Can’t remember where i left off, but it doesn’t really matter. Last week ended in the normal dancing/kyt type stuff and a good bit more house tidying, before packing ourselves up and heading northwards to my parents house for a night before gong away. That was very pleasant; girls played various games with my dad and Max while my mum and i caught up a bit and slunk about in the shadows.

Got up earlyish for special Grampty breakfast and then headed off to Centerparcs for a few days away with friends. Managed to be there and in the pool by about 11, which we thought quite impressive, then had a lovely lunch and mooch, met friends as they began to arrive, unpacked and swam again in the evening with lots of them.

The week was very enjoyable; we swam 7 times in total and the big 3 were able to be far more independent and go off with friends this year. F and M can swim well enough to be sensible (if not really well enough to not drown if they happened to need to avoid doing so, must fix that) and so really enjoyed their freedom. Being with lots of friends who they’ve grown up with helped and in general they’ve all morphed into a group of kids who are considerate, thoughtful, caring towards each other and resourceful enough that i knew they’d be fine. And they were – and had a brilliant time. Ams got braver as the week went on, graduating to being able to do slides without an adult supervising her by the end of the week and Josie was perfectly happy doing assorted pootling and using a floaty noodle on the last day. So all that worked quite perfectly really.

I really enjoyed bobbling about in water and the walks, chatting etc but got too sleepy to socialise in the evenings. Baby seemed to get bigger and lower and more weighty as the week went on, which left me a bit shattered by early evening. Was definitely starting to engage at one point, but has reversed now, not helping that i seem to have a touch of whatever Max was struck down with one day in the week (that’ll teach me to blame it on the beer!) Max got to have a holiday and some down time and really enjoyed himself in his own quiet way.

So perfect really. Other events of the week were Amelie mirroring Fran from a few years ago and suddenly starting on Fairy books while away at CP – although not so dramatically as Fran since i already knew Amelie could read them if she could be bothered. Was funny though and should keep her quiet for a while! We did a good bit of gaming, trivial pursuit, card games etc and a play morning but didn’t find Sherwood as conducive to trying out other activities as Elvedon so didn’t get round to rock climbing etc Loved seeing squirrels, rabbits, pheasants etc though. Finished off with a lovely last swim and lunch out with the Beans and got home late pm.

Amelie was too tired for kyt the next day but the others went and i mooched in town for some stuff. Has just occurred to me i have given no thought at all to anything for babe to sleep in for any times when my bed isn’t appropriate – used to have a carrycot but it is gone now and not sure crib will fit. Might need to get a Moses basket i think. Or maybe travel cot with an insert newborn bit as we’ll probably use a travel cot for it later rather than bothering with a proper cot. Am having a fairly major fret about how best to extract this baby now The simple answers are just not simple.

Got home and then went out again to watch Maddy do an exhibition rugby stint for the rfu – not enough kids turned up so Fran and Amelie joined in. They looked… bemused… and Fran fell in the mud and then wept copiously when she came off after. TBH, i was not sympathetic as i think there was an element of overtired not being centre of attention-ness to it which didn’t please me. Maddy was great; she’s been back today and is apparently going to move up to the contact rugby team in a couple of weeks

Today we’ve done lots of MoshiMonsters and craft and i’ve felt fairly sick and we’ve had a film or two on and done some music practise and… well… nothing.

Tuesday was a good day; i’m trying to do more work that pulls all the girls together a bit. In general i don’t mind having them working independently around me, i don’t find it particularly hard to juggle 4 separate children doing 4 separate things and helping each one but with the potential arrival of a baby sometime soon, i thought encouraging them to have some learning activities that they did together might be very useful.

