THE FROG-ACADEMY

It’s All Happening Here!!
This post was published to The Wellyboots Tribe at 17:34:29 06/07/2006

OK – decision made – ‘making my way’ wins :-) It was a close one (in my mind), but I decided to let Jacob have the ‘down by the sea’ template and I’ll find something neat for Joel, so he can have a blog too. Jake was showing an interest the other night and although his old one never took off (and I’ve forgotten the password it’s been so long!) I think he might be ‘up for it’ these days. He’s beginning to want to use the computer for stuff other than games. I know at school he uses it a lot for research and he is becoming keen to expand on that at home. School really has worked for him! He wrote a beautiful piece about ‘a day in the life of a crab’ the other day and he has gone up two levels in the reading scheme this week. I still think the books he has are too easy for him, but it is supposedly assessed on his comprehension and vocabulary levels, so it may be fair play. Parents evening next week – looking forward to that and seeing all what he’s been doing. I do feel ‘out’ of it a bit as it’s difficult to get a clear picture from what he tells us and he has so little homework that I can’t tell from that either really. I did get a sneak look at his literacy book when he brought it home to type up his ‘day in the life’ piece though and on the whole I would say his work is the average of a 9yo and much better than it was when he was at home. I would like to see his handwriting looking better though (that has sadly gone down hill a fair bit, but is still neat for a 9yo lad) and his maths, because I am sure that he is not being stretched by his maths in the least. Anyway I just hope and pray that when he comes home to Wellyboots, all the good things he has built into his learning can continue at home.

Our week has been pretty full and busy – and a bit eventful.

We have had a bulge in the boys ceiling on and off for the last couple of weeks. We (and the plumber) think that the stop cock in the tank needs replacing and the water is overflowing. Anyway – this morning the artex eventually gave in to the pressure, but thankfully only rendered a tiny hole and so the water has been draining slowly out all day. Plumber coming tomorrow, so I just hope it stays under control over night although it is obviously still being fed as it is still dripping a fair bit. It’ll also mean the ceiling will need repairing as the artex is wrecked – I’m SO glad we only rent our home, So far, in the year we have been here, we have needed the pipe under the sink repairing and a replacement kitchen cupboard because it was damaged by the ‘flood’ , the fence at the back of the garden fell down and needs three new panels (it’s propped up OK atm though) and now this latest water disaster. If I look around me there are other things that need doing too; the shower has stopped turning off so now we have to pull the power cord simultaneously to turning it off, the flat roof over the car-port has a leak (seems like most of the house’s problems are water related!), and a lot of the plug sockets could do with being replaced as many of them don’t have on/off switches and are therefore a bit worrying with tinies around (thank goodness for socket protectors). If it were our own home all the cost would fall to us, but thankfully, it doesn’t!! They have insurance so a lot of the cost is absorbed by that, but it’s still a hassle. The great thing is though that they are so apologetic. I mean, most landlords would be a bit cheesed by now and probably be trying to say it was our fault, but they are so nice. As soon as we tell them there is an issue they are ‘on the case’ – none of this 2 years in a manky bathroom because the landlord can’t be bothered to replace the tiles that have fallen off the walls because of the damp behind them (thereby leaving large gaps in the sealant around the bath and making things even worse), or the leaky toilet that the plumber would condemn if he were permitted to replace it! I am SO thankful for the blessing that is this house!! None of it’s ‘issues’ affect our quality of life in any way, and if they do they get fixed :)

Anyway – I was going to talk about school and other stuff and got way side-tracked and soon I need to go cook tea as P is out at 7.45pm again for music practice

Gonna have to finish this later…

Back!!

Just to finish off then – v. quickly as I really want to go bed – it’s too late – again!

It transpires that I am going to be looking after two Spanish children on a Tuesday morning for the next couple of months, excepting the days we are away, and this week was their first visit. I made them some Spanish/English word books, but figured my children would actually not be that interested in those. So we started the morning out with them all watching the end of ‘The Incredibles’ though. which mine had been watching all morning (and have every morning this week I might add!) and then we did some collage art. H & A (the visitors) did some beautiful work. A (7yo boy) has limited English, but his sister’s (9yo) is very good. ‘A’ seemed to understand more than he chose to though. They all spent a good while on that and then I encouraged them all to play a game together. They started a game of Junior Monopoly, but Boo lost interest half way through so they all decided to stop and just mess about in the garden together. Eventually, as will always happen, Joel and A ended up on the PS2 and Abbie & H went upstairs to play whatever it is that little girls play together! Everyone seemed happy enough, so I hope H & A will look forward to coming back next week. I just need to think of something to do to get them all chatting – as much as is possible! If you’re wondering where my other girls were – they were at Helen’s and after lunch Helen and I swapped children so that I could carry on with tying up loose ends with mine for the summer.

Goals for the next three weeks;

Finish (eventually) the plants project, but maybe leave the notebook/lapbook assembly to be done in the holidays).

Joel to finish Primary Maths 2B – he’s easily on target. He’s breezing trough at the moment and has realised that instead of crying every time he reaches a ‘practice’ he can actually whizz through them in less than 10 minutes. Today he did a practice and three other whole exercises, plus the textbook work (verbally) all in about 25 minutes!! I think he must have hit the ‘I get it’ stage :-)

Abbie it finish EarlyBird maths (she’s up to the ‘telling time’ section) and polish up her addition and subtraction skills a little more using Miquon, both of which she is well on target for.

Complete ‘Write about my World’ with Joel – I am so bored of this now – he seems to suddenly just be enjoying the drawing, having hated it for the last 18 months – and I want him to begin concentrating less on that and more on the writing, so this feels like a bit of a waste of time to me now, but he is enjoying it, so I’ll let him complete the book – it’ll please me to actually do that. in reality I hate leaving things almost finished!

Complete ‘Grammar Skills 2’ with Joel – also well on target :-)

???? try to do mock SATS with Joel again – it didn’t work before, but he’s jumped loads in the last couple of months, so he might be OK now. It wasn’t so much the answers tht presented a problem as the questions – iyswim!

Round off the science on ‘molecular movement’ that we have been doing – sounds deeper than it is and is really only an afternoons work.

Bring Joel’s weather project to a suitable close and think about how we are going to ‘present’ his learning in a re-visitable way (lapbook/notebook). He wants to do a lapbook, but I think it might end up being a bit of both due to the amount of info he will have. I would also like him to be able to expand on his learning in later years, so I would like it to be extendable – hmmm – that presents a challenge!

WOW – if I achieve all that I will be well impressed!

That’ll do – need some shut eye.

I hope you all like my new image – it’s very clean and fresh I think. Jacob’s blog will be coming up soon @ http://www.jacobite2.blogspot.com/ – he’s not posted yet, but he wants to tomorrow, and so if any of you have children who want to be blog friends (he’s 9) then get them to pay a visit and leave their blog addy – ta :) Also Joel will be getting a blog soon too – I’ll let you’ll know when it’s up and running :-)

Night!