just another morning here

Always catching up, or trying to at least …

The weekend
Was spent in various places; Steve and the children at home, and me away in London. They had a ball doing not very much although they did manage to buy new school shoes for Josiah, I’m not sorry to have missed that particular ordeal. They mooched around in town, had lunch in the park, and bought DVDs which they then went home and watched (Steve’s idea of a good day ). Apparently they missed me, because I don’t get cross as often as Daddy. Grass is always greener, I think, I’m sure I do!!

I was camping at Crystal Palace, where I went in order to meet an internet/acww friend! I decided to camp so that I could check out the site for possible future use ourselves, but as it turned out it was only 10 mins walk away from my friend’s house, so that was handy. And, she rents a room from a home educating family, I met her landlady as well so we compared Hesfes stories and I wished I was still a proper home educator. Ahem. Anyway, Chorna and I cooked, chatted, and played DS, all of which was lovely. And then I had some very self-indulgent time in the van as well, reading, sleeping, etc. Didn’t see London at all, but I couldn’t really be bothered, we’ll go back to the site again soon I’m sure. The drive home was horrendous, but the less said about that the better.

Got back into town, picked Anna up from her Wizard of Oz rehearsals, then went home to watch King Kong with friends for film night, we had dinner together in an extended interval too – quite enjoyed the film, at least I managed to stay awake for once! Mainly because we started it so early!!

Monday
Back to the usual routine (only not quite so usual as Russ is away for a couple of weeks so Steve and I are on full office duty), I think it’s the first day since school started again that Josiah hasn’t said he didn’t want to go.

Emma and Robyn moved in; they’re staying for a while because Steve’s parents’ house is undergoing major refurbishment. Meant I was finally forced into sorting out the cupboards and drawers in the music room which has needed doing ever since we moved house so that is a good thing! Might be chaotic to have them around all the time but on the other hand it could suit us all quite nicely and I’m sure she can babysit for us as much as we can for her

Got some new books for Anna; she’s doing WWII in school and is getting really into it, so thought it was the ideal opportunity to try and get her to read something different (having finished Harry Potter she’s back onto Lemony Snicket and while any reading is better than no reading, there is limited literary value in Lemony Snicket! although I notice The End is out soon, must get it and finally put the series to bed!). She fancied When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit so I’ve got hold of the trilogy for her, as well as a couple of Michelle Magorian books too. Don’t know if she’s actually going to read them but it’s worth a try! Now if only I could wean Abigail off those wretched fairy books …

Watched another film in the evening but have decided I can’t stand Nicolas Cage and anyway I was wifi-ing with acww friends at the same time which was more fun

Tuesday
I’m blogging from work This morning was interesting, getting everyone through breakfast, getting dressed, music practice etc. is bad enough usually but with Robyn thrown into the mix at that time in the morning it was even more chaotic. My children are *so* easily distracted! But we managed it with only one broken glass (Robyn ‘helping’ to empty the dishwasher!), and hey, it makes everything more exciting

Well, annoyingly, Steve fixed the bug that had been bugging me on the website. How is it that I can spend two WHOLE days staring at code then he comes along and fixes it instantly?!! Sooo annoying, that man!

Anyway, here it is: Water Lane Garage. There is still one tiny detail that I’m working on but otherwise I’m pretty happy with it. In due course we’ll add more articles and probably some photos too (still haven’t got our signs up at the actual site so we’re waiting for those). And I ought to put a Code Placidly hosting button on there somewhere too

In other news: Steve and I went to see Anna’s teacher today for another glowing report which again, I feel we actually can’t take that much credit for, as whatever Anna is/does is all herself and her own work. Still proud of her anyway.

Had a lovely conversation with the children yesterday which sprung from talking about school holidays and the differences in them across different areas of the country, to the ages at which people take exams. It seems as though Anna & Abbie at least are both thinking that they’ll stay at primary school but then be home educated again after that – I know it’s a long way off and plenty of things could change by then, but as a mid-long-term goal educationally it’s a plan I’d be really really happy with.

Nice to have Russ back at work, we missed him, as we had to do some work for once. We’ll be back to slacking now

As I write, Steve is out with Anna & Joe at Stage by Stage and violin respectively. Abbie and I are sitting here writing together which is nice – I’m blogging and she’s finishing a story based on Mrs Armitage on Wheels, her own take on it. Just nice to be doing stuff alongside one another.

Looking forward to the end of term, the children have a non-uniform day tomorrow and then the end of term on Friday so hurrah for the holidays

It feels as though we’ve done nothing but eat, this weekend! Steve was working on Saturday so I took the children in to the South West Festival of Food and Drink in the morning. We all had a pancake for breakfast, then spent the morning nibbling various cheeses, sausages, crisps, chocolate, jams, chutneys, etc. It was great! The kids had a sausage roll for lunch, and we made it home for an hour or so before dashing out again.

Saturday afternoon was a bit of a blur; I had to take Abbie to piano lessons, take the other two to a Young Strings concert (which involves parking in town), stay while Josiah did his performance, by which time it was time to go and pick Abbie up, so we left Anna there, went and got Abbie, got stuck in traffic, made it back to the concert *just* in time to catch Anna’s solo, although we missed her group performance.

