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!

A Bit Out Of Touch..!

I'm feel I am seriously OUT of the blogging loop atm. I am just about managing to hold together my 365 (although even that is a week behind) and I haven't blog-hopped in WEEKS, either to my photography friends, or my HE ones ~ and for that I apologise. Somehow life just seems to have been a whirlwind since Christmas and evening are often tied up with jiggling a restless baby - like they all get in the evenings! We have decided to experiment this week with putting him to bed earlier as he was waking at 5am and really struggling to re-settle. By the time we eventually got him back off it was almost time for Paul to get up and that didn't seem to be working for us! Putting him to bed earlier means he wakes at 3, but goes back off better and we get longer until morning! We'll see how it goes ~ it worked well last night, but I am not a 7am person, even if Paul has to be and the kids naturally are!


HE-wise things are ticking along. Stitch and DD both completed a 'year' on Education City last week, meaning DD is now working at Yr1 level and Stitch at Reception (which of course he would be starting in September were he going). The work on there is just right for them and in fact perhaps a little easy in some areas. Stitch is quick as a wink and misses nothing ~ I am thinking I might be teaching them BOTH to read next year and save myself some time and work. I reckon Stitch is actually almost ready and DD definitely is. DD is already sounding out words really well, even if he doesn't yet know the sounds of all the letters. Let me explain: He can tell me that shoe is made up of 'sh' and 'oo', or mouse is made of 'm', 'ou' & 's'. He would not be able to tell me what letters make those sounds yet. However, some words, like 'b-u-s' he could probably actually write correctly as he does know all those letters well enough and his pencil control is excellent. Letters he knows sounds for consistently are (for the record); a, b, c, e, k, o, p, q (and qu), s u, x, z. ~  that's almost half the alphabet even though I've not made any concerted effort to teach him any yet! He knows some of the others sometimes; f, i, l, p, r, y.
Stitch also knows a few ~ although he seems to be learning a mixture of sounds and names due to the sources of his learning (i.e. mainly Starfall and Ed'City!). Consistently he has; a (sound), c (sound), e (sound), k (sound), o (sound), p (sound), q (sound), r (name), s (sound), w (name), x (name & sound), z (sound) ~ interestingly almost exactly the same ones as DD has picked up, only the u/w is different! I wonder why that might be???
Lilo is eventually picking up with reading at a more rapid pace, although she still does make consistent errors that I wouldn't expecting by now: she still, almost always, reads 'd' for 'b', she still sometimes still reads 'i' for 't' (and vice versa) and often cannot remember 'j' at all, or reads it as 'i'. She still forgets 'v' on a regular basis too and sometimes, when she remembers it, still makes a 'f' sound for it. I know these are all common errors in younger children, but I am surprised she is still making them when she can essentially read, and that by phonetic means! I think she needs a vision test (well I know she does), but I need her to be more consistent with her letters before she goes, so it doesn't seem she can't see them when she can! She is almost at the end of Headsprout. She had only about 10 more episodes to complete, so just another couple of weeks - she'll be finished by half term. I am thinking of enrolling her on Explode-the-Code online. They have a 3 for 2 offer on atm, so I could enrol all three youngest ones at their own levels! I think it might be a fun way to sure up Lilo's phonics, whilst still taking her forwards by doing LOTS of reading with me as-well. Her confidence is growing, and that is good, but it is still not brilliant and I believe that is half the battle with her. Where she is confident, and almost able to self-teach, she excels. Reading has not really been something she has been able to approach in that way, or that has come to her easily, but she IS getting there at last and I know she is happy about that :D
Maths is progressing nicely with all of the younger ones too. Lilo has completed Miquon Orange and is rapidly pacing through Singapore MPH 1A (it's a cinch for her now). DD is working through Grade 1 Math Mammoth, which is also relatively easy for him, but gives him a stretch. He resists the stretch a little, but the work is not too hard!


