just another morning here

Can’t help but blog about the good days we’re having inbetween the other posts.

Today I spent most of my day up on Dartmoor, where it was very cold! I walked a bit, but mainly sat in the van … drinking coffee and hot chocolate to keep warm at the same time as simply enjoying time away from the world at large. Annoyingly I left behind the OS maps that I’d been lent, so I’m not at all sure I ended up where I was supposed to, it was so grey that I didn’t even bother taking photos bar this one just to see if Rog can tell me whether I was in the right place or not!

I have to say that I am really enjoying the enforced organisation in the mornings due to school; I like having an alarm and getting up to it, I like the fact that the children are all doing their music practice before we leave in the morning, and I like the way we seem to have breakfast together, whereas we rarely did that when things were more relaxed – I guess there were other times that we did, but anyway.

The kids had another good day at school by all accounts.

As we walked home I heard tell from Anna of numeracy – brackets and doing the operations in brackets first, literacy – writing instructions for making a sandwich and a cup of tea, PE – gymnastics, all of which she hed enjoyed. She also went to ICE club in her lunchbreak, apparently, which is a christian thing ‘like Sunday school’.

Abbie told me about skipping with skipping ropes in the playground, and maths which was easy. No surprises there then

Josiah seemed to cope with his first full day really well. He said he couldn’t remember what he’d done at school, and I joked that if he couldn’t remember and tell me anything then I’d have to home educate him again, and his response was ‘yikes!’ At which point he miraculously remembered an interactive whiteboard game of word-snap that they’d played. His teacher caught me at the end of the day and talked to me about his reading so they are obviously making an effort there, which encouraged me.

When they all got home they cleared out lunchboxes then settled down with Little Toe/Big Toe Radio and hama beads, draughts, some 3x and 4x tables homework for Abigail. Then Abbie had a bath, Anna drew pictures, Joe played with Mollie, they watched Blue Peter – all really peacefully. I was being domestic goddess and making a roast dinner! Then Joe had a bath, Anna carried on with hama, Abbie played with her hamster, and then we had tea

They seem so happy that I am really not regretting the decision for a minute, any more. I don’t think they learn any more at school than they would in half the time at home, and I’m sure they are wasting plenty of time doing pointless activities there, but hey, they used to waste an awful lot of time dossing around at home as well. They are all enjoying the social side, and the extra motivation for doing things.

Meanwhile things behind the scenes are busy as ever – more on that another day. Need to go and find some chocolate by way of stress relief for my husband

Reporting back on the first day.

At home before school everyone was up, ready, breakfasted, sandwiches made, music practices done, all by 8.30am which I thought was pretty good. There is a fair amount of novelty value involved I know, but still. We walked to school with Mollie and her dad.

The girls just joined in with their classmates as if they’d been there forever. Josiah was a bit more wobbly; the class he is in has two teachers and he hadn’t met this one before – and we hadn’t really managed to prepare him properly for it as we hadn’t realised either. So leaving him was hard However, the January intake children are still on staggered times, so we picked him up just after lunchtime – he came out really happy, gave me a huge long hug, and said he’d really enjoyed it. Once home we sat and chatted over his leftover Hula Hoops, I heard tales of a friend called Ross, the letter ‘x’, and some other stuff besides.

Steve went back to pick the girls up and they have both had a great day. I’ve told them that if I ever ask what they’ve done at school and they reply ‘nothing’, I will deregister them the very next day!! So they are being really good about talking about their day, just to humour me, I think

All I can say is that if *I’d* tried to get Anna to do all the things she says she’s done today, it would have been a battle from start to finish. She actually learnt something! Told me all about the River Exe, where it starts and finishes, etc. She has homework already – they have to look at the moon every day for a month and record what they see. I am very pleased for her, I think she will thrive at school. Not that she wasn’t doing fine at home, but I think school will suit her really well.

Abbie’s day was good too, her highlight was a computer session where she played a game with a dragon (not sure what it was called!) where she had to answer maths questions in order to progress. Her teacher had done some reading with her and was pleased, apparently – the reading book hasn’t found it’s way home though She seems very happy as well – when asked what rating she would give her day, out of 10, she said 10

I guess we’ll thrash out some after school routines over the next few weeks, but tonight we just had chatting, a game of draughts, Shoebox Zoo, and tea. Early nights all round, as well, as school seems to be very exhausting – this could be a plus point!

Although in lots of ways I personally am not finding it easy at all, in other ways it is really nice, and once we all get used to it, it will be as good for us as home education has been. I am incredibly proud of them all for embracing a change and throwing themselves into it as well as they have

Spell with flickr, first seen on rjjm.net – I like it, but couldn’t think of anything to write … that would be suitable for posting on a blog

Nothing much else to report from us, we’ve just been going on as usual. Spent a lovely afternoon with my neighbour (Mollie’s mum) yesterday which was nice, we get on really well and don’t actually manage to get together often enough!

A little bit of a Pratchett theme to the past couple of days as we all enjoyed watching Johnny and the Bomb yesterday, then Grandma read the first chapter of The Wee Free Men to the girls while she was here this morning.

We’ve also had another couple of chapters of The Horse and his Boy in the car over the past couple of days, which has been nice – not worth blogging about on the Narnia blog really as we haven’t done any more than listen to it. Pulling the activities out of each chapter, while it’s a nice idea, has really felt a bit false and contrived, so we just haven’t bothered.

Anna sat and wrote a story this morning, first time I’ve ever known her do that, I think! I was so surprised and pleased that she’d done it that I bit my tongue about all the there/their sort of mistakes I know if I’d pointed it out she would have seen the difference but I just didn’t want to pick it to pieces!

Abbie’s been reading Haffertee Hamster books to herself recently, which has also been encouraging, as for ages she wouldn’t attempt anything with chapters or without nice colour pictures.

Music practice has been pootling along, Anna’s working quite hard on hers at the moment, and they all did some maths workbook pages while hanging around for swimming lessons this afternoon as well.

So my daughter would like to think, anyway!

Grandma’s present to the girls for Christmas was a voucher entitling them to a sales shopping trip, and Anna redeemed hers today. She had birthday money to spend as well, and did fairly well for herself.

I was at the swimming pool with the other two when Steve’s mum dropped Anna back to me and I had to do a double take when she walked in the door – not sure I’m ready for her to look so grown up! I have been informed that she is always going to go shopping with Grandma from now on because Grandma has better taste than me. Ah well, I guess I can live with that (it’s probably true ). I’d like to suggest it’s also because she knows she can get away with buying different things!

In other vaguely educational news: helped Abbie with some maths today, on units of measurement and translating through millimetres – centimetres – metres, millilitres – litres, grams – kilograms – tonnes and back again. We had rulers and measuring jugs out to illustrate the points in question – all fine until she spilled water all over her maths book!

Swimming lessons took up the afternoon as per usual. We also used our hanging around time at the swimming pool for plenty of reading practice for Abbie and Josiah. Other than that I failed abysmally to ‘get going’ as I had intended, but hey, tomorrow’s another day.