Home Educating the Puddle Girls…

ARGH.

Todays good points… Ammi eating a huge portion of lasagne… not trashing the car on my first day… erm…. putting away the washing… watching Fran learn to do fractions and greater than/less than signs without any help from me.

Bad points… my middle daughter… the rest of the house… and other things too infuriating to even put here. I tell you what, its a good job Bowater or the bank didn’t ring up for random marketing today.

Fume strop stomp.

Maddy has morphed into a basket case overnight. Its a good job Zoe was here today or Maddy would currently be in the freezer with the start of my freezer winter cooking (along with the rest of the mince.) So far today she has ruined paintwork, wet herself, refused all foods, changed 20 times, been horrible whatever we try to do (ruined stories, ruined drawing, ruined a trip out) twiddled her hair, made mess everywhere, refused to play and generally been in a hysterical panic with attitude for most of it.

I could cheerfully throttle her. :~( We have a lovely summer and then within 10 days of going back to nursery, she is like this. ARGH.

*Big Cheesy Grin*

Look what we have :~) (She says, nicking a picture naughtily off its ebay listing :~))

Its very nice indeed. We picked it up and decided to tootle around town in in for a bit, so picked up dinner and headed off to the local “place to walk people” so we could sit in our new car, swivel the seats round and have a comedy family picnic!!!! I love it; i’ve only driven it on the park campus (because i hate driving Max!) but i felt instantly very comfortable in it, which is great. I’ve got so much more visibility in it than i ever had in the Vectra, that that makes up for the extra few inches really. Girls think its fab, Fran and Maddy are delighted to have the very back seats and highly amused by going round corners in it (rolls a bit!) So - now we can bring on the baby!!!!!

The rest of the day was good too - started off with snowbabies and Zoe took Ammi on, so for the first time she wore real skates and loved it. She was wearing the top Fran used to wear when she first went (okay, yes, i nearly cried!!!) and had a great time. Its nice to be back in to skating now and great to see Ammi enjoying it.

They were all pretty pooped when we got back so they had a dvd and then Fran and Maddy spent time on a couple of computer games (Jump Ahead Year 2 for Fran and Jump Ahead Starting School for Maddy) - Fran loved hers and needed no help really. She was happily away with fractions and sequences and so on while Maddy worked really hard on hers too. She surprised me (just slightly!) by being able to do all the letter ones and the alphabetical order ones, so i think i’ll just shut up and leave her to it shall i!!!!!!????!!!!

Got some admin done, booked Melrose, tidied up a bit; Ammi loves Zoe and got some lovely one to one attention from her which i think is going to be the major benefit of this arrangement. I’ve not really given enough thought to the fact that she is about to stop being the youngest, but Max has a lot of time off over the next few months now because he has saved all his holiday really, plus he gets paternity leave so between him and Zoe and any visiting friends, i hope she’ll be okay. I’ve not got fears for the other two really, they are big, comprehending girls and i know they know they are loved and vital to our family and how it works,. But Ammi is in for a shock i would guess.

Finished off with a start on our new book Mr Meddles Mischief - i remember the first story from when i was little!!!!

Minute maths moment.

First thing this morning Fran asked for some sums so i felt obliged to oblige! So i gave her a load of money ones to do, using pictures of coins and she happily added those for a while, one set being groups of 5ps and 10ps, which she spotted corresponded to the 5x table. Then she did a load of adding up of numbers in the teens, among other things and we spent a bit of time working on breaking down a sum like 13+14 into more manageable sums; i started by showing her that she could think of it like the money ones she can easily do and that got her confidence. She could do it easily, but i am wary of overstepping her “only do it if its easy” mindset, so we left it there. Now would be the perfect time to retry Miquon… if i could find the time! lol!

Anyway, at that point my friend Jenny turned up with her youngest, roughly Ammi’s age and they all had a lovely time. When Fran had had enough she played Zoombinis. And then it was time for the nursery run and they were all pooped. For bedtime tonight we had Katie and the Sunflowers - i think Maddy was a bit baffled by pictures coming to life, but still!

Frances Van Gogh.

This was our Sunflower workshop. I’ve put both our efforts here, partly to show off my flower as well ;~) but also to remind myself how much fun i have when *I* sit down and do these things with my children. We had a ball and we both did better for each others company.

The two pictures (middle leftish) are Frans attempts to copy the whole picture. After that we spent ages working on blending colours, pressing with different weight, shading, looking and replicating shapes, etc etc. She finds pressing gently SO hard but when she really tried she got some great results. This was a good couple of hours of effort, a massive accomplishment for her really.

And this was my attempt. I really CAN’T draw, although with a bit of effort i can copy okay, so this was a big achievement for me, mostly really helped by watching my girl knuckle down and try and seeing what she needed to work on, helped me too. Putting pen to paper is a bit of a demon for me to overcome so i was quite proud of myself really.

It would be nice to get some real ones to try and draw but i suppose the season has gone now. I must remember for next year though because a local farm grows them in huge fields.

Hmmm.. stick with Disney i think.

