One word? When seven would do…

It has been brought to my attention today that there are really people out there, existing among us who have a computer and a working email address but only check their inbox on a once a week basis. Yes that’s right people, ONCE A WEEK!

Now you or I can hardly comprehend such carelessness I know, why it would be as foolhardy as having a credit card and just spending on it willy-nilly without giving a thought to whether you were nearing your credit limit or in a position to pay it back wouldn’t it? It would be like having perfectly good, free education and childcare rolled into one available but choosing to educated your children at home instead. Like I say, crazy!

Anyway, these people all seem to the ones who run local youth type organisations such as Badgers, Beavers and other small mammals (thinking of calling the possible new HE group by a mammals name actually to be inkeeping – what do you think to SHREW – Some Home Residing Educators in Worthing) so emailing them for details about their groups is unlikely to get a speedy reply.

So this morning I got back on the websites for both and ring round a sucession of regional and local phone numbers for people called Marion and Keith and the like before finally getting to the right person for each.

Keith (not his really name 😉 ) from the Beavers tells me that yes there is a Beaver group on a Monday at the church literally round the corner from us, but at the moment it has no leader. Infact says Keith sounding really quite Eureka! about the whole idea ‘Do *you* know anything about scouting? Perhaps….’ I cut off what has probably been Keith’s biggest flash of inspiration of his life to date rather hastily ;-). So Beavers is out for now, they are fairly categoric about them being 6 anyway but at least his name is now on their waiting list and Keith assures me they will be in touch ‘in due course’.

Marion from Badgers was slightly less able to help with specific details like cost and uniform (although being a SJA lady I imagine if I’d needed guidance with the correct way to wind a bandage or deal with a minor scalding incident she would have been invaluable!) but she did confirm that Badgers locally to us runs on a Monday evening in a youth centre not too far from us and that the best thing to do is to go along next week with Davies and speak to the Badgerette or Badger Queen or whatever the leaderlady is called.

So that’s what we’ll do.

Talked to my mum about starting a new group yesterday, just as a real life, no personal interest type sounding board and managed to get quite excited about it again – clearly unfinished business there then!

This morning I have had a couple of scary letters so I bit the bullet and made a couple of phone calls and instead of not picking the phone up when it rang with withheld numbers I answered it both times it rang today on the basis I’d rather know about something about to happen and try and prepare myself for it. Anyway both calls were from HomeEducators, one asking about the Worthing Group (is that news travelling very fast or A Sign? 😉 ) and one trying to track down a HEer she used to know who lived on a houseboat and had a child called ‘Noname’ or something equally out there. Clearly not the sort of HEer *I’d* be in contact with ;-). I told the bloke after a local group roughly what he could expect if he came along to one I was considering setting up and he was really up for that, so my first attendee recruited!

So my vision for a group then, for Joyce, reading from her duvet 😉

Venue – needs to be accessible to public transport, have adequate and free parking, be ground floor, have some sort of kitchen and toilet facilities although a kettle and a bucket could suffice ;-), have tables and chairs, not be too immaculate ;-), an outside space would be utterly fab but not essential and it needs to cost no more than about £10 an hour. Worthing area ideally over to the west of the town as that is the direction the gap is in although not too far as that is moving away from me!

Group – running for two or three hours. As good a mix of ages and gender and educational philosophies as comes really. I guess I’d be striving to replicate what was good about WAG on a good session and that was:
A weekly theme which most attendees brought something related to – a craft activity, an idea for a game, some books or posters.

Fairly structured activities with very little of the running completely wild for two hours although I am not averse to a last half hour of that aslong as there is no wilful descruction going on with it.

The main aims for me are some socialising – the chance for the children to be in a room full of other Home Educated children for a couple of hours a week, the chance to engage with peers (which I consider to be any child under about 13 rather than within a year’s age range of them), the chance to participate in activities as a team and allow skills such as leadership, teamwork, cooperation and so to develop. And the chance for me to meet other local HE parents/carers. I enjoy the sitting and drinking tea while debating the ups and downs of our lifestyle choice for an hour a week rather a lot!

I do know that the possibility of grants and other fundraising is possible although that would be a bit of a back burner type priority.

I would like to use the benefit of being a group to get discounted entry to places and organise field trips / educational trips. I would also like to get in people occassionally to run music sessions, drama sessions, science workshops etc although it is possible that there might be parents or contacts within the group who can provide this.

It’s not so far away from where we started in the very beginning last time but I think there were too many of us involved in what the group would be about and too much politicising went on. Because I’d be doing it alone I would be less worried about ensuring every individuals needs were met and more inclined to say ‘this is what the group is, you either want to be part of that as it is or you don’t’….

