Home Educating the Puddle Girls…

The people who lived here before us were a bit of a bad lot. They left without paying 6 months rent, the house was trashed, i’m still fending off debt collectors and baliffs for around £25,000 worth of credit card and various other debt and, not surprisingly, they left no forwarding address. Equally, they had rather a lot of people who just came to stay for a while, for whom post occasionally arrives but i still have no addresses for.

I’ve got into the habit of opening post now with no address to return it to - on several occasions this has avoided us having to have our chattels removed at 8am by baliffs, it has got rid of the worst of the debt letters and i’ve been able to return some personal post to the sender when there has been an address inside it. Which, while not legal, seems slightly more human than not bothering.

So today a letter for one of the “friends” came. It had old lady writing and was thickish and it turns out to be a card from a loving auntie. It has photos, absolutely no return address, surname or anything else and £30 in it.

So here is my dilemma. I know what happens to unreturnable post, it goes to Belfast thewn after 6 weeks it gets incinerated. So i could do that, but it seems a feeble option, given i know it has money in it.

I could hang on to it forever and ever and hope this loving aunty, who the girl hasn’t bothered to let know where she is, eventually writes here with an address in it. But the chances are are i’ll lose it or forget or something. And i am fairly sure this aunt wrote last year too and no one came looking for the letter.

I could donate the money to charity and decide that in the circumstances, that is the most useful help i can be.

I’m not going to spend it, obviously, that would just be wrong. But which is the most right?

Read several Roman myths.
Make a list of Roman Gods to compare with greeks.
Add Roman Empire to Timeline book.
Look back at some Roman stories in OIS
Get out mosaic squares and play
Look at Rome in Cross section.
Have a go at some clay columns?

Look at Detectives in Togas and see if it would suit for us soon.
Look on Audible for suitable stories.

Max and i spent a bit of the morning revving the car up; he diagnosed black-black smoke to be less bad than blue-black. (Well he would know, if anyone can read smoke signals from an exhaust pipe, he can.) We stuck some cleaner in the fuel and then needed to drive it. So we went. We think, having come back today, that it is slightly improved but it’s going to have to go into a garage, something is clearly NOT right.

Had a nice time, shortened as it was and got to see everyone. Girls had a ball playing retro-amiga games, or something of the sort. Maddy is very into the Egypt Cross sections book, they all went mental around their uncle and his girlfriend and Josie and Rowan faced off and tried to work out who was alpha-baby. (It’s Rowan )

Amelie, Josie and i are down with some lurgy now; i feel a bit shivery and spaced out, Amelie itched all night and managed to wake up every hour at 22 minutes past, for the whole night So some sleep is now in order i think. Josie is managing the odd set of step, normally about 3 at a time and babbling away but a bit grumpy to say the least.

Can’t decide what to do with the week. Amelie is adamant she doesn’t want to go to nursery so i guess we’ll have to see how the wind blows.

a) Black smoke coming out in large quantities from the back of your diesel car.
b) Your diesel engineer husband going green.

No need to ask if it’s going to be expensive then

And there went our weekend, approximately 5 minutes after setting off.

We’ve got a hefty weekend of family contact this weekend. I’m really looking forward to seeing my brother and sister, mum and dad, sundry partners and niece mark 3. It’ll be just the thing to keep my mind occupied.

We’ve had a productive day; more reading and maths from both big girls this morning. I gave Maddy a split page exercise book and she wrote about 6 sentences, all really comically illustrated. I must do photos. Breezed through her maths, as did Fran. More Titchy-Witch too.

We had group this afternoon, slightly disorganised but actually it came off okay, with a general art theme. My favourite thing though was that Fran and Maddy were insistent that they should run an activity on their own; they chose it, we planned it and practised it, they packed their own little crate and carried it into the hall, set up themselves and told people what to do. I was very proud of both of them. Fran did wax resist firework skies and Maddy did blow painting. Suddenly i have gone from having very needy girls to having these big independent people. I must admit it was a welcome flavour of things to come.

