Home Educating the Puddle Girls…

In oh so many ways….

The weekend was spent mainly with my parents; all the girls adore them, even Josie started to flirt and play hard to get with them this weekend and as they have a lovely big house (for now as i think the family pad will be moving on sometime soon ) it is perfect for a big gang of girls to rush about in. They spent 2 days gardening, being daft, eating treats and being adored and it was very good for them. Fran started on a set of Famous 5 books my dad bought them ages ago and read to him, much to his delight. She is completely hooked and has nearly finished her first, the first book to really grab her for a while. She’s been dipping in and out of things a lot lately.

On Saturday we went to Bradgate Park together, all except Max who i’d given 36 hours off to go and watch cars go round in circles We had a lovely time, losing the phone aside, and had loads of interesting conversations about the volcanic rock it sits on and the long ago occupants of the ruin, the family of Lady Jane Grey. I can’t be bothered to do photrs atm and i can’t find the flickr badge code on the site (WHO does the navigation on that site????) but you can see here if you so desire.

Found it! (Tools menu at bottom of the page!)

Sunday and i got my bit of time off, only i needed to work in my 4 or so hours. Max collected my phone from the very nice policeman who’s wife had found it and they all went off to Foxton Locks which is apparently wonderful. I worked (when don’t i?) and they came back refreshed. Between us, Max and i took the big two out for bike rides and Maddy did fabulously well. I’m managing 4 or so miles a day on mine, but won’t be signing up for the Tour de France any time soon

Today Amelie has had a swimming lesson, which she liked a lot and Fran has finished the prototypes for her kit. Tomorrow we start nailing down the final plans. We’;ve listened to Egyptian stories while i made Egyptian bead mats, Maddy has beaded and written and made things and Amelie has continued with her explosion into writing which seems to be happening quite unprompted.

Josie has mastered “I want a cuddle” as well as my parents names, has individual names for each of my breasts and has been generally charming. Although, she did lie on top of me for a feed and balance a book on my head so she could read while she drank tonight. I think that means i’m finally an extended breastfeeder Lol - good job i had 4 really, i’d never have achieved closure on all parts of motherhood otherwise; i seem to have done one particular thing with each of them. Actually, as an aside, is this individual relationship with each side (she smiles to greet them”!) normal? Talk about feeling out of my depth at a late stage. Mind you, i realised the other day i think of myself as a successful breastfeeder now - finally.

And now, what else - i could do a million other things but i can’t cope with any of them and were it not for the Prozac wending its way round my body, i’d probably have a good cry about all the things that are dependant on the will of the gods to stay in one piece. At least it’s been raining in Puddley - i don’t have to water my hybrids. Night all.

You gotta love her.

This week can probably be summed up by describing the following:-

*During the big girls swimming lessons, i normally buy the little ones some sweets. This week i bought them Love Hearts… then i stopped paying attention. Next time i looked at Josie, she had stuff every single one of them into her mouth at once and was foaming pink and sugary foam from her mouth, nose and had i left it any longer, probably her eyes and ears as well. She looked like she might have learned her lesson as i whisked her to the toilets among the horrified gazes of ‘Organic Mothers’ and hauled 14 sweet fragments from between her gums, but no, she choked on an entire banana today.

*I dragged on a pair of trousers, decided it was ridiculous that i still hadn’t sewn the button on them and grabbed the button had bought, some pink thread (khaki trousers, so what else?) and a cross stitch needle and sewed them on while i was in them, shaking Josie off as i did. When i stood up, button safely and tightly in place, i realised i had my trousers on inside out and consequently the button was on the inside.

*My mum gave Maddy some gorgeous hair clips with little ragdolls on them. Maddy put them in, my mum and nana went “aaaah” and Maddy said “Look.. scarecrows for nits!”

*Taking my children out for a lovely hands on, CM moment in the ruins of Lady Jane Greys house, giving them an explanation of her story that impressed the steward, then employing a technique from the 2nd parenting book i have ever read to get us back to the car whinge free and all feeling fulfilled and delighted. Then i discovered i had managed to drop my phone somewhere on the mile or so back Immediately start swearing and ranting at children (oops, parenting lady clad in tartan probably still has work to do then) am forced to use PAYPHONE (while explaining it to mystified children) but can’t get through to dad and don’t know Max’s number - decide parents are away because sister must be in labour, then (in a leap of randomness which i think Chris P will like) decide that whoever finds my phone will no doubt ring my parents and Max and prank call and tell them i’m dead - and go completely to pieces.