Today I have revelled in my mother’s generosity and loved every minute of it :-).

But first, why I might well be crazy for trying… Since Christmas I think I must have been contacted by about 20 families via the EO website where I am listed as a local contact for our town. I probably average one or two a week and they vary from people already HEing, people thinking about it with pre school age children, people HEing moving to the area, people taking children out of school and people just curious about what happens if they did take their children out of school. I have a draft email response with all the local information and some handy online resources written which I amend accordingly and email back. Most continue the dialogue with at least one follow up email and sometimes I actually get to meet the person I’ve been emailing.

I think I have had the thought bouncing around in my subconscious for a while now but this morning I had a ‘thank you for all that information’ type email back asking if I knew anything about the WAG group she’d heard about. WAG was of course the group that Jenny and I set up last year and I closed towards the end of the year due to all sorts of reasons with a sense of relief and freedom. Now when I gave it up it was with the intention of getting more involved with Activeo (the big HE group over West Sussex / Hampshire way) and although my involvement had probably been more half hearted and feeble than it could have been I do go to anything listed in the newsletter which looks remotely interesting, I’ve been to everything Julie hosts and I gave the drama a go a few weeks back. I have arranged a local event at the soft play here in Worthing for later this month and thought I’d do a walk at some local gardens in April and then a trip to the Pick Your Own farm in May, so I’m aiming to do something once a month – free to attend wherever possible. But Activeo just bores me somehow, it is so established and entrenched in AGMs, QBMs, groups for new members, groups for making interim decisions inbetween QBMs and it has such a group of egos trying to clash themselves together running it and being treasurer and secretary and moderator of e group that there seems very little passion or enthusiasm left for actually doing anything particularly relevant to educating children. There are some excellent events for older children – there is a science group meeting once a month for example, but monthly doesn’t really cut it and the few things I’ve been to have been in crappy venues which are probably the only places who’ll have such a bunch of ‘out there’ HE folk back a second time, run by lacklustre, flat, wishy washy people (the drama teacher was really not at all exciting, passionate or inspirational) who are probably the only ones who’ll agree to do it when the bulk of the children are cheeky, disinterested or even downright rude. I think the original trailblazers are either long gone and forgotten or believed their own hype to such a degree that they disappeared up their own arses and have not yet reappeared. Anyway! 😉 Julie is desperate for me to get more involved and keeps suggesting my name to people for things like fundraising and so on and really that is not what I want to be spending my ‘spare’ time doing. I have said before that I do not have the energy or time for doing charitable works for the HE community – I either want to do something which reaps as much back for me and my children as I sow into it – or I want to be making cash from it! 😉

So this morning I sat there a-thinking and a-wondering and I came up with the realisation that the gap ‘in the market’ that existed which prompted Jenny and I to set up WAG in December 2004 is actually still there, infact it is probably a bigger gap than it was even back then. I learnt plenty from that experience and there were things we did that I wouldn’t repeat but I know that after a good week I was fired up with huge amounts of passion for what we were doing, the children were enjoying it and it just worked really. So I sort of have a plan 😉 I’m going to cast a few emails out to gague interest, I’m going to have a bit of a ring round to find a potential venue meeting all of *my* criteria and I’m going to see if I can’t set up a group which is exactly the group that me and my children would like to go to and then see if anyone else wants to be there too. I’l give it a very clear timespan to work or not work, I’ll be clear about what it will be about, how it will work and so on and I’ll just see if there really is a reason why there is no Home Ed group in a 30 mile stretch along the south coast other than the fact that the right one just hasn’t been set up yet.

So I rang Julie to chat it through with her this morning and as expected she was a little hesitant and keen to push me towards Activeo again and to be honest I was more after chatting it through with a third party than her actually buying into the idea of attending or getting involved herself but actually her lack of enthusiasm has had the opposite effect on me and I am now even more fired up about it. So we’ll see. As I said I could well be mad to even consider the idea but I am feeling the lack of a local group myself so the logical thing to do it to create one and see whether others are too. Right?

So, back to today and my Mother then. 🙂

Mum arrived with us around 10am and after playing geomags with Davies for a while we debated whether to go out or not which had been our original plan. Davies decided he wanted to go to The Dinosaur Place so Mum, who was financing the day suggested going there first, looking round the indoor bits and then going somewhere else for lunch as their coffee shop is quite poor. So we wrapped up warm (beautiful sunny day, three loads of washing dried on the line today, but still very very cold) and headed off. We walked round the Planet Earth bit and for probably the first time the children didn’t dash round like lunatics but actually asked about some of the pictures and posters and listened while I read some of the stuff to them. We talked about weather, volcanos, fossils, ice ages, neanderthal man, Ancient Egypt, dinosaurs, rainforests and space – all briefly it has to be admitted but I think we ticked history and geography fairly well. 🙂 Then we walked round the indoor catci garden and chatted about them quite a bit, to the point that we said we’d look at cacti for sale and might buy them one each. We had a very brief peep outside round the dinosaur area and then did ineed go in to the houseplants and get them a small cactus each. I do have photos of the children which I might flickr if any are any good but I only worked out how to turn the flash off half way round and tbh most of them are so similar to the pictures taken there before it’s hardly worth posting them again!

