All The Best Laid Plans...
…Certainly got laid to waste today! Paul and Joel, P & C headed off to Portsmouth for the weekend Yesterday afternoon, to take C to meet his Great Grandparents (we have not been down since just before he was born), leaving me home with Jake, A and E. Bliss!! People with 3 children don’t know their born (glinting smile)!! Match that with the fact that my Mum comes over on a weekend and today we could actually all FIT in her car - GREAT! Lets make the most of it and go somewhere for the afternoon together that we can’t usually go - Blue Planet should work for all of us :-). So we all took J to tennis this am, which finished at 12pm. Picked E up from her little friend’s (where she had been to play for a couple of hours) and on the way out of the said friend’s road awkwardly bumped over a speed hump (due to parked car on the left). Assumed no damage and continued on to Cheshire Oaks for lunch at the Golden Arch! On the way managed to take a wrong turn and a 8(ish) mile detour!! Starving by the time we were back in Chester, so decided to stop at the V. Little Chef we were passing and have a main meal instead (with a view to a snack tea then at Blue Planet later). Sat down - table in a draft so shuffled across to the window seat. Settled down with our menus - E was sick!! Cleaned her up - decided it was travel sickness, hunger, indigestion of one eaten-on-route banana and catarrh from her cold. Once eventually we were settled I happen to glance out of the window - only to notice that mum had a serious flat on her drivers side)! At this point I was very grateful for changing tables and for the fact that it was Mum’s side that was flat and therefore visible to me because otherwise things would have been a whole lot worse! We then spent the duration of our meal hunting through the Yellow Pages for a mechanic who would come out and change Mum’s wheel on a Saturday afternoon (she has no emergency cover…sigh!). Eventually we found some-one who said he could come in just under an hour (which he kept to thankfully). So, then I rang Blue Planet to find out last entry time which sadly was 4pm. By now it was 3.30 :-( The service in the LC was very slow, which any other time would have been very annoying, but as it was, at least the eating kept the kids occupied for most of their long boring afternoon!! So when all was said and done we headed home again :-(
How do you make up for such a disappointment? Well a silly game of Hullabaloo, another silly game of Cranium Hullabaloo, more silly fun on the Eye Toy (Play 3) and a video tea in front of a long film about pirates and adventures - Swiss Family Robinson!! And...the promise that we’ll go to the early (9.15) service in the morning and try again for Blue Planet straight afterwards. This is a major exception for us - certainly not something we would usually do on a Sunday, but I figure today was exceptional enough to make an exception!!
So on that promise I’m heading off to bed - it’s going to a struggle in the morning for me!
Sunday, November 12, 2006
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
Not-so-Mini-Blog!
Still taking it pretty easy round here. Today contained a monumentous ONE hour of official ‘school’ I think! And Joel even kicked off about that - rrr! I think things have been too slack around here just lately, but tbh, I’m not that bothered as the kids are well up to par with their peers and ahead of most I guess. Abbie is reading with reasonable fluency these days and tackling some quite tough words at times. She has not been as quick to take off with it as I seem to remember the boys being, but then I also remember thinking that once they hit 6 they just flew there-after. She is not 6 until February and it’s good for me to recall that at her age Jake had only just completed his ‘learn to read’ scheme with ACE (having not started until he was 5 ½ ) - not that he wasn’t ready before that - I just wasn’t!!
On the maths front though she is really struggling. I’m going to paste in here a copy of the email I sent to the singaporemaths yahoo group the other night;
We have moved to MPH where there is a test book with each level. The child is recommended to take a 45 minute test at the end of each section to check for mastery. My 5yo daughter just reached the end of + & - within 10 (MPH 1A) last week and failed the test - simply didn't know what to do when it came to subtractions! :-( I will also say here, that I broke the test up into 15 minute sections and only required her to do 2 sections at a time. I wasn't sure she had the concepts down when we were working through the books and this confirmed my suspicion. SO, I've erased the majority of her practice book (part one) and we will repeat the book, but to give her a break from head-maths we are going to do some of part 2 first; patterns, shapes, ordinal numbers and some other concepts that I know she already understands, before we go back and repeat the tough stuff. Meanwhile I'll have her working on education city (www.educationcity.co.uk) and the Rainbow Rock CDRom to help her along and then I think we will work MPH hand-in-hand with Cuisenaire rods (we've covered these concepts in Miquon already and she 'gets' the rods). Hopefully second time round she'll be more retentive. Perhaps she was just not ready!Any tips on how to help her remember the number bonds (fact families - whatever you choose to call them), so that she doesn't have to work them out every time? I am not fond of 'drill' - I acknowledge that it can work, but I can only see it as boring for her AND ME!! I'm planning lots of dice games - any other ideas? She is very visual/tactile (both - really), but struggles to picture images in her head. So if I say "imagine...." she simply can't! But she can make a picture with objects to illustrate what I'm saying. However, mental maths is all about transferring the images from the real to the abstract (so for example, from _manipulating_ rods physically, to _imagining_ you are doing the same, to not needing rods at all eventually), but how do you actually get from a to b if your child struggles so to make mental pictures (after-all - when I do mental maths I still make mental pictures of the numbers I'm using!)?
