Mad Wednesday today and yep, it’s been pretty mad!
Tumble Tots with Tarly this morning was excellent. We’re both really enjoying it at the moment. She is among the oldest in her class though and is slightly struggling with being held back by slower children and also her competitiveness is a bit pointless there! Spoke to the leader to find that at 3 she moves up to the next group – and !SHOCK! she goes in on her own then without me. Not at all sure how I feel about that yet. On the one hand it will be nice to have that hour with Davies instead as he does tend to just sit alone in the waiting room and it might be a good opportunity to do some more challenging stuff with him, sit and practise reading, writing or whatever. On the other hand I have really enjoyed the bonding time of that hour each week just me and Tarly. She has revelled in my undivided attention, strived for my praise and we’ve felt like a little team which has been so nice. Will have to find something to replace it to do with her each week I think so that we still get that little bit of her and me time. She told me yesterday that she loves going shopping just her and I so much as I would rather avoid such bad habits in one so young maybe that can be ‘our thing’.
Home again for lunch and to stick dinner on (beef in red wine sauce with some added red wine, red onions, garlic and bacon, which I’ll be serving with smashed potatoes fried off in garlic and onions, with leeks and peas on the side) and do a bit more Halloween making of stuff, so more laminating, more drawing and so on from the children too then dashed back out again to Home Ed group.
Unsure as to whether it was positive there or not really. We now have 5 of us who come week in week out and so Hayley and I fed back what we’d discovered at the fundraising fair and while the children played in dens made from blankets and cushions (the theme had been hibernating animals but when we realised how much talking we needed to get done we swiftly amended it to pretending to be hibernating animals and let them get on with it) we tried to knock together a constitution and a management committee as per the guidelines for applying for funding. One of us was not really that interested in a huge role although she is committed to the group, one of us is already playing the role of membership secretary by way of putting together membership packs, collating membership information and working out when fees are due etc (Vickie) so that role falls naturally to her, Julie is already playing the Treasurer role (well she is since I gave her the tin and the cash book and told her to be the one to collect money every week instead of me!) which left myself and Hayley. I took role of Chair and Hayley took Vice Chair/ Group Secretary which seemed sensible given the support of Julie and Vickie and Nikki for me to take the role but I now wonder whether it a) pissed Hayley off and b) is going to cause me future headaches – ah well!
Anyway, we then chatted about all the other stuff relevant to a constitution and then I moved us onto a wish list of stuff to get costed out for the grant application. Which is where it all went slightly wrong really 🙁 The kids by then (bearing in mind there were 10 running about and two six month old babies on laps) were getting pretty fractious and I don’t think anyone uttered a single sentence without one of the children wanting one of the grown ups so it felt very disjointed, I really shouted at Davies about playing a bit roughly and then he got all upset with me and kept bringing me drawn signs with a picture of me shouting in a circle with a cross drawn through it 🙁 He was eventually placated by sitting on my lap for the remainder of the meeting and drawing in my notebook. He also won over all the grown ups by drawing pictures of me driving a racing car with No 1 on it and M for Mummy and then asking me to write ‘I love you’ so he could copy it to present to me – does a good line in inciting guilt that boy 😉
Anyway inbetween all this there was some friction about some of the ideas for what we wanted to spend the money on. I worked out that our basic wish list of venue costs plus refreshments, drama teacher fortnightly, music teacher fortnightly, art and craft supplies, science club subscription, guest speakers and putting on one dramatic performance type event annually costs over the £5K and I think that is what we should apply for initially. Hayley has some ideas which are very schooly – she admits to wanting her children to go to pre school really for what they would miss out on and is really after recreating that at group. So she is after applying for things like display board / screens, storage boxes, early years stuff like dressing up clothes, play kitchens and so on. The issue there of course is that a) we have no storage at our venue and b) I think we would be less likely to get funding for things which are slightly less dynamic or interesting to a grant fund board. I can talk up stuff like drama teachers and guest speakers in an application, I would struggle to prove why our children are missing out by not having storage boxes and display boards, my children have pretend play stuff at home but I cannot supply an annual play or guest speaker there. Hayley got slightly knocky although to be fair her children were playing her up and said she was feeling even less positive than before. So now I have come away feeling crap about the whole thing again. I wonder if I am browbeating people into either agreeing with me although they don’t really and / or resenting me for pushing my own ideas through and pulling theirs to pieces. Obviously I have had my fingers burned by Home Ed group in general very recently and am also feeling slightly unsure as to how others percieve me, the fact that this is all still fresh in their minds too make me even more wobbly about it all. The problem is that in previous meeting type situations it was about work and I needed to be vocal, get my points across and at times be persuasive about talking people round to my way of thinking – but I was sat round a table with a load of others all doing the same thing. Here I am suddenly aware that we are all doing this for the sakes of our children and I don’t want to be responsible for telling people their ideas for their children are rubbish (which they’re not anyway). Oh this is rambling now so I’ll shut up, but I just wish I was dealing with slightly more forceful personalities, I would rather someone told me to shut up than just sat there thinking it, particularly now I am worrying that everyone is thinking it anyway!