Then we drove through some of the nicest bits of the South Downs scenery back to Brighton, passing the place Joyce stayed at last summer, which Davies amazingly recognised. He suddenly piped up from the back of the car ‘we’ve been here before’ and although he couldn’t remember why or exactly when (he did when I reminded him) I was quite impressed 🙂 Then into Brighton Marina for lunch. We also popped into the discount bookstore where Davies got a sticker book with insects and Scarlett got an excellent colouring book with loads of empty squares and loads of mosaic stickers to fill them in with.

We came home and the children played with those, the geomags and the polly pocket thing from yesterday while constantly interupting me and Mum trying to talk 🙄 until Ady got home and I made him take them upstairs so I could finally finish a conversation with Mum I had been trying to manage all day! They both did some nice colouring and Davies made a stab (albeit very reluctantly) at some reading and did some lovely writing during the course of the day too.

So a very nice day really although the children both drove me slightly crazy by being very demanding all day and not shutting up with endless questions – I realised that since we have stopped being out and about so much and spending more time at home just the three of us lately they have gotten used to me not trying to talk to other people and are really annoying about knowing when it’s not OK to talk across a conversation and ask inane questions just for the sake of talking. 🙄 We are home tomorrow though and I plan to watch Planet Earth with them and actually sit and watch it with them and answer any questions and see where that leads us, maybe a trip to the library and as much constant questioning and attention from me as their hearts desire. Who wants to bet they don’t want to know me at all and spend all day playing together beautifully? 😉 Then the rest of the week we are out and about again (yes, Ali, Friday, come see my incredible don’t even pause for breath talking children 😉 ) or having friends round so it’s a pretty full week lined up. 🙂

I had this plan to go to bed all early and sober last night. I blame Ali for it not happening 😉 So I was not as enthusiastic about getting up with the children at 6.30 this morning as I perhaps could have been, so Davies actually said ‘I’ll look after Tarly Mummy’ and swept her off downstairs, plied her with something to eat (not sure what) and put a Winnie The Pooh film on for her. When Ady and I finally surfaced a good hour later he was so proud of himself and explained ‘I love my little sister very much. I like looking after her!’ Bless 🙂

It’s been Davies’ turn to be the child I adore most of this week actually. We had a few rocky times a few weeks back but we seem to have both gotten over whatever it was and he’s been lovely this week. Really grown up, really helpful and you can just see the glimmers of the man he might become – many shades of his Daddy in him so it’s no surprise how lovable I’m finding him just now. 🙂

So we went off to find a car boot sale this morning and the one we were expecting to be there wasn’t so we went further to the one I’ve visited with Julie a couple of times. Scarlett and I went round together and Ady and Davies went off bargain hunting together. They brought back a cuddly Shawn the sheep, a Wallace hand puppet and some cuddly character from Chicken Run. Oh yes Davies is a fully paid up member of the Aardman fanclub 😉 And all for under a pound you know! Tarly and I splashed out and spent a whole two quid which netted us an almost mint condition fun bus thing, a Polly Pocket light up thingy and this peg and block thing that I have trawled the internet trying to track down but can’t and given it’s retro packaging I would say could well be older than me! A true haul! 🙂 And they have been played with all day today so well worth the investment 😉

We dropped Ady off at my parents to go logging with Dad and came home so I could antibacterial wipe and spray all the car boot booty and make lunch ready for Dad and Ady to return. Dad stayed awhile and then when he left I went to do our week’s food shopping for next week.

When I got home Ady and Davies went outside for an hour or so. They cleaned out my car which was being used as some sort of holding bay for a load of work related stuff out of Ady’s car from when we went to Melrose, messed about with some bedding plants and generally got muddy! Me and Scarlett played with the block and peg things, did some jigsaws, she helped me unpack the shopping and then she put glittery gloopy pink make up on her and I to make us both look all ‘fritty’. 🙂

Davies and I had a bit of a session with coins earlier, he has a spiderman wallet with a load of loose change so we counted all the coins, seperated them into denominations and then talked about how a 2p piece was worth two of a penny and so on all the way up to a pound coin – imgaine that is worth 100 of those pennies! and so on. I don’t know if we’ll go much further with it yet, after all I only truly realised the value of money at 31 years old (;-)) but it was a good, well illustrated start.