The older four are plodding along nicely, although I do feel their work is too much 'on your own' atm. I want to be able to input more with them, but just now I can't see how. They do have plenty of things they do which are not book work and there seems to be a significant of arts and crafts happening atm which is off their own backs. I like that as a&c is not really my thing at all tbh. They are enjoying playing some games together sometimes too ~ also which I like. I would like to find some to get back and finish our long abandoned Astronomy project (which we were all enjoying) and get on with learning some more History from our Diana Waring series. It all seems to have been on hold for TOO long now. Maybe after Easter Solomon (need to pick web-name for him soon), who will be 4 months by then, will be in a more predictable routine and/or be happier to sit and play while we work. At the moment, when he's awake he wants to be held, fed or stimulated by one of us. He does sleep most mornings, which gives me time with the smaller ones, but he less often sleeps after lunch so the big ones only get me avec babe-in-arms, which is not conducive to Mummy-led teaching :(  I guess sooner or later we'll find our way again ~ we usually do...


I need to get my finger out about arranging an appointment with the deputy of the local college if we are still going to look at Bugs maybe going there next year ~ time is flying by and it'll be the summer before we sneeze at this rate and he'll be stuck home with me for another year by default, which may not (or MAY be) the best thing! I must add though ~ I think he's going to need to address his work ethic before he goes to college or he won't last there very long at all! The motivation cannot come from me. I can only warn him, and coax him. I cannot force him to work. He might just have to learn his lesson hard when he gets to college. He doesn't believe me when I try to help him understand the amount of work children his age would be set from school. Not that I think that that is a good or necessary thing, but it is a reality for most kids and he simply doesn't believe me! The downside of that being, I know he will be shocked by the amount of time and effort the college will expect him to put into his studies, but I HOPE he will rise to the challenge!
I'd really like to take a trip to London (or somewhere nearer maybe) with him soon, to a photography exhibition of some sort, as I believe this would inspire him and also it would look good on his portfolio/'CV' when he's trying to impress the college deputy!!


So that's us. I feel we are treading water a bit right now, or at least the bigger children are, but all the same they are making progress and life is not too much filled with daily drudgery, so I must be doing something OK. :D Only two more weeks to half term, when maybe I might get a moment or two to look at things again. There's not much I feel I can really change right now, but I might just need to shuffle things here and there to make life a little more 'vibrant' for us all ~ especially with the nicer weather hopefully just around the corner (yeah!).


Next week, on Thursday, Minnie turns 10. I can't believe I am Mum to 3 children in double figures (and three under 6 too, with a couple in between!). She is a very grown up 10 in so many ways... ~ look out for her 'special-day' blog later in the week!


In other news...


I would be very appreciative if those of you who know about my Aunty, would please keep her in your thoughts and prayers. Having been exceptionally well right up until Christmas and having had a scan that showed very little change in any of her tumours, she then became increasingly unwell over Christmas, with a variety of different symptoms. She asked for a re-scan in January and it sadly shows that all of her tumours have now spread ~ some more than others. She has developed a cough where fluid is now gathering in her lungs (although this is not distressing her atm), but her most painful symptom is in her muscles, which simply refuse to work at all some days. So much so that she is unable to even turn herself over in bed at times. She has lost a significant amount of weight over the year (it is almost a year since she received her initial diagnosis) and is constantly nauseous (which could be due to the cancer and/or the pain-relief drugs). She is no longer receiving Chemo', but they are discussing radiotherapy to target the cancer she now has on her spine. I am hoping to visit her very soon (maybe the beginning of March, which is her birthday). Thankfully we have wonderful friends who are willing to take on our children for a weekend, so we will just take Solomon down with us. I am not looking forward to it very much because I think I will see a marked change from when we visited last in October. I am sad. I am still praying for a miracle...
Her teenage son (my cousin) is not coping well either and has been missing significant amounts of school and/or simply not completing assignments. He is due to take his GCSE's this year. I'm not sure he will. He is now on mild antidepressants (depression runs thick in my family) and not at school. He has been told that unless he makes up the time he's missed he will not be allowed to attend the leavers ball! I think the school is being grossly unfair to him ~ they have made little or no allowance for the fact that he is watching his Mum getting sicker in front of his eyes, & seemingly quite rapidly now. GCSE's are not where his head is at right now! The real world is not a happy or nice place for him to be and he prefers to bury himself in virtual-reality. I can really understand that tbh ~ pain is not real in there! At the end of the day, it's not like he can never re-trace his academic path, whereas he will never be able to have his Mum back once she's gone and just now he needs to be with her ~ at home. The world can wait!! That's my view anyway... but it's hard to say that out loud - even to them.