The other problem I find she has is that when she needs to make two 'moves' she forgets the first almost instantly, or even simply forgets the answer she has found before she has recorded it. She then needs to repeat the whole process to find the answer again - even with simple additions of 5 + 3 say!! It's like her brain doesn't actually log the answer at all and if she does manage to record it quick enough it, is forgotten instantly and, should the same sum appear again in the exercise, she will repeat the whole calculation again because she has forgotten/fails to recognise that she has already done it once, let alone remember the answer! I have been at this point before with my other two older sons, but the mud did not seem quite so thick and they did not get really sunk until we were dealing with numbers to 20! In reality they did get the basic concepts first time round and are now both very proficient at maths, but dd is REALLY struggling! We have actually covered the basic concepts of addition & subtraction within 10 four times now already in various ways. We have used EarlyBird (last year), MEP (a free downloadable curriculum I found online) and the first part of Miquon - and now we have been through MPH 1A once already and are about to repeat - that will be 5th time over the same ideas and each time she SEEMS to grasp it and then, just as quick as a blink, it's all gone again!
So, there it is in a nutshell. I must admit - I’m a little stumped!
Joel on the other had is whizzing on and not blinking at MPH 3A :-) It really is a breath of fresh air to him.
All the English resources I bought from S&S seem to going down well too and today Joel did some vocabulary work. He loves using a dictionary so this was a really attractive exercise to him.
I’ve done no formal English with Boo today, but sat and read a whole Sheltie (by the Sea) book to her - I never read nine chapters of anything in one sitting - and she thoroughly loved it!! :-) I am slowly coming to the conclusion that I am going have to approach school a bit differently for her. She is OK with pen-work, but she is really a listener/doer and would probably thrive better on Sonlight style school…it’s me that would struggle with it! After I read to her, she then read to me and then went downstairs with a CD & Book and listened to more stories.
Whilst I was reading to Boo (and the other girls should they have chose to listen instead of playing dress-up), Joel was out with my friend S and her family at a homeschool get-together over in Newcastle. S’s son asked if Joel could go and I leapt at the chance to amuse him for the afternoon. He had a great time so it seems! His biggest report is that there was a ½ pipe which he was apparently very good on with his scooter!
One saving grace atm might be the amount of time I assign them to Edcity and other times that they take off to listen to a ‘Learn French’ CD in their room while they play!
Other things…. I found this great resource today and for the $10 (just over £5) it cost me I though it worth having; A Child’s Geography - downloaded it and am busy printing it off (I’m so glad I bought that heat binder in Tchibo!!). I think it might suit Boo very well and looks like a nice ‘must have’ to own!
Caleb is now officially a ‘big boy’ - in bed!! (albeit just a converted cot, but still..!) But couple that with the fact that since the clocks went back he has been getting up at 6am (6.30 at the latest) and we are NOT early risers! AND he is getting up in the night too (no idea why)…resulting in me being one over-tired grumpy mummy too much of the time, who can’t wait for lights-out most nights. If fact I often shut down before the kids are in bed and leave them to Paul (not sure if he is best chuffed though, as he is most often the one who gets up early with C.). If you’re thinking “if C is getting up why put him in a bed?” - well - he was getting up anyway - with a thud enough to disturb the other boys as he clambered out of his cot, and then going over and hitting Joel to get him awake. With the bed he just wanders into us and leaves the boys alone - so that is much better for them at least! Strangely he always goes down OK and seems to love his big-boy bed. He’s just not too good at staying in it for very long. Even in the day he has dropped his sleeps to just about an hour each, if I can actually get him to have two at all. Why can’t he stay a baby just a little longer - long enough for me to get through the worst of pregnancy - like another 3 or 4 weeks would be OK!
