just another morning here

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 …

Sorry all … took huge pleasure today in cleaning the kitchen, although I did get dragged into work for a few hours inbetween times. And work, other than a small fight with a petrol cap on a Fiat Punto, was fairly good from my point of view today. In fact I think it’s fairly good from most people’s point of view just at the moment, despite being utterly all-encompassing and thoroughly tiring! Anyway. I came home, finished the kitchen, then went off for the school run.

I’d arranged to see Josiah’s teachers today, just to chat about how he’s getting on, and they seemed very happy with how he’s settled in. Which is a Good Thing. He was proudly sporting an ‘excellent reading’ sticker He’s still really enjoying things; they all had school dinners today and that new experience didn’t seem to phase him either. Took him off to his music class afterwards and got to sit in the van and chat to a friend while he was there

Meanwhile the girls had been kidnapped by Ruth, Caitlin & Riona – I picked them up later and found that Anna had managed to trip up and gouge a hole out of her knee (and her tights ) which was fairly impressive! She had a bath to make sure it was clean, and I’m sure will get excellent mileage from the size of plaster which is now covering it

Once home we bumbled around – Abbie wrote out some spellings, Joe watched some Cbeebies, I made some soup and rolls, Anna had a bath, then we had tea. Asked the typical ‘what did you do today?’ question over teatime … Abbie said she’d enjoyed outdoor PE today, and Anna told me all about Choir (a lunchtime club she’s been going to), while Josiah just talked about school dinners! Steve got home sometime during tea having sold a couple of cars this afternoon

After tea we’ve done Gameboy and reading (Joe), playing with the hamster (Abbie), and maths homework (Anna). Anna doing her homework had to be seen to be believed, it seems that school definitely has not cured her maths-dizziness, and she had Steve and I in stitches over her blonde approach to it all! Still, it’s done now … time for an evening