just another morning here

Trying to fulfil my blogging duty here, there were a couple of things that I wanted to record but just hadn’t got round to it, so here we go. It’s long, and personal, bragging in places, so only read it if you’re *really* needing to fill up that blog-reading schedule

Josiah has been really making friends over the past couple of weeks. I am becoming more and more superfluous to requirements in the mornings; we walk to school and he tends to run off ahead, eager to get there. On Monday morning he hooked up with a little friend on the way in, they chatted all the way to the classroom, and he hardly gave me a backwards glance (I have to steal a goodbye kiss if I want one, these days!).

Then after school this little friend of his came out of the classroom first and accosted his mum asking if Joe could go back for tea, so she asked me, and I didn’t have any reason to refuse, so said yes. Little friend went running back into the classroom to tell Joe, who came out in a huge state of excitement, the two of them made their teacher laugh they were so excited. So he went, and had a fabulous time … and he and this little boy have been inseparable this week, so I understand.

Abbie had a big-headed moment yesterday too. She came home bragging about how Mr Cook (her teacher) had said that she should be in Yr 5, and how he’d told the class that if they needed help with maths they should ask her. All this came from some activity or other they were doing with counting blocks, dividing by two. Dividing by two! I am seriously wondering about asking whether she can be stretched a bit more in the classroom, honestly – apart from anything else, it’s the same activity they did last week, according to her! Anyway somehow she ended up having a conversation about square numbers and square roots, which Mr Cook was obviously impressed with. I’m not terribly impressed, for her that’s just normal, but she was very proud of having been singled out in front of everyone.

Abbie’s still loving the friends thing, too. Although I wish she’d learn not to share head lice with her so-called friends

Anna came out of school and met me with a string of verbal diarrhoea about her day on Monday too … measuring in maths, writing stories in literacy, making powerpoint presentations about the river Exe in geography, what she had for lunch, who she sat next to, how her pencil case broke – honestly, for her, this has been the best thing ever. She is loving the variety and the motivation that school gives her, and I’m really pleased for her. It is becoming a logistical nightmare to fit everything in though!

Me. I still miss home education. I miss being the one to see connections being made in their brains and being the one to help them make them. Don’t think I’ll ever feel differently about that.

But they are enjoying themselves so much, they’re loving every minute of it. They’re happy to go, happy while they’re there, and happy when they come home (if a little tired and hungry ). I am irrationally cross with them for being so happy about it, when I miss what we had so much. But there we go, I have to let them get on with being the people they want to become – I know they could have done that either way, but actually in some respects they couldn’t. So yeah, it’s a compromise of my ideals, a compromise academically, but if I have happy thriving children then I’m not complaining. At least we always know we have a choice.

Meanwhile, the workshop has been rushed off its feet – we only opened a month ago and we’re already chock-a-block, with literally hardly any advertising. The sales garage had its best month ever in February and this month isn’t looking too bad. So there’s plenty going on.

As a counter to school and the busyness of work we are working to getting weekends freed up again, with no lessons/activities in them unless absolutely necessary – then every weekend that Steve isn’t working we’re going to take the van and go away with kids/bikes etc, and really make the most of weekends.

Oh, and we had a new carpet fitted in the lounge yesterday, hurrah. Things are all wired in, now all we need is some furniture

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 22nd, 2006 at 9:02 and is filed under abigail, anna, business, general, home improvement, josiah, personal, school. 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.