So now, the children are asleep, we’ve had a bath, we’ve had a lovely roast dinner, I have turned the TV off in disgust at Sian and Russell winning Just the two of us and now I am being asounded and awe struck by the beauty of both the subject matter and the putting together of the Planet Earth show on BBC1. We’re recording it for the children, I hope Davies at least is as captivated by it as we are being….

Fun 🙂

I fully rewarded myself for all the hard work feeling like Snow White living in a house full of little people yesterday with large quantities of white wine. Ali caught me on IM for a first flush of giddyness and general nonsense around 7pm and I enjoyed the cyber equivalent of a girlie night out with Alison way way past midnight! Scarlett joined us around twelve which put an end to any further alcohol consumption on my part which was probably just as well given how my head felt this morning anyway! 😳

We have this new plan to become avid car boot sale shoppers, getting the sort of bargains ebay customers can only dream about, kitting ourselves out fully for camping in June all for under a tenner and finding treasures like books, toys and dvds for the children for mere pence. So we headed out to the local one around 10am, but it was rather a disappointment with a handful of stall which seemed to only be selling bulk purchases of batteries and lighters, dodgy soft porn dvds or pansies (which given Ady’s job are something we are not short of anyway! The pansies that is, not the dvds). We were due to my parents for around 11am so we walked round the charity shops in the nearby village to where they live. Ady got a Watch With Mother B&W video which he is trying to pretend is for the children but we all know the truth and the kids had 20p each to fritter away 😉 Tarly got a fairy on a stand version of those toys where you press a button on the base and it collapses and stands up again. Davies got a Woody from Toy Story complete with removable hat. Tarly’s fairy broke before we got back to the car, but it did allow a quick lesson in how those toys actually work which was something I’d always wondered! 😉

Then we went to my parents, me and Mum headed up to Sainsburys to get some lunch, came back and ate it and the kids played on the piano and hounded Frazer (who is Fiona-less this weekend as she is away visiting family). They were both really tired and whingey though so I ended up doing jigsaws with them for ages and then reading them stories, which always make me wonder in what way it is a weekend really 🙄 So we left there around 4pm and Ady and Davies had an hour or so doing stuff in our garden before tea, bath and bed for the children.

Just before bed we had a discussion about wax, sealing wax and old fashioned seals on letters. My Dad has a stick of the wax and a stamp somewhere so I must ask him to dig it out so they can see it better but we recreated it a bit with a candle and a pound coin so they both enjoyed that. Then I taught Davies how to play scissors, paper, stone (a game which brings back many happy and not entirely child appropriate memories of playing it very late one night with nakedness at stake 😉 ) and promised I would indeed play it with him again tomorrow. Scarlett and I have been playing clapping games recently too and she’s getting quite good so I must google and see if I can find some more chants to go with them. Oh and I read them Princess and the pea, Gingerbread Man, Jack and the Beanstalk and a couple of other fairy stories while they had their bath that they joined in with so we’ve covered reading pretty well today. 🙂

Right, off for a hair of the dog 😉

So really, people genuinely do this for a living? Really?!

Actually it has been altogether far less gruesome that I was imagining it was going to be. I’ve managed to spend oodles of time online having very serious and intelligent input on message boards and IM, tracking down links to illustrate my points properly and debating challenging, worthwhile things including regional accents. 😉

So Jack and Maisie were here for a few hours and it worked pretty well. D & S were excellent hosts, I was very proud (and grateful!) and we managed not to inflict any of our high sugar, high salt, high in saturates, high in cholesterol type foodstuffs on the clean living half of the next Goddard generation, so that was good. 😉

Just enough time to tackle each room (Davies did the playroom, Scarlett did the lounge and I did Davies’ room, the washing up and ran the hoover round to collect up all the bits of rice cake – see I told you we were clean living!) before Mel arrived with Liam and Lily.

Room trashing was contained pretty much to the lounge and the playroom as Liam, Davies and Scarlett watched W&G. Lily was scared and chose not to watch, which made me all the more relieved that I hadn’t let the children put it on for Jack and Maisie. They’d wanted to but I remember Jack having nightmares after watching a Brum video we’d lend them once so I thought Were Rabbits might be a little too macabre for their genteel tastes! I did allow half an hour of Nick jr while they ate lunch and that entranced J&M to such a degree they were utterly oblivious to everything else around them being totally hypnotised by the screen. I think their TV watching may be as restricted as their food choices! Very commendable but possibly setting them up to be McDonalds eating, Eastenders watching teens of the future when they have their rebellious phase!