On a happier & lighter note... 


Solomon is an awesome baby! .... and I am over a stone lighter now than I was before I fell for him, so he's also a brilliant weight-loss machine!! :D ~ I have few more stone to go before I get to where I want to be, but it's a great start and I am happy to now be wearing jeans I couldn't comfortably wear before I was pregnant!

Snapshot of the Week

It's not been a particularly unusual week . Stitch continues his obsession with Wii Mario Cart and Poisson Rouge (PC) and at the moment pretty much refuses to take part in any activities that don't involve a screen, a mouse or a controller! I'm not sure how much of a problem it really is, but I'm hoping it will ride itself out and he will get bored soon enough ~ only he's a boy, so I'm not sure if it will... At not yet 3 I'm not sure I want to get into all out fights with him over it though, when there is so much else that matters more at the end of the day.

DD and Lilo have done very well at avoiding doing too much work this week, but I quite like when they disappear off and play together. I don't want to be stretching them too hard anyway atm. I've had Lilo do some very low-key reading work, just so she doesn't forget what she has already learnt while she is 'not' learning to read! Actually, I think when she decides it's time it really won't take her long, so I'm letting her take the lead on that one. She can read basic CVC words, she can find rhymes & she can find missing beginning, middle and end sounds of words. She is slowly cementing the remaining letter sounds that she is less sure of in her mind. The basic building blocks are all in place. I'm waiting for her to decide it's time to start building :D

This last couple of weeks Lilo has also decided that she loves cuisenaire rods and so we've been working with those a bit. I have some basic 'fun' cards that are really 'getting to know your rods' cards. We are working through those and she is enjoying them. 12/16 complete. I think when we are done I will print out Miquon Red and start on that ~ I can see Miquon being just her kind of thing. If I could afford Maths-U-See I would invest, but I already have nearly the whole Singapore scheme on my shelf and I don't want to start again with the cost buying new resources. Miquon is pretty cheap to do, and we have that too, so I will start there and when I think she is ready we will merge into Singapore slowly. That's worked for my other children and, although Lilo is quite different, I think as long as we keep it nice and hands-on she will be fine too. She definitely seems to 'get' numbers better than letters at the minute :D

The other highlight this week has been that the SUN has come out. This has meant the children rediscovering the trampoline (yeah), but spending excessive amounts of time outside on it, instead of doing any real work. Not that I really mind ~ they have had a whole winter of hard graft, it's time for some fresh air. One afternoon the girls did take the rug out and do their English on the front lawn - I like living here! I too was itching to spend some time outdoors, so Thursday late-morning I decided we would take an hour out to do a nature walk and draw what we could spot of the emerging signs of spring. Taz decided not to join us (he really does NOT enjoy art or drawing AT all) so I let him stay home. The others all came and we had fun, and stroked horses and enjoyed the sunshine :D I was particularly impressed with DD as he really tried hard to draw what he could find. This is a picture of him drawing the leaf he is pointing to :D

Lilo on the other hand was a lot more random and rushed, drawing pictures of piles of sand! She drew some blades of grass that were pretty standard kid-grass, so I encouraged her to look more closely as this particular grass had run to seed and was quite interesting up close. She did look and then improved her drawing quite significantly, but only one or two blades! She was much more interested in running around, but that's OK too ~ she had fun!

