Today Anna’s had Stage by Stage, which despite moaning about having to get up for, she enjoyed as usual. We’ve mooched around at home mainly doing low key but nice things together, colouring (and a bit of writing practice for Abbie), playing, music practice with accompaniments from me, Joe and Anna played with Mollie while Abbie had a sleep, the girls had piano lessons, and that’s about it, really. Oh, and we’ve started a Christmas shopping/making/giving list, too, which was fun – but still has too many blank ‘uninspired’ spaces on it for my liking!

We’ve had a good day so I’m blogging quickly, then off to nurse my sore throat and make some wedding tiaras. Steve worked my day at the office today (phew!), although still not sure who got the easier day, but I was pleased to be at home anyway.

Morning started with loads of tidying up/sorting out/gaming … followed by Joe’s violin lesson at 10am. Violin is a moveable feast, thankfully Mr Featherstone is flexible as we’ve moved lessons for one reason and another over the past five weeks now!

Despite not wanting to go and throwing a wobbly about it beforehand, Joe pulled himself together, changed his attitude, and did really well in his lesson, so he got to choose cookies in Sainsbury’s for elevenses While he and I were at violin, the girls sat in the van – I’d filled their bookbags with activity stuff of one kind or another and asked them to do whatever they wanted, my only request was that they had something to show for their time.

When I got back to the van I was really pleased; they were sitting together doing a sticker flag atlas thing but they’d also spent most of their time writing and illustrating a poem together. Nothing earth-shatteringly amazing in terms of poetry, but they’d had the idea together and carried it through, and obviously made loads of effort, all of which is relatively unusual, so I was thrilled. The handwriting (Anna was the scribe) wasn’t bad, and spellings were pretty good all round. And they were pleased with themselves; they’re now going to write more poems this week apparently!

Went to Sainsbury’s and stocked up for the week, then came home for lunch, more sorting out, music practise for the girls, etc.

The afternoon was completely taken up with swimming and hanging around waiting, but again, it was productive. I did some work with Anna on percentages/fractions, and rotational symmetry, just from one of her workbooks. Abbie did a bit of addition practise which was fairly simple and easy. Joe and I read some Flying Boot books together, and we generally had a nice relaxed time as well as the swimming lessons – chatted to their teacher for a bit as well, and she is pleased with all of their progress, so that was good.

Got home at 7pm to find Mollie and Ruby from our close trick-or-treating, Ruby looked absolutely gorgeous dressed as a pumpkin with matching orange & green stripy socks, irresistable. Chatted to them and their mum for a while, which was nice too, haven’t seen Emma properly for ages.

Baked potatoes and various bits for dinner, kids are just in bed (Monday is such a late night!) and I’m trying to make a list of stuff to do this week – house exchange (this weekend coming) is a great idea but it does mean you have to go away and leave a tidy house, which feels like a bit of a pressure. Still, I’m glad in a strange sadistic sort of a way, as otherwise we’d never tidy it up properly! Feeling fairly naff still, sore throat is a killer, but never mind. Must fit some Animal Crossing into my evening too, as Halloween is a special occasion there I think!

Anna: has also played on neopets. I can’t work out what the *point* of neopets is – I mean, I can waste time there myself playing games and stuff, but not quite sure if there is a bigger picture I should be grasping – Merry? It doesn’t seem to be instructional enough for the girls to get anything more than playing the games out of it – which might be a good thing if they discovered all there was to discover for themselves, but they don’t/haven’t yet – I thought they would ‘explore’ more than they have. Hmm, there’s still plenty of time, I suppose.
Anna’s also finished off a little art project she’s been working on, but can’t say too much about that on-blog She came to Sainsbury’s too. Her afternoon has been rather spoiled by somehow (during a dance practise session, apparently) falling into the corner of the coffee table, with her eye, or just to the side of it. Despite immediate ice-application she’s ended up with a big purple bruise to the side of her left eye, and has been feeling sorry for herself ever since. I have to say, I felt sorry for her too, it was nasty. She’s currently snuggled on the sofa listening to Big Toe Radio. Taking a photo of it cheered her up somewhat, she’s progressed from feeling sorry for herself to being proud of it now

Steve managed to not sell two cars today, so that wasn’t very good. I’ve bummed around – got the shopping done and planned menus for next week, and kept everyone fed and watered – picked up lots of post-easter-bad-for-you-but-couldn’t-be-refused bargains at the supermarket so it hasn’t been very healthy, and we’re about to end up by having the cooked breakfast that we didn’t get round to this morning. We have countered it by snacking on fruit as well, if that helps at all!

