Sometime, back along, whenever I wrote about Anna’s birth, I declared the end of my official teaching career. However, it looks as though it will be starting again – better late than never. This morning I had an interview for a temporary (1 year) teaching post at my school, and I got the job. I hated the interview, they asked *really* hard questions – and then afterwards told me off for not selling myself well enough. To be honest, I hadn’t dressed up or anything like that – I felt as though that would be stupid as they already know what I’m like so it would be false to try to give any other impression! So I wasn’t really trying to sell myself – perhaps that was wrong?

Just so you can all have a laugh, here is the ‘scenario’ I was given just minutes before the interview:

It is 9.30am. You are a member of staff down in class, leaving you with 2 teaching assistants and 9 pupils. One pupil has just arrived in class having been very sick on the bus. There is a social worker on the phone who wants to speak to you urgently. One pupil has come into class very distressed and is gradually wrecking the classroom. This starts another pupil screaming. The headteacher is coming in at 10am for a lesson observation. The intranet is down and you haven’t been able to access the resources you were banking on.
Talk us through what you are going to do.

Cue hysterical laughter. Actually most of this is fairly normal on any morning in our school, so it wasn’t very difficult to talk about! Easy answers: I would never leave resources till the last minute as the intranet at school is unreliable at the best of times. I would *certainly* never leave them till the last minute if I knew the head was coming in for an observation! Get rid of the social worker (perhaps find out what the urgent matter is) and arrange to call her back later – pupils are always my first priority. Get one TA to take the distressed child out of the class before they do any more damage/hurt someone then hopefully the screaming one might calm down (unlikely in real life, but hey ho). Of course I did have to confess that I’d be getting one of the TAs to clear up the vomit While all that is going on I’d be holding the fort with the other 7 children/phoning the nurse about the ill child etc. etc. As I said, all in a day’s work!

My presentation (on Further Developing Personalisation in KS4) was fairly boring but it must have been ok otherwise surely they wouldn’t have given me the job. I mean, I know I’m cheap as an NQT but that’s not a good enough reason on its own, is it?!

I am pleased, I suppose, although I can’t seem to get excited about it yet; firstly it doesn’t start until September, and secondly I can’t quite get used to the fact that it’s in Key Stage 4, which is way out of my comfort zone – I confess I prefer smaller children. Not only that, I must stop calling them children and start calling them students!

Anyway it’s felt like a bit of a strange day being offered congratulations and yet not really feeling particularly celebratory. We had chinese for tea though

Now getting through the slog of remaining music practices, homework, and bedtimes. Watching Anna on Linguascope – looks good for language practice though I don’t know if it’s a subscription thing (probably) – might be a good resource for anyone doing languages. Hmm, I just looked at it more closely. Only £200 for a site licence! Discrimination against HEors strikes again. Though perhaps if families clubbed together it might be worth it – or it might be worth contacting them for a HE friendly rate.

On Wednesday they arrived; we met them very late at the motorway services. It was quite chaotic with over 50 of them and almost as many English families there to collect them (and of course, no sensible system in place for matching people up!) but by wading into the crowd, looking for girls who could be about 12 and calling their names I managed to extract our girls from the melee and be pretty much the first to leave!

My French managed to re-surface; it was probably awful with wrong grammar all over the place (thank goodness they couldn’t see which accents were missing) but good enough to feel as though I was taking good care of them. Anna got a bit frustrated that she couldn’t communicate very well though – only one way to solve that! We did spend some time each day on conversational French, so that was educational I think I would seriously consider doing a long term exchange like the Not Sheep family sometime in the future.

Thursday saw them in town at a Civic Reception with the Mayor etc., lunch laid on, a tour of the cathedral, and then some free time in the city centre. I had given them maps of the city centre which they promptly forgot to take!

The day ended with a long rehearsal, for our orchestra, theirs, and then both together. We got home relatively late, had dinner (probably normal time for the French, late for us!), and then hunted through our DVDs until we found a few with French language/subtitles – surprisingly few of them!