Taz has continued his little fixation with Airfix models this week and finished off am Army truck and built the body of a jet plane. He loves them and is all absorbed in them ~ squeezing as much modelling time as he can into his school week!

That's it I think ~ all else was pretty mundane this week - Oh! except that Taz possibly dislocated his thumb at scouts last night. He 'forgot' he wasn't on the trampoline whilst playing dodge-ball and threw himself on the ground - on his thumb! There was still too much swelling this morning for the hospital to be able to tell if anything is broken yet, but the X-ray he had 'seemed' clear - check up early next week.

30 Boxes packed...

... and many more to go!

I cannot believe how much stuff we have - well no - actually I can - that's why we are moving!!

The kids are being great actually. They are so excited and of course not too worried that school is not happening normally ;)

Despite the endless packing, school does not feel like a total loss. The morning began with Carcassonne - the five eldest played (E teamed-up with A). Then all the children used ed City in varying amounts. Joel passed his Test B (third time) with 86% . Needs to redo Test A and polish up his Mental Maths on there - that should keep him busy for a few days! I'm going to have to be really creative when we are UNpacking as we won't have internet for about a fortnight - how WILL I cope?! 

Some of our toys already have their own boxes that don't need further packing, so the Duplo was brought out today for Nat, but everyone wanted to play with it - of course! It was good for Caleb to play with this for a while too. 

Lots of 'Mummy' play going on too, which I love watching. I've put some bigger photos over on my 365, but here's some snap-shots of our day :D

    

  

LONG week!!

It's been a mish-mash of good and bad this week. It was our non-book week and these are supposed to be a rest for me and a change for the kids, but tbh I'm not sure that they work all that well in the first regard as I usually end up more stressed at the end of them than I do when we are in routine. 

Monday - C had a bit of a temperature so we kept him home just in case he went down through the morning. As it was he was fine most of the day and has been fine since. We started off the day with squircle board which for this week's theme was The Vatican and person of the week was The Pope. They were interested enough in it (even if I did struggle to get stuff together for it). I had planned to make a rosary bead as a craft to go with, not that we are Catholic or anything, but just as something about a different 'strand' of our Christian faith. As it was that never happened because I didn't get round to resourcing it! After squircle board the children tried to re-act Jake's play of a part of Melusine. While they were doing that I spent some tot-school time with C working on shapes and patterns with this;

Sadly the 'play' ended up with the boys squabbling (as usual) and me taking over as 'narrator' - really no big issues, just J2 not being able to accept not being in charge! Once that was over the kids all got measured ready for our 'drawing to scale' activity. Was amazed to find that Jake is almost 160cms already - that's 5'2"!! He's not yet twelve - he will be as tall as me by the time he reaches his teens at that rate! Also interesting that there was only 1cm between J2 and A (representing 2.5 years in age!!). We then took a break for a bit & later in the afternoon I sat them all down and did an ad libbed lesson on drawing to scale. This actually meant a little bit of explanation on decimals and how they can be translated to fractions (of cms). I was amazed at their seeming level of understanding. When I asked what 5/10ths was E (age 5) - with the help of a little picture - was the one who saw it was 1/2. It was complicated to teach three concepts in one, but somehow I think they really got it and the drawing went really well. They drew themselves 1:10 (hence the reason for the decimals lesson). I didn't teach them about ratio, but simply said they were going to draw themselves 1/10th of their real height, which in effect meant they learnt about ratio too without knowing it was called that. They did some great pictures of themselves and I want to keep the outcome as a memento of how tall they are just now and how they all drew and coloured at this age.