As I write we’re watching Two Brothers – it’s one that I have some activities on CDrom from Film Education for so we rented it because of that really. Not sure what to make of it yet but the tiger cubs are definitely very cute, and the children are enjoying it.

We all ended up at home from about half past four onwards, and we’re part way through watching a channel 4 documentary on Henry VIII and his wives, which the girls and I are finding really interesting. Joe and Steve were both falling asleep in front of it before tea We’re planning another instalment after bathtime.

Steve and I are sitting here trying out some different radio stations (his dream come true, I’m sitting next to him while he listens to his beloved stereo, *and* I’m blogging!) – currently listening to PlanetRock, which is classic rock (Nirvana, early U2, 70s/80s stuff) … he’s enjoying it . Tomorrow I’ll put the radio back to R2

Education … erm, well, Josiah went to Start Right where he had the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, with appropriate number seven related activities. He pulled the ‘I want to come home with you’ stunt when I dropped him off again today, which he never does for Steve … hmmm. Came home saying he’d enjoyed it despite all the fiasco.

Anna and Abbie both did some workbook stuff (maths and handwriting for Abbie, maths and english for Anna) this morning, while I typed up some minutes from a meeting I went to last week – oh, the luxury of a laptop! I sent Anna off to google for vowels and consonants when she declared that she didn’t know what they were – I’m sure she did really, but anyway, she managed to find out, finish her workbook page, and get involved in an online game of chess with another home educated friend all at the same time! She went off to school for lunch and the afternoon’s dance and drama lesson, Steve brought Josiah home and stayed for lunch, and the rest of the afternoon has been spent on games of one sort or another.

Now, I have a confession to make. Not quite sure how my number got passed along, but last week I was contacted by a journalist, and we agreed to have a reporter round tomorrow who is doing an article on home education for one of the national papers. A photographer is coming too … argh. Anyway, they’ve said they want pictures of the children ‘working’ so the kids and I have been thinking about ways we can portray ‘work’ without having to agree to the preconception that learning = sitting down and writing. Anna suggested the computer (surprise surprise!), and other ideas so far have included science kit activities, geomags and hama – possibly geomag platonic solids are more visually impressive than hama bead designs … any other ideas, anyone? I don’t have any more details than that at the moment so don’t ask, I’ll let you know as soon as I know anything else about the article.

Off out for dinner at a friend’s house tonight which should be lovely, so I’m off to do bathtime and bedtime with my lovely children

Steve’s parents came for dinner later on; they’re having a new kitchen fitted this week so their house is in chaos. Only the third new kitchen I’ve seen them install in the ten years we’ve been married (not all in the same house, I hasten to add), they are quite good at the whole thing – don’t know how they do it, myself, I just couldn’t stand all the mess … when our house needs redecorating any more than the basics we’ll move, I expect!

The children were playing an elaborate rpg with the wooden castle, princes, princesses, kings, queens and dragons (very Shrek-esque in style ) during the evening, which we didn’t have the heart to break up. Once Steve’s parents had left Steve & I had to go and be the audience to a replay of the game, and after that it was bedtime for everyone.

Today we’re planning a low-key day at home, I’ve promised to play Monopoly with the kids once they’ve done a little bit of something workwise, so I guess I’d better go and get them working towards it, otherwise it won’t happen!

Joe went off to nursery this morning and the girls & I did some handwriting – Anna chose to copy a psalm from here, while Abbie is continuing to work her way through a Schofield & Sims book. They are both really improving, and it’s quite nice to see them take pleasure in watching their own progress. I think they did a couple of pages of maths each as well – nothing too strenuous though. They spent the rest of the morning together on the computer playing here – which makes me cringe, but they like it.

After picking up Joe and some lunch and a bit of housework we went to the park to a home ed meet … which was nice, although I can’t believe we ended up discussing the other group again (the one with the exorbitant prices, lol!) and still not really getting to an answer – our best bet at the moment seems to be to try and talk our way into concessions on the rent. Either that or find somewhere else to go. Not that I’m at all sure we’d go wherever it was or however cheap it was, well, not regularly anyway. I guess I just find that the week is usually full enough anyway … then again having said that I do think we maybe ought to give it a try again, because I feel like the kids are missing out and the reason we don’t go (other than the cost) is more because *I* wasn’t enjoying it than anything else. I dunno! Turns out both Jules and I had been paying over the odds without realising in any case … I still think it’s all too confusing!

