One word? When seven would do…

Today we have covered the following educational areas:

mass and volume of water and stones (digging up a gravel area and playing in a pool)
properties of liquids and solids (as above – some things are easier to pick up than others!)
role play with Bob the Builder construction machines (what they used to do so)
acting and role play (some sort of Sponge Bob Squarepants game)
trampolining (excellent exercise including working out how to clamber on and off!)
eating in a social environment and sharing (sandwiches, tortilla chips, strawberries and scones)
the properties of liquid when frozen, defrosted and refrozen
water confidence (ice lollies which had been a casualty of an open freezer door after purchase)
body condidence (i.e running around naked with others)
mixing with children older and younger of both genders
singing along to music (to keep Tarly awake on the way home)
time management (as in we are going home in five minutes and you need to be out of that pool, into dry clothes and have found your sandals by then!)
climbing, clambering, bouncing, swinging, splashing, running, jumping, yelling and laughing

While I sat and debated educational styles and ideals, parenting methods and other such lifestyle choices with a respected Home Educating peer and friend of mine.

For about half an hour!

I also sat and gossiped, enjoyed the sunshine, ate, chatted and laughed 🙂

Yep that’s right, we went to Ros’ house 🙂

This morning I started with all good intentions. A dreadful night with all the Goddards up and about at various points finishing with Davies and I waking up next to each other in bed meant an early start for us all (earlier still for Ady who was out by 7am and stuck in some sort of security alert induced traffic jam trying to get into central London before 9am). So my plan was to have a quick check of my emails and then make myself available to the children for the early part of the morning before heading off to Rachel’s and then coming home for further educational pursuits this afternoon.

Davies brought me an activity book and we sat and did that for a while – spot the difference, dot to dot etc all done with ease until we reached a connect the word to the picture bit. Now Davies *knows* pretty much all of his letters. He knows the names and the phonic sound, he knows a few blends too such as ‘th’ ‘ee’ and ‘sh’. So we started with ‘hen’ which along with ‘cat’, ‘dog’ etc is a lovely easy phonetic word. So there we sat ‘h….e….n’ we began – excellent, thought I, in all naivity thinking that if he could get that far he could manage the rest…

‘h…….e……..n’
‘h……e……..n’

‘pig?’

FFS!!!!!! 🙁

In the middle of all this the phone rang and it was Rachel to say she had to cancel as she needed to dash over to Brighton to collect a birthday gift for Elliot which couldn’t be delivered in time. Which left us with a day empty spread out yawningly infront of us 🙁 And this before 9am….

Gave up on the activity book and got out a ‘what I believe’ book (Usborne I think, got it from the Book People, can’t be arsed to find a link 😉 ) to read to Davies. Had realised that I can’t actually remember the last time I sat and read a book with either of them which is dreadful. Regardless of HE that is such an enjoyed activity by me and them that I can’t believe I let it slip 🙁 We read that for quite a while and it was going well – Tarly was playing with her Dora house and happily occupied having decided that learning about religions was something she would happily pass on 😉

The phone rang again – not sure who now but it was sufficient distraction to decide Davies that he would rather ‘play’ with Tarly than sit with me… play quickly degenerated into Diego beating up Boots with Dora and Swiper forming a two man (well pre schooler and talking fox) rescue team at high volume and deciding that both my sanity and their physical well being was at great risk by not seeing other people today I texted Ros to see if her comments box invite from last night still stood. Happily it did 🙂

Loaded kids, some of yesterday’s shopping and myself in the car and hot footed it over there pronto 🙂

The children had about fifteen minutes (slightly longer for Tarly but not much) clingy whingy adjusting time (we’ve only been there once before and it was full of people for Buzz’ birthday that time) before they became one with Ros’ tribe allowing us to sit around with occassional feeding and sun-blocking duties. Ros fed me bacon sandwiches (oh, the hospitality! When she came here last week she had to go to the shop and buy bread 😉 ), was coerced into eating scones and cream and strawberries and tbh only the prospect of her taking her offspring to dancing lessons and me having to drive myself and offspring home stopped us from breaking open the alcohol 😉

We rang Joyce at work (which of course necessitated saying rude words to her to see if she could keep a straight face at her desk – but she had taken her phone outside, spoilsport 😉 ) to arrange schedules for next week (we left out LI but I think she has that covered 😉 ) and I got just the straight talking, kick in the bum I needed from someone to get me back on track from Ros (thanks Mate :-D).

We finally left nanoseconds before they did – hope you go to tap on time!- and almost kept Tarly awake all the way home. She had a ten minute nap which kept her going until nearly 9pm (normal bedtime 7pm, that 10 minutes did a lot of damage 🙁 ). I put Davies to bed and we raided his bookshelf for ‘something interesting’. It is packed full of Book People package bundle deals all bought with ‘the future’ in mind. We got out the Pocket Science series and I said he could choose two, not realising quite how information packed they are! He chose ‘What’s under the ground?’ and ‘where does rubbish go?’ so we did the under the ground one. He sat enthralled and commented at least four times about ‘how interesting’ it was and even said ‘you are finding it interesting too Mummy as well as me aren’t you?’. He amazed me as always with the little gems of information he has retained from various conversations. He knew about nocturnal animals and was able to tell me some examples and explain what it meant, gave me a near perfect definition of hibernation and some animals who do it (throwing in the hedgehog we found in the garden story for good measure), he was able to identify which dinosaur was pictured in the fossils bit and tell me that he was a herbivore too and possibly more that my wine fuddled brain has forgotten. But anyway, I think my point was that he as always reminded me that he is doing just fine and actually, whether or not he can put together h, e and n to make hen is largely irrelevant at this stage 🙂

Have cooked one of my four speciality dinners tonight, tacos and tortilla wraps with onion, avocado and mayonnaise sauce, stuffed with seasoned chicken and sprinkled with grated cheese, all washed down with copious volumes of wine so am feeling at one with the world and happy ;-).

So I think my crisis in the making eductation wise was put to rest today but also a slight wake up call that I do need to be investing more time and mental presence in the children at the moment. It is an easy trap to fall into to be in the house but sat behind a computer for the biggest proportion of the day. There is nothing wrong with learning through play but I need to be guiding and directing that play towards the many resources we have in the house and away from putting the toothbrushes in the toilet brush container and swirling them round in the neat bleach mix at the bottom! I have been guilty of using autonomy as an excuse for simply being a lazy bint and that ends here!

So a lovely day, spent with good friends and on the upside the late night for Tarly must make some difference to her having a crap night’s sleep.

Tomorrow we are popping to Ali’s to dispatch a gift for Freya – 4 tomorrow, Happy Birthday Freya! and then we have WAG group in the afternoon, more boxes to be ticked there I am sure 🙂