Drive like loon back to parents house only to dicover nice lady has used my phone to call my dad and handed phone into Police Station. First lost phone in 10 years, no doubt triggered by being the only one not to have phone insurance EVER. Cannot decide if my Theory of Inevitable Consequence is proved or disproved by it being handed in and does this mean i should double or cancel my life insurance?

Today marked the start of our involvement in the history group work that 2 friends have been doing together for some time; i hope they felt it was relatively successful, it seemed to go all right from my point of view. Granted, 10 children on a very hot day and 3 adults who would also like to be cooler is never going to be perfect, but overall it seemed all right.

We started with a very short SOTW V2 chapter on India, no more than a taster really and i suspect more as a way of breaking up two major sections on Christianity and Islam - however, it was perfectly do able and we’ll no doubt do some more India over the next couple of weeks until we meet again to finish it. The plan is then to “do” Islam, which will be interesting in itself, given the majority of the gathering will be Muslim. I’m hoping to learn a lot anyway, not sure about the kids.

Anyway, afeter a bit of playing and lunch, we took the big girls upstairs and 2 of us read from SOTW while they crafted and coloured in an elephant )lol SOTW activities range from the sublime to the erm.. uninventive… at times!) That kept them quiet, but it was kind of noticeable that the most of it had been taken in my Linzi’s 4 year old Might go back over it with my two! I quite liked the fact that the babes were occupied elsewhere, that the kids seemed to respond to being in a group and that all the kids semeed very happy to be jollied along and co-operate by other mums. Overall it seemed positive and refreshing - i’d like to get into doing more of that type of thing as well really.

Beyond that we did a slightly random sand art craft from the book, supposedly a Diwali thing but it involved glue and mess which naturally went down perfectly well! I have half a ton of coloured sand (what is it with buying in bulk when you first start HE? ) so it was an excellent opportunity to get rid of some of that. It was all a bit too busy to do photos of though!

Beyond that we’ve done more on the voyage of the Beagle tonight and LOADS of Hama again, Amelie copied a fab pattern and Maddy was on a roll as was Fran. Even Josie Maxi’d.

We’ve swum and i remembered to catch maddy’s teacher to explain how hard she finds verbal instructions; cue very relieved instructor who had been wondering what on earth the issue was! She does so well now that i tend to forget and it was only when i saw her utterly floundering in the lesson last week, unable to fathom what to do without the visual clues she is so used to from people who know her well, that i suddenly remembered the teacher needed to know. All credit to the teacher, who responded magnificently and with considerable insight and Maddy came out of the lesson massively more cheerful than last week. In fact, i wonder now how much of her general wobbliness over the last week has stemmed from that?

Ah well… going to have to work now. Site has picked up after a dreadful last few days; i reckon i need to take a comfortable £500 clear profit a week for the next 5 weeks though, which could be mildly alarming! (And that is before i get paid anything!)

I will flickr later too though, got loads to put up.

All of which Josie has now mastered

“I’m hungry”
“I want biscuit”
“I want cake”
(Wonder who she takes after here???)

“I want this milk mummy” (with appropriate pointing )

“I’m naked” (???????)

Today we were supposed to do a return trip to Charlie and Claire, but i managed to have some deeply unpleasant tummy upset through the night, resulting in a distinct lack of sleep so we called it off, given that tiredness on nasty roads and bug spreading are not a good combination for travelling/visiting. Fortuantely i was feeling a good bit better by lunch time, so today has not been the washout it could have been.

Started the morning with everyone busily employedin various things; Maddy worked throguh Year 1 science on EC, which covered plenty of body/life cycel stuff that she is interested in. She also got out a pen set and did a 3 pictures that were largely the same but one in pen, one in pencil and one in crayon. Yesterday she made some ‘weather clouds’ do today i gave her the Draw Write Now book on weather and left her to that. She did some BrainPop too and some ETC and some GD, so she was well occupied.

Fran finished Singapore 2B, largely by accident in fact. She’d been weighing beads for me and i suggested we wnet down and talked through the notion of kilograms/grams and then did whatever was in Singapore on it. In the event though i couldn’t find anything but noticed that there was only area left (i do love the fact that you can reduce most mathematical notions at this level to “cakes on plates” or “carpet tiles in rooms”) - so we quickly talked through area (we touched on it last year) and she did that section and learned the term “square units” and then we ceremonially threw 2B in the recycling!