Afterwards, more food. The highlight of these Young Strings concerts is often the buffet tea … especially the home made meringues that one of the members makes, they are some of the best meringues I’ve ever tasted.

Anyway. Saturday night was quietish … the children have been doing lots of drawing recently so I told them about Illustration Friday (thought we could jump on that bandwagon even without the home-ed-art rationale ) and they did some Spring pictures which I must photograph later. Steve went out to play poker again!

Today we took Steve back in to the Food Festival, so much more of the same picking at bits happened. I actually watched one of the ‘serious’ cooking displays, although not that seriously, as for goodness’ sake, who has the time or the inclination to make basil pasta from scratch, and then fill it with some weird creamy crab concoction – it was a very pretentious recipe, imho!! Which is exactly what I thought when we went to Michael Caines’ restaurant, but there we go. It was quite impressive to watch a one-armed chef at work, if nothing else. Bought some delicious curry sauces and some freeze-dried strawberries!

Had a naff start to the morning though, as I went to get the parking ticket and put a weekday’s worth of fee into the machine, pushed the button, and then realised that it was Sunday and I could have paid a third of what I did. DOH. Josiah then wailed as I’d borrowed his 50p in order to even make that mistake, and for some reason it suddenly became the hugest deal in the whole wide world.

Ended up in town buying too many cheap DVDs then came home for lunch. The afternoon saw DVD-watching, game-playing, and Mollie was over as well … as usual! I cooked dinner, and then read for a while with Joe – we really enjoyed Mr Cool, which was his school reading book, might have to see what else there is in that little series as it was perfect both ability wise and story length/involvement wise.

And here we are, ready for another exciting week ahead … must retrieve uniform from clean washing pile …

The girls both brought school reports home today. I don’t even know where to begin in blogging about them. The reports are generally really complimentary about both of them, and in an alternate life I might have read them and been really happy, and left it at that. Which is probably what I should do anyway, after all, what did I expect? Well, I expected precisely this, I suppose.

The reports don’t really reflect my children and their abilities, all they reflect is the areas in which my children do or don’t match with the National Curriculum. The starting point isn’t the children, it’s the curriculum, which I guess is the only place *to* start when you have a class of 30 children with a vast array of ability, but it’s completely topsy turvy to everything I valued about our academic approach when we were home educating. I don’t really know why I feel disappointed with this, after all, the teachers are paid to teach the NC, and therefore reporting according to that does kind of make sense, but it’s so far from the whole picture, even just academically.

Not only do I think the NC is a load of rubbish, but also the reports are politically correct in that they assess children according to ‘expectations’ rather than anything else. I wonder who exactly it is that suggests what expectations the teacher should have for each child! They certainly didn’t ask me what *my* expectations were for my children!! I guess in our kids’ case this may be slightly different due to them only having been there for a term so perhaps I shouldn’t judge too soon, but it still seemed weird that perhaps, if a teacher didn’t have particularly high expectations of a certain child, they could get all the ‘exceeded expectations’ boxes ticked without too much trouble, yet it would be completely meaningless really! Also, if all they teach is the middle ground NC content, then surely that is all the children are going to achieve?!! Anyway, yes, our children are in school, yet I’m not a fan of institutions [understatement of the year] , so therefore I’m frustrated. Don’t mind me

One of the ‘goals’ set in Abbie’s report made me wonder if they really even bother finding out whether kids can already actually achieve the goals they’re about set, or perhaps the goals are just the same for everyone deemed to be at a particular level, according to what’s on the NC for the following term, I don’t know.

Anyway, I’m probably going to get myself into trouble even by mentioning school reports so I’ll shut up. Ho hum. There should be a box for parents to tick ‘I want reports’ or ‘I don’t want reports’, then I could have saved the teachers the trouble I wonder how frustrated *they* get by having to report in this way, I know it would annoy the hell out of me if I were a teacher. Next week we get the pleasure of parent-teacher interviews as well, so I guess those will actually be far more useful than a written report anyway.

There was one line in Anna’s report that made me giggle though, something like: Anna’s work is well presented and thorough, but she needs to work on her speed. This could be improved by not talking so much when given a task … !!!!

In other news: Anna had a piano exam this morning – so much anticipation and it was over within 10 minutes! Two weeks until the results are available, apparently.

That car I sold – although the people came back and agreed to buy it, I actually let them go without paying a deposit for a couple of reasons … Steve completely wound me up later on by saying they’d come in and had changed their minds, but thankfully it *was* just a wind up.

Josiah’s teacher seems to finally have given him a book worth reading after I wrote a little note pointing out that the book he had yesterday was actually one he’d had only a couple of weeks before. The reading books he’s getting don’t seem to have any progression whatsoever but I have to say that I’m almost past caring, he’s reading loads at home anyway and I suspect that the choice they have for a reception class probably doesn’t cater for his ability anyway so it’s unsurprising that it’s been something difficult to get right.

Treated the children to chocolate doughnuts after school and we’re currently appreciating Shrek for the hundredth time, but it’s still a great film

Can’t decide what to have for tea as I have to go and pick Steve up anyway so can’t really start cooking yet – fish and chips maybe! Poker night tonight and I am determined to beat Neil but I think he’s secretly got quite professional about it and is leaving the rest of us standing …