One of the things i find oddest about the home ed conversations i have with non-home-edders is the “how do you manage with them all at different levels?” one. From what you read in the newspaper (an certainly borne our by Fran’s brief school flirt and what teacher and schooling friends say), it isn’t uncommon to have children in a yr6 class who are ‘Level 2 Literacy’ (ostensibly functional 7 yr old reading) and ‘Level 5 Literacy’ (more like age 12/13) – and 30 children spread across those ranges seems to me problematic. Put into that context, 4 children with varying levels seems simple-pimple because i don’t see any reason to pretend that a year of teaching practise prepares you for that type of multi-tasking. Only motherhood, so far as i can see, would bring you anywhere close!

So no, i don’t find that difficult. What i find more of a challenge actually, is remembering that while classrooms using able children to ‘teach’ the strugglers is something i largely disapprove of, there is some merit in emulation, support and mutual skill sharing. I might not like it if Fran was being asked to listen to another struggling 11 year old read in school, but i wouldn’t mind her being grouped with some children slightly either side of her ability and being encouraged to work as a reading group. Nor would i mind her working on punctuation skills as part of a group – it seems fairly rare for one child to be in full possession of a set of skills and have nothing to gain from group work. In fact, i’m probably less disapproving of peer ‘teaching’ than i used to be, especially since i’ve watched her enjoying being a peer coach at gym. She clearly gets a lot from working with little ones and they clearly enjoy the attention of an accessible gymnast who will show and encourage and work quite literally at their eye level (so long as they stand on the beam!)

So one of my goals this year has been to encourage some peer support among the girls in terms of some of their basic skills. We’ve got an interesting spread of talents and weak points among them and instead of fretting that Amelie is fast over-taking Maddy in some Literacy skills, i thought i would try to play it to our advantage. Amelie is a perceptive girl and can be quite cutting, but if you encourage her to support, she does. So this week i thought we’d try and encourage them all to work on spelling and letter blends together, in game form, using these cards. They would all benefit, but Maddy and Josie the most and with a bit of priming, certain 7 year olds can be persuaded not to jump in and show off, so other people get a chance to build up some confidence.

And it seemed to work – we had various very enjoyable games of it and it was all quite co-operative and fun. I’d also bought some maths, fractions, money and music versions and they’ve so far been played plenty. If i can try and make them part of every day in the next few weeks, hopefully it will be a way of them all engaging in something that manages to also be educational for a week or two when babe arrives.

Josie slightly surprised me by being able to find the coin card and value in the money ones all by herself. Not sure where she learned that except that she and Amelie have played shops a lot recently with real money, so i assume it was from that. Good-oh, as my mum would say.

And Amelie has been bringing herself up to speed with music notes (she has a tendency to learn music then play from memory) with this set.

She’s learning the treble clef ones – and Fran is going to practise the same – and then all of them ought to be able to play that together as well.

She did pretty well and i tested her today and she could name them all and tell me what string and finger it is played with on the violin too.

This is another places where i’m trying to get them all working together – although they can mostly work out their tables mechanically, i do think one of my saving maths graces is that i was made to learn them by rote; for all that type of learning doesn’t really stand up on its own, there dos seem a place for just ‘knowing’ some things. I used to love the competition of trying to be the first to get ticks in all my tables boxes each year at juniors, so i thought we’d try it. So far it is going fairly well. Maddy and Amelie spent a hilarious hour last night trying to learn their 3′s together – the squeaking, giggling and use of a cash machine all seems superfluous to me, but today they can both do that one, so it must have worked.

Other stuff going on has been music (theory and practise, lessons going on currently, including Josie on a violin for the first time), Amelie learning her new gym routine, Fran jarring her knee and various bits of history. Going to have a go at a group Egypt Lapbook in a couple of weeks, to round off a chapter Maddy and Amelie have done on that, pull in Maddy’s superior fact knowledge and hopefully give Fran a quick overview of that snippet of history. Maddy has worked very hard on doing the two written exercises… i’m still laughing at her picture of a caveman inventing the wheel. Must take a picture. And then i think we’ve done more maths for everyone and more reading. Maddy went again to TKD and definitely likes it so that settles her.

