Home Educating the Puddle Girls…

Not-a-day!

Well the plan for today was that Max was going to take all the girls out so i could spend some time working on Beadmerrily. I really need to get it on a more professional footing (never mind frankly just a bitm ore organised!) and i have a lot to do and lots of things i would LIKE to do with it! However, Moo woke up in the night with a dreadful headache (which has been the first sign of this bug in all of us) and we generally played musical beds most of the night. By this morning she was in awful pain and lying on her bed, roling about and clutching her head, sobbing. So clearly she couldn’t really go out :~( She stayed with me, slept for 3 hours, threw up twice, sobbed lots more and then suddenly sat up, demanded orange juice and potato with cheese and butter and has been fine ever since!!!

Moo is not a partcularly high impact child when home alone so i got plenty done - i need another day to get the rest of my paperwork done and my tax sorted but i feel more on top of it now and i have had time for a few ideas to filter into my brain too. I’m hopelessly disorganised about soe things lol!

Max took the other two out into the fens to a couple of nature reserves/bird sanctuaries. They seem to have had a nice time and saw dragonflies, kestrels and rather a lot of wasps although Fran did have another enormous nosebleed while they were out. Max is making a big effort to get more involved in the HE side of things, i really appreciate it.

We finished off with bedtime stories for Ammi and then an extra one for the big girls from me - finally got round to reading the Tanabata story from The Barefoot Calender of Festivals. Lovely story which i could have made more of really!

Baby is sat on a nerve and i have a dead right leg - funny how “dead” does not mean “painlessly numb!” Hmmm….

Blogger is annoying me because i don’t seem to be able to edit any past posts; most irritating. its not even a browser thing, IE won’t either.

As for the July review - well we have had lots of social contact and now need to quiet down for a bit i think!!! I want to get back to doing more reading and writing again with Fran AND Maddy so that is my goal for this week really, plus continuing to read our way through the AO thing. Everyone is enjoying that and its giving me a sense of real release to know that i have done something meaningful with them each day. Now i have my Sonlight books i really want to put a little thought into how i might use them and that means planning ahead a bit so we make the most of them over the winter when i will presumably be feeding a baby a lot! I have a fair urge to plan some “unit study” type things around them for “sofa ed” :~D

Feel most upset that The book People no longer seem to have The Story of Painting that i got to see at Jan’s - and it was SO lovely!!!!

I am living the wrong life

And i am not quite sure what to do about it. As a girl who hankered over Austrian/Swiss mountains via books her entire childhood, adored a long summer in the North Yorkshire and married a man from the middle of Dartmoor, i think the centre of Peterborough probably counts as a location mistake, a fact made rather more obvious by getting to spend a few days in a house with the kind of views and ambience i only normally get on holiday. I appreciate my life choices and lack of application (and more latterly balls to take a risk) have contributed to this, but i do feel things perhaps need to change. We do have a plan and it can’t happen for 18 months but i need to start being a bit more proactive about it!

Anyway, arrived quite literally “off the path” at J&J’s after an extremely uneventful journey with perfect directions. People, you have to visit, its the funniest journey; you start on big roads, they get smaller, then smaller and more winding and eventually the road surface runs out - its truly a “journeys end” or slightly like playing a role play computer game where you know you have nearly reached the monster because its all got a bit deserted looking. Heaven anyway. I wasn’t even late which was startlingly impressive.

All the girls played beautifully all day and my lot did remarkably well given the lack of Nick Jnr!!! Fran was a bit disgruntled at the real gravy as opposed to Bisto (fortunately she redeemed herself later by complimenting further cookery and was in fact very grown up and lovely the whole time we were away.) Ammi had a bad night, par for the course with her while away really but we managed.

Thursday was somewhat more fraught to start with. Maddy woke up in a very wobbly state, quite literally really and was lying on the sofa and pretty much non-verbal for a good while. She did have breakfast then went back - and showed off her complete mis-interpretation of life in general fairly impressively too She asked for milk and i asked her to find her milk bottle; she stood at the bottom of the stairs and said she couldn’t climb them because she was “too wobbly” - i looked up, realized she really was in a state and said, rather too sharply “Come and sit down on the sofa” because i was quite shocked by how bad she looked. Only she didn’t compute the words and only the tone of voice and started to climb the stairs on all fours, weeping. Poor little soul, i felt terrible. And shortly after that she went green, threw up (but fortunately i had seen the signs and we were in the bathroom) and then was fine, instantly demanding huge quantities of food. Which i wouldn’t give her and so she went back to bed for three hours. While i was wiping vomit up Ammi ripped a toenail off, apparently on nothing given she was doing a jigsaw on the carpet with Jan at the time and just as we wiped her up Fran fell headfirst off the monkey loop things and bashed her nose very hard. And there was blood EVERYWHERE!!!!!! I’m amazed she didn’t break it really, given she actually achieved a grass stain on the bridge of her nose. Luckily it was just that and not teeth, plastic surgery or anything else that had been damaged!!!!

