THE FROG-ACADEMY

Blog as you Go!

Today I’ve decided to leave open my Word document (blog) and blog as I go, so you’ll get interspersed glimpses of my day … Hope you like it – hope I like it!!

9.30am – The Spanish children are here and I’ve decided they can all just play this morning. SO, having played Football/Polly Pockets briefly, as children will, they have stationed themselves at a computer screen each with a friend each beside them. Boo is playing Junior Monopoly PC style with H, and Joel is playing Crash on the PS2 with A, although I’m not sure how much A is into it really, but they seem happy enough together. Phoebe & El’s are at Helen’s and C is sleeping.
The washing is on the line and another load on. The breakfast dishes are washed (thankyou Phoebe) and I’m blogging!
I think I’ll go downstairs now with a duster & polish to attack the front room while I have a chance…

10.00am – still sat here reading blogs!! Must go, must go … All the kids are now playing with the marble run in the front room – hmmm – maybe I should sort my bedroom instead, or clean down the surfaces in the kitchen as is the fly mission for today, or maybe I’ll procrastinate just a little bit longer!!

10.15 – really going now..!

10.30 – the power of 15 minutes - OK, so I didn’t clean, but I put away all the girls’ clothes (two big piles) and the children are all dancing to S-club now – lots of giggles from downstairs. They say the marbles are away – I haven’t checked yet! Now, what next… snack time maybe…no, I’ll put away the babies clothes first! Err –that’s a bit loud…

11.10 – OK – that’s all the babies' (E & C) clothes away – that takes ages. The kids have been playing musical statues most of that time. Now it’s music change time (to DC Talk) and they have now helped themselves to drinks. Need to go give them biscuits and then apparently I’m to be the ‘referee’ for the game – and the war between my two by the sound of it!

11.40 – Drinks and biscuits consumed (the marbles were away!) and musical chairs disintegrated into too much competitiveness for Boo, so we called that a day. Now we have spontaneous art happening downstairs. They are all experimenting with colour mixing. I’ve suggested to Joel he writes down which colours he mixes and what the resulting colour is, but really they are just having fun and I know he won’t do it. I might get him to ‘write-up’ later with a journal of what they did this morning and ‘science’ results of the colour mixing…but then I might not – we’ll see. I might just leave it as a ‘fun’ morning in their minds. Why can’t every day be like this? I wish it were, but in reality it takes outside blood to make both the kids and me more spontaneous, otherwise we stick to the ‘safe’ routines That said, this is how I would like to see our activity weeks work out and today is reassuring me that it really is a good idea.

12.10 – Going to make some sandwiches now and meet Helen over the park and do the children swap over there – no hurry to do much else today, I'm just enjoying the feel of today so far.

14.20 - we’ve been to the park, had our picnic and a play on the swings. It was a nice opportunity to chat to Helen about a couple of churchy things while the children played. The spanish children have now gone back to Helen’s and I have my own back. Joel has asked to have a rest “because I’m very, very, tired!” It’s most unusual for him, so I said he could have ½ hour reading time. Meanwhile I’ve sent the three girls to do likewise. I’m using it as a filter really. If they fall asleep I’m in for a quiet afternoon – and no school work getting done, if not then we’ll start school nice and fresh in a bit. Phoebe is making a bit of a fuss about it, but she’ll go – she never objects for long. She gets that it doesn’t really work!

15.15 – about to go round up those still awake for a little bit of brain stretching. Can’t do much at this time of day though – maybe an hour, no more.

17.00 – well – an hour and a half…! I’ve put out the second load of washing to dry and folded the first. Phoebe has covered big and small, colours, shapes, numbers (wrote her first number 4 with no dots to help her) and had a nice time. Abbie regained four of yesterday’s lost leaves from her tricky word tree, and gained a couple more besides, sorted out a sheet of igh/i-e/ie/y sounds, copied the written numbers seven, eight and nine, wrote two sentences about two pictures : “This is the beach. You can swim.” & “Aimee can play on the swing.” (her spelling of Aimee not mine, but I liked it!) She has also done three pages of miquon work. She totally understood making number sentances of her own with the family of 3, 2 & 5 – yeah!

Time to order tea soon. We've decided to have a chinese tonight

18.10 – tea should be here soon. In the last hour we have veged for a bit and Abbie has practiced her ballet. There were a couple of dances that needed some extra work, which she seems to have polished quite well tonight. School is tidied away and everyone is back up from their rests now (Caleb excepting). The middle three are all tidying away this morning's Poly Pockets – hopefully quickly before tea arrives. On order we have BBQ ribs and chicken chow in copious quantities for the kids, SF rice and prawn crackers, dunno what Paul is having and I’m having ‘triple roast & noddles in soup’ – which looks yummy, but this is a first try for this take away. We usually use another one, but I fancied giving this one a try. It’s a speciality noodle bar & I like noodles!! Need to go get the second load of washing in off the line and put on the last load of the day.

20.45 – tea was lovely, but, having looked forward to it all day, I now have the instant headache I get when I eat chinese. It’s been so long since I had one I had forgotten – it’s pants! As usual I am still nagging the boys to finish off their jobs and as usual they are missing out on their story for not being ready to listnen by 8.30. I really wish they would sort themselves out. I’d really like to be able to read more to them and this is really the only opportunity we get, but it’s too late after 8.30pm and I want some no-kids time. By now I’ve had enough. It’s always nice to chill knowing the washing up is done and the house is tidy – albeit not clean! (No, I never did do any of that in the end today, but I did get a mountain of clothes put away instead and another mountain washed and dried, which also needed doing – more to put away tonight/tomorrow now!)

21.00 – I caved and read to the boys – just because I really wanted to tonight and at last they are all in bed, but not yet asleep…
So that’s my day. I’m going to watch TV for a bit now. Paul has gone to housegroup, but we couldn’t get a sitter tonight so I’ve stayed home (as you see!). It’s been a much better day today. Bedtime has been stressful, but then that’s par for the course really. It’s been busy, but not rushed or hectic; sunny, but not scorching and I feel like we actually managed to pack in a fair bit of free-range education today as well!

PE & Music – all that dancing, musical chairs and ballet with Boo later

DT /?Physic – with the marble run

Science/Art – painting and colour mixing (Joel made some gorgeous shades of blues and greens)

Maths and English - with Abbie & Phoebe (not so free-range though)

More English – everyone had stories in the end and with the boys tonight prediction’ – we’re reading the circus of adventure and it’s just getting interesting…

Science again – ‘Night-time animals’ to the girls at bedtime (usborne lift-the-flap book – gorgeous!).

‘Life Skills’ and Socialisation +++ ; dealing with conflicts, having fun together, negotiating rules and roles – and all that kind of stuff that’s really just run of the mill !
Not bad

21.20 – Oh look there’s a little person on my knee! …. Back to bed Ellie (guess who slept too long this afternoon). It’s OK though she’ll go back in about 5 minutes and that will be her ‘til the morning then. She’s so sweet how she sits here with her two little Polly’s pretending they are discussing their left and right feet! Her little people have very long and convoluted conversations – not usually sure what they are about entirely, but they are very cute to listen to. It always seems sad to me when this stage passes and becomes a much sophisticated version of the same thing, but with more people and alongside peers. It always signposts ‘growing up’ .