Home Educating the Puddle Girls…

Half term whether we like it or not….

Well we are now 5 people deep into colds, coughs, snot etc etc - so there is not a lot going on here to say the least! In fact OH TO BE ABLE TO PUT THEM ALL IN THE CUPBOARD!!!!!!!!!

Still - aside from having to miss skating and our HE trip on a boat today cos everyones just too poorly to go out in disgusting rain, wind and hurricane, we are doing okay. Pud and Moo sat and did the DK British Isles Explorer this morning for ages and completed several of the travel medals and then they all snuggled up for some Nick Jr - now normally it annoys me that they repeat the programmes so often but today, as Blues Clues started, Pud jumped up, ran out and got paper and pens. The prog had a little drawing workshop built into it and she followed it all, presumably cos she knew what was coming - and produced some really good “shapes make pictures” drawing - now we have all dissolved in a heap again. Oh we also looked up Venus flytraps today and found some fab pictures - including one of the Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors.. .ah… nostalgia…. those were the days….

Moo has made some necklaces, picked out words and letters from the pages of my book and generally pootled about. There was some very protracted play with the dolls house toilet that was frankly baffling…

Pud made a train out of a party ring box and was very pleased with the results, especially as it was self started and done all on her own.

Scruff is… scruffy! (and snotty!)

Then, just as i thought i had shaken them off, the LEA inspector rang up. I tried to be polite, i really did, but she really got my back up. She said, without any preamble “What has made you suddenly decide to HE?” (HM.. well actually i decided 3 years ago) and that she would “have” to visit and that i didn’t “have anything to worry about” because she was “just coming to see what approach we were taking and make sure i knew what i was doing.”

NOW FORGIVE ME (!!!!!!!!!!!) but i have been making rational, informed and intelligent decisions about this child for nearly 6 years - she is smart, able, social, curious, happy, healthy, talking, walking, smiling, drawing, counting, reading - frankly - i don’t think i have done a bad job. In fact i would say the people who might need inspecting are those who randomly send tiny weeny children off into the nearest school available as soon as possible for as long as possible, regardless of whether it suits them or not. And i find myself unexpectedly riled by the notion that having done a good job for that length of time, i suddenly need inspecting or advising about it. Quite frankly, when i left school you could get on to a teaching degree with one E at A level, and most teachers i know said their training had more to do with form filling and crowd control than knowledge - i mean - how far wrong can we go quite frankly???? Until very recently there were many ways to bring up children and educate them that were considered perfectly acceptable to the majority; down mines, governesses, small schools, HEing, boarding school, nothing at all. Given the generally accepted failure of most of our public services in terms of perfection, i don’t see why we put such faith is schools as being the “right” way to educate children. An interested and intelligent parent who loves and understands her child and will go to any lengths to make it work, really has to be a valid and viable option. No one mutters about the Queens social abilities and she had a governess!!!!!!

Which is all (spout spout!) totally at odds with what i thought i felt! I don’t really mind them knowing we exist - if it was a welfare system being in place that found us then so be it and i hope it works - but i am not going to be advised on how to bring up my child so no one better start!

Grrr bah humbug!

I now pronounce you….

Awww…… i love a wedding. Its a particularly nice thing when its someone you really love getting married and even nicer when you have a small and very excited girl being a bridesmaid.

The weekend started slightly inauspiciously when i woke up on Friday morning unable to breathe - actually really struggling to get a breath, rather than the bunged up sort of “not breathing”. I thought this rather strange so a doctor was called and i had a chest infection of the “bottom half of lungs stuck together” type. Clearly this was not good, although extremely strong antibiotics were produced to get me fit enough for a wedding the next day - but we had to abandon our original plan of me and Pud going up to Yorkshire early for the reception by train, as i just wasn’t up to it. So the small girls were shipped off to Granny and me, Pud and Daddy drove up instead. By the time we got there Daddy and Pud were clearly coming down with it too but we made it through the rehearsal, got drugged up, ate junk food and retired for a long and snuffly night. Twas a very nice posh hotel though so we managed to enjoy it!

Fortunately by the next day i was a lot better and Pud no worse. She hopped with excitement till it was time to go to the Bridesmaid house; i am so glad we did it that way - she felt such a big girl and we got to see Auntie Anne before hand. Anne is my best friend from school; we sat together in French from the 3rd year onwards and did RE GCSE and A Level together. She is now a teacher at a private boys school, having resolved firmly to never be any such thing until about 10 minutes before she was!

