THE FROG-ACADEMY

Saturday, February 13, 2016

Abbie's 15th Birthday & A Late Winter Walk

As promised ~ a birthday blog for my beautiful 15 year old!

Her birthday itself was set to be a bit busy with all the usual Wednesday evening things, plus the addition of her and myself going to a Lent Bible study in the middle of the day. But she requested to open her cards and presents in the morning and then go out for a walk, and as it was a lovely bright, crisp winter's morning that's what we did ~ and then rushed back to cook lunch and be ready for us to go out for 1pm. I'm glad we went though ~ we all felt it was great to get some fresh air in our lungs. We'd have walked around The Moss if it hadn't been so wet lately, but we knew we'd be up to our knees in mud, so instead we stuck to the concrete this time. It was still lovely though, and the children all enjoyed stroking the local horses :D

On Thursday evening we had pizza and watched Cinderella (the newest one) together (Abbie is a huge Disney fan!) ~ and had cake!!

Happy Birthday my eldest princess ~ I hope you enjoyed this one!

Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Fun & Games

So the last week or so the chids have been a bit full of cold to push for full-on concentration, so I let them have a games week. There's so much to be learnt from playing great games ~ not least co-operation ;-)

Also I got a phone upgrade, so it was a great chance to try it out with photos :D
So here are some shots from last week...

Stratego

( this game was mine as a child. I never loved it, but my boys really do)

Enchanted Forest ~ a great memory stretcher, and a favourite of mine since my nursing days.

Scotland Yard

Ticket to Ride

Take Two (like mini-Scrabble)

and full onScrabble at one point too with no photos.

And one point they decided to revive Just Dance (1) and had a giggle with that one afternoon...

A fair amount of tablet gaming (solo and together), and plenty of reading, drawing and colouring.

We also got three more new windows last week ~ including the girls room (meaning we can now get on with the re-vamp the week after half term) and the front of the living room - meaning we can now SEE the view outside :D

At the weekend Abbie & Lilo had their dance school's Bi-annual show. It was wonderful ~ I thoroughly enjoyed watching them and I know they loved the whole thing. They are just sad that it's over so soon - and I remember that feeling from my school-play days.

This week we are back at it for the week, before we take a proper week off for half term next week. The colds have mostly cleared up and everyone has the holiday in sight!

But today was Pancake Day. The children love pancake day and hoped it would be fine enough to do some races outside - which happily it was.

So I cooked nutritious (& yummy) savoury fillings to fill their crepes with and then supplied sugary goodness to pour over the sweet American style ones. All happiness :D

Then we went outside to play...

It was COLD outside, but we had some fun...

So, that's us up to speed. Tomorrow Lent begins. This year Paul, the two older girls and myself are giving up meat for Lent. It's years since I gave something up for Lent, but this year it serves a two-fold purpose; to bring some self-discipline back into my life can never be a good thing and focusing that around a time to focus on my faith will be wonderful, plus it will allow me room to think more carefully about what I am feeding this body of mine. Coupled with the meat-fast we as a family are going to be doing a Bible-study once a week, based around the Narnia films and Shadowlands ~ "Not a Tame Lion." In addition to this I am going to be attending a Lent study at church, starting tomorrow, based on The Theory Of Everything (film) ~ "The Mystery of Everything." I am thoroughly looking forward to both studies - and actually looking forward to a meat-free few weeks too :D

And ... tomorrow my beautiful Boo turns 15!! Where did the years go? Birthday blog will be next, but meanwhile feast your eyes on this just-born beautiful baby girl...

Thursday, January 21, 2016

The Way it Looks from My Side...

So, I thought I'd take some shots myself and show how it looks here, when everyone is busy doing their thing. A selection of shots, taken at a number of points on three different days... If you hover on them, I've added descriptions to most of them.

Abbie has her own little spot in the room. If it's cold and I haven't lit a fire, she sometimes brings her duvet down and makes herself cosy.