All that would have been quite enough really but Ammi, who was in a foul temper all day anyway, annoyed a bee (due to standing on him in no shoes - how many times do we have to say it!!!!) and got stung. Blood i can do but bee stings panic me a bit as with the eczema and asthma i could just see her being allergic, but she didn’t seem to be and bicarb and an icecube worked like a dream. It seems virtually incidental to all that that we spent a really nice day with lots of friends!!!! Thank you all for coming everyone!

It was a blinking good job i had lots more nice books to look at that evening and i had a lovely time - thank you again J&J.

And i have just got home to a big load of Amazon and Craftbits parcels, plus a bead order i needed so its parcel time then lots of reading!

Another pleasant day

We have a certain amount of non-violent lurgy (i give you fair warning Northerners - turn us away now if you don’t want us!) which has had me and a couple of girlies on calpol but it doesn’t seem to be having any other effect really. It didn’t spoil the day anyway.

You guessed it, we did more Hama towards our Africa display. Maddy stuck with a theme she liked (flowers!!!) Fran was “in charge of ostrichs” and also did a couple of bees which were probably her first ever effort at a square board you-have-to-count-and-concentrate pattern. She did them all on her own too. I was instructed to do trees but diversified and made a few (African???) dragonflies! lol! They look lovely done with glittery beads….

Here is Maddy’s house from last night.

I loved the stairs (and all the people in a row!)

And here is our avocado I’ve done it so you can see the root and stem length better than the leaves, but its lovely and healthy!

We shall have to do the other stones we have.

Max has just taken the girls out for a bit so i am pottering and houseworking. In a bit, when they get back i am going to read a couple of AO stories to them and then get them to do a bit of reading if they will. Fran did do a wordsearch today but Hama has definitely taken over from workbooks!!!! lol!

Oh yes, worth a mention for sheer loveliness was that when i woke up properly this morning they were all sat by my bed playing pop up dragon together - bless! And Fran helped Ammi do a set of 9 piece life cycle jigsaws and was really patient with her.

Edit: Ended the day with a chunk of Beauty and the Beast in story form from the Blue Fairy Book (lovely although Fran made me laugh by asking “Is this the Disney one or the cheap one?”) and then The Brave Three Hundred and How Caligula Conquered Britain. Now that was a weird story… i shall have to read it again and try and make sense of it!!!! lol!!! I’ve been vaguely writing up the sort of things we are getting through in a week and what else we have in the house that it ties in with. Maddy listened in to everything we read tonight but i thought a record of what had worked once might be useful in case its ground she would enjoy going over again in a year or two.

Shameless Propaganda!!!!

Beadmerrily hosts its first ever design competition!!!!

Question from Max for the techies.

Is it possible to rotate an image object in steps of 15 degrees???? Ah yes, should have said, “coding it in Visual Basic”

*swoosh as it goes over my head*

Catching up on a few photos then!

The delicious book haul!!! (Oh i am so sad!)

Under a Sculpture at Burghley - it was only after i got there i realised they were all in pink/purple dresses with sunglasses and floppy hats and i looked like a mad, control freak stepford mother! They dressed themselves, i promise!

Happy…

For some reason a photo of this conker collection was extremely important!

My bee picture. I like bee pictures, i have a collection! (nutter!)

Don’t mess!!! (Who would????)

Beautiful girl! Ooops, sorry Maddy, yes, yes Beautiful PRINCESS!!!!

Taken by Fran.

Another by Fran. She’s quite good isn’t she!!!!

A K’nex Monster!!!!!

A K’nex Tilda and Alison… don’t ask me… yes Alison, that IS you with the floppy purple ears!!!

Hmmmm… i like Fireworks i can make the photos all the same size if i want! Should have tried it a year ago… now for its 872 other functions…

Blast from the past!

Well, the children’s past anyway - rather more my every day but there you go!!!!

When i got up this morning i got instantly bombarded with a load of children in highly creative mood - they had already covered sheets and sheets of paper with monster drawings and had really cottoned on to the idea of doing the “Africa” project - Fran was desperate for Hama beads nad wanted to do drawings, poems, maps - you name it she was up for it. It was lovely to hear.