2am last night: Fran awakes… shrieking. Enter Mummy stage left.
Fran: Its the monster… its the monster.. the one in the rubbish tip…
2.30 am: Mummy leaves sleeping child having carefully explained the possibilities of filming a large puppet monster in a small room pretending to be dragging people under water to their death while being fired at by Princess Leah’s blaster. We managed to transform said scary monster into the image of a pink and purple stripy tights puppet….

7.30am: Mummy constructs fake monster with padded pair of tights and pretends, sock puppet like, to eat/strangle Amelie for Fran’s delectation until all parties quite convinced the nightmare has been dispelled.

Which i think, ably proves that my daughter is not ready for a “certain type of film”, delicate soul that she is.

This morning started badly due to further cock up with taxi. I felt really terrible because i sent two perfectly nice taxi people away until it was sorted properly, which made me feel very uncomfortable because they are asian and i felt like they must think it was a racist thing; it wasn’t, i was just annoyed by the following. Maybe its just me, but an LEA transport team that think the below is okay, don’t seem to be doing their job well enough to me.
They
a) can’t get my address right despite several attempts by me to get it changed on their records,
b) can’t phone me back to tell me the names of the people collecting my daughter,
c) can’t send me a letter confirming details of said event,
d) think its totally acceptable for a 4 year old to be delivered to nursery for a full day 30 minutes early so they can do 2 separate trips for several children on one contract
e) don’t think its important to be able to tell me for definite that the (married) couple who turn up unannounced to collect my child have been police checked (and lets just remember this is Cambridgeshire, of Soham fame we are dealing with here) and
f) don’t think its likely that said 4 year old, who has issues with change, might be a bit thrown by a black cab (not the previously familiar people carrier) turning up with two completely unfamiliar people in it, with no carseat for her and with names she can’t pronounce (and has frankly no chance of remembering either - who has been asked “Whats your name again?” by Maddy 6500 times?)

Sigh - looks like i will be doing the nursery run then :~/ I can’t decide if its more horrifying that they operate that way or more horrifying that they expect parents to be okay with that. Am i completely odd because i want to be utterly sure with the whole set up before i put my daughter into a car with two complete unknowns? I had a HORRIBLE experience last year where i didn’t check carefully enough when things changed slightly and then the taxi was 20 minutes late - 40 minutes where i really couldn’t be sure that i hadn’t just made the most fatal of parental errors; i’m not going to go through that again. I find it amazing that sorting out these arrangements really carefully is not paramount; they would be so accountable if it went wrong and i think its my job to make sure that they HAVE done their job, otherwise *I* would be accountable. Apart from anything, these are arrangements made for SEN children and vulnerable children and its really not that fair on the taxi people if its not carefully sorted out, they need to know their backs are covered too.

Rant over.

After that, things improved. Fran and i sat and read the baby book; we got as far as the pictures of mummy and daddy bits and then she asked to stop, so we did. I was very proud of myself, not a stutter ;~)

After that i read her Camille and the Sunflowers and then we spent ages on oil pastels and sunflowers. We had lots of fun doing it and she tried really hard. I’ll do photos later.

Then we read the end of the Moses stories and Androclus and the Lion, which she loved. It brought a tear to her eye. And finally she did some writing practise and when i dictated a small sentence to her “The cat has a hat” she wrote it out perfectly, which was great. And since we got Maddy, its been garden play al lthe way. Lovely.

Van Gogh Ideas and Links

Van Gogh Gallery
Van Gogh and Gauguin (very beautiful site)
KinderArt - Starry Night
KinderArt - Vincent’s Flowers
KinderArt - Sunflowers

Read Camille and the Sunflowers
Try Art Ideas Trees with Oil Pastels project
Have a look at the portraits of Camilles real family. Try some self portraits of us.
Try drawing with dots (using thick felts maybe?)
Try a sunflower in dough/felt collage/seeds?
Use Art History book for a mini timeline/lap book/ make a display of some paintings of his?
Talk about his life, look at map.
Acrylics - might work nicely with Starry Night?
Use all the postcards to put out a visual timeline of the paintings we have and see what that says about his life at the time?

Edited to add: Taschen this site seems to have produced the set of cards i happened to have already from my book buying ferst the other week. 30 postcards of various artists for £2.99 - not tried buying yet but they seem to have UK listed as somewhere they can sell to anyway.

Enjoying being “on holiday”

Max had to go into work first thing to nurse an engine back to health. Don’t ask me, i know nothing…

So we all started very slowly; the girls did a “Dora party” which seemed to involve dancing to the Mulan music (don’t ask me, i know nothing) while i ironed a vast quantity of Hama stuff, tidied up a bit and put some washing on. At some point during all this, Fran wrote out a sign for a “Dora Party - Today” pretty much all on her own. I was impressed.