We travelled to the wedding in the bridesmaid car which was really lovely and she walked down the aisle with her “god brother” and the big bridesmaids, just beautifully. I didn’t know which to look at and only just avoided roaring! Anne beamed the whole way down, just as i did nearly 6 years ago and she positively grinned through the ceremony! Puds “godbrother” is the son of another of her friends, born 4 months after Pud and bizarrely (considering Anne never got round ot mentioning Puds name!) he has the boys version of her name. It was very odd to be saying “X give that to X” all the time cos Pud has never met anyone else with her name but they thought it was fantastic and really hit it off - he pulled faces at her across the aisle the whole time and she just giggled and giggled. Then throughout the reception they played constantly - so much for HE’d children not knowing how to socialise - clearly she is a very normal and well adjusted child! They ended up in the classical kids-at-wedding pose, under a table collecting chocolate and sparkly stuff to hoard! The took to the dance floor as soon as the jazz band started and held the floor on their own for about 40 minutes, completely unabashed! In fact Leisa and i wondered if we might end up at another wedding in 20 years or so - but if we do, one of them is going to have to surrender their name! Someone took a little video clip of her dancing - hopefully i’ll get it emailed to me.

So it all went well - unfortunately i forgot my camera, but have a couple of disposables to get developed which i will get done on to cds so i can upload some. I was sad to be poorly and not get to do lots of socialising but in a way it was lovely not to have to - i just got to sit and watch my lovely friend be happy all day - and that was enough. And Pud had such a great time and everyone made a fuss of her and told her how beautiful she was, and she needs those comments really cos you just never know when her scar might start to bother her - its lovely that people see her as gorgeous - cos she is!

Did find the odd conversation with teachers i had slightly weird - HE is obviously very hard to grasp but one asked me how i would manage to teach 3 “year groups” at once - like i would have 90 kids in my care or something! The she asked if i took half term off - as if i put the kids in the cupboard for the week or something! i suppose if i think back to when i first was interested in HE, it all seemed so un-do-able - but now i know so much better…. but really… year groups!!!!!

Yesterday
Kind of had a bad day today and didn’t post. Don’t have much to post today either except that Pud has been madly playing Reader Rabit reading 4-6 and really loving it. She voluntarily did two 2 1/2 hour stints this week and as its quite a structured and intensive word and phonics games, thats quite impressive!!!

Had a meeting with Moos keyworkers yesterday. That went very well, they seem to be getting a lot of the same behaviour as we do, which is reassuring, they are finding ways of suppporting her through it and reassured me that i am NOT imagining this!!! I found the reaction “we are learning we need to give her lots of pre-warning and talk through changes” so much nicer than “we are trying to get her to fit in” like you might expect. The are going to arrange for her to do her “reception year” there too, were very positive about HE being where she went from there and actually said they could really see that her home environment was good for her and being always around sisters who were kind but not completely compliant to her wishes, was very good for her. Further talk went on to the fact that the very experienced SENCO felt that although she would probably not get statemented if she went to school, due to her clearly being pretty clever and able to “cope”, she would certainly flounder in a reception class, particularly as we are not settled enough to be able to start looking around for the “best” of the schools in our area. So all in all i felt very supported and encouraged by the meeting.

What else, excellent slidy dancing this week, she remembered her whole programme and was so chuffed. Its very good for her - Auntie Kate is gentle and lovely but she is also strict and expects now that she is getting on a bit, that she would make the effort to listen and work on doing as her coach asks. And Pud really does work at it all. Its a joy to watch her being so adaptable.

Um…. nothing else - off for the wedding tomorrow.

Feel a bit ill

Haircut 100

What a ridiculous title… still, twas quite appropriate as we used our Moo free time today to pop into town for a cheap, pre wedding haircut and practised counting to 100 while we were waiting! We also indulged in a box of clickits with my boots points and sat making bracelets and necklaces and hairclips and all sorts - very good for fine motor skills… (ahem!) We had the photos printed and are now trying to summon up a few creative ideas to do with them (and its NOT easy!) They are really good - for a 5 year old she did a nice job of them - i am impressed.

We picked Moo up who had had a nice day (yesterday we asked her what she did at nursery and she thought very hard and said “I wet my knickers!”) Her keyworker is changing next week which is cheesing me off - i hate lack of continuity.

Scruff has been really singing - today (after the weekends rendition of Bob the Builder) she clearly sung the ABC song tune and Twinkle Twinkle which is very cute as that is what Pud and Moo have sung to her if she cries from the day she was born… bless.

We are making more effort to all eat together now they arer getting older (Scruff has the best table manners nad appetite of them all which is not saying much!) and tonight descended into a very amusing riot with eyespy for entertainment - Moo is really good at it!

