes to go for – one clashes slightly with our Home Ed group and as I keyhold I can’t slip off early and the other is on a Friday at 4.30 which would be a nightmare to drag Scarlett to – clashes with tea time, means loads of backwards and forwardsing on a Friday and we’d end up stuck in Friday night traffic coming home and probably fighting to keep Tarly awake in time to get back to eat. Might pull rank and see if I can twiddle with HE group start and end time (whatd’ya reckon Jenny? 1-3 instead of 1.30-3.30 would do it???) No need to decide ’til August anyway so won’t worry about it yet.

Back home we spent ages tidying up some beads Tarly had scattered about the place and then I taught the kids ‘she’ll be coming round the mountain when she comes’ which they loved. We spent ages thinking of the silliest things ‘she’ would be doing when she came and adding yipee-eyes to it all – great fun.

While I was doing their tea I realised that just at the moment I am really rather happy with my life. I know this is a good time of year for being at home with them but actually instead of somewhat dreading Davies’ impending fifth birthday and all the imagined milestones that offers up I am looking forward to finally being official and Real Home Educators. The hands off approach to reading and writing I have been lazily following since our touching on it all with 100EL has really paid off. Every night he falls asleep with early reader books (Red Nose Readers, Bob Books, Oxford Reading and Apple Tree Farm) piled all over his bed. He is obsessed with knowing what every bit of writing he sees anywhere says and is really starting to think about the sounds within words. he’s also started to pick up some of the more educational maths type toys or resources which have been in the house for ages and gone ignored previously – today he was messing about with the cusinere (I know that’s not spelt right but I can’t be arsed to look it up!) rods for ages and works through little maths type puzzles aloud showing he is getting to grips with the theories behind maths in practical real life scenarios.

Argh, that was so not brief! I really want to get my Ed Phil properly drafted and agreed to by Ady and talked through with Davies, some sort of evidence – probably pulled from out of my blog – of how our approach works and so on in readiness for a knock on the door if one comes. I also want to explore some different activities for them come September and look at how our week is structured to make sure they are both getting the most from it. And finally I really feel like I might be ready to start touting for some sort of business for me too, but that all needs a lot more thinking through.