Group was quiet but pleasant and everyone seemed to have fun

www.flickr.com More photos in Hama Bead Inspiration

Is now up and running. Would be very delighted to get entries to it; if you would like to join it, you’ll need to let me know your Flickr screenname. As long as i know who you are, i’ll accept

No education today.

Didi manage to get them all bathed and hairwashed by 9.30 (me as well) which was fairly impressive. No nits either, i combed in vain. Excellent.

Dashed out to see Hannah and Linzi. Spent a pleasant couple of hours discussing maths books and so on. Kids did play but eventually separated out into packs again. Lol.

Hurried home, everyone got their hair cut by the lovely Anna then hurried back out to Sainsbury’s to spend Nectar points on Halloween costumes. Maddy and Amelie chose identical ones, which is not going to help distinguish them from each other.

Fran looking very gorgeous in hers.

Josie being adorable too.

I’m off to parcel now and hopefully get more done to BM and MPO tonight, while i feel motivated. Josie went to bed at 7.30pm last night, which made a huge difference to my evening.

Local people - random art theme for tomorrow, since we are all being a bit wimpish!

The Flickr girl she say yes!
So i can use Flickr on BM

I’ve finally got to grips with TextPattern, which means i’m now transferring MP over to a new and slicker system at some speed. If i can keep it up i reckon all the worthwhile of the old will be done within a month and then i can get on with making it better and adding new content. I’m feeling really motivated about that, i’ve missed doing stuff to it.

I’ve also managed to make BM briefly seasonal, albeit with last years stuff. Might manage a quick bit of halloween new stuff for its last few days if i go mad. I’ve come up with a couple of competitions for November that i’m going to launch and properly do something with too; i’m mildly frustrated till i hear back from Flickr though, or find something that i can load photos from easily. The Dreamweaver photo albuming is very clunky.

Todays been one of those odd high-and-low days. Mostly it has been extremely nice, the company of my children has reached its best ever level of enjoyableness just lately. They’ve had the Happy Street down and played amicably with that, they’ve played on the computer a lot (all of them are irrationally amused by building a tube loop that you set the Flowerpot men into and they can’t escape! ) and done an enormous amount of Hama-ing. Fran is attempting to fill the house with multicoloured rabbits i think. I made real macaroni cheese and they all enjoyed that, which was gratifying as Maddy’s food comfort zones are pretty low when it comes to new stuff.

The low point of the day came when i got the post from the front step and brought it in, including a parcel of books (with which i am delighted, thank you Joyce.) i was working my way thorugh the pile and Fran was pestering me to open the parcel, which i didn’t want to do until i’d read the rather more important bits. i said “in a minute” and “please stop pulling at that, it’s heavy and you can’t open it yourself” and she just kept plucking away at it. Which eventually led to her getting it and knocking over a completely full glass of Pepsi, all over everything.

I was REALLY furious. It’s the second time recently where she has completely ignored a very specific instruction and caused havoc (and last time she also put all of them in considerable danger) and i completely lost it with her. She got the worst bawling out she has ever had, lost her book parcel for the day and lost all of them the trip out to get Halloween Costumes with Nectar points. But really. I don’t say no a lot, but when i do and when i say it specifically and with an attached reason, is it too much to ask that a 7 1/2 year old actually just listens?

Maybe it is, i dunno.

We’ve recovered since then. Fran and i have done more HTU addition, which she is now doing flawlessly and seems to be really enjoying being able to manipulate numbers. I’m doing the writing for her, as trying to concentrate enough to get figures in the right order and not backewards seems to undo her but all the actual working is her’s. She also read me more Titchy-Witch; she’s been reading those little Pooh bear books, that came with the Nature Trails series, in bed and it has improved her abilities quite a bit. Gradually, gradually, the guesses are receeding.