Anyway, turned out we didn’t need a book; 15 minutes of playing with beads, scales and a pen and paper and kilograms, decimal places and weights, plus the meaning of the word ‘kilo’ were covered and understood. Hurrah. Knew we didn’t need to struggle with it at age 5

Josie and Amelie had beaded, HappyMaised and played through all this and i think they watched something - oh yeah, Piglet’s Big Movie

This afternoon Fran has designed people in Hama for a kit that is going to be her baby on BeadMerrily - she is promised the profits of her kit if she does all the work. Maddy has done similar and more drawing and while they all beaded i read to them from a book about Darwin and The Beagle, which i bought from a charity shop a couple of years ago. Enjoyed that very much indeed; does help when Josie naps!

And now everyone is watching Fantasia 2000, so that counts as educational and i can go and nap!

There isn’t anything so good as spending time with people you love; a close second is with people you like very much, a pretty good third is exchanging a few written words which changes feeling very blue and lonely about your outlook into something more like realising “you’re going through a phase”. Gosh, how often did my mum say those words to me? If i’d realised i’d still be going through phases at 32, i might not have been in such a rush to achieve adulthood!

Well, i’ve managed to do all of those things this last few days which is good, because i’ve been feeling just a tad jaded; jaded with business (invigorated by new site and meaningful conversations with people), jaded with family life being somehow not wholesome, or meaningful, or happy enough, jaded with home educating and the thought of saying “in a minute” or “we’ll do that soon” for the next 15 years.

We’ve had a lovely weekend, marked mainly by Maddy and i getting new bikes and cycling loads with each other and Fran on both days. Maddy, following a monumental meltdown, got to grips with hers and cycled several miles on it and even used the brakes; i had to midwife her through it with lots of encouragement, but we did it and she was so chuffed. Fran took me out on my maiden flight and was patient enough to go slowly (she never got out of bottom gear!) and we had a lovely time.

The last was alieviated by an email exchange with someone feeling similar, which may not have solved any of our problems but it sure is nice to know it isn’t just me. Thanks

We also spent time digging out and rehanging lots of pictures and photos, so the house feels very definitely ours now (the fast dirtying carpet also makes it feel like home! ) We need something nice to hang up in the living room now but we have photos of us on our wedding day and a variety of precious pictures and portraits of the girls hanging in places that feel nice but not too in your face. The girls camped out with Max in the garden one night, we watched a ferocious thunderstorm happen over the back of us (people setting up tents on the ground behind us seems to automatically trigger rain here!) and we watched a LOT of Japanese cars (why? ) meet, get very wet and then have a fireworks display which was truly spectacular. The storm was incredible; a sudden gust of wind came over which actually blew our open doubleglazed windows shut, taking a huge quanity of rubbish and leaves across the tented area and then we just got blasted by this storm. The rain and wind were quite extraordinary. I wasn’t in a tent; i quite amused myself watching the people who were

Favouite sentence of the week, as mouth droppers go, was probably Fran’s sentence referring to a pattern she’d called “love” in Animal Crossing which she wanted to come and display in my town - “I’m just going to come to your town and make love, mummy…” *WHAT?*

Today managed to be a really good home ed day. Started with me being organised from fairly early but then struggling to find anything unit studyish on Charles Darwin/Evolution for Fran - no surprise that all the American HS sites kind of avoid the topic so coupled with it not being on the NC, it is a bit under resourced as a topic Eventually found something on Brainpop, so left Fran with that as maddy wanted to do bodies and Amelie wanted to do the sun. Maddy drifted to Fran and next time i looked they were watching something on buoyancy and water.

This prompted them to ask for a bucket of water to experiment with, which i provided in the form of a big stacking box in the garden and with gritted “don’t steal the moment” teeth, i left them too it. They spent ages sinking and floating things, then got a bit noneplussed, so i, who had been watching from an upstairs window, provided an Usborne experiments book and a clipboard to record results on and left them to it. They spent hours working through the pages of the chapter, completely on their own and IT WAS GOOD. It took a whole load of courage not to muscle in and TEACH them - but they learned all the same. Surprise!

Both have decided to be scientists “when they grow up.” I didn’t think it worth pointing out that they’d been scientists all day

The next door kids came round and they all played all afternoon; when they gave up on… ahem… watering the garden, they did loads of Hama and then loads of HappyMais. Maddy built an awesome model of a garden, house and people.

And then i ended the day with a really lovely visit to Hannah and Linzi which refreshed me enormously. We’ve laid some plans for doing some HE stuff together and that just feels like a load is lightened/shared somehow - and it has buoyed me up. So thanks, you two

“4 girls and no blogtime” might be a better title really. Oh dear. However, i can at least qualify this by saying that education has been happening, albeit not particularly directed education.