There has been more Hama-ing, a lot of playing and Fran and Maddy watched Star Wars, which involved a lot of hiding behind the sofa and “oooh…ergh…argh….” sort of noises coming from behind it. I sat an read a quick history of Van Gogh and got together a few ideas of things to do on him with Fran this week, as i would like to freshen up what we have been up to recently with something a bit more interesting now. I don’t want life to turn into worksheets. She wants to have a go at using oil pastels again and i have some old acrylics hanging about so i thought we might have a go at “rowing” Camille and the Sunflowers this week using our own ideas of stuff to do. I dreamed in his pictures for my lunchtime nap, which was quite funny! I was most confused when i woke up!

We also sort of “did” our first “Saturday Science” today - this one is a more personal theme “How Babies are Made” to try and help Maddy overcome a few confusions. So we have started with an Usborne Flip Flap book tonight which she enjoyed. Fran wants more detail so i said we would look at something else tomorrow together so as not to overwhelm Maddy too much. Moo really does NOT like the idea of how they arrive at all and while i appreciate its unlikely she will see anything, you just never know, so i want her to be a little more prepared because “it will jump out of your mouth” just might not cut it!!!

Family Poll.

We’ve taken a straw poll among the family on what type of baby its going to be..

Max: Blonde Girl 8lb 1/2oz
Merry: Dark Boy 8lb 6oz
Frances: Blonde Girl bigger than she was (+7lb 5oz)
Maddy: Blonde Boy smaller than she was (-7lb 13oz)
Amelie: Dark Girl bigger than she was (+7lb 11oz)

I think we have most eventualities covered. Obviously we could do utterly bald, but we haven’t achieved a hairless one yet!

Making the most of what is left of tranquility!

I definitely don’t remember previous babies giving me a bruised tummy button…

Anyway, after this mornings decent start, Max and i decided we needed to give all the girls some quality time. There seems to be a certain amount of nervy anxiety going on at the moment, Maddy is very tired from her first week back at nursery and Fran is having bad dreams most nights. Ammi isn’t sleeping which i think is due to her eczema, which in turn is probably due to teeth, so everyone is a bit edgy.

Anyway, first of all Fran, Maddy and i sat down and did Hama together which we all enjoyed. Fran is making a series of panels from a book which we are going to mount as a present for the baby and Moo did a lovely dog and a flower. I did the second set of panels for my Noah’s Ark. We spent a lot of time on all that, and then Ammi who had been with Max, went off for a sleep, so Moo spent time with him, playing letter bingo, before they also curled up for a sleep. So Fran and i just had nice private time together, which we felt better for.

This evening we finished off the CM readings for the week and had more Teddy R - only two left in that book now and i’m getting short of short stories, will be another charity shop raid soon i think. I’m plodding on with getting our photos uploaded and sorted, so when that is done i shall start putting photos on the blog again, i refuse to unload any more till i am up to date!!!!

*GRIN*

Just left a deposit on a car. A nice V reg peugeot 806 with 6 seats (which hopefully will prove a self limiting exercise!) which is in nice condition and feels pretty great. Quite surprised to discover its only 3 inches wider than ours too; all the older ones i sat in felt much clunkier around me when i sat in the driving seat and i really like the fact it has sliding doors on both sides too so i’ll be able to button both the little ones in without too much clambering about. Its a diesel, so Max is chuffed and the bloke wanted a car he could drive straight away so he’s taken ours in part exchange. (Which frankly, is a major bonus just on its own!!!! ROFL!!!) Hopefully we will pick it up later in the week when we can sort out swapping over the cd player/radio and so on.

Phew! And thanks Steve for the favour, much appreciated :~)

Generally speaking…

…this week has ended better than it started. In fact this morning was one of those mornings when everyone wants you and keeping up is a minor miracle! Fran did a fabulous array of stuff, which despite its boringness in terms of what i want for her, really showed that she is “getting it” in terms of quite a few things. Her writing has come on amazingly and most of her d,b,a,p,y, g type letters are now pretty neat and consistant (relative to what we started with!) plus her desire to write seems to have leapt forward with the confidence that has given her. Her reading is really improving, although that is not as dramatic as her writing right now and her maths is giving her real pleasure, which is nice to see. I’m guessing that this intensive period will fade shortly, or when baby arrives anyway, but hopefully the momentum for just “doing” will continue from her and we can settle back into something a bit more interesting.

So, that was pleasing, plus Moo sat with us and did a number workbook, which predictably suited her down to the ground and Ammi drew and played while we worked. Then they all had a good play while i tidied up downstairs a bit.

We managed to find the dance class today and they all really enjoyed it; its a toddler class but the teacher was fine with the big two being there and they are daintily sized enough not to seem massive in comparison. Ammi was a monkey but definitely spirited rather than spawn of Satanish, which made for a nice change. ;~) (I’m only kidding really, but.. well.. but…) So they had a lovely time and we have a set of classes for the big girls to choose from as well; i’m trying to work out the timetable for the week to suit us best atm but Fran particularly wants to try tap anyway. ROFL…*sings* “What is it that we’re living for? APPLAUSE APPLAUSE!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Hopefully we have also sorted a car too, more later. Which is a good job as this babe is cranking up again this evening…. Hm.