That’ll do - PC headache coming on and tea needs cooking!
Still taking it pretty easy round here. Today contained a monumentous ONE hour of official ‘school’ I think! And Joel even kicked off about that - rrr! I think things have been too slack around here just lately, but tbh, I’m not that bothered as the kids are well up to par with their peers and ahead of most I guess. Abbie is reading with reasonable fluency these days and tackling some quite tough words at times. She has not been as quick to take off with it as I seem to remember the boys being, but then I also remember thinking that once they hit 6 they just flew there-after. She is not 6 until February and it’s good for me to recall that at her age Jake had only just completed his ‘learn to read’ scheme with ACE (having not started until he was 5 ½ ) - not that he wasn’t ready before that - I just wasn’t!!
On the maths front though she is really struggling. I’m going to paste in here a copy of the email I sent to the singaporemaths yahoo group the other night;
We have moved to MPH where there is a test book with each level. The child is recommended to take a 45 minute test at the end of each section to check for mastery. My 5yo daughter just reached the end of + & - within 10 (MPH 1A) last week and failed the test - simply didn't know what to do when it came to subtractions! :-( I will also say here, that I broke the test up into 15 minute sections and only required her to do 2 sections at a time. I wasn't sure she had the concepts down when we were working through the books and this confirmed my suspicion. SO, I've erased the majority of her practice book (part one) and we will repeat the book, but to give her a break from head-maths we are going to do some of part 2 first; patterns, shapes, ordinal numbers and some other concepts that I know she already understands, before we go back and repeat the tough stuff. Meanwhile I'll have her working on education city (www.educationcity.co.uk) and the Rainbow Rock CDRom to help her along and then I think we will work MPH hand-in-hand with Cuisenaire rods (we've covered these concepts in Miquon already and she 'gets' the rods). Hopefully second time round she'll be more retentive. Perhaps she was just not ready!Any tips on how to help her remember the number bonds (fact families - whatever you choose to call them), so that she doesn't have to work them out every time? I am not fond of 'drill' - I acknowledge that it can work, but I can only see it as boring for her AND ME!! I'm planning lots of dice games - any other ideas? She is very visual/tactile (both - really), but struggles to picture images in her head. So if I say "imagine...." she simply can't! But she can make a picture with objects to illustrate what I'm saying. However, mental maths is all about transferring the images from the real to the abstract (so for example, from _manipulating_ rods physically, to _imagining_ you are doing the same, to not needing rods at all eventually), but how do you actually get from a to b if your child struggles so to make mental pictures (after-all - when I do mental maths I still make mental pictures of the numbers I'm using!)?
The other problem I find she has is that when she needs to make two 'moves' she forgets the first almost instantly, or even simply forgets the answer she has found before she has recorded it. She then needs to repeat the whole process to find the answer again - even with simple additions of 5 + 3 say!! It's like her brain doesn't actually log the answer at all and if she does manage to record it quick enough it, is forgotten instantly and, should the same sum appear again in the exercise, she will repeat the whole calculation again because she has forgotten/fails to recognise that she has already done it once, let alone remember the answer! I have been at this point before with my other two older sons, but the mud did not seem quite so thick and they did not get really sunk until we were dealing with numbers to 20! In reality they did get the basic concepts first time round and are now both very proficient at maths, but dd is REALLY struggling! We have actually covered the basic concepts of addition & subtraction within 10 four times now already in various ways. We have used EarlyBird (last year), MEP (a free downloadable curriculum I found online) and the first part of Miquon - and now we have been through MPH 1A once already and are about to repeat - that will be 5th time over the same ideas and each time she SEEMS to grasp it and then, just as quick as a blink, it's all gone again!
So, there it is in a nutshell. I must admit - I’m a little stumped!
Joel on the other had is whizzing on and not blinking at MPH 3A :-) It really is a breath of fresh air to him.
All the English resources I bought from S&S seem to going down well too and today Joel did some vocabulary work. He loves using a dictionary so this was a really attractive exercise to him.