So that was a less than fantastic couple of hours anway.
Then on to Gym Bobs for Davies, which he enjoyed. I read some of my book, played dominos with Tarly and then we went to the tuck shop bit and bought some chocolate which we shared 🙂 Davies came out and had his share and we came home for tea.
My Mum arrived with a new fireguard for us, Ady arrived home still with his headache which he has had for two days now (and I now have one in sympathy!). Kids are now in bed, I’m off for a bubble bath, a glass of wine, my dinner and Lost. Tomorrow we have nothing at all planned so I might spend some time on the phone chatting stuff through about Home Ed group with the others seperately – or drafting a letter to resign 😉
Fucking hell Nic, I’d be running a mile!
That Hayley really just needs to send her kids to preschool and be done with it – what on earth is the point of recreating a nursery school with a bunh of supposedly HE’d children? Fucking pointless.
If you can get some money to get people in to do activities with the children, brilliant. But storage boxes??? FFS! WHen her kids hit 5 she’s just going to want to set up a small school at this rate. Can’t wait to meet her at Halloween 😉
Comment by Alison — 19 October 2005 @ 8:07 pm
URGH.
Greatly relieved our group much less complicated. I’m with Alison (again) – i’d have my running boots on.
I know that feeling about being forceful though – its my main gripe with being MRs MP – i have this feeling of not wanting to be pushy and end up actually doing less than i’d like because i hate the feeling people are just being polite, iyswim.
Comment by Merry — 19 October 2005 @ 8:24 pm
I can do forceful and pushy Nic 😉 No problem. I’m on my way remember, so we can boss one another about, and you won’t feel like a bully cos I’ll boss back 😉 Actually, sounds bloddy horrible. I’d smack Hayely in the chops in no time. I don’t *think* I was ever that bad, even in my early days. I think you should rename your group anyway, never been too keen on WAG myself (what does it mean, anyway). I’d go for LAGR (pronounced lager) (lazy arsey buggers rule)
Comment by Joyce — 19 October 2005 @ 10:44 pm
I guess it’s all down to what the reasons are for not sending your kids to school. It’s easy to rubbish other’s ideas when they’re not coming from the same perspective. On one hand you’re saying you wish people were more forceful with what they want, even/especially if it’s not the same as you (presumiably like Hayley), yet of the above three comments, 2/3 are slating her, only 1/3 is agreeing that people who don’t push their ideal makes things awkward. You can’t win. Maybe before you start deciding what to spend the money on, you need to work out what exactly the aims/objectives of the group are, and what people are actually hoping to get out of it.
FWIW, I think display boards are a good idea. And if she wants storage boxes and early years play stuff (I can see the point in that too, but maybe wouldn’t want to spend money) then try freecycle.
Comment by Barbara — 19 October 2005 @ 11:19 pm
Groups are hard, aren’t they? My work involves supporting community groups with equipment and information, and we publish factsheets about various aspects of running a group on our website at http://www.resourcecentre.org.uk – might be useful to you, or maybe not. You can also hire equipment from us for the odd session.