Anyway, the children had a nice time playing, we took scooters which I think got used by everyone … and then we had to leave to get home for Steve’s Aunty Jacky who came round for another Ancient Greeks project session with the girls … they did some work on alphabets and numbers which complemented what we’d done the other day, and she read stories to them from Story of the World while they coloured, all very nice and laid back today.

Discovered I’d left Joe’s hat at the park when Jules called round to return it (thanks Jules!!), just as I was on the phone to Stuart telling me they’ve been approved at the adoption board – great news, and now I’ve stolen his blogpost for tomorrow

The highlight of our day though, came after tea when we (well, Anna, Abbie and I – we left Steve at home with Joe who was crying because he wasn’t coming) called for Mollie & Emma from up the road, and went off together to see Wild One at the school round the corner – a Theatre Alibi production. It was absolutely brilliant, we all really enjoyed it – highly recommended if they ever tour near you!!

No snow here, just wind and drizzle. Typical!

We dropped Anna off at school for dance & drama then came home for lunch, after which Josiah decided to play pairs with his Start Right reading cards (high frequency sight words), while Abbie worked on a bit of tens/units stuff in a maths book. She then decided to start a handwriting book because she wants to learn the joins for joined up writing. I think this is a result of the Draw Write Now stuff … she really does find writing quite difficult and wants to be able to do it more easily. Part of the problem, though, is not being able to spell all the words, it’s the ‘looking up to see what the next letter is’ thing that ends up putting her off – so I may try and teach her some strategies for remembering the whole word that she’s writing. She really enjoyed the handwriting book, anyway, and after four pages I was telling her to stop! Abbie has spent the rest of the afternoon so far wobbling her ‘very wobbly and really needs to fall out’ tooth … I won’t be at all surprised if it comes out today I’ll endeavour to update with a photo when she succeeds in pulling it out!

Also chuffed today because Anna chose to buy herself a handwriting book which she’s been doing for fun … and Abbie’s been playing around with new cdroms, all educational of course! Joe’s been ‘helping’ all of us. Other fab news is that a tiny bit of inheritance money we’ve been waiting for appeared in the bank today, enough to pay for the tv we bought the other day, and pay off credit cards – another liberating feeling! (just have to make sure we don’t use them again, now.)

Anyway, better dash, desperately trying to tidy the house before friends arrive, have done a charity shop run and Steve’s just gone to the tip with lots of rubbish too, then we’re hoping to put a new mirror up in the bathroom – I’m not helping, this time!

Anyway. The children have been writing lots of letters recently. Despite the fact that I’ve been very bad at insisting on handwriting practice, Anna’s writing is improving, and so is Abbie’s. Abigail is left-handed and until recently hasn’t written much at all but over the summer she suddenly became more confident. I was quite proud of today’s effort which was a letter to Josiah, here it is:

Also, happily, it was Steve’s day off today. Well, supposedly – he made it home just after 12, so a half day, in reality. We spent a lovely hour together while Joe was having a nap, doing one of our science kits which was all about solids, liquids and gases. Although it was at a basic level, the experiments were great fun – one was watching raisins go up and down in sparkling water, another was using a balloon on top of a bottle to demonstrate gas being produced in a reaction (see, I could have had Hydrogen in my title, too!), watching bubbles rise from a fizzy sweet in a glass of water (even better as Celsius the Science Bug had included extra sweets for eating!) … and a couple of others too.

not a terribly brilliant photo I know, but it kind of caught the atmosphere of our afternoon

here’s Abigail watching our raisins go up and down

Aunty Jacky came round later on, she’s doing a mini-project on Israel with the girls, as she’s going there at the end of September. She brought them a map and asked them a question about Israel, and has challenged them to make a little notebook to write the answer in, and she’s planning to send them a postcard every few days while she’s there with another quiz question on it that they have to find the answer to. It sounds like fun … and has made me think even more that I need to find a poster-size world map for the dining room wall. Oh, and she brought sweeties with her as well, so that went down a treat.

We played on the dance mats a bit again today (tick music/rhythm awareness and PE!), and then Steve had to go back to work at teatime. I didn’t mind too much, as he came home with a bag of Cantonese food for us – had to laugh at myself because as I opened each container I said ‘ooh, this pot will be good for keeping beads in!’ … tell me I’m not the only one! Anyway, we were sitting eating dinner trying to think of words to describe our day that began with H, and were saved at the last minute by the makers of the paper bag something came in – Hoo Hing Ltd!!