I’ve done no formal English with Boo today, but sat and read a whole Sheltie (by the Sea) book to her - I never read nine chapters of anything in one sitting - and she thoroughly loved it!! :-) I am slowly coming to the conclusion that I am going have to approach school a bit differently for her. She is OK with pen-work, but she is really a listener/doer and would probably thrive better on Sonlight style school…it’s me that would struggle with it! After I read to her, she then read to me and then went downstairs with a CD & Book and listened to more stories.
Whilst I was reading to Boo (and the other girls should they have chose to listen instead of playing dress-up), Joel was out with my friend S and her family at a homeschool get-together over in Newcastle. S’s son asked if Joel could go and I leapt at the chance to amuse him for the afternoon. He had a great time so it seems! His biggest report is that there was a ½ pipe which he was apparently very good on with his scooter!
One saving grace atm might be the amount of time I assign them to Edcity and other times that they take off to listen to a ‘Learn French’ CD in their room while they play!
Other things…. I found this great resource today and for the $10 (just over £5) it cost me I though it worth having; A Child’s Geography - downloaded it and am busy printing it off (I’m so glad I bought that heat binder in Tchibo!!). I think it might suit Boo very well and looks like a nice ‘must have’ to own!
Caleb is now officially a ‘big boy’ - in bed!! (albeit just a converted cot, but still..!) But couple that with the fact that since the clocks went back he has been getting up at 6am (6.30 at the latest) and we are NOT early risers! AND he is getting up in the night too (no idea why)…resulting in me being one over-tired grumpy mummy too much of the time, who can’t wait for lights-out most nights. If fact I often shut down before the kids are in bed and leave them to Paul (not sure if he is best chuffed though, as he is most often the one who gets up early with C.). If you’re thinking “if C is getting up why put him in a bed?” - well - he was getting up anyway - with a thud enough to disturb the other boys as he clambered out of his cot, and then going over and hitting Joel to get him awake. With the bed he just wanders into us and leaves the boys alone - so that is much better for them at least! Strangely he always goes down OK and seems to love his big-boy bed. He’s just not too good at staying in it for very long. Even in the day he has dropped his sleeps to just about an hour each, if I can actually get him to have two at all. Why can’t he stay a baby just a little longer - long enough for me to get through the worst of pregnancy - like another 3 or 4 weeks would be OK!
That’ll do - PC headache coming on and tea needs cooking!
Saturday, October 28, 2006
Just to Say…
I’m still alive!! Been feeling pants and avoiding the PC as it exacerbates my inevitable pregnancy headaches that are so unrelenting! But all is well and after our half term break and a birthday (Joel is now 8) we are back to school on Monday - although we are on light duties atm (like Maths and English in the mornings, a long lunch-break and some kind of ‘fun’ activity after lunch) until I feel more up to the general chivvying that full-on school takes!
Be back to blog land more soon!
I’m still alive!! Been feeling pants and avoiding the PC as it exacerbates my inevitable pregnancy headaches that are so unrelenting! But all is well and after our half term break and a birthday (Joel is now 8) we are back to school on Monday - although we are on light duties atm (like Maths and English in the mornings, a long lunch-break and some kind of ‘fun’ activity after lunch) until I feel more up to the general chivvying that full-on school takes!
Be back to blog land more soon!
Monday, October 09, 2006
Give Up and Give In!!
I just thought I'd share these with you all too. These are Caleb (of course) as he was climbing out of his cot after being put down for a nap. He gave up (unusually as he is pretty expert at it) and gave it to his tiredness - bless him!!
To Blog, to Blog, Oh what to Blog?
The rest of 'yes' week went happily by with some constructive play and some general having fun. I needed to chill a little so I decided it was fine to let the children do the same the majority of the time! Plus it gave me chance to get a little housework done before my SiL and her family (hubby + 4 children, I-7, R-5, M-3 and J-16 months) descended for the weekend. It’s always lovely having them over. The kids are mostly great when they are all together. J was a handful though. He and Caleb are so close in age, but J decided it was fun to bash C over the head with two hands whenever he was within reach. Apparently it’s a bit of an issue (he bites too, but he didn’t do that thankfully) and my SiL is struggling a bit to know how to deal with it without making too big a deal, so that it has a negative reward effect (tough one). Fortunately Caleb is tough and he simply avoided J a fair amount!! I never know why I clean before visitors with reams of kids arrive though - it’s such a waste of time!! Over half term we have another old friend coming up from London (a family where Paul used to work with their eldest son). They have four children too. The eldest (Ge) is now 12 (and autistic - we have known them since he was 2 ½ - where does time go?), then the next three are L-10, Gr- 8 and R-6. So when we are together we have a lovely descent of ages; Ge12, L10, J9, Gr8, J7, R6, A5, P4, E2, C1 :-) They of course are a bit too big for top and tailing, so sleeping arrangements should be fun!