She doesn't move much from this spot some days, except to eat, or maybe do a bit of work with Chip. She's working really hard this year and seems to be quite enjoying her subjects. Although today she asked if she could drop one of her Alison courses as it was just "too boring." I don't mind ~ she's in charge of what she learns this year and she is no slacker.

She is enjoying working independently and today did a beautiful piece of art, just working straight from an image on her laptop screen.

Phoebe is also trooping through her work. She too seems to be mostly enjoying what she's doing and I seem to have got the levels right for her this year. She is LOVING her Zoology studies - especially as she gets to do it all by herself.

She has also taken to spending significant amounts of time drawing animals, following tutorials on You Tube to produce some lovely pieces, that have required a lot of perseverance. The leopard above is this week's work.

Lilo is working well too. Still struggling along with some things and wouldn't say she 'enjoys' learning much, but she does just get on with things these days. I'm hoping one day she will find something she loves and then she will enjoy it all a bit more. There are things she does that she does like, but certainly it's more of a slog than a labour of love for her.

DD is hard to capture, as he likes to rise early (around 7am) and set to it as quickly as possible. He is usually done by, or just after lunch, every day. Some days he powers through 3-4 hours of work in a morning and is almost done before I've finished my morning chores! But recently he has decided he wants to learn to cook, so I've managed to catch a few shots of him busy in the kitchen last week and this...

His first solo cooking project. Start to finish by himself. They tasted wonderful, even if they were a little flat. I think he over beat the mixture. He's going to have another go though :D

Making a bain-marie to melt his white chocolate in.

Pleased as punch with today's double chocolate muffins :D

Glazed with white chocolate ~ again done all by himself (with just a little verbal help here and there). Light, moist and SCRUMPTIOUS!

Stitch is beginning to settle into learning a bit better. He starts when he feels like it (today was gone 10am) but allowing him control over his comings and goings seems to be ticking his bucket now. He does snippets of this and that here and there and buzzing about like a bee in flight, but he does seem to be getting his hours in over the week. This week he has decided he wants to learn Spanish and must have spent about 3 hours on Duolingo. He is now spouting badly pronounced Spanish phrases at us randomly and is talking about going to Spain (en Famille style) in a couple of years time. I've told him his behaviour has to settle and calm before I could send him to stay with another family for any length of time, but otherwise I'm not averse to the idea. We'll see how long the 'phase' lasts, but it might...

It's funny how things sometimes come full circle in this life isn't it? Way back when Jake was Stitch's age we used a number of CGP resources. Jake didn't like them much and I wasn't much enamoured either, so we moved away from them. However, this year I dug out some of the Science 'Project' Workbooks I had left over from way back then and offered them as an option to Stitch. Well, he has absolutely thrived on them - the style and layout just suits him perfectly and he asked for more. He also asked if CGP did write-in English and Maths books (he doesn't much like textbook-exercise work). He had been asking for write-in workbooks for English at the beginning of the year and CGP hadn't crossed my mind, but when he mentioned the idea I said I would look for him. So, now I have bought him some CGP workbooks for English and, at his request, Geography and History too. I decided I'd prefer him to stick to Conquer Maths for Maths because it's more comprehensive and just easier all round to keep him up to speed and see where he is at - and he only complains when he's stuck on something challenging, which he would complain about in a workbook too! He seems very happy with his additional work and, to my surprise, has just added it to his selection of choices without removing anything else. So this week he did some textbook work AND some workbook work. Score :D

Chip is NON-Stop! He is like an ever-dry sponge, constantly looking for what to learn next and much as I love that, it is EXHAUSTING! To help me (and him) keep a better check and balance on what he's up to each week I've made him a mini-skool smiley chart, with just a few things on that I would like to cover each week (if we can). A bit of number and letters work and some quiet 'reading' (aka looking quietly at a book by himself) each day, then however much computer time, art, cooking, playing games, physical activity he wants to squish in to all the rest of his time (all day counts). The quiet reading bit he is yet to master as he really likes to be read TO, and doesn't like to be alone, but I'm working on it as I think it will be valuable to both of us ;D. Meanwhile here's a few moments from his week.

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