Home Educating the Puddle Girls…

I’ve been humming and haa-ing for ages about whether to accept a place at the only dedicated local nursey school for Moo for ages. They are excellent with autism which was a plus but could only offer an afternoon place which was going to mess up Puds day terribly. It also meant removing her from a loved playgroup for a new place and as both were good it was a really hard decision. But i do think she needs help for the next year as she is clever but frustrated and i am finding her hard to motivate.

Anyway - last week i agreed with the SEN people that she could use as much or little of her 5 afternoons a week as we liked - which i feel much happier about (less schooly!) and they have just rung up and confirmed she can have transport to the nursery in the middle of the day, so i won’t have to drag Pud and Bubba out twice or miss most of our weekly activities either.

All obstacles removed. I think its the right decision for Moo, she still won’t do reception but i think this will suit her and be good for Pud
Bubba and me too - because frankly we could do with a break from the “moo onslaught” sometimes….

copied over from email to MP list… to save time!

We had a nice day today. Moo went to playgroup ( although i think the pox has hit tonight :~() so me Pud and Bubba went into town. We revisited Catherine of Aragon and went into the shop where we got a good henry book and a tudor life and heraldry one in the same series - they are very nice - pitman series i think. Shes fairly spotty but the woman asked about school… first time that has happened really. Anyway- it was a great shop, just by Peterborough Cathedral - we shall go back We had a nice mooch about and a good look at the books and tomb too - it was nice.

Spots are awful though. Its horrid - its like something defiled her beautiful little body and i couldn’t stop it

Well. One thing has been cleared up a bit today anyway. I spoke to the SENCO at the nursery Moo has a place at today about the amountr of time she will go for - basically they have changed a lot since we turned down a place there for Fran - now its very much more “you have 5 afternoons, you use what you want”. Which is a major relief cos it means i can “work up” to 5 pms and if we never get there then that is just fine.

I think Moo needs this - its an excellent place and i think it will bridge a gap its going to be hard for me to fill while getting Pud enough attention too - i am happy to try it now. But reception will still be a no-no. No way :~)

Its always good to temper good with bad…. today has been rubbish- i’m ill, everyones grumpy.. .lots of TV… real life HE!

And here it is - a brief history of the wives of Henry VIII

Welcome to Tudor England, 1485 to 1603

Moo, currently still pox free, has gone to playgroup today (i did ask if it was okay!) and Bubba has had a really nice long sleep so Pud and i have had some time to really DO something. The result is a fantastic wallchart of Henry and his 6 wives and it has worked so well. We used the above site to get portraits, which was interesting in itself as each queen has several different portraits, some very different indeed. I was astonished that she picked Anne Boleyn out of a line up - no prob at all - i asked how and she said she just “knew her”.

What we did was assign a colour to each queen, printed a map out of europe and another one of the UK with county borders. We coloured in relevant counties in the right queens colour, and the same with counties, looking at birth place and where they lived. We gave each queen a number and a heading, a big map of her country, a picture of her child, additional differing portraits etc.

Its a real achievement and it looks great - will take a photo later - and we practised loads of skills - cutting, lining things up, grouping, making a key, blutack, colouring, recognising countries by shape to name but a few.

It was also interesting to briefly discuss that Europe was slightly different in geographic outlines back then… must find an appropriate map….

Educational Philosophies for Home Educators

I’m spending time thinking about this - and as the kids are outside measuring peapods *thinks… surely this counts as educational!* i figured it was as good as time as any. Its 2 years and 3 months since HE first became a possibility for us, since i joined the eo list to get help and ideas. Fran is now 5, her “reception year” is now over and we know the LEA are aware of us - we never really expected it to be any other way. It could never have believed 2 years ago, that i would become so relaxed about HE already. I really believed i was gonig to need structure and workbooks and set up exercises all the time - but that just isn’t how it has panned out.

I think that is partly due to Puds temperament - she has a body language all of her own if you try to lead her or guide her - while she is quite happy to be shown new things, it has to be on her own terms.

She is phenomenally interesting - i love talking to her, i love learning about Henry 8th, i love seeing her use the computer and do maths games like i never could (still can’t!) - i love her energy and her enthusiasm - i even love her refusal to be led by my “ideas”.

But that means i need to be clear how i see myself as her facilitator - and i am not sure i have a clear idea at all - i need to think…

Edward Jenner Museum

Heres another link. I can remember being fascinated by this at school.

Edward Jenner and the Discovery of Vaccination

What with Pud having chicken pox, and undoubtedly the other two will follow shortly *deep sigh*, we had a brief conversation about the difference between chicken pox and small pox. This was, admittedly somewhat oddly(!) because all these spots, and she has a fairly hefty crop of them, are reallt scaring her. We talked a bit about how chicken pox was usually just a very mild illness compared with other childhood diseases. This led on to vaccines and what was available and what she had been vaccinated against. We talked about Edward Jenner and his cowpox discovery and how it led to the irradication of small pox. it was quite interesting to talk about it in terms of a vaccine granny had but mummy didn’t.

Well… whats new?
Obviously its been a while - we went to MuddlePuddle camp and it was a blast - i shall write it up elsewhere though, we found out our home was not as secure as we thought which is not so good, we came home and got chicken pox!

So that explains the general crabbiness of the last few days anyway.

Other than that i am ashamed to say not much has gone on - its taken a few days to come down after camp and now everyone is ill.. heigh ho!