Actually, we didn’t get further than Hama because we all had such a nice time but we talked and planned lots while we were going along. I think we covered Meercats and Ostrichs and Lion gender and types of monkey and alsorts. I think the most fabulous bit of it was the incredible concentration and effort they put in and the lovely part was all sitting down together and enjoying something happily without a small person trashing anything. Ammi did her own two, but tipped it away once she had finished it.

Hopefully this will show the pics up okay- first time i have used Fireworks for photos, so bear with me if it goes wrong!

Three happy little girls getting on with things (and looking dangerously like a Chalet School illustration in all those frocks and hats now i look at it! lol!)

The top four are Maddy’s - she copied the butterfly from a pattern with very little help, made the flowers up from her head and adapted the giraffe from another pattern. These are almost her first ever Hama’s - didn’t she do well!!!

The middle three are Fran’s. She just had some help around the manes but otherwise did them herself.

The monkey menagerie is mine and so is the camel - i was just playing while i communed with my daughters, but i had lots of fun!!!

The whole thing has inspired me to set up a competition page on BM, so watch this space ;~)

My book people order arrived today (safely!!) and had two great art books in it from Usborne - i’m very inspired to try lots of new stuff.

Suddenly at tea time Fran got a temperature and i got a sore throat; Ammi was hot last night but fine today so i am hoping its a passing germ and nothing worse. Fran, Maddy and i cuddled up and read a couple of Aesop’s Fables from the new book (much nicer than printouts!) and then i read her “Hill of Fire” which is about the Volcano that started from nothing in a Mexican field. It was one of our new Sonlight books but we read about it around Easter when we were doing Volcano’s and it really captured Fran. Its a reasonably simple Grade 2ish (American) reader and Fran has fallen asleep trying to read it. She was very pleased at one page she could manage all of.

Maddy has just come down to tell me about a rather amazing lego house she has just built. If the photos work i’ll add one of it.

Oh yes, and…..

… while we were away we happened upon a tent show, with loads and loads of tents all set up in a big field. So we had a lovely time going in and out of all of them and had almost decided that the 2-centre-hooped version of Jax’s would suit us when we happened upon the Outwell Hartford XXL which we really loved. Its an all stitched together with a top sheet one, like the one we have, which we like and i was rather dreading having to do groundsheets and gaps and its a hexagon with 4 sleepnig pods (which would NOT fit 3 people in each lol!) and there is a little front porch and a back door. Somehow it doesn’t seem to take up much space from the outside but is really nice and roomy inside and the sales bloke suggested actually turning it round and using the porch as a kitchen area and the backdoor as the entrance. Worked for me, we really fell in love with it and i think we will be getting one asap. Its actually now cheaper than on that site too, £340 i think.

Had a doo-doo-dah-dah moment when we went past a campsite and saw Alison’s tent, Jan’s tent, Katy’s tent and my tent all camped in a circle with a load of kids running about - i felt like i had accidently missed something!!!

Thoroughly lovely weekend away.

Every so often its just lovely to get away from it all, and that is what Max and i did this weekend. Mum and Dad had the kids and we legged it off to our favourite pub/hotel in Derbyshire. Despite some seriously dodgy traffic we got there by just after 8 on Friday and spent a gorgeous weekend hunting through bookshops/charity shops/antique shops/craft shops and walking in lovely scenery.

Spent a really nice time in Buxton, Bakewell, Matlock and all the surrounding villages, walked along the Viaduct at Monsal Head (including a rather steep walk that reminded me how pregnant i am!!) tootled over Snake Pass, which as we normally go in winter is generally shut, and just got to talk and enjoy ourselves and sometimes just enjoy the silence and lack of “can i, will you, argh!!” type demands children make!!!! The kids had a complete ball with my parents and brother and didn’t want to leave - they had done piano and violin playing and Fran had learned to do a two handed scale of C, a pretend carnival using Granny’s toy tractor and bike with dollies in the trailor and Fran’s Poi for ribbons. Apparently Mum, Dad and Rich had to stand at the side and chuck coins at them and it was all a hark back to going to MortonHampstead Carnival last year. Maddy had completely floored mum by giving her an account of “Auntie Gaybor” (Maddys imaginary friend) which mum swallowed completely!!! lol!!! Auntie Gaybor lives in Torquay, wears a brown coat and blue shoes and was apparently flying the tornado that flew over MP camp - she has, this weekend, sprouted a husband or father called Uncle Bonkers-Bonkers. Who says she doesn’t have an imagination!!!!