My general feeling is that money is sometimes as much a curse as it is a blessing, and that it is definitely important to be clear about what you want to do *before* you start applying for funding, even if that means you have to miss a deadline or two.
Hope it all works out for you.
Comment by Dani — 20 October 2005 @ 1:00 am
Nightmare I have to say. I totally agree with what you say and actually the things she asking for are things that you could all bring yourselves from home. Each parent bringing one box of toys from home each week adds more more variety and you don’t have the storage problem.
I would ask the centre if you can have an area of wall space to display on (good for promation).
My biggest ‘fear’ here is that you aren’t creating an HE group but a toddler/preschool group and this will put other off from coming along.
I like your suggestions for the grant, I would probably throw in some some of sport equipment also (big mission everywhere atm). I think as a group you should also join the supermarket schemes where you collect the vouchers for stuff. HE groups are welcome at all except Nestle so far.
Good Luck!
Comment by Roslyn — 20 October 2005 @ 8:35 am
sports equipment is on the list for the following year. Only because we can only apply for £5k and we’ve used that up already in theory with our initial list. Also they will only fund for something once as a sort of project, but when I spoke to the woman on Monday and asked whether we could do something like concentrate on art, drama and music in year one and then reapply for sports and science the following year she said that would be fine. Also the sports stuff will have the same storage issues again whereas spending the money on buying in professionals time only requires a venue.
And, erm, don’t know how to say this without causing total uproar really but at the last meeting about the group I suggested we register as a group and collect supermarket sports vouchers and one of the members is totally oppposed to the idea as her and her family never shop at the big supermarkets as they consider them unethical and would not want any sports equipment funded by them at a group they attend.
Comment by Nic — 20 October 2005 @ 8:51 am
Ok, I guess I was flippant last night, and I wouldn’t go as far as to say I was slating Hayley, as I’ve only met her once (or not at all, if she isn’t the person I think she is). In the past, I’ve done a lot of work with groups round development issues, and I would acknowledge that during the early stages, a group often isn’t the most comfortable of places for the participants – and in fact, if it is, it probably means that there is too much agreeing for the sake of avoiding conflict. FWIW, I also think there can often be a fair amount of passive agression in groups, with people not putting their point across, saying they don’t want to be pushy, but doing a lot of moaning and manipulating behind the scenes, and actually being very disruptive and damaging to group development. Although as a facilitator, it’s a position I can work with, as a group member, it hacks me off more than just about any other behaviour I can think of. IME, if things are tough, it can often be very helpful to have an outsider faciliate one session, to help clarify what everyone wants, rather than trying to do it from within, with the person feeling they are left being a bully, or alternatively, not getting what they want. I think what often happens in community groups is that the person with the energy and enthusiasm to set in up often feels that they then have to do constant negotiation and compromise to please other people, who don’t actually input into it in any real way.
On a personal level, I can never see the point of setting up a HE group, then then trying to replicate things that already exist in the community. While in rural areas like here, the alternatives may be much thinner on the ground, but I can’t imagine that’s the case where Nic lives.
It does sound to me as if there are fairly diverse “wants and desire” from the parents in this group, and I would be with Dani that these need to be thrashed out, even if it means the money is not applied for.
Comment by Joyce — 20 October 2005 @ 8:53 am
That’s just unreasonable and inflexible of her Nic. It would be reasonable for her to say she couldn’t contribute vouchers because of her ethics, but the point of not shopping at supermarkets is to try and hurt the supermarket, so unless the alternative to collecting vouchers is that *none* of you will shop at them, then her obstructive position will only hurt the group without causing the supermarkets any harm.
Comment by Heather — 20 October 2005 @ 1:38 pm
As insightful as ever, Joyce. And I suppose what makes it even harder (/more personal) is when the group is actually a group of friends who have a lot more to loose than just ‘business’ relationships. Especially in an already minority group (home educators) people are going to be worried about alienating themselves further. But how you would go about encouraging honesty above outward politeness / quiet, begrudging compromise, I’ve no idea. Except hire Joyce to come and facilitate from outside, of course.
Comment by Barbara — 20 October 2005 @ 2:49 pm