At home Joe and I have decorated the kitchen – well, stripped the orange-terracotta painted wallpaper and repainted in a light yellow – which is much brighter and lighter so that’s good, although I’m not sure the colour goes in the kitchen as well as I thought it would. And having painted the walls it’s just highlighted the fact that the gloss needs doing as well. Trouble with starting on gloss is you never know where to stop as one room leads to another, doesn’t it. Anyway, I digress. Joe’s also done loads of maths, finished one of his music theory workbooks and then laminated the certificate from the back of it, erm … oh and he’s now got an old computer in his room so he’s been rediscovering Zoombinis (our Maths journey disc is dead though ) and Carmen Sandiego Maths Detective and playing lots on those.

Abbie and Anna have had another week at school, groups/lessons have all started back up again (with the exception of swimming which is 2 weeks late due to pool refurbishment). Nothing much else to say on that front other than that Abbie got another Thank You Certificate this week – for something maths related. Anna’s cello teacher asked for more time with Anna from now on, but we decided that instead of 1/4 hr more in lessons once a week, it might be more beneficial if she just practiced more!

We rewarded ourselves for the hard work on the kitchen with a new wii game which has kept us occupied pretty much ever since we got it home!

Butterflies have all hatched and we released them this morning. Don’t know if I mentioned the butterfly named ‘Lucky’ by Anna, depending on your definition of lucky, it was kept alive by her despite having dodgy wings … anyway, the other three were fine.

Erm, what else? Anna’s been very grown up going to and from her sessions on her own, don’t know why I worried about her the first day, it must have been hormones. She stayed up late the other night watching Life Before Birth on Channel 4 so that was educational, too. She’s made friends, and is generally having an excellent week.

Abbie’s been enjoying her group and asking me lots of faith-related questions which has been interesting and made me