My kids had their bodies abused with fish fingers and potato waffles along with Liam and Lily for tea, there was some dressing up and some rowdy game or other while Mel and I chatted and then they headed off for home, shortly followed by the arrival of Ady.

Tarly is long since asleep, Davies is tired but fighting it, Ady is looking at me with new found respect and admiration and I am already on my second glass of wine. A bath, steak and chips and the weekend await…

No bloodshed, no tears, no bodily fluid related spillages.

Have just returned the house to normality and we await phase two!

I think I may have found my vocation. Lost in the wilderness all these years fannying about with retail management, recruitment, marketing and latterly of course blog entrepreneurialism I have seen the light. I have heard my calling…. tomorrow I start my course to become a registered childminder!

They’re here!

Already been out on a mercy mission this morning towing my Dad’s van (again!) 🙄

We put away all the various things the children deemed ‘too precious’ to have played with by other children and we built a great big brio track and got out the Dora house.

J & M arrived, Julie very nervously went off again, they played with the brio and the Dora house for all of about 30 seconds and are now all up in Davies’ bedroom! Early indications from sounds drifting down the stairs indicate they are having a great time but it is likely to end in tears quite soon!

I made a deal with Scarlett last night. If she wants to sleep in our bed she can but it means she has to give her dummies up. Of course this could have backfired big time but I was trading on how much she adores her dummies. And guess what? It worked! 🙂 She appeared in our bedroom at around 6.30am (Ady’s normal getting up time anyway) saying ‘I did it! I stayed in my room all night and now it’s morning time!’ So hurrah 🙂

By the time I came downstairs they’d already got stuck into the plasticine I bought yesterday and Davies had made a rather good array of W&G characters.

He was really pleased with them and decided he wanted to put on a film for us so Scarlett and I settled down to watch it but it quickly became clear that he hadn’t done much preparation and we were really just watching him play. 😉 So I explained that films are made by creating a story and a script first and planning it out. I talked through the plot line of Were Rabbit with him about introducing the characters, the place they live, what their interests are if it’s relevant and the beginning of a storyline. Then suggested that something scary to add suspense or funny to add humour is always good, then usually something dramatic like a car chase or other action before finally tying up all loose ends with an ending to the story. (We’ll cover soundtracks and sequels next time 😉 ). Got some paper and told him about the idea of a story board which he has actually seen on some of ‘making of’ dvd extras he’s watched so we divided a sheet of paper into 12 squares and I got him to start planning out his storyline.

Then once he was happy with his plot line I got him to have a few practise runs with his characters.

Meanwhile Scarlett and I made some figures too. Anyone guess who they could be by the distinguishing features? 😉

Then we settled down to watch Davies’ new improved planned out show and I brushed Tarly’s hair while we watched. Can’t say it really followed his story board but he confessed he’d been happy with it but then changed it as he went along! Ah well, the idea has gone in anyway. 🙂

Dad arrived then so I shot off to the local post office and the children put away the plasticine, Davies showed Dad his storyboard and they went back to playing with the geomags. Mum arrived a while afterwards bringing stuff for lunch so we all ate and the children had TV on for a while, while we chatted.

After lunch Mum and Scarlett played with the plasticine again and made some baskets of fruit

While Davies and I finally got out the owl puke he had for Christmas and read the book about owls and then gathered all the various bits we needed for disecting the owl pellet.

Davies really enjoyed that and we dug out loads of bones and bits which he really enjoyed using the book to identify and sort. Scarlett came and had a little dig about too and they both delighted in grossing out their grandparents with their graphic talk about eating rodents, owls puking up like cats and how all the stuff around the bones in the pellet was dead animals fur! Mum didn’t seem to grasp it was genuine and kept saying how good the shrews skull was, bless her :-). He did get bored towards the very end and although we sorted all the bones I can’t imagine we’ll do any skeleton reassembling – it looks too fiddly for him to do himself, particularly pre-reading and I don’t think I really want animal skeletons cluttering the place up anyway! Good little ‘experimenty type’ kit though.

Ady came home while all this was still going on so he was chopping wood and stuff while I sorted the kids tea, then everyone seemed to disappear and the kids were still bouncing on space hoppers so I got them pj’d up and read them the pile of library books we got earlier in the week to calm them down a bit. The firm favourite was a Quentin Blake Mrs. Armitage book – we’ve read one about her previously and it really captured them both then.

I’ve also made bird food in tins to string on the tree outside as we are now getting regular bird visitors which I want to encourage.