Yesterday we had Latinetc which seemed to go well despite me being slightly off the planet with backache and lack of sleep. Kids looked at bacteria under the microscope, did a practical using paper cells and peas to show how bacteria multiplies and spreads (on the way home we started discussing how bodies make cells from sperm and egg upwards and they all noticed the number sequence of cell division was the same) and then prepared agar petri dishes with swabs of various parts of Katy’s house – lol…. are you ready for that Katy? There was also French, Music, Latin and Sewing in various quantities. Littlies got more sewing this week as i think we’d over run slightly and the Bigs got squashed out.

Home in the snow for a pm of odds and sods (and more reading of Horrible Henry for Maddy!)

Suddenly remembered i had caught a glimpse of one of the rabbits looking a bit like she was hopping funny the night before so went out to investigate in the daylight (having ascertained the night before she was otherwise fine) and realised her fun underneath had got rather mucky and clogged up, so brought her in for a bath which she took remarkably calmly. She stayed in for the rest of the day and evening in a warm box to dry out (she has very, very thick fur) and got lots of rabbit worship. Fran made pancakes, everyone went to bed.

Much as i hate using the blog for this, on our boring box ticking days, it is quite a useful thing to do. Not done anything terribly remarkable either but everyone got on with it and seemed quite glad to be back.

Fran – Chp4 history, started GP Decimals Chp, Music, times tables, reading Carrie’s War.

Maddy – blends, negative numbers Chp, GP Egypt Chp, music, winter words, times tables.

Amelie – Music, Music Theory, Times Tables, GP Egypt Chp, winter words.

Also, KYT, dancing, gym etc

Happy Birthday to me I like this particular birthday, (it would have been a good one to be 10 on!) as the date was 10.01.10 – i managed to look at the clock at 10.01am too.

Had a lovely day, with a breakfast of egg and bacon muffins made by Fran and some lovely presents of pyjamas, smellies etc My main present is the mounting, framing and hanging of a picture i bought a couple of years ago but has been behind my chest of drawers ever since, but it isn’t ready till next week. And the microwave was a joke (i hope!) – Max organised a surprise babysitter and he and i have been out for dinner, my parents came over and i had two really wonderful cakes made for me by the 4 girls, which made me feel very special.

My present to myself was to go yesterday and have a 4d scan of the baby. It was kind of weird to see something so intimate, a bit like being a peeping tom really; Max said it was a bit too odd, like seeing your birthday presents the night before. But i loved it – it felt a real privilege to get a peek at this little person.

I wanted to be sure i would have no regrets about this last time being pregnant and i wanted to do this, much like having found out what we are having this time, having never known before. I’m not regretting any of my choices to do things differently so far

Today…. did reading with Josie; she remembered the words 9and could read some of it back to Daddy later) to quite a lot of Peter and Jane 1a. We also read a Penguins book, picked out words like penguin, eggs, ice and waddle to find on different pages, did some counting of various things and so on. Was nice. She’s quite keen to learn stuff now, so i must get on to offering her extra bits and bobs.

Maddy and i found this website and decided to try out some of the blending packages – she did one today and really liked it. I think she is going to need an awful lot of practise in this area and formulaic repetitive stuff suits her, so it is worth a go. She was ever so happy about what she achieved anyway.

Amelie was very happily working on some multiplication and some reading again; she’s got no problem with working up to find an answer in times tables but they all need to work on “just knowing” them – so we’ve set up a cash incentive challenge. Each of them has 2 columns for each of the tables, “say it” and “know it” – the first is when they can say it through correctly and the second when they can be tested randomly on that table. 50p per tick for 11 tables each, which can only be claimed once they’ve got the whole set ticked.

Fran did some GP English – i need to look through it but she tried very to make it neat, used her thesaurus, asked about some bits and we chatted about WW2 and rations/coupons etc too.

