You Are 60% Boyish and 40% Girlish

You are pretty evenly split down the middle - a total eunuch. Okay, kidding about the eunuch part. But you do get along with both sexes. You reject traditional gender roles. However, you don't actively fight them. You're just you. You don't try to be what people expect you to be.

How Boyish or Girlish Are You?

I loved this - it's pretty accurate, except for the part about rejecting traditional gender roles, because I so don't! I embrace them actually and don't fight them at all. Other than that it sums me up :)

Holidays - where did they go?

I can’t believe half term is over already! We have celebrated two birthdays in our house this month - Abigail was 5 a couple of weeks ago and Phoebe turns 4 tomorrow! We actually pretended her birthday was today as Granny was here and Mondays are always such rushed days with school, playgroup and swimming. Plus Daddy is at work tomorrow, so today was better all round. Bless her, she had asked for a trampoline - so we got her the octagonal one in the Argos catalogue and she and the others have been bouncing all day long in the middle of the lounge! Its destiny is the garden, but at least it fits in the lounge for now :) The girls also got a sandpit between them (the square wooden one in Argos Cat’ - we love Argos!!) and they were thrilled with it. I just hope the weather warms up soon for them now!

Besides birthdays we have had the usual half-term holiday club going on at church, which Paul is always part of and the oldest three children go to now. That left me with three little ones for three afternoons this week. Most afternoons the two smallest slept, leaving Phoebe and me alone together to have some one-on-one time - FAB!!  So, we embarked on her ‘Wheels on the Bus” project (from live’n’learn press) which I have been wanting to do with her for some time and she was SO keen. As soon as the others were out she was asking to ‘do school’ (school especially for her this week - she knew that was a good thing!)  We have had a great week - making box-model buses, painting, printing ‘tyre’ tracks and she has done some beautiful colouring & learnt the letter ‘b’.  I shall post up the pictures (promise), but we have one more flap-bus to add before it’s completed. I was hoping we would do it yesterday, but she went out to a friend’s to play instead.

I’m not too good at blogging at the moment as I and some others are busy organising a children’s charity event to happen in a couple of weeks time (a variety show type thing) and there is lots of admin’, which I volunteered to do too much of! Also I’ve have had ‘puter troubles, so we’ve bought a new tower, but I am still in the throws of trying to collate all my resources and delete all the unnecessary stuff from the old hard drive (which is sitting in the new machine as a slave quite happily, but needs major cleaning up!). The old PC has been re-formatted and is making it’s way downstairs for the kids, but that needs some fiddling with too one day. And what with that and school planning for two and a half children, it’s all busy, busy here and blogging is always top of my ‘want’ to list and bottom of my ‘need’ to list I’m afraid!! But I am still alive and I occasionally do nip around to have a little read and update myself on your lives, so don’t think you are all forgotten about!

Milestones!

I now have a crawling (as of today he learned to go forward without slumping down), clapping SLEEPING through (as of five nights ago) baby!! And a little girl who turns 5 tommorrow!

They grow up :)

Today's Log

Just to log today;
First thing - Bible study (skipped handwritng today), body project ('The Heart') , play, make chocolate brownies (only half as many as I'd hoped but Paul had eaten half the chocolate!!), lunch - including yummy brownies!! Jolly Phonics for Boo and Comprehension for Joel (Phoebe did the JP colouring too). Phoeb's on ed-city, Elly driving me nuts!! Maths with Joel - measuring bendy lines with bits of string. Maths with Boo - count and write (numbers 1-4 - easy!!). Boo dictated a story and drew a picture for it. Not done from the timetable - Joel's reading but we can do that at bedtime. Wow -we almost did it all!! And we were done by 4pm with good breaks taken throughout the day. I also did my washing AND the washing up from breakfast and the cookery session! My new 'fun-focused' timetable seems to working really quite well. I have been as generous as poss' with my time-slots and tried to keep it low-pressure, but still cover everything in stimulating a way as poss. We have three or four slots in the week for project work & that keeps the motivation high. Monday is a high-concentration day (after the weekend rest), but the rest of the week I tried to make evenly spaced between pencil-work and non-pencil work. There are even 'play games' slots and 'you choose' time. Everyone seems to be happy here at the moment and I must confess I wish Jake was here to share it a little, but in the same breath I know that things would not be the same if he were :(

I met Jake's teacher on Friday - she was nice enough and seemed to have the handle on him! Easily distracted, too busy watching the world go by, distracts others too often, can't keep quiet when he's supposed to (i.e. when she is talking he constantly wants to contribute out of turn). I was frank with her and said that this was exactly how he was at home too, and that was partly why he is now at school! I couldn't be constantly sitting on his shoulder and didn't want to damage out relationship any more by having to be constantly 'on' to him. She seemed to understand that - gladly, but at the same time I think she thought I was a bit cheeky to send him in for that reason, to let her deal with it!! Generally, she thought him a very bright boy who could achieve so much more if he applied himself (well I knew that), and a very pleasent child if he could learn to tame his tongue a little (that I knew too!), so she seemed to have him just about sussed!

The handwriting issue was less of an issue than Jake was making it. She is very happy with his writing! She thinks it is beautiful and not too slopey at all. Reading wise she wants him to read more widely at home, but his school books are 'comprehension level' based, so I'll grant them that his comprehension is not too good.

I need to send them in a copy of the speach therapy report becaseu she said she hadn't seen one. But I told her it's finding and gave her a couple of pointers for dealing with his auditory-memory deficit (i.e. he can't remember what he hears, but works better with visual/written prompts). She was fine about that too.

So all is well really. Life is ticking along smoothly and the PC should be home this week (hopefully tomorrow) - that will be nice!