just another morning here

Such a mad day I will have to amend the time of blog-entry to make this appear on the right date!

Started off this morning by helping Steve at work, running errands with kids in tow.

Home for a quick coffee for me, while the children played with Mollie and did their music practice.

Back out (via the cinema to get Orange Wednesday 2-4-1 tickets for Narnia) to our Home Ed groups’ joint Christmas party. A well attended affair including a party lunch, storytelling session, gift giving and opening and enjoying, then carol singing and lantern procession around the park! We were there until around 5pm when we went to extract Steve from work and take him to the cinema.

Loved the film. I wasn’t sure I was going to, and I’m not going to attempt to review it at all as there are plenty of reviews out there already. But I liked it – I liked the ‘magical-ness’ of the story which I think they did a great job translating into film. The cast were brilliant; there were a couple of moments where the special effects seemed less good than others, but the main animal characters were exceptionally well done. The battle scene, we realised on the way home, was interesting because there wasn’t a drop of blood spilt (or very little, at least!). Still not quite sure it tops the animated version for me personally, but they are such different films from different eras so you really can’t compare them. If Disney/New Walden Media are planning to make the entire series I will be thrilled, does anyone know if they are?

Once home and the children were in bed it was an early night for us, too. Well, it would have been early for me until I started chatting online on Animal Crossing, where the Wild World has become a small world – wi-fi means you meet people by playing across towns with your characters, and somehow I’ve managed to meet a someone who’s as sad as me – obsessed enough to buy AC:WW before it’s even released in this country, then play it obsessively too. I got Nookingtons (with added hair salon) first though! Bizarrely, my new found friend actually lives nearby in real life, so one of these days we’re going to have to meet up and play AC without worrying about the network dropping out!

Still no photos of the new hamster but Abbie did have him out of the cage this evening and he seems quite settled and still very cute. Will get Steve on the case today

This morning started well with everyone doing a bit of music practice in turn – Joe’s finding holding the bow quite hard so he didn’t want to do that, he’s agreed to do it later on with Steve. Anna swore blind that a pair of quavers were semi-quavers, and crotchets were quavers, but we got there in the end.

After that we settled down to some Narnia reading etc., then watched Look & Read on BBC2, which covered short/long vowel sounds, single/double consonants, and then possessive pronouns. I must say I find it a weird programme, they present things by the rules, which always seem bizarre when they’re taken ‘out of context’, iyswim, I still think good grammar will be absorbed naturally if the children read enough, with the odd thing needing to be learnt perhaps, but generally I think reading is the key. Not that I’d know, my children are so resistant to writing anything (or reading anything decent, for that matter!) that I haven’t been able to test my theory, so I could be talking rubbish for all I know. Hmmm.

Went out to Sainsbury’s, had lunch in the office with Steve, went and did some banking for him, and now the children are drawing/playing … we’re about to go out for our manic swimming afternoon with the long gaps inbetween, must go and round up some stuff to do (Maths!!) during our long waits.

Louise, in her great organisational capacity, had organised us a home ed group trip to Living Coasts today. The group had been once before and we were gutted to miss it, so this time decided not to miss out.

Haven’t got time to blog properly yet (will catch up later or tomorrow) but it was an excellent day.

Followed that very long day with an hour’s violin lesson for Steve and I – as predicted, Steve enjoyed it far more than me! Got home around 7pm, made some soup quickly, kids are justabout in bed now, and we’re playing poker

Tomorrow will be equally manic – work-related trip to Taunton first thing, then I’m planning to get to the Creative Stitches Exhibition (a tradition, here – anyone remember last year’s visit, featured on a Different Life?), followed by a visit to Start Right to get some new books for Josiah, possibly fitting in a visit to Martin’s Caravans to talk about awnings as well. And then the girls need to be at Friday Fish a little bit early as Anna is acting the part of Lucy (from the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe) as part of the story-telling there …

Anyway, better go, as lack of concentration will lead to losing even more than usual

Must blog a little bit more about yesterday – as well as Narnia stuff we went to home ed group, which also included ballet lessons – Anna was over the moon about that.

Joe made a new friend, which was lovely to watch – one of the older boys had brought a toy roulette set in, and after the big boys had finished playing with it they left it out on the table, and Josiah started playing with it, along with this other little boy who is a very similar age – they made up all their own rules and were spinning the roulette then giving one another money, loads of mathsy stuff going on, from what I could overhear.

Afterwards Anna had cello and then her chamber group practise as well, then in the evening a friend came round for tea (the tuna burgers were scrummy, by the way), and to test Turkish Delight recipes, among other things!

Today we have read a couple more chapters of TMN, only one to go now (edit: and we read it over dinner). Josiah and I did some more reading together, just some library books. The girls both did music practise, which I helped with for once, and then they had an hour of schools’ tv – Words and Pictures (air and ow sounds), followed by Primary Geography then Primary History.

That was followed by Carrot & Almond soup, set to become a family favourite, I think.

The afternoon was taken up with a couple of science kits at the kids’ request – plenty of enthusiasm today – we are doing them in desperation as the cupboard was getting full up! Number 23 was another electronics one, pretty crummy actually, and because we’ve had an electronics kit about for a while, the stuff in it was fairly rudimentary, apart from a simple electromagnet experiment at the end.

Number 24 was on magnetism – reviewing poles, attraction/repulsion, and then looking at magnetic fields using iron filings. This was hugely exciting for all three and Anna even made one of those funny face things with iron filings in it …

By this time Josiah had got distracted from the science kits but had got into the electronics kit and was building circuits by correctly following instructions in the book, which I thought was quite impressive. He was really pleased with himself anyway. And so absorbed that he wet himself, but I’ll let that pass.

After school time Anna & Abbie went to play with Caitlin & Riona, while I took Josiah to his Music group. Amusing incident there, when the teacher asked them to clap the rhythm of their names – we’d been talking about syllables earlier, so Joe started to tell the teacher that they were clapping syllables, got it wrong and said cymbals Probably only amusing to me who knew what he was on about, but there we are.

Home after a quick cuppa with Ruth (thanks – was lovely to see you ) to give the kids tea and get them sorted for bed before the babysitter arrives, we’re off out tonight to celebrate a friend’s birthday, so that should be a fab evening.