Just before bed Davies went round the house gathering up all the various W&G stuff he has collected and set it up as ‘a display’ which he then insisted on taking photos of:

Mum and Dad left, the children are asleep and I’m about to get dinner sorted, enjoy a bath and a glass of wine and try to stop being nervous about all those children tomorrow! To add to my stress levels I’ve invited Mel to bring Liam and Lily over for tea after school! We’ve not seen them since before Christmas and as much as i hate the tidying up after one of their visits it will justify not bothering after Jack and Maisie come and give Davies a fix of older than 3 year old playmate which I think he’ll enjoy! 🙂

Oh and I’ve added pics to the post below too.

D’you know I reckon I’ve got the hang of this Home Ed lark. Well at least until tomorrow 😉

We’ve had another good day here today although I did lose my temper with Scarlett and yell once I don’t think it was entirely unjustified and blimey did it make her move! 😈

First thing the children were playing with geomags and soft toys while I did some washing and generally faffed around. I got into my head that I wanted to read up on Key Stages and National Curriculum so that I could mentally weigh up any glaring gaps in the ‘stuff’ Davies can do – and probably then just brag to anyone who’d listen about actually how well he is doing, well my Dad anyway. So I was messing around online trying to find a simple laid out basic list of the goals etc. Not as straightforward as you’d think really 🙄

I did read through the Foundation / Reception stuff and was very happy to note that both the children are fine in respect of the 3-5 stuff anyway. I guess it was a semi-pointless exercise as it’s only remotely likely to be literacy and numeracy that are quantifiable anyway (everything else must surely get lumped into general knowledge and just living although I know they categorise it in far more detail – y’know that National Currciculum was obviously written by someone like me wasn’t it – why use two words if a whole paragraph will do! 😉 ) and I’m more than happy with his progress via autonomous educating with occassional forays into forced Bob book reading and supermarket counting!

So I was trying to concentrate on a bit that waffled about children being able to get themselves dressed independantly or with help or not at all or not even knowing what clothes were or something and Scarlett got yelled at for being clumsy and giddy and falling over the geomags so I told them they both had to get dressed by themselves! And they did 🙂 And then I continued my rant having read about getting suitable attire for outdoor pursuits on independantly or with help or not at all and heading out without a vest on in February with bare feet. And they managed that too. Davies was in the hall whispering to himself and I shouted at him thinking he might be muttering bad things or putting curses on me and he came in having made a start of tying his shoelaces (our latest in house row, with me veering between insisting he’d have to do it if he was in school and he’d better bloody learn, being all patient and doing one shoe while he does the other and just doing it for him as it’s quicker and we never leave the house until we are running 10 minutes late anyway so faffing with shoelaces just makes us later!). So it turned out the whispering was him reciting some poem he’d seen on Little Bill or Sali Mali or something about how to tie your shoelaces 😳 …

Off to soft play where we were followed in by Lucy who I’d texted yesterday to say we’d be going there so we sat and chatted for ages and then Julie and the twins arrived too. The kids had a ball, all played together really nicely and me, Lucy and Julie had interesting chats about parenting, Home Ed and other general life stuff. Lucy then headed off, me and Julie and children had lunch and chatted to another woman who just had the look of a Home Educator about her but we didn’t pluck up the courage to ask and then we went back in for a final hour’s play.

It was quite busy in there today, particularly after lunch and we were amused and slightly grossed out by witnessing two urine related accidents within the ball pool and tunnels! Nothing to do with our children although me and Julie did end up dealing with one little boy who’s mother had buggered off to the cafe. I’d thought he’d been there with a bloke and so was asking him where his daddy was which upset and confused him as apparently ‘My Daddy is at work. Why isn’t my Daddy at work then?’ Poor child! Both of my two found new friends there to include in their games as usual which is always heartwarming so it was a very nice day there.

We came home via the Wizard store as I had a need for retail therapy however frugal so for under a fiver we picked up some plasticine, a couple of crafty kits (one with straws and one with sparkly wool for glitter knitting!), some foam beads with a plastic needle and thread, a small globe and some bubble mixture. Scarlett blew bubbles til she got lightheaded while Davies and I looked at the globe for a while and then got out an atlas and compared various things on there. I showed him whereabouts in the UK we live, where we lived in Manchester and where we were at Melrose. We talked a bit about the continents, capital cities and about how the UK is an island very small in comparison to other places. All very basic stuff but still about twice what would be covered in an hour’s lesson at school :-).