Tuesday - Thursday 

We decided (with a little persuasion from me) to make a start on this. I bought it ages back, along with some others in the series and ever since we did an American Indian one, Boo has been begging to do the other one. I didn't want to do the same type of thing again just yet + storage of the gorgeous models is an issue! Instead I persuaded them all to have a go at this because we can make a lapbook with the models (as most of them are flat). They did succumb and we had a good time with it for the rest of the week. We have learnt about the seven systems of the body (an overview), types of body cells, some types of body tissue, the brain and it's functions, neurons, eyes, and ears. We didn't quite finish off all I had hoped - which was to do sight, touch and smell and complete 'The Nervous System' (and associated organs), but we can pick up next non-book week. That's the beauty of lapbooks :)

As an aside, but relevant all the same, I have been sadly stunned by how LITTLE Jacob knows about all this - considering he got Level 4 Science SATS. He didn't know the 7 systems of the body. Even once he had been informed of them he couldn't clearly sort out which system he thought each major organ should be in - meaning he does not have a very thorough understanding of the basic functions of any of the major organs of the body. I know science and memorisation of facts are NOT his strong point at all, but really... I am SO glad I decided to push this now because it will be teaching Jake the stuff he should already know without him feeling like he is being patronised by me. Hopefully it will give him a starting point for some more serious science next year. I can't imagine he is ever going to do anything really scientific in life and I have considered dropping 'science' as a whole subject out of his curriculum entirely (giving him more time to focus on art and dance - and the things he excels at), but in reality a) I don't think he would really want me too as it "can be fun sometimes" and b) I think he should have at least a basic level knowledge of how the world hangs together. But it does make me wonder exactly what science (if any) he did at school!

Integrated Tot-School.

At some point in Tuesday C played with this a bit (note the ever present Hula Hoop packet!),

 at other points he joined in with us a bit and did some colouring along with the others. He was disappointed not to be able to cut anything out of the project work, but was not content to do some cutting out of his own, so we did have a melt down or two :(  However, he did enjoy joining in with our make-believe 'ear' (toilet roll and greaseproof paper), and the couple of games we have played to help get ideas across; for 'NO BONES!!' one person calls out an action like "skip", or "hop", etc... and then at some point shouts "no bones," at which point everyone else flops to the floor like jelly - amidst fits of giggles as they all land on top of one another! Mine can play this game endlessly it seems & they ALL love it! :) Ellie calls it the floppy game and has wanted to play it everyday since Monday! Then "SILENT MESSAGES" is designed to help them understand the workings of neurons. They all stand in a circle holding hands. On the word "Go!" I start of a timer & one person squeezes the hand of another. They pass the squeeze around till it gets back to the beginning hand. The last/first person then shouts "Stop!" The idea is to see how fast they can get the message round. A variation on the theme is to stand them in a line finger-tips to finger-tips and pass 'tickly fingers' along the line (and maybe back again) as fast at they can . This is actually a little harder, but possibly better as a visual illustration of how the dendrites and terminals of the neurons work. They were fascinated to think that while they were acting like neurons the neurons in their own bodies were doing the same thing, only at lightening speed!

Thursday pm

The smallest ones went for a rest and I played Ticket to Ride with the older four (P 'teamed up' with Jake). J2 won - with 8 journeys under his belt!! A lost, but not by a great deal and she did remarkably well considering her age (8) and the fact she had NO help until the very last. Jake & I drew scores exactly. 