School wise - back to normal today was met by a 45 minute tantrum from Joel when he opened up his maths book to the last review of 2B and had a melt down when he saw the length of it. In reality, once he got over it and knuckled down he worked solidly for 45 minutes, got stuck a couple of times, got passed it, and only made 5 mistakes out of about 30 sums. He said it was hard, but it obviously was well within his capabilities and when we chatted at length about it in the cool of the evening, he could see it was silly fuss for nothing much. I just wish he would remember that the next time. That said we are switching to MPH now so this shouldn’t be an issue any longer as there are no ‘reviews’ and revisions as such - just more workbook practice as you go along, which for us will be the best thing I’m sure. It probably works out to equal amounts of work, but with the different layout it just doesn’t look so daunting when you open the page. Hopefully we will be ready to start after half term (which is only two weeks away). This week we’ll finish off the two ‘revisions’ in the workbook 2B and then I have some BBC skillwise sheets I’d like to work through with him to recap on different methods of mental calculations and particularly recover rounding to the nearest 10 and 100. I just think these ideas have struggled to take root with him.
Abbie is doing great with her maths too and loving MPH. Today we started counting on and she got it straight away. She is definitely catching on now. She was even practicing her maths walking home the other day - completely voluntarily - adding door numbers; “that’s number 22, 2+2 is 4” - etc… Just simple ones like that, but it’s a start :-)
Other stuff is going well too. We made some clay models today (looking at the properties of clay in science) and Boo made a lovely cat. When it is dry and painted I’ll post pics. Joel made a cool flat-man and Phoebe made a sweet flower with a fair amount of help from your truly! So that was fun.
History was Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego - a great story and we had fun with that too.
We then rounded off the whole day by watching ‘Because of Winn Dixie’ on DVD - based a book by Kate DiCamilo that we read way back and I’ve never seen the video of it until now, although I knew it existed. It was really excellent and unusually true to the book. I spent a good portion of the film in tears (as I did when I read the book too) and the kids loved it. Jake said it was one of the best films he’s ever seen - and I guess he remembered the book best too as he was the oldest when we read it. I might just go back and read it again to them - or maybe Jake could read it himself now. It’s not a difficult read at all, but it is a great one!
And last news, but not at all least, is that I’m pregnant! Not planned, but happy and feeling blessed (I just wish I could have lost a bit more of that weight before I fell though - pregnancy was pretty uncomfortable last time and my right hip is already twinging and I’m only 9 weeks (I think!!)) !! We’re just wondering where exactly the baby is going to fit in the house? It’s doable- just, but it’ll be a squash - even more than it is now! Ah well - a few weeks to cross those bridges..!
The rest of 'yes' week went happily by with some constructive play and some general having fun. I needed to chill a little so I decided it was fine to let the children do the same the majority of the time! Plus it gave me chance to get a little housework done before my SiL and her family (hubby + 4 children, I-7, R-5, M-3 and J-16 months) descended for the weekend. It’s always lovely having them over. The kids are mostly great when they are all together. J was a handful though. He and Caleb are so close in age, but J decided it was fun to bash C over the head with two hands whenever he was within reach. Apparently it’s a bit of an issue (he bites too, but he didn’t do that thankfully) and my SiL is struggling a bit to know how to deal with it without making too big a deal, so that it has a negative reward effect (tough one). Fortunately Caleb is tough and he simply avoided J a fair amount!! I never know why I clean before visitors with reams of kids arrive though - it’s such a waste of time!! Over half term we have another old friend coming up from London (a family where Paul used to work with their eldest son). They have four children too. The eldest (Ge) is now 12 (and autistic - we have known them since he was 2 ½ - where does time go?), then the next three are L-10, Gr- 8 and R-6. So when we are together we have a lovely descent of ages; Ge12, L10, J9, Gr8, J7, R6, A5, P4, E2, C1 :-) They of course are a bit too big for top and tailing, so sleeping arrangements should be fun!