On Friday their organised excursion was to Dartmoor, rather them than us – it was cold! Don’t think they had any clue of how cold it would be, when I told them where they were going. We picked them up mid-afternoon and came home for an early tea before going out to the concert venue for the evening.

The concert was really good; a diverse range of music which was excellent. The French group had a classical guitar ensemble with them and I must admit that their pieces were among my favourites, particularly when they played the Schindler’s List theme by John Williams, with a single violin solo.

Our French girls finally started behaving normally after the concert when they were high as kites (as were our girls!) and regaling Anna and Abbie (with a bit of translation help from me) with a tale of somebody’s bassoon being blocked up and what happened to the blockage (don’t ask!) when it was finally blown out! Anyway it was nice, as I was wondering how long they could be on their best behaviour for! We had late night tea and toast and packed them all off to bed!

Saturday was a very early start; I took them to the services for 8am so that they could have a trip to Bath. Again rather them than me, it was pouring with rain all day long. Still, I think they enjoyed themselves. The Ceilidh that we put on in the evening was a roaring success; we served Cornish pasties and various local cheeses, then ice cream in cornets, and the dancing was enjoyed by all.

On Sunday we had a lazy morning. The children all bonded over Wii Sports, while I cooked a full english breakfast, made all the more exciting by flame grilled tomatoes (I grilled them in the same pan as the bacon, and managed to set fire to the fat, to the extent that Steve had to chuck a wet teatowel over the top! Front door wide open to let out the smoke, fire alarm going off, neighbours all watching in amusement!).

We got ready at a very leisurely pace and then went down to the Quay for the grand finale of the weekend, an open air concert. The sun shone for most of it, but as they played the last piece, the rain started in earnest, if you watch the video clip you can see it at the end!

Took them back to the coach and waved them off. A simply fantastic extended weekend (and I’ve only blogged about the bits related to the orchestra, there was plenty more!). Tired now, and it’s back to work tomorrow … so doing the only sensible thing and staying up late drinking wine, eating leftover cheese, and watching a film

Here are a few photos from their trip – there weren’t many to choose from but this gives a bit of a picture …

This was taken from the Cheese Store at the bottom of Bob & Muriel’s garden, looking up towards their house. When they moved to Troyes 4 years ago the cheese store was exactly that, and they have renovated it into a guest annexe. Steve and the rest of the ‘boys’ stayed there, while Anna and the other girl on the trip stayed in the main house.

I think these photos were taken at L’Oasis, the church in Troyes, on the Sunday morning – this is Anna with her friend Mollie, and Mollie’s big sister (whose name escapes us …)

Four of our friends – Sarah, Ben, another Ben (at the top!), and Rich.

Mollie again – isn’t she just gorgeous?! We’ve been praying for this family for a while, they’re part of the church there and recently their mum died very suddenly and unexpectedly, during a routine operation she suffered a fatal blood clot – leaving her husband and 4 children … so it was nice that Anna met them, it will mean more to pray for them now.

And this was last night at the Music Festival – beforehand, I assume, because they don’t exactly look like they’re playing anything! Anna did take some photos of them in action, but they were taken from her level looking up at the stage and none of them have heads!!

I think they had a great time, although they’re both quite tired. Steve says that Anna really enjoyed the music festival and saw lots of different styles of music there, she especially liked the reggae band, apparently! And of course she enjoyed eating out at a Creperie that night too – he reports that she was generally really good with all the food that was served up so I was chuffed about that. She was counting up her leftover euros before going to bed, and has brought home little presents for the other two, so that was sweet.

Anyway, must get to bed because I’m knackered too and we have a busy few days ahead of us before camp.

I also borrowed some Letts KS1 SATS books from the library – Anna looked at them in disgust but I think I will use them to refer to now and again. Having had a quick look at them I’m fairly happy that our maths and science are well up to standard, and reading/comprehension would be fine, but I know Anna’s writing is behind her schooled contemporaries. I’m not worried about it at all, really, as one of the good things about home educating is that you can approach things when the children are ready, rather than when ‘the system’ says you should, but it might be something to bear in mind.