If you are wondering why all this lovely together-school stuff would be more stressful than our normal routine I can explain. I have an 11.5 yo joker-boy in my classroom, a 10yo hoppity, "can't control my laughter" son who sits opposite, an 8yod getting to the 'I know everything before I do' stage, a mousey 7yod who forgets what you said 2 seconds ago (& who is quite capable of giggling along with the others) and an airy-fairy 5yod who takes every item of fact and makes it part of her fantasy world!! Mix that together with a 3yos who wants in on the act and a 20mos who climbs up and dances in the middle of the table you are working on to make sure you notice him!! That makes quite a cocktail and it's not very conducive to everyone listening and learning sensibly, 'front lead' teaching from me. Now one-on-one these kinds of 'free(r)-style' weeks might be even more fun and not requiring of the 'teacher' bit so much, but in a mixed age group that haven't quite learnt enough respect for the next member, I get a headache! They all call out comments (although that is getting better), one makes jokes, and they all try to be the first to show off how much they know, or worse still I have one that rarely answers anything because she knows if she says nothing for long enough someone else will give the answer! It's not like we aren't doing the hands-on fun stuff too, but I have to do a bit of 'teaching' for it all to make any sense to the younger ones (and maybe the older ones as well it seems). On Tuesday morning it did actually get to a point where I wasn't willing to continue trying to 'keep order' and I made them all do an hour of silent book-maths instead! They were not happy but it did the trick. The girls were 90% better after that, but the two big boys still mucked about too much for my liking and so had to do ANOTHER hour of maths after school. I don't like using maths as a punishment really, but it needed to be something they were least likely to need me for help with and that they didn't want to do! I gave them all a straight up chat after school and said that if things didn't improve drastically not only would I call off THIS non-book week, but I would be considering not scheduling them in at all next year - and I would scrap non-book DAYS as well. This definitely got them thinking and they did majorly improve for the rest of the week - now they need to show they mean it by keeping it up next time round! I am not into 'crowd control' - that's not what I want my HE to look like. I want it to be good fun, but I need them all to understand that it is only fun when it is fun for everyone - and that includes me - and for it to be that way they need to learn to learn a lot more respect for each other (and me) so that everyone gets a fair share at taking part, I can think clearly and not get be-fuzzed & grumpy and we can all learn together and from each other. School should not be a competition - it should be am exhilarating ride!!

Moving on...

P went away on Thursday to his Grandad's funeral in Portsmouth, leaving me solo for the last couple of days. So after all the busyness of the day I ventured out to kitchen to cook tea. When tea was done I was seriously flagging and I think Jake saw this and kindly volunteered to bath the small boys :) He duly did so very well while I washed up. He even managed to put N's nappy on and was so chuffed with himself for doing it right - "Wooo, I'm a real big bro now!!" That was such a blessing as it didn't mean I had to face a sink-full of dishes late at night or in the morning :) He can definitely pull out the stops at times. Shame he let himself down though by omitting to tidy his room, or put away his clean pile of clothes (which he should have done while I was cooking tea), thereby hindering the actual putting to bed of the baby by about 1/2 hour - but also, at the same time, getting me out of another exhausting game with the big boys! I had said (why do we do this to ourselves?!!) we would play their new Star Wars Risk game that they got for Christmas, but that we haven't had time to look at it properly yet - if everyone else was in bed by 8pm - which in the end they weren't ;) Boys came down and played Hue Knew together while I read my rss feeds and emails. Not long after they went up at about 9.15pm my Internet went down, so I played on ACCF for a bit and paid off my mortgage part one :) Then I went to bed!

And that about takes us up to speed! Today was Friday group at my friend's this morning, followed by Lasagne for lunch, which, thanks to having been able to get the kitchen tidy last night, I made this morning before I went out - I am never that organised!! There is something about P being away that means I get all 'driven' but by 9pm I am done for - except I stay up - don't ask me why! (My answer would be because if I don't blog now I will forget my week). N went for a rest after lunch and the others played nicely. The kids go out to club at 4, but before they went tonight I got them to do all their chores (rabbits, tidy rooms, tidy lounge & hallway, clear & wipe table) so that tonight would be easier. I didn't have Jake to help me tonight because he is at a 'half knight of pear' (half night of prayer - sleepover - fun night). Once they had gone C went on Reader Rabbit Nursery for a bit, giving me a window of peace - well maybe, only by the time I had finished washing up from lunch N had woken from his nap all grumpy and C was bored of the computer :( I put 'Cars' on for C and snuggled N on my lap - at least that way I would get to sit down quietly for 5 minutes, where N promptly fell back to sleep :) Once he was settled I put him down on the sofa under a blanket and set to writing a bit more on this blog... A few sentences later the rest came home (ho hum...). Round 2!! P and I set to in the kitchen (not long cleaned up remember) making promised scones for Tea. If A had made them she can do them alone, but P wanted ME to make them with HER - so like the nice Mummy that I am, I did - and they were lovely and she did really well, but the mess..! After scones J2 remembered that I had said we would have Angel Delight for pudding today and had not done it at lunch time, so he set to making that in the kitchen and dishing it up for everyone - more mess..! N & C woke up and played in the lounge - more mess..! By bedtime tonight I was running well out of steam, so this time J2 offered to help (no little kid's baths tonight), so he went up and tidied his room while A read C's favourite book to him (One, Two, Buckle my Shoe...), then tucked C up, said prayers with him and put his music on. He then went and read stories to the girls. I usually try to keep it to a shared story, but he read at least two! Said prayers with them all and put on their music for them :) He came downstairs looking a little more weary than when he went up and declared that it was more tiring than he thought!! It was nice though as it gave me a few mins to be with N and just chill with him - not that he really ever chills much these days except when he is asleep! J2 & I then played with N together for a few more minutes and he asked me how to put N's nappy on, so I showed him, but N was in manic, reaching overdrive mode, so it would have been impossible for him to do. Once N was down in bed J2 ate the last scone and got a big hug from me before he went up to bed.  At LAST I get to finish my blog - the mess can wait till morning!! Now I'm done & I'm off to bed - I've no more energy left for today and I have 3 girls to get ready for ballet in the morning!