If i may do a Jules (lol!) my book haul consisted of…

The I Can Draw compendium (been looking for that for AGES!!!)
How to Draw… Monsters (a big hit immediately!!! lol!)
The Aesop for Children illustrated by Milo Winter
A History of England (for Max!)
Not Just a Witch by Eva Ibbotson
Charlottes Web
A book of Van Gogh postcards
The Wizard of Oz
A Traveller in Time by Alison Uttley
History of Costume
I Wonder Why Flutes Have Holes
The Adventures of Charles Darwin (creationists avert your eyes! ;~))
Teddy Robinson Himself
The Sheep Pig
Heidi
Tales from the Ark by Avril Rowland
Treasure Island
A Calender of Garden Lore
Tom Jones (Max’s)
Clever Polly and the Stupid Wolf
A Cross stitch pattern collection
Compact History of the World (Max again - apparently the 20 we already have were not enough!)

All the kids ones were 3/4 for £1, so it was a pretty good bag of spoils i think!!!

I also indulged myself in a blackwork kit to try as i used to love that type of thing and have never done that particular type of sewing.

It was great to get a bit of time together; one of the things that has changed since Ammi came along is that i don’t seem to “need” time off quite so much - with 2 life could sometimes be near enough like the “olden days” for me to resent the impact of two small kids - once you have your 3rd or 4th i guess you know what you are doing and know that if you choose to make that particular bed you can’t really expect to get bailed out of lying in it much. I know when Moo was small i used to really need some time off, now its more a pleasant interlude, which yes i loved, but by this morning i was starting to look at things and think “the girls would love that”!!!! Plus of course, bigger kids are easier to get along with, for me anyway. All that is not to say i didn’t look forward to it, enjoy it and come back feeling refreshed for it.

I made a massive effort to get the house clean and tidy before we left - everything was away and sorted and organised - and it was so lovely to come home to it - really lifted me. Wonder how long it will last!!!!

Oh yeah - and the completely excellent thing about all the books was that as we were driving up, i opened the inner pocket of my purse and found the £30 cash i got out on the last day of Melrose to buy the kids shoes which i subsequently didn’t use!!!! Job is a good-un!!!!!

ROFL - i must have had withdrawal!!!

Now, is it me? Am i completely unreasonable to think that..

…washing the basket of laundry left ready, in the kitchen…
… sorting the two small baskets of clean washing…
… doing the washing up…
… running the vacuum cleaner around the upstairs (where HE had taken it!)…
… and collapsing the several boxes by the back door…

…are not particularly massive jobs to ask a man who gets home at 5pm and had two completely free evenings while the rest of us were away to do? Do i really need to leave a jobs list???? Surely these few things, which would have taken a couple of hours of jobs away from me today, might possibly have jumped out at a man who has in those two evenings managed to manage a virtual Exeter City into the 2nd division…. Grrrrr….

I will not have a row… i will not have a row…..

OOh - two nice things!!!!!

Firstly i am six months pregnant today! Hurray, i made it through the Pregnancy Bermuda Triangle!!!! (And actually nice thing 1.5 is that all is still going okay for my sister, and at definitely a minimum of 27 weeks pregnant her baby is now old enough to be supported in their local SCBU unit if needed so thats good stuff.)

And the second nice thing is my box of Sonlight Books just arrived and i have to say they are really quite beautiful - i deliberately got a lot of American History type ones so we could have a Winter of using those and related projects and i am pleased i did; very nice.

And now i have sorting and tidying to do!!!

Popping up!

Just a quickie, since Jax has withdrawal!!!! Had a very nice couple of days with The Porticos and also saw a fair bit of Layla, Simon and C too which was lovely. My lot seemed to take a bit longer to shake down than sometimes for some reason but although there were a few squalls and wobbly moments they have come home declaring to have had a ball as normal, and Ammi is STILL reciting the entire Portico family names constantly - she and Lulah got on very well again.

I realised today that i have gradually become much less protective of Maddy over the last little while, i don’t go rushing to her aid anymore and she knows it, because she tries it on with any available adult, it seems, to get help for slightly feeble requirements! I suspect this may be a result of nursery having taken the strain a bit this year - she’s got wise to having adults around other than me whose job it is to jump to her command. Probably something i need to get my head round over the next few weeks. So apologies to Alison if a combination of that and my “too many nights without enough sleep this week” spaced-out-ness was a bit wearing! i was kind of aware i was reacting to most events about 50% too late! Ahem….

Had some interesting conversations about labelling, learning styles, writing and art while i was there which i must ponder further on. Also summoned the courage to let Fran take a mini jaunt out adult-less with Poppy and Tilda which was pretty brave for me; fortunately Maddy diverted my attention with a “i want to go tooooooooooo” wobbly and they were back before i knew it!!! Thoroughly enjoyed the assault course in the front garden laid on for our enjoyment ;~) (And of course it goes without saying it was lovely to see Chris too!)

Nice drive back, arrived just ahead of the thunderstorms, thankfully!!!