Wednesday was AWFUL. The trouble with life at the moment is that it is so finely balanced that anything different throws it all to the wall, so our truly lovely day on Tuesday in the company of Claire and Charlie (just throwing that in so Claire doesn’t think i’m doing an inadvertant rant at her for accepting my invitation to come over!), did mean that Wednesday just started horribly. I made no less than 3 parcelling mistakes (argh) there was HappyMais and Hama all over the floor, i had something like 12 boxes to unpack and just ARGH. And it was blooming hot. Children were ridiculously tired and needy and it all just went pear shaped. Max had to use the car in the morning and when he reappeared at lunchtime for 30 minutes quality family time, all her got was an earful from me on how hard life can feel at times.

Most of this, if i’m honest, is the WAHM thing; in fact it was some consolation to discover later in the week at at one point me and the web designer had been crying at our desks separately while trying to get the site up and running with endless children in tow. Trouble is, it rings all the wrong bells with me; i was the child of a pair of parents always working at home and i hear myself saying “in a minute” all the time and i just hate myself for it. I need to replan my weeks somehow and claim different bits of time.

I love my business and it is important to me and to the quality of life the children have in terms of groups, but it impacts on their quality of life in other ways and i need to sort that out somehow. Work smarter is what i somehow have to do. If only i was a naturally organised person….

Anyhow, we rescued Wednesday when we’d taken Max to work by me sending them all to lie on beds and sofas with books again and making them relax and rest and it worked a treat. By the time we needed to go to swimming, everyone was calm. Both girls did really well in their lesson, particularly Fran this time and we were refreshed by some time in the cars air-con. Think the evening may have ended badly with Amelie being awake till midnight and me not getting enough sleep either, but oh well… could vbe worse. Wonder when my children will realise that the art to getting to stay up and play till later is to employ the “not seen and not heard” stay in the bedroom approach. They’ve turned into shocking evening wanderers.

Thursday and Maddy indulged in BrainPop again; she is obsessed with how bodies work. Fran and i spent ages discussing the concept of “margin of error” and cost effectiveness. We talked about old methods of farming where every seed counted due to costs and labour and up to the current notion of growing too much on the assumption that not doing much maintenance will mean some dies but is still cheaper than buying less seed that requires total care. Interesting stuff. This led on to a conversation about my business and how sometimes i have to go down the “quit while i’m ahead” route because spending money and time tracking lost/damaged/mis-packed parcels can be less worthwhile than just replacing something. We talked about the notion of customer care and business reputations and how a bad reputation spreads faster than a good one but that treating a customer decently will be more likely to bring future business. Weird how that conversation evolved, but it did

Other things have been lots of computer play by Amelie, lots more Hama and HappyMais, Fran has been reading about Pompeii this week on her own and did a great cut-away picture of a volcano out of Mais; Maddy has been using them to print as these ones have particularly strong colours and transfer onto paper really well. She is very much enjoying quiet time with piles of books; i’m not sure what she is reading but she is managing to type/decipher in Animal Crossing very well - today she typed “Hello Belle i love you” to me

They’ve also been watching a Learn Spanish dvd a lot which is good; must get on to languages with them; i’ve also faithfully promised to set our keyboard up for Maddy this week. Some EC has gone on and some normals but honestly what is the point when it is so dreadfully hot? I can’t work, so why should they be able to? Besides, we’ve had dog and horse shows out the back all week… “And now here comes Harriet on Scooby Doo/ Veronica on Pirate/ Lara on Wellington” has been booming out over the speakers. Currently we have a worrying quantity of Japanese car enthusiasts camping out back; and why not indeed…..

Yesterday also involved watching some CBBC robot wars type thing; big two now want to make one, so we’ve promised to attempt that this weekend along with the fruit clock and some looking into evolution with Fran and some body stuff with them all.

Today has been lovely as Hannah and Linzi came over with their lot and much princess playing went on. A perfect mix of girls (and a small boy) really - and no one to be threatened with marriage either! When they’d gone we lay on my bed together and gamed, then i read from How Your Body Works and we made a basic start on body functions from that.

Not much other big news except that Max has bought me a bike which we can pick up tomorrow and then i’ll be able to go off for rides with the girls!

(Oh yes, and is it only my washing machine whose drawer gets gunged up with congealed powder and fabric conditioner? 15 lovely minutes i spent defurring that today… i don’t recall my mother ever doing that. Is this some delight of adulthood that got missed off that sketchily drawn job description for the slavery that is 3-loads-of-washing-a-day parenting????? )