Anna has packed her bags for going to France with Steve tomorrow – he and a group of friends from church are going to Troyes (Champagne region) to play in the Festival de Musique which is held every year on June 21st, and I think they’ve been for the past 5 or 6 years now – the only year Steve didn’t go was when we were at Bible College. Steve’s not actually playing this year, he’s driving/roadie-ing for them instead – so I decided that it would be a good opportunity for a field trip! We looked at our First 100 Words in French this morning and I’ve written a few other important phrases in the back of the book for her (and Steve!!). They’re leaving early tomorrow and getting back late on Tuesday.

And it’s Friday, so that means there’s an update from Stuart and Liz, and it’s eviction night on BB. Steve’s going to be home soon so I’d better go and get tea ready …

We’ll just have to do without titles till I can think of something original to do with those … numbers, maybe?

Anyway, we’ve had a busy few days doing all sorts – here are the highlights.

Monday was school … Anna’s dance clothes that I bought off ebay had finally arrived so she was over the moon to wear them. The dance teacher told me afterwards that she actually thought Anna was quite promising with her dancing and would we be interested in some proper dance lessons so I had to say yes (how to butter up a prospective customer, eh?!), but we have yet to see if anything comes of it.

Tuesday we had our Free Range Learning group – we’ve decided to go every week if we can. One parent takes a short practical French session which the girls love, they’ve been singing ‘heads, shoulders, knees and toes’ in French ever since … and there are other activities going on as well, plus all the socialising. The group was in the Telegraph, the other day, actually – read the article here.

Wednesday has seen swimming, some catching up at home with our postcard project, plus a bit of maths work together on the computer, another HE meet-up in the park, popping into town to get some parcels, then going to St. Luke’s for some more resources. And I wonder why I’m tired! I’ve been out the last two nights as well so tonight I’ve pleaded washing overload instead of going out again – now I have to get round to actually sorting some of the washing!
Anyway, I was really chuffed with Josiah at the pool today, for the first time he actually went off and swam on his own without needing me to hold him all the time. This is a major improvement!
Also, while we were at the park, I spotted a flier in the building there about some Music Awareness classes for 4 – 6 yr olds which I didn’t know about before. I rang the organiser this evening and it seems they may have some places so I’m hoping they will, I’ve been looking for some general music groups for ages with no luck – I just didn’t want to start individual instrumental lessons too early.

Also, this evening we’re playing with our new toy – a hyperpen & tablet. I got it with an offer from Serif, along with PhotoPlus 7 and DrawPlus 6 – more software to load the pc up with! Completely unnecessary, really, but I wanted to try one out because I’m left-handed and have problems with drawing when I have the mouse in my right hand. Abbie’s left-handed too, so I was thinking of her, too. Anyway, guess what – I hate it and Steve loves it! Still, we’ve got to use it a bit and give it a chance. The kids are looking forward to using it for drawing, as it is really sensitive for that. We’ll see.

The heat really made us relax this week which was nice – I read nearly all the books I’d taken for two weeks this week! I’m trying to think if there is anything else I should remember from the week … we ate lots of pasta because it was easy, and lovely fresh fruit & veg from the market, not to mention the cheese and sausages! Abbie particularly enjoyed tasting greengages and eating them by the bucketload given half a chance!

Well, that’s it for now, if I think of anything else I’ll have to add it in later!

Joe chose blue paint, of course
It lasted all of 10 minutes till he started trying to splatter paint the table/carpet/walls so we stopped the painting session rather abruptly at that point!

This afternoon I’ve been very attentive and have showed the girls how to play top trumps, we read a story with lots of French vocabulary in it and then played a lotto game with French word cards, the girls have read stories and done puppet shows for me, and it’s all been very nice!