We did the straw craft for a very short time and then Davies started playing with the geomags while Scarlett resumed bubble blowing so I ignored them for a while and went online. Davies then brought me a geomag fish he’d made and then turned it into a shark by adding a fin. He made a couple more fish and then I started helping with some more fish, a crab, a very unsuccessful seahorse ;-), a starfish and an aborted attempt at an octopus. Davies did a deep sea diver, a clown fish (doing alternate white and red rods with me having to ‘pretend the red ones are orange Mummy!’ and a few more small fish. It all looked really good 🙂

Then I showed him a variation on the Krampf experiment of a couple of weeks ago based on that executive toy with ball bearings on strings in a cradle. Krampt used coins but we used geomag balls and I lined 6 up and showed him that if you knock one into the row then one moves the other side, if you knock two then two move and so on. He really liked that and was very interested in how it worked and even explained it to Ady in great detail – and very accurately – when he got home so that was physics more than ticked 😉

Finally we did an experiment to test how many balls you could lift with one rod, how many with two rods, how many with three rods and so on to see if it increased with more rods. I got Davies to write down the numbers of rods and balls so he’d remember and he then explained it to Ady referring to his notes and recreating it for Ady too. So writing, maths and the general basics of how to conduct an experiment and record your findings all covered.

All sounds like loads really but I probably spent less than an hour doing it and all with no preparation at all. Coupled with that we pulled off socialising and physical activity too. 🙂

Tomorrow Mum is coming over at lunchtime (and bringing lunch from M&S hurrah!) and on Friday I am looking after Jack and Maisie for a few hours. This is actually a HUGE deal as I don’t think I’ve ever looked after anyone else’s children ever. Infact I know I havn’t. So I’m relying heavily on Davies to entertain all of them for me while I try hard not to think about the huge weight of responsibility weighing down in having all of the next generation of Goddards’s under my irresponsible, unethical, childish and intolerant control! 😉

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I was mid post and the laptop crashed when I put the photocard reader in 👿

So, I had mentioned how nice an evening we had last night with Frazer. Just chit-chat, wine drinking, very good curry if I do say so myself (loving my slow cooker 🙂 ) but all very pleasant.

Dreadful night’s sleep with Tarly appearing within moments of me getting into bed at about 11.30pm wailing about wanting to sleep in our bed. She tossed and turned and talked in her sleep until I gave up around 3am and went off to her bed. The rest of the house woke at 6am and the children were in and out of her room until I gave in and got up at 7. So feeling pretty tired today but determined to remain in a good mood as it just has such an impact on the children’s behaviour when I am cheerier.

First thing I drank tea and caught up online – enjoying all the ‘complimentary’ stuff people have been saying about me in the windows ;-). The children predictably did their version of normals – watching W&G and playing with geomags and soft toys 😉 Davies made his own geomag version of cusinaire rods (just can’t spell that word!)
He’s been playing with number concepts a lot again lately but as usual he backs right off if I try and get involved or suggest stuff so I’m leaving him to it, praising when I can and answering any questions he asks.

Then Scarlett got out her princess paints and painting book and did some of that very nicely and accurately. I do have a picture but she was only wearing a vest and on closer viewing it is not altogether suitable so I shan’t post it! Davies watched something about Egypt on Class TV while I made his chocolate factory, which turned out to be rather fiddly and not at all sturdy enough to withstand much playing with but he seems to like it.

They played with that for a while and I looked up some info about Shrove Tuesday online and then told them a bit about Easter, the symbolism of Hot Cross Buns and Easter Eggs and how some people believe Jesus died for all our sins. We made a geomag cross and a geomag Jesus so I could illustrate how he died (geomags, the ultimate educational prop!) and then we talked about Lent, giving things up, why pancakes are made on Shrove Tuesday / Pancake Day and how they’re made. Not sure how much went in but Davies at least seemed to pay attention to it all.

Then I headed into the kitchen and made up some batter which I left to rest while I sorted out the kitchen cupboards in a vain attempt to find a frying pan I am still sure we have somewhere. It was fruitless and it would probably be impossible to the casual observer that I’ve done so but I did reorganise them a bit at the same time. Also stuck three loads of washing on the line as it was breezy and sunny. I’ve just brought them in actually as it started to snow but it saved them being draped round the house or in the tumble drier for hours, they are now just damp and airing.

I then had a little production line of pancakes going with the children reappearing every few minutes for more as I cooked them. I’ve made another batch of batter up this afternoon and there is a large pile of them waiting for the kids tea and for me and Ady to eat this evening. There may well be a knack to pancake making but with each lot of batter I veered between expertly good turning out consistently well cooked, wafer thin, perfectly round pancakes which I could toss like a pro to turning about every fourth one into a soggy heap so I’m inclined to think it is more to do with luck!

I’ve offered reading aloud several times today but no one has taken me up on it (ingrates!) prefering instead to experiment with geomags and a magnetic Dora book and a variety of cutlery 🙄 – ah well I’m sure there’s lots of science in there somewhere!

this one.