The dreaded phonecall!
Well - i didn’t expect to remain unknown to the LEA for long and today i got a phone call from an EWO - from what was said i am guessing that we were informed on by some kind soul. Thing is - however tedious it is, we are not doing anything wrong and i know my rights, so not THAT much can happen. Cheers anyway whoever it was is what i say! *blows raspberry!*

So what else is new… okay.. well highlights of last week definitely included
*Our gorgeous kids looking so happy, relaxed and well-behaved in the cinema.
*Moo’s face at seeing Lilo and Stitch in full cinema scale technicolour (big fave film!)
*Scruff cartwheeling down a very long flight of stairs and surviving with only a scrapped nose!
*Pud discussing her speech “differences” with a group of kids and being completely unconcerned.
*Late night mummy chats with likeminded people who don’t think i am mad!
*Not getting tonsillitis….

I’ve managed to scrape up a couple of photos… here is Scruff doing Hama beads

and here is Moo and Scruff (Moo modelling her very own home made necklace)

Pud and i (well all of us) have joined The Wildlife Trust. It runs a series of “badges” for its young members which are home based, or local group based and have a broad remit well suited to HE. We looked at them and decided we might start on one where you create 3 bits of artwork based on nature. So today she took our camera out into the garden and made a record of it as autumn sets in. Then we picked the ones she liked the most, retook ones she wasn’t happy with and eventually assembled a set of about thirty she really liked. Tomorrow we will go into town and get them developed so she can make a collage out of them - we might get an extra set so we can use the others for some extended work - we both got quite into it.

These are 4 she was really pleased with and said i could put up on this blog.

What else have we been up to since Friday? A lot of Webland and Reader Rabbit, a lot of the Dora Explorer site, lots of really gorgeous drawing, a fair bit of healthy eating discussion, including using this little game a fair bit which Pud really likes
Welltown Healthy Eating Game

It THE WEDDING at the weekend and much excitement is boiling up about it!!!!

Puddling at The Portico

Not going to be a long one cos the drive after 3 late nights has left me pooped - but just wanted to say what a fab time we had down at The Portico household with them and The Clarkes this week. I don’t “worry” about my kids and socialising but watching your kids play beautifully, in a relaxed fashion in a group of 7-10 kids they rarely see for 3 days is incredibly reassuring - and more so that these are all children who can live together, appreciate each other (by and large) relate to each other despite differences in ages, sex, experience etc etc - amazing… There was just such peace among them and thats pretty rare in a group of that size and diversity.

All in all i feel really really refreshed by the three days.

We got to see Piglet, Little Polar Bear and Lilo and Stitch too, have a birthday party and some nice walks as well.

One thing that i did shake my head at quite a lot was hearing teachers “shhhhh” frantically at a bunch of well behaved primary school kids just cos they did a muted cheer at the film starting… i mean, are you NOT ALLOWED to have fun at school? Surely this was hardly a mutinous riot? Sigh…..

Still no photos

Sorry - whole blog is pictureless now - will try and do something tomorrow!

Anyway, this is just a short one but i just wanted to write up one of those real “home ed” moments - one of the ones that really makes me feel i CAN do this. Its not that they are infrequent but this one falls outside what i might imagine i could naturally teach someone, so its a good illustration of just how great HE is for all of us.

Pud has had an interest in “healthy food” recently and from conversations we have had has actually changed her own eating habits a bit - started eating tuna sandwiches not chocolate, more fruit, trying pasta more often and with different sauces etc. Parlty this came from the fact that Henry VIII and the Tudors really didn’t eat fruit or veg and lived mostly on meat and bread and that this had an effect on his health and lifespan.

Well, the other day we chatted quite a bit in the car about this and also about food groups - fruit and veg, how bread, pasta, potatoes etc had the kind of energy that kept you going longer, how sweets and chocolates gave you short energy bursts but were not so good for your body, about protein in meat and how it was important to have some of everything but not too much of one thing. It was a fairly casual conversation and she asked a lot of questions and so we actually got as far as fat cells, water content in bodies, calcium etc - but it all took place in the car, rather than any sort of contrived lessony environment, as i COULD have done at home i suppose, or would have happened in school.

Anyway, it was pleasant and was good in its own right but what was really quite pleasing was the next morning, as i woke up, i heard her discoursing most ably to her daddy about everything we had discussed. And she was very clear about it all, rather than just repeating stuff she had “learned”. And when we went skating a bit later, as she chose her post skating sweetie she said “Its a good idea not to have sweeties TOO often isn’t it, to be healthy!”

We’ve been looking at photos of food on Clipart.com since and deciding what food groups different things are in.

Interesting stuff!