School wise - back to normal today was met by a 45 minute tantrum from Joel when he opened up his maths book to the last review of 2B and had a melt down when he saw the length of it. In reality, once he got over it and knuckled down he worked solidly for 45 minutes, got stuck a couple of times, got passed it, and only made 5 mistakes out of about 30 sums. He said it was hard, but it obviously was well within his capabilities and when we chatted at length about it in the cool of the evening, he could see it was silly fuss for nothing much. I just wish he would remember that the next time. That said we are switching to MPH now so this shouldn’t be an issue any longer as there are no ‘reviews’ and revisions as such - just more workbook practice as you go along, which for us will be the best thing I’m sure. It probably works out to equal amounts of work, but with the different layout it just doesn’t look so daunting when you open the page. Hopefully we will be ready to start after half term (which is only two weeks away). This week we’ll finish off the two ‘revisions’ in the workbook 2B and then I have some BBC skillwise sheets I’d like to work through with him to recap on different methods of mental calculations and particularly recover rounding to the nearest 10 and 100. I just think these ideas have struggled to take root with him.
Abbie is doing great with her maths too and loving MPH. Today we started counting on and she got it straight away. She is definitely catching on now. She was even practicing her maths walking home the other day - completely voluntarily - adding door numbers; “that’s number 22, 2+2 is 4” - etc… Just simple ones like that, but it’s a start :-)
Other stuff is going well too. We made some clay models today (looking at the properties of clay in science) and Boo made a lovely cat. When it is dry and painted I’ll post pics. Joel made a cool flat-man and Phoebe made a sweet flower with a fair amount of help from your truly! So that was fun.
History was Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego - a great story and we had fun with that too.
We then rounded off the whole day by watching ‘Because of Winn Dixie’ on DVD - based a book by Kate DiCamilo that we read way back and I’ve never seen the video of it until now, although I knew it existed. It was really excellent and unusually true to the book. I spent a good portion of the film in tears (as I did when I read the book too) and the kids loved it. Jake said it was one of the best films he’s ever seen - and I guess he remembered the book best too as he was the oldest when we read it. I might just go back and read it again to them - or maybe Jake could read it himself now. It’s not a difficult read at all, but it is a great one!
And last news, but not at all least, is that I’m pregnant! Not planned, but happy and feeling blessed (I just wish I could have lost a bit more of that weight before I fell though - pregnancy was pretty uncomfortable last time and my right hip is already twinging and I’m only 9 weeks (I think!!)) !! We’re just wondering where exactly the baby is going to fit in the house? It’s doable- just, but it’ll be a squash - even more than it is now! Ah well - a few weeks to cross those bridges..!
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
‘YES’ week begins…
Yesterday was the start of our activity ‘yes’ week. We started off with a couple of games; ‘My first Vocabulon’ and ‘Days of the Week’. Then in the afternoon we had a friend come round to play, so more ed’ stuff really happened, but that was OK. Today has been pretty full on and I’m tired out. I was supposed to get some free-time to get some housework done and this is the first breathing space I’ve had all day! The kids started out by choosing to get out all their old lapbooks and some file-folder games I made way back when Phoebe didn’t know her numbers or colours (that seems like history now) which meant that they were great for El’s, but she needed my hep with them, and they still had some play-value for the younger girls. Joel busied himself with the lapbooks and all in all they probably spent over 2 hours working with those. Then Joel started on the Hama and made a bus, and Phoebe followed and made her first un-guided heart design - it’s lovely too :) Elle and Caleb did a bit of Hama too, but Elle will never complete anything - she does a few beads and gives up. Abbie wasn’t interested in doing Hama, so she continued with the lapbooks playing with the Egyptian dress-up dolls.
After lunch Joel went on BrainPop (shame that cost’s so much. I can’t afford it as well as Ed City) and played on there for about ¾ of an hour I guess, whilst the girls knuckled down to painting in some pictures from a rather nice book I have. They are still at that now. Currently P. is doing a Christmas tree and A. a whole load of presents. I was thinking we could make a ‘big picture’ combining the two and display it in a few weeks time!!
