you’re TRAPPED!
We woke up this morning to more snow, which hadn’t been expected down here but had come just the same. We’d not really had a plan for the day so we decided to keep to not having a plan and stay home. Scarlett got out a couple of animal books (she got several rather lovely animal books for Christmas including ) and sat looking through those, did some sketches and drew my attention to some of the photos. Davies wanted to have a look at educationcity but when we booted the computer up it recognised us from before and said all our free trials had been used up. I couldn’t be bothered to see if there was a way round it to register again so looked at the BBC bitesize site for him instead. He got upset when trying to do the science stuff that the actual science was far too easy but reading the instructions was very tricky. I refused to sit and read it all for him and we had a long chat about reading. I explained that the only way to progress was to try and yes it would be hard at first but that was how he had learnt everything he knew so far in life, by identifying something he wanted to be able to do and putting in the necessary effort to achieve it. Some of it had come easily and other stuff had been a challenge and along the way there were some things he’d discounted as not worth the effort but that if lack of reading skills now were stopping him doing things he wanted to do then he needed to deal with that by improving his reading skills or deciding not to do the things he wanted to do. I repeated that I am more than happy to sit and listen to him read and help him when he stumbles but I won’t just keep reading everything for him so he doesn’t have to. He agreed that was perfectly reasonable and straight away went back to the game and albeit haltingly read the instructions and carried on with the game.
Scarlett then joined in the conversation and I explained to her that the same was likely to start happening to her soon. I said that she was never going to learn to read because I’d insisted on it and sat her down at a table to learn but because she’d have to come to the conclusion that she did want to learn to read and that I felt she was being shortsighted in her insistance that she didn’t want to learn. I said it was like saying she didn’t want to eat – maybe the act of eating was tedious and not enjoyable but the end result would be you’d die of starvation – whilst she might not want to put in the effort to learn to read the effects of not being able to begin to be more far reaching the further through life she goes. It was all very amicable all round although I did mention possibly clamping down on us laissez-faire Home Educators with our crazy ideas of not sitting our children down at the table and making them conform. I think Scarlett is testing the freedom she has to see what will really happen and I also suspect in the style of those children who were caught smoking by a parent and told it was fine, go ahead and smoke, infact smoke this whole packet while I stand and watch you, went green, vomited and never smoked again she will step up to the responsibility of being in control herself and do it. I know once she has made a decision to do it she will go at it all guns blazing until she succeeds.
I sewed on lots of badges – six onto Davies’ Sea Scout uniform having peered at the rest of the boys yesterday to work out where they all went. Davies and I talked about him doing some more proficiency badges too as they’d been sent home with a letter saying any of the boys could do any additional badges they liked, they just had to let the leaders know. So we’ll get hold of a copy of the badge book and he can choose some to tackle. I also sewed on 3 Badger badges too – 2 for Tarly and 1 for Davies.
Davies and I had a cuddle and decided popcorn would be good for lunch so I went off to make that while they chose a film – we started with Simpsons Movie but the disc is scratched so ended up with Ice Age 3.
I then cut up the rest of the joint of beef we didn’t roast yesterday and bastardized several recipes to make steak pie including Hugh’s ‘rough puff’ pastry. Beef simmering and pastry chilling in the fridge I came back into the lounge and did some work on planning Chatterbooks sessions as I have a planning meeting with the childrens’ librarian at work tomorrow.
Scarlett did some drawings and davies made a 3d house skeleton with the k’nex. I went off and sorted out their tea, constructed the pie, sorted out the shoe box in the hall when Davies could only find one of his Badger shoes and then did chivvying while they ate their tea, got changed into Badger clothes and I brushed Scarlett’s hair.
Ady and I had talked on the phone and he’d misunderstood me saying to let me know early on if he was unlikely to be home in time as I’d go and clear all the snow off my car and check it would start okay (and probably shovel the snow off the path infront of the drive too). I bitterly regretted not doing so anyway when he rang at the time I would have like to have been arriving to say to go and he’d meet us there as my car refused to start :(. Having had various text exhanges with Julie from Badgers through the day as she was considering cancelling anyway I felt really bad. I don’t know if it ran last Wednesday as we’d already said we wouldn’t be there and we won’t be there next Wednesday either so potentially we’ll have missed the first three. Which isn’t a good start for Davies being a Follow Me Badger and me being a new Assistant Leader really :(. I sent Julie a text to say we wouldn’t be there after all and rather grumpily we all came back in the house again :(. Ady did ring back to say he’d be home just after six so we could be there for 1/4 past and only miss the first half an hour but the kids didn;t want to go along for just the last bit and I was worried we’d actually be more of a distraction and nusiance arriving midway through anyway.
So the children got in pjs and we had an extended story reading session (revisiting Mr Gum) which was nice :). Dinner was delicious – another triumph in the kitchen for home cooking from scratch (and served with leftover mash and roasts from ealier in the week so all very frugal).