just another morning here

Can’t help but blog about the good days we’re having inbetween the other posts.

Today I spent most of my day up on Dartmoor, where it was very cold! I walked a bit, but mainly sat in the van … drinking coffee and hot chocolate to keep warm at the same time as simply enjoying time away from the world at large. Annoyingly I left behind the OS maps that I’d been lent, so I’m not at all sure I ended up where I was supposed to, it was so grey that I didn’t even bother taking photos bar this one just to see if Rog can tell me whether I was in the right place or not!

I have to say that I am really enjoying the enforced organisation in the mornings due to school; I like having an alarm and getting up to it, I like the fact that the children are all doing their music practice before we leave in the morning, and I like the way we seem to have breakfast together, whereas we rarely did that when things were more relaxed – I guess there were other times that we did, but anyway.

The kids had another good day at school by all accounts.

As we walked home I heard tell from Anna of numeracy – brackets and doing the operations in brackets first, literacy – writing instructions for making a sandwich and a cup of tea, PE – gymnastics, all of which she hed enjoyed. She also went to ICE club in her lunchbreak, apparently, which is a christian thing ‘like Sunday school’.

Abbie told me about skipping with skipping ropes in the playground, and maths which was easy. No surprises there then

Josiah seemed to cope with his first full day really well. He said he couldn’t remember what he’d done at school, and I joked that if he couldn’t remember and tell me anything then I’d have to home educate him again, and his response was ‘yikes!’ At which point he miraculously remembered an interactive whiteboard game of word-snap that they’d played. His teacher caught me at the end of the day and talked to me about his reading so they are obviously making an effort there, which encouraged me.

When they all got home they cleared out lunchboxes then settled down with Little Toe/Big Toe Radio and hama beads, draughts, some 3x and 4x tables homework for Abigail. Then Abbie had a bath, Anna drew pictures, Joe played with Mollie, they watched Blue Peter – all really peacefully. I was being domestic goddess and making a roast dinner! Then Joe had a bath, Anna carried on with hama, Abbie played with her hamster, and then we had tea

They seem so happy that I am really not regretting the decision for a minute, any more. I don’t think they learn any more at school than they would in half the time at home, and I’m sure they are wasting plenty of time doing pointless activities there, but hey, they used to waste an awful lot of time dossing around at home as well. They are all enjoying the social side, and the extra motivation for doing things.

Meanwhile things behind the scenes are busy as ever – more on that another day. Need to go and find some chocolate by way of stress relief for my husband

This entry was posted on Monday, January 23rd, 2006 at 20:47 and is filed under art and craft, english, general, maths, music, reading. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.