Tomorrow we already have a list; Socially Speaking game, Playdoh, ‘ART’ (I might make that a little more ‘looking at’ art than doing it though - I’ll see), French, more Hama I expect. The park is on the list too, but that’s rather weather pending - it’s not been good for a few days now :( Autumn is in the air for sure!!
Jacob had a ‘challenge day’ at a different school today, so I’m looking forward to hearing all about that when he gets home. I hope he had a good time. It might have meant he missed his footy training today though, so he was a little annoyed about that!
Jacob has also been ‘spotted’ by his swimming club coach as having some talent! He wants to keep him for an hours training n Wednesday nights now. To begin with that can only be fortnightly because of our other time commitments, but come the summer (and his birthday) he can cycle himself home, so that won’t be a problem. He can go more often then too if he needs to :-) Tomorrow & next week he has a gala & time-trials, so I guess that will be a test for him that he hasn’t met before. I’m sure he’ll do fine though. He really is very sleek in the water and displaces hardly any water (except on his butterfly - which I can’t even do at all!). I raced him the other day, front-crawl up our local 30m brine pool. My hair fell down (lost my toggle) which slowed me, but only fractionally and I was still ‘going for it’ some - he beat me by a stroke!! When he did his 400m (16 lengths) he did it in about 10 minutes and that was about 6 months ago - he’s significantly faster now and swims over 30 lengths every week (in ½ hour), so I’ll be interested to see what he times in at tomorrow and next week when he is swimming flat-out.
Yesterday was the start of our activity ‘yes’ week. We started off with a couple of games; ‘My first Vocabulon’ and ‘Days of the Week’. Then in the afternoon we had a friend come round to play, so more ed’ stuff really happened, but that was OK. Today has been pretty full on and I’m tired out. I was supposed to get some free-time to get some housework done and this is the first breathing space I’ve had all day! The kids started out by choosing to get out all their old lapbooks and some file-folder games I made way back when Phoebe didn’t know her numbers or colours (that seems like history now) which meant that they were great for El’s, but she needed my hep with them, and they still had some play-value for the younger girls. Joel busied himself with the lapbooks and all in all they probably spent over 2 hours working with those. Then Joel started on the Hama and made a bus, and Phoebe followed and made her first un-guided heart design - it’s lovely too :) Elle and Caleb did a bit of Hama too, but Elle will never complete anything - she does a few beads and gives up. Abbie wasn’t interested in doing Hama, so she continued with the lapbooks playing with the Egyptian dress-up dolls.
After lunch Joel went on BrainPop (shame that cost’s so much. I can’t afford it as well as Ed City) and played on there for about ¾ of an hour I guess, whilst the girls knuckled down to painting in some pictures from a rather nice book I have. They are still at that now. Currently P. is doing a Christmas tree and A. a whole load of presents. I was thinking we could make a ‘big picture’ combining the two and display it in a few weeks time!!
Tomorrow we already have a list; Socially Speaking game, Playdoh, ‘ART’ (I might make that a little more ‘looking at’ art than doing it though - I’ll see), French, more Hama I expect. The park is on the list too, but that’s rather weather pending - it’s not been good for a few days now :( Autumn is in the air for sure!!
Jacob had a ‘challenge day’ at a different school today, so I’m looking forward to hearing all about that when he gets home. I hope he had a good time. It might have meant he missed his footy training today though, so he was a little annoyed about that!
Jacob has also been ‘spotted’ by his swimming club coach as having some talent! He wants to keep him for an hours training n Wednesday nights now. To begin with that can only be fortnightly because of our other time commitments, but come the summer (and his birthday) he can cycle himself home, so that won’t be a problem. He can go more often then too if he needs to :-) Tomorrow & next week he has a gala & time-trials, so I guess that will be a test for him that he hasn’t met before. I’m sure he’ll do fine though. He really is very sleek in the water and displaces hardly any water (except on his butterfly - which I can’t even do at all!). I raced him the other day, front-crawl up our local 30m brine pool. My hair fell down (lost my toggle) which slowed me, but only fractionally and I was still ‘going for it’ some - he beat me by a stroke!! When he did his 400m (16 lengths) he did it in about 10 minutes and that was about 6 months ago - he’s significantly faster now and swims over 30 lengths every week (in ½ hour), so I’ll be interested to see what he times in at tomorrow and next week when he is swimming flat-out.
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