Meanwhile, all of them had music lessons going on; Amelie and Fran are busy working on festival pieces now, Maddy is still plugging away at her book and trying to relax while playing. Then all of them had a piano lesson together to start learning notes and fingerings etc. Fran is working towards Grade 2 now (not sure if Amelie is working towards Grade 1 or not yet) but really looking forward to getting some keyboard skills. R pronounced the keyboard a very satisfactory one.

At lunchtime we went out for them to all have a trial Taekwondo session as Maddy was keen on the idea. Really liked the place and the instructor and it was lovely to see them do something where Maddy was the one who shone straight away. Deeply amused that the have a biometric system for checking in so they can keep a count of who came to which sessions Maddy adored it, Amelie was funny as she couldn’t resist pointing her toes, Fran thought it was okay and liked some of the spinning kicks and Josie was shy but joined in and thought it would be fun. We’ve started by signing Maddy up to a double and a single session per week (it is a flat rate per month) and if i can work out how to fit Josie in, she can join too. Fran and Amelie might do some at point but prefer gym for now. Maddy started tonight and looked in her element.

Fran and Amelie went off to squad – they’ve started working on grade work tonight; Fran is apparently doing Grade 4 and is happy to have a free roll on the beam and a 2 bar routine rather than her previous all low bar one. But cross not to have a flic in the floor work, as her grade does a round off-backwards roll-handstand. Sounds very complicated. Amelie looked happy as larry again. Bless her.

Home to pancakes cooked by Josie and Max – yum.

I’ve managed to be ill for most of the time since Xmas day, first with a cold and then with some lingering cough virus which will neither bugger off, nor be quite bad enough to make me properly ill. So i’ve been asleep a good bit, coughing when awake and feeling slightly out of sorts. But since we were mainly just hunkered down for the holidays, it hasn’t really mattered, although i would have liked more energy to enjoy it.

We had a lovely New Year with The Beans, very much part of our tradition now and then we’ve been trying to rid the house of some clutter since, using bits of time i’ve been awake to clear out cupboards and crud holes. So far we’ve managed 15 bags of rubbish from F & M’s room, the bathroom, kitchen and my wardrobe. I think the skip we’ve hired which will hopefully make it here tomorrow is going to fill up nicely. The idea was to clear the garage into it – but i think we might have to get another one!

Today we made a start back to some gentle work and music practise; everyone is a bit rusty but i dare say it will all be okay in a few days. Fran was cross with fourth position on cello and Amelie knocked her G-string out of tune; guitar made Maddy cry – but still, that is why practise is important. After that Fran did some GP history and then told me all about Matilda and Stephen, Amelie wrote some sentences about what she’d learned from this amazing book, Our Family Tree: An Evolution Story which she got for Christmas and has been going on and on about. It has been lovely to hear her enthusiasm for it – the sentences were random but definitely proved she’d engaged with the topic and understood the sense of it all. Trying to think what Maddy was doing…. reading i think – and Josie was writing out words from a penguin book very industriously. Gosh, she is now in the term after her fifth birthday – official!!!

At this point everything stopped as i got a call from the gym coach to say they wanted to offer Amelie a trial place in the same squad that Fran has recently moved into. She has to get through a grading in April and prove she is up to standard for a competition in July or she’ll have to move down again but she is SO excited – even better, she was allowed to start tonight!!!! It means she has to drop the rhythmic class (although the coach hasn’t turned up for 2 weeks, so she has presumably dropped them) but Amelie is just SO excited! And it does make things easier in terms of how we organise our evenings. Spurred on by that, i called the local Taekwondo club and they are doing a trial for Maddy and Josie on Thursday and the classes run 200yards from gym at the same time, conveniently offset by 15 minutes at one end. So potentially rather perfect as Maddy is really keen on that as an idea and Josie is up for giving it a try.

After that we popped into town to look for sewing patterns for Fran, organise my birthday present, pay in some cheques and have some family time, then home for tea and then gym. Fran tends to get out of condition quite quickly but Amelie doesn’t so much and she fitted right in and looked like she had been there for months already. So pleased for her