Nothing else of much interest is going on here, I’m trying to get through as much washing as possible before going away, I’m just glad I have a tumble drier because if I was relying on sunny days to dry it, I’d be in trouble! I’m also planning to defrost the freezer but that has to wait till after tomorrow’s dinner.

Picked up some euros from the bank this afternoon, first time I’ve seen any, so that was interesting. Marginally.

Bunnies in the garden

Meanwhile, the children are playing beautiful ‘made up games’ upstairs (which generally results in the total trashing of Anna’s room, but there we go). Abbie has just appeared in a bunny costume wanting to pull a carrot from the garden that she can eat, so I said it would be fine. She looked too cute to say no to.

We reviewed our Ecuador project yesterday and made some Hama fruit and a volcano picture as a result. Today Anna had the beads out again and followed one of the Hama patterns to make a rabbit.

this is Anna’s rabbit … a joint effort but she did a great job on the ears all by herself

this is my Ecuadorian Volcano! The children helped me choose and sort the colours

and these are all our creations so far this week – the butterfly is Abbie’s (her design, made with my help), and the rest are Anna’s. The fruit was all her own work.

For more bead inspiration look no further than the Queen of Hama’s site, and here is where you can buy beads, boards and all things Hama.

Today we also received our Eduss maths software. The jury’s out on this one, Anna wasn’t too impressed. Personally, I thought it looked very good, and I think it is the kind of thing I will use as a teaching aid should I need support teaching any specific concepts, rather than the sort of thing Anna will use to ‘play’ with. Abigail will probably enjoy it more, but she hasn’t had time to test it yet. Still, I have cancelled our subscription to Einstein, as the eduss programme is much better and we don’t seem to be using Einstein (without a lot of encouragement) any more.

We’ve finally got round to buying and writing some postcards for our Postcard Exchange (this was set up through the International Christian Home-Educators’ group), and we all enjoyed receiving cards from our postcard family in Wisconsin last week, too.

Anna has a Girl’s Brigade trip to Crealy tomorrow, so hopefully Abigail and I are going to take the opportunity to go worm digging and set up her worm farm which we can keep running during July.

My goals for July are to focus on France and things French, in anticipation of our holiday, so I’m intending to plan some activities in order to have lots up my sleeve. At the moment we seem to be a bit aimless, and I think we all enjoy a bit of structure to our days, and some ideas that we’ve thought out in advance will help I think. So if anyone has anything creative to offer me on my French theme I’d be very grateful!

Kids – have done all sorts over the past few days including swimming, seeing friends, assembly at Emmanuel, more about Ecuador including some lovely paintings and some random spanish words, some gardening and our caterpillars arrived!. We bought a ‘Butterfly Garden’ and we’re hoping to grow these caterpillars, watch them metamorphose and change into butterflies. That’s the idea, anyway. We got the kit from Earthlets but you can see loads more similar things at Insect Lore. It’s all very exciting, for me, at least. The kids aren’t quite so thrilled, mainly because you have to leave the caterpillars in their pot till they’ve turned into chrysalides … no handling allowed! But it will still be fun to watch them grow and change. Knowing my luck, they’ll probably die – but then again the makers of the kit guarantee that you will have at least three butterflies out of your five caterpillars, otherwise they will send new ones, so there we go.

Steve – is very stressed because of the ongoing cashflow problem at work. Another 50K and he’d be happy.

Meanwhile I am chuffed to bits because we’ve finally cleared the front garden! Now I can’t decide whether to actually try and grow things in the garden or whether to pave/gravel it and grow things in pots. A friend boosted me into action and came round to help me with the worst of it. A couple of very stubborn roots later (took a couple of hours!) and the garden is clear. Well, of plants, anyway. As I was turning the soil over to break it up a bit, I discovered a wire which looks suspiciously like our cable tv wire running right the way across the garden, in a piece of green tubing. So I’m not quite sure what to do about that. Off to browse some gardening sites!