Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Weather!

The weather here has been, to  put it mildly, WILD! Now I know what living at the top of a hill in a less than sheltered location feels like! Yes there are plenty trees, but it’s still pretty exposed. Strangely though I kind of enjoy listening to wind billowing around the place (even if the kids really don’t!). I getting used to going to sleep to that noise now. It’s seem kind of quiet when the weather finally decides to calm down. We’ve had almost 2 weeks of it now (maybe more, I’ve lost count). I’m not sure our bunnies appreciate it as much as I do though!

The pants thing about such rubbishy weather is the lack of ‘going outside’ to run off steam. I can’t abide running in the house, even in a big house – quite frankly it is too dangerous, but I do appreciate the need for the kids to burn off somewhere…

I am grumpy as…what’s a good metaphor?… an old woman! I think maybe I’m brewing the bug the kids are sharing between themselves (runny tummy, temperature, heavy cold – in that order). Def had the tummy this morning :( Did not help my mood at all!

I’m not going to lay myself bare here tonight, but suffice to say, today was NOT a good Mummy day :( I lost my patience too quickly and easily and I was less than encouraging of my children’s efforts – this of course will not encourage them to be creative at all (see below). I wish I could stop shooting myself in the foot!

We are having an ‘auto’ week. I seem to be interspersing with these lately. 2 weeks on boxes, one week on auto! Basically I tell the kids what they must do in the day and they are free to keep themselves busy learning whatever they like and by whatever means for the rest of it. It’s not working terribly well this week (although it has been better other weeks), but that might be more me than them! I’ve decided we all need to sit down and have a family conference about what we like/dislike about the workboxes, what we can change to make them work better, and how I can change to help the children learn better (will I want to hear this?!); I’d like to address expectations and ‘goals’ (I think maybe it might be good for the older children to set themselves some to work towards – to encourage them to take responsibility for their own learning a little more). I don’t want the workboxes to become a ‘timetable in a box’ (which I am in danger of slipping into out of sheer laziness and lack of creativity). I know some people do actually choose to use them that way, but I was hoping they would instil more independence, more creativity and more diversity into our learning. I think diversity is possibly doing ok – and probably independence (in terms of getting on by themselves, but not so much in terms of thinking for themselves), but creativity is dragging her heals! I’d like to know what the children think though…

All in all a rubbishy kind of day – didn’t even make it Little Drama Group :(.  The children failed to tidy away the mountain of ‘stuff’ that they had strewn around in the ‘school room’ through the day (which should of course have been tidied as they went along…) before it would have been worth leaving. By the time they were done the group was about to start and it’s a 20+ minute walk to the village, so not worth going. I was cross (a bit beyond reason I think), especially as I think they are letting Kel’ (leader) down, as they are supposed to be practicing for a little ‘sharing’ at the end of term, but there have to be consequences sometimes don’t there?! I just hate that those have a knock-on effect of others and in our case (where 4 children are involved) that is felt quite severely. I shall ask them to apologise for their absence next week.

Yesterday was a little better though and I had fun with Lilo and DD in the afternoon making biscuits. The pics are on my 365 :D It turned into quite the little cottage industry! I can be a good Mummy too – I can!

 

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