Maddy and i did more teen addition and added a new manipulation skill into her mix, one i’ll show Fran tomorrow as it will definitely help her. (Did i mention i like Singapore Maths?) Maddy added another sentence to her collection, i’m amused that she is now asking me for new words to add to her wall, based purely on the fact that she thinks of very SHORT sentences now (less writing, hahaha mummy i beat you). But (hahahahah Maddy i don’t mind!) because of course she is actually leading her own learning. ROFL - horns locked without either of us acknowledging it

Then, reminded by a thread on the eo list, i got out a Critical Thining book and independently worked with the big two on some of the warm up exercises. Predictably, Maddy flew through it. She has absolutely got Max’s brain when it comes to stuff like that. Fran found it harder, she is a bitm ore like me, she finds it hard to throw off the reasoning behind the last question as she moves on to the next. But both seemed to enjoy the challenge and they are skills i am keen to encourage in them as i’d like them to grow up confident and skillful at puzzles/logic/maths stuff. I used to love “verbal reasoning” but we never did it beyond 11+ entrance exams. I wish i was like Max, who can sit down with Suduko/crosswords and so on and lose himself in them. i do try but i don’t have the thinknig skills or the confdence for it.

So anyway, that was a pleasant interlude. Now they are watching fairytopia, rented from Amazon and a bit scratched I’ll have to complain. But i daresay it will keep them quiet while i do some parcels.

…. “what goes around, comes around” doesn’t really cover it does it?

School Reform

I’m deeply aware that my blogs have lacked a great deal of interest in the last year. I’m not convinced it’s going to change anytime soon; really i do blog as a way of trying to make sure i can write an LEA report easily, plus i do actually like having a record of our days. I always was a diary writer. Largely i think it has to do with the fact that i have switched off, emotionally, over the last year to some extent and i’m afraid my brain just doesn’t ramble over things anymore. So, i apologise for the mundanity.

I also apologise for the emails i’m behind on

fran and i have cracked HTU addition with carrying today, which was hugely satisfying as we did it by using Base 10 until she was doing it fluently and without stress (or randomly losing hundreds). My mum always made me do maths as “trial by pharmacy standards” ie every sum wrong was a person dead. I do try not to put that level of stress on my children, though i am fairly glad she still rules with that particular rod over her students Anyway, we painlessly spent an hour of so swapping up and down and i taught her the technique Maddy and i had been doing for rounding up to 10. Until i saw it written down i hadn’t been able to convey what i do in my head to Fran at all, but she definitely sounded like it had helped.

Maddy and Amelie are both enjoying a CBeebies cd-rom at the moment and have played on it lots. Amelie’s computer skills are impressing me. She gets very little time on there, compared to what Fran used to get, but she uses it to good effect.

Maddy has been happily employed in sentence writing, computing, tv, books and currently making stickers with a stamping set, having also done a rather lovely hama horse today.

Fran has read a new book, done some maths, got very into making some hama rabbits, computed, including finding some new Neopets stuff she can do.

They all very much enjoyed a social call from Js, our summer student.

Josie has repeated yesterdays step without holding on and has TWICE gone very quiet, in that particular fashion… i’ve found her tipping cold tea and purple juice all over the carpet. Those days are here then

Even i have been a particularly “good girl” and got BM updated with new stock and if i can get Josie down at a reasonable time tonight, i might even get some new patterns and photos on it too.

Japanese Male Heir crisis

Maybe i’m missing something here, i mean, maybe i really am rather than in a sarcastic “i know i’m not” way.

But surely, there is no possibility that the Crown Prince’s Wife doesn’t know that sex is determined by the man and therefore there is very little she can do about it? Or are they suggesting she can’t carry males? Either way, surely the 21st century doesn’t still have to be plagued with the whole “you will be made to suffer for not bearing me a male” thing?

Sounds like a rule change might be a good idea. Wonder what the eldest girl thinks of that????