6 WEEKS IN...

Due to computer issues I've not been on to blog (or anything else) much lately, but having spent the last couple of days building a new PC ~ yes, I built my own, with a bit of messenger help from a friend here and there ~ I can hopefully get back into a bit of a routine with my online-life. But I must say, it's been nice to take a break and focus on other things for a bit :D

So, I promised an update on how our new more-flexible system is working and on the whole, I'm pleased to say, it's working very well for MOST of the children. For Stitch however, the person who I thought this would work better for, it is not working SO well as I'd hoped. This might be more because he is basically 8 and rather work-shy. It doesn't matter what I ask him to do ~ learning activities, or simply picking up his mess ~ he walks around in a dream-world: he begins things, stops, doesn't go back, gets into trouble (and doesn't really care that he has) and is generally quite difficult to motivate to do ANYTHING constructive with his days! He is a mud-up-your-fingernails kid and I need to find a way to be a Mum who is more happy-with-that than I currently am. I still am not managing to be very hands-off tbh and trusting the process doesn't come easily to me :-( That said, he makes it all that much harder for both of us by not showing me any willingness to do anything other than play (and distract others). When he does do some work, he tries to do too much at once and gets in a tizzy. He doesn't seem to register his own limits, or want to listen when I try to help him. So, instead of doing some maths (for example) for about 10 or 20 minutes, and then taking a break and doing something else for a bit before going back to it, he tries to cram for a whole hour and wonders why he hates working so much - he has fried his brain! Then, because the last experience wasn't great, he avoids doing anything at all and ends up with hours and hours of work left to do at the end of the week, having used up all his 'free learning' time in one or two swoops, or spent the whole day playing!  I don't know if I'm doing the right thing by leaving him to learn the hard way, meaning he misses out on free time with his siblings in the evenings and on weekends (because he has work to catch up), or whether I would be better to come down a bit harder on him so that he has more free time. He, by the way, doesn't see that all the playing he does in what he considers 'school time' counts towards his free time. My children are very stuck in a 9-4 routine and it's proving very hard to get any of them to break that mindset. Stitch, however isn't so much in the routine as his mind likes to think he is!! We're only 6 weeks in though, so I'm hoping things will improve. For the others though, the new way has proved very successful. It enables to my early risers to get up and get on, and my late risers to take it at their own pace. DD, for example is a 'plougher' - this week he has worked really diligently and completed everything he 'must' do by Thursday late morning, leaving himself free to get his chores out of the way and carry on building his den in the garden all afternoon and all day tomorrow if he chooses! We've also done some baking this afternoon, so that was 'extra' that he chose to join in with. Stitch on the other hand, just by comparison, still has about 3 hours worth of empty spaces on his chart, so will end up with a day of work and chores tomorrow (and maybe Saturday), but instead of doing some of it, he is currently in the garden den-building with his brother. It's not that I don't count the den-building as educational - I know it is - and I would be fine with it, IF every now and then he just came in and did a few minutes 'work', to chip away at the back-log he has left himself. I wouldn't mind either if he didn't care about working in the evenings, but I know that I will have a tantrum on my hands if I ask him to do anything after 4pm. I'd be happy with him working in the evenings ~ after-all that is definitely when I work best and it might well be for him too, but HE is not happy with that arrangement, because it means he doesn't get 'screen time' (screens aren't on in the day time, other than for educational purposes, as they are too distracting to EVERYone), or to 'play' (lol). I've been out and reminded him of the time and his need to do some work, but he just 'nnnyah'-ed at me and carried on, so I'll be facing upset later then! This really is a catch 22 ~ fuss now or fuss later... let him choose to make bad choices & face his own consequence, or coerce him into doing things my way and face the long-term consequence of a child who is possibly less able to make good choices on their own. Right now I'm fighting the urge to coerce him and letting him be because I THINK that is the right thing to do, but I'm also dreading the melt-down that will be inevitable later. 'Training' children is no easy task, when you have one that doesn't want to listen to any form of reason - and doesn't easily learn lessons from the consequences (good or bad) of his actions. 