She was a gorgeous baby really, but this wasn’t her best photo. Doesn’t she look like Ady though?

Thanks Kath 🙂

My window-y thing is here, please pop along and join in!

And for anyone who’s in a picky frame of mind 😉

It’s been a pretty nice day today actually. The children have been really, really well behaved, which means I’ve managed to remain calm, patient and loving all day and it does make such a difference if I’m not watching the clock from about 3pm gagging for my first glass of wine and for them to go to bed!

First thing they watched W&G twice 🙄 and played with geomags, currently the game with them is to create one dimensional characters using the rods as straight lines and the balls as joints – skeleton style really. So Davies creates his W&G line up and then ‘plays’ with them. Scarlett’s current favourite game is using about eight of the soft toys who usually live on her bed. She brings them into the lounge, lines them up in a very specific order and proceeds to do what I suppose is her equivalent of me playing with my teddies and creating tea parties or picnics when I was a child. At least three times a day I will bung them all back in her bedroom and at least three times a day she will go and retrieve them and line them all up again!

I spent some time working out a shopping list for this week’s dinners and then we headed off to Sainsburys. Davies elected to sit in the trolley (a real squeeze!) and Tarly wanted to walk alongside me. They were perfect children for the whole time we were in there which must have been close to an hour as we were talking and counting and stuff as we went round. Scarlett walked round the whole of the fruit and veg naming stuff and asking whether we needed it. A woman actually stopped and listened and said to me ‘she knows more about fruit and veg than most eight year olds!’ I laughed and said ‘yes but she doesn’t actually eat any of them!’ which isn’t strictly true but she was pulling off a good impression of a vegan and it scared me! 😉 She helped count six carrots into a bag and learnt about checking for freshness / ripeness on certain things. Green bananas as we already have a couple of yellow ones at home, firm grapes rather than squishy ones, that sort of thing. They begged for strawberries so I got some and we had a chat about them not being seasonal and how plants and flowers are ‘forced’ or ‘hothoused’ at times of year or even countries they wouldn’t naturally grow in.

Round and about the aisles with Davies reaching the higher stuff from his trolley vantage point and Tarly bending down for lower stuff, lots of counting for Tarly and addition maths for Davies. They even managed to keep it together while I loaded the conveyor belt, packed and paid so I was really really pleased with them. 🙂

We then headed to the library where we had several books to return. As we left the house the post had arrived with my HEAS newsletter and a couple of World Book Day tokens so we popped into the bookshop in town too. Davies originally chose the Harry & The Bucket of Dinosaurs book out for the WBD promotion but they didn’t have any of the more girlie titles in yet and then Davies spotted a make your own Willy Wonka’s factory book and Tarly spotted a Paint A Princess book complete with heart shaped watercolours so as they’d been so good at the supermarket I added a couple of quid each to their tokens and sent them off to pay for them, which they both did beautifully with plenty of pleases, thank yous and lots of chatting to the shop assistant. I was really pleased to see the delight with which they ran to the children’s section at the back of the bookshop actually. They dashed down there, carefully selected a title each off the shelves and settled straight down on the floor to ‘read’ them. Scarlett adores those ‘That’s not my….’ Usborne books, we have that’s not my bunny and that’s not my fairy at home and they are firm favourites of hers. There was a That’s not my mermaid version which she read through making good guesses on what it said. I love how much they love books. 🙂

Then we went back to the library and spent about 20 minutes sat on the floor there looking through children’s books. They both chose a couple each and I chose a couple of carefully selected ones for them too. While I was looking they’d sat close to each other flicking through a book together and deciding what they thought it was about from the pictures. Davies then grabbed a craft activity book too so we got all those out and came home.

I offered to read to them or for them to do their new painting / Willy Wonka books but they declined and went back to their games for the rest of the afternoon. So I flicked through the YH booklet that also arrived in the post marking off ones available for Halloween with enough beds that are not too far for Joyce. Slightly limits the choice really 😉 I’ll shortlist the ones that qualify and then check availability before posting a short list in the next couple of days for us to decide on and get booked.

Frazer is here for dinner tonight (chicken curry already sorted in the slow cooker 🙂 ) so I’ve been grilling him about Fiona 😉 whilst the kids leapt around him on their space hoppers for a mad half hours exercise at the end of the day.

Tomorrow I have planned pancake making, some reading and maybe some bird seed cake making as we seem to be attracting a fair few feathery visitors to our original ones which the children are loving watching through the big lounge window so I want to keep encouraging that.

Happy Birthday Layla 🙂

Have a fab day darling!

Happy Birthday Sarah 🙂 Hope you have a lovely day.