School & TotSchool Happening Here.

Well sometimes it seems I can do it all :) Today went smoothly and generally fun was had by all. Nat didn't seem so distructive and managed to involve himself a little in our classroom today, so I guess that's TOTSCHOOL worthy :) Check out the photos of him discovering magnetism (by clicking on the little square you'll see nice quality ones)!

2009_01_13 Geomag TotSchool

After that he settled onto Phoebe's knee for a while to watch her on Ed' city and for once didn't mess with the keys or the mouse!
Aside from that we learnt about Ceasar Augustus, discussed the number 5 and the letter V and the fact that V is also the roman numeral for 5. Then we had maths. Jake had an end of topic test for fractions on ConquerMaths  and got 10/15 first attempt, and 100% 2nd attempt. Mostly his mistakes seem to be silly ones (silly miscalculations) or misreading/understanding of the question itself - which stems more from his struggle with comprehension of english than from a struggle with the maths! Overall though, he seems to be working better with just letting him work online. He is more co-operative about it at least, despite saying he really does not like maths. I can see why he doesn't like it though: he is more the creative artistic sort - enjoys art and dance, hates maths and science and anything where he has to try to retain important information. Even so, he is not at all bad at Maths - pretty average I'd say, but at science I think he is always going to struggle with the 'thinking it through logically' aspect of it. Phoebe finished her section on division and is excited to see that she is doing 'time' again next - as she just 'gets' time with little difficulty. It has been really interesting watching her maths developing actually. Maybe because she has a foundation in Miquon, maybe because her mind works differently from some of my others, maybe because I have been so much more hands-off with her and allowed her to work much more at her own pace, but sometimes, when she has her head in the right gear, she makes some suprisingly advanced and logical calculations by methods that I have never taught her. I enjoy seeing her blossom and it is so un-forced. And to boot she has almost completed Yr 1 EdCity English now. I'm hoping I will see a vast improvement in her spelling anytime soon - and I hope it will happen as naturally as some other things seem to have with her. She is about half way through the Ed'City maths. I think maybe at the end of MPH 1B she can take some time out to finish that off - and the rate she is going that won't be long!We did a bit of geography, discussing scale and lines of latitude and longitude. We made a plan to draw our family to scale on Thursday - might be fun! Then we rounded off the day with Spanish and ended up playing a memory game. It was good fun :) I think in the end we had 15 objects in our school bag, ranging from pencils to walls!! "En mi mochila tengo..." The younger girls went out pretty soon, but enjoyed watching myself and the boys getting in a muddle ;) It was good practice of masculine and femine forms too.Homework has generally been done well and mostly today has been happy and content - doesn't mean I'm any less tired, though my stress levels are definatly more tolerable on days like today ;)