As part of my 'make it better' this year, I've have decided that we need to go out more. I don't drive, so this can prove challenging, but Paul's hours at work have changed a little and he now has two days a week working for the church. This is great for us too, because it means on a Tuesday he is free to drop us at the train station in the morning (saving us a phenomena amount of bus fares) and we can off out for the day and be back in time for tea :D. So last week I renewed my family railcard, courtesy of Tesco vouchers, and we took advantage of the tail-end of the Indian summer and headed for Colwyn Bay. Just an hour on the train and we spent the best part of the day on the beach! The kids loved it and the day was not too long. The clouds came over and it began to rain just as it was time for us to get the train home :D. I think we will go to Liverpool next month. It's a year since we were last there, and we never got out of the Science Museum that day!! This time we won't go there, but instead will head down to the docks, where The Tate and the slave museum are ~ or we might spend some time looking at the amazing Architecture! Liverpool is definitely a city we need to make several trips to, to get the best from it. 

This weekend my eldest children are all away... four are going to The Gathering and their levels of excitement are rising as I speak. This is one of the highlights of their year. Lots of meeting up with friends, and LOUD worship with about 2000 other young people from around the country. Worship to D&B music may not be for everyone, but they love it!! Joel decided not to go thought this year, so he is going to a different worship conference in Bradford with another friend. 

I'll leave you with some of the highlights of the last few weeks in photos (and video).

Beach Day...

Male or female?

The English trench!

The German trench.

The bombing!

Other fun that's happened...

SCIENCE

This is possible Phoebe's favourite subject this year. She's loving being left to do her own thing with this and work at a her own pace.

There's a stop motion that we made to go with this too, but I've not uploaded it yet.

ART
Stitch & DD's

Chip's

Chip's first 'proper' people drawings :D

MATHS 

(with spontaneous art and literacy built in)

SPIELGABEN

WRITING

NATURE WATCHING

COOKERY
The girls and DD made shortbread...

whilst Stitch and chip made simple biscuits.

And today we made these!


...which were seriously INCREDIBLE ~ so incredible they left Chip speechless - and he is SO fussy about his goodies!

This week at our house...

ART ~ we'll start here because it's pretty :D

This week, we did 'Big Face' watercolours, which are meant to be sort of Eric Carle-ish; here's how they turned out (youngest to eldest this week) ...

We liked how, despite following the exact same instructions, we each ended up with faces that had distinct character of their own. 

COOKERY ~ 
Regardless of what I said last week, we did in fact make pastry this week. I decided that as I was going to cook turkey pasties for lunch anyway, we may as well make pastry and pies instead. So that we did and it was a very successful lesson :D

I gave each of them a bowl and the ingredients they needed, then I verbally guided them through the whole process. 

This point was the hardest, and I did assist a little with the cutting and mixing, but purely for the sake of their arms - the pastry was perfect.

We cheated a little and used bought puff pastry for the lids, but in all honesty, the shortcrust pastry the chids made had more taste and texture to it :D

Don't they look amazing! And they tasted fabulous too :D

I've bought a book this week and Abbie has decided she is going to work through it as part of her studies. It was originally an Irish Home Ec' textbook, back in the 80's. Although it's a bit dated, it is still a lovely text to work with, covering all sorts of different aspects of health & home-keeping :D

TOT-SCHOOL ~  
We have done a fair bit actually, but I've sadly not taken many pictures. I did take some today though, while Chip was playing with the Spielgaben. We were having some fun with spinning shapes and seeing how they looked as they spun. Chip was quite fascinated with this, but not as much as I thought he might be.

We did another lesson yesterday too, where he matched these 3D shapes with others the same, and began to learn the words for 'cube', 'cylinder' and 'sphere' (or Sophia as he says it). He did well, and still remembered the names today. Spielgaben certainly works for him :D

This week I have also put him on a trial of Busythings. Stitch and DD used to enjoy this site when they were younger, and it's exactly the kind of experimental learning that Chip likes. He has been very fond of PoissonRouge (and still is), but I think Busythings might stretch him a little more now. So far he is loving it :D. He likes Starfall too, but prefers to play the songs on there over and over, which can be a little tedious for the rest of us! 

Besides that, he is doing numerous drawings and trying to write things. His writing looks like some kind of binary :  l + 0 l 0 + l 0 . Then he looks at it and sees it is lots of ones, zeros and pluses and says he was writing numbers not letters ~ smart kid ;-)

IN OTHER NEWS ~  
Saturday saw the girls and I trawling the charity shops in our local town ~ which is pretty much a town full of charity shops, coffee shops, designer shops, and a great market! I need clothes suitable for wearing in 30+ degrees for 3 weeks, and the girls just needed to re-stock their wardrobes since they have grown so fast! Abbie has gradually outgrown most of her clothes, but they don't all pass well to TP, who is a completely different shape. TP has grown loads this last year too, and was running out of choices. Charity shops here often have some very nice stuff, so we can do a big stock up for a fraction of the cost of buying new. My problem is, I have personal issues with the 'charity shop' smell ~ it brings back memories I don't like too much, but sometimes I have to swallow that and just get on with it.  We shopped for about 3 hours, spent quite a lot of money, and the girls came home with a handsome stash and a 'new' coat each. I really can't complain.

I, on the other hand was less successful in my search. Why is it that all the plus size clothes seem to be made of nasty polyester/viscose materials? I wanted cotton and it looks like I'm going to have to buy new, or make do :(

TOMORROW ~ 
Joel has his interview for college. He has applied to do BTec Level 3 in Music Performance. I'm hoping he will do well and win them on side despite not having a piece of paper to his name! Watch this space :D

A bit of a week...

I think I would find in near impossible these days to document the entire ins and outs of our week, so what you (and I) see here is always only a snippet, but it is a fairly good representation of how things go along most of the time.

I'll start with out artwork last week. We used another lesson from Art Projects for Kids (my go-to place now) and began a short watercolour series that we are going to do using lessons from here. 

Here's the results ~ that most of us were particularly pleased with...

Joel got as far as the painting, but then struggled to see the flowers and complete it. I drew one flower to show him and then he said it was spoilt and wouldn't even have a go at the rest. I liked it without the flowers too, but he was ready to throw it away :( I would let him because I thought it was very beautiful, and could envisage a poppy field, so tonight he let me have a go at finishing it for him. And so this is a piece of joint artwork really. I think without the pen-lines it's rather more impressionist, but love it with them too.

Abbie didn't really like hers - she felt the flowers were all too big. It's a shame, because again I really like it, but hey ho ~ can't win them all ;-)

TP was very pleased with hers though;

Lilo's is lovely ~ there's something very simple and innocent about hers ~ and unmistakably 'girly'.

DD has not quite finished his yet, but I think it's going to be great. Again there is something about his work that is quite unique to him ~ orderly, and straight, but striking at the same time.

Stitch's is incredible! This has to be one of the most successfully and carefully executed pieces of art he has ever done ~ and it's stunning! ~ a conglomerate mish-mash of intense colour, out of which he has brought beauty :D

I was also very pleased with mine ~ and have been asked if I'm framing it! I'm not, but it might look lovely as a print on a wall I think...

Chip joined in with this lesson too and was doing a really good job, but in hindsight I should have given him a smaller piece of paper because he didn't really have the concentration to fill the paper enough. I might try him again with this another time. He absolutely LOVES his paints that we got him for Christmas, from Merry ~ they are perfect for him and he is really careful about washing and cleaning his brush between colours, so he is managing to keep them nice too :D

Whilst we are in Kenya Abbie will take charge of art and they are going to have fun doing some cartoon work using her Cartoon Drawing for Kids book (although I bought the dino's one too in case anyone wanted to have a go at something different.)

Chip has also been further developing his drawing skills, and this was his flower this week (which Stitch then wrote Chip's name all over and Chip then decided to cut around)...

There's been some Spielgaben work - not as much as I'd like, I confess, but he loves what we do manage to fit in. This week we did some work with ordering numbers. This particular lesson is used to teach ordiNAL numbers but he's a bit too young for that, so instead we just put the numbers, selected at random in order. He had absolutely NO problem with this, showing me that he not only recognises all his numbers to 10 (only occasionally stumbling over 7 & 8), but can also put them easily into correct order - even to the point of leaving gaps and filling gaps for missing numbers. I was a bit impressed with him :D

We brought out our 'characters' again and blue-tacked them to wooden cubes (the lesson said to draw people, but these are just as much fun and less time consuming) and lined up alongside their house (red bricks). The house was where number 1 would be. Numbers on scraps of paper were blue-tacked to the reverse of 10 dots, which were then turned blindly. He then had to place the number on the character the correct number of blocks from home. 

We did this a couple of times, shuffling the characters about, so that he didn't learn their positions visually.  

Lastly I just gave him the down-turned number dots and had him arrange them in order, without the characters or house for a starting point and that was equally easy for him :D

Later we moved on to another number activity. He was supposed to try and arrange the bricks to create the number shapes. This proved too difficult for him, but Lilo had fun with it and Chip himself made some lovely symmetrical structures and then just named them whatever number he chose!

AAS ~ Lilo and DD are just testing at the end of Level 5. I can't say they are doing fantastically well ~ about 50% correct answers, which might mean another repeated book. I can't decide if it's worth it...
Stitch on the other hand is doing really well in Level 2 and barely ever spells a word wrong!

Science
TP is using some TOPS science cards at the moment that we were given by a friend a long time ago and we have never really used. I think we have an older edition, but it's fine. They are quite simple experiments, but have good teaching in them. She is doing the 'Cohesion and Adhesion' set atm. The last two lesson looked at cohesion and this week she moved on adhesion. It looked a bit like this;

Four tubs containing (L-R) oil, soapy water, tap water and rubbing alcohol. The stopwatch on her phone for a timer (and the cakes are a kitchen necessity!!).

A greaseproof paper 'ramp' was attached to a lemonade bottle, marked with four headings to indicate the four liquids.

a drop of each liquid was timed for how long it took to reach the bottom.

The greaseproof paper was then detached and the 'tracks' of the liquids drawn around, as a permanent mark of their travels.

From this easy experiment, TP was able to visibly see the liquid with the greatest and least cohesion and adhesion. 

The little boys & Lilo have been using some of the experiments from  http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/ and this week had a go at making a musical straw. 

It was easy to make, but more tricky to make the notes!! I was so busy trying to make a sound with it, I forgot to take any pictures!
As of next week I'm going to get them to work through topics though, as I'm not sure random choosing because they look easy/fun is the best way to get a build up of knowledge. We'll see though ~ it might not be so fun that way and I'd still rather it were fun than boring!

Outside of HE there's been plenty of general family-ness. So, here's some of 'those' moments from our week;

Noodle-tea!

'Smokin' (chocolate fingers!)

Experimenting with sound through air-bed pump tubes!

Cuddles

cycling (still) ~ nearing half way now!

Reading (a whole LOT of reading :D )

Lilo has now FINISHED the Hetty Feather trilogy she received for Christmas ~ three books in a month - I NEVER thought I'd see the day!

And a whole selection of cute and crazy faces!!

Before I go, I will just say this...

I haven't mentioned here last night, when I burnt the tea ~ TWICE ~ and was rescued by Paul, with ready-roasted chicken and microwave chips! I haven't mentioned the fact that Paul & I had our first set of jabs on Friday, which brought me down with an almost instant cold (that I had probably been quite effectively fighting off until my system was overloaded) and has left me feeling rather rough tbh. Nor have I talked about toddler melt-downs, or seven-year old's food struggles. I haven't mentioned the mornings when it's just too cold and none of us really want to get up and about - and the days when everything seems a struggle from beginning to end. I haven't mentioned all that 'stuff' because... well, it  just wouldn't make much fun to read, but suffice to say ~ we are a very normal family consisting of very normal stroppy kids - and stroppy parents at times! Please don't look at all we do with rose tinted glasses ~ you read the best bits and snips here. There are plenty of not so photo-worthy moments in our life, but I prefer to keep those to ourselves ;-)

I hope you've all had a good week ~ keep healthy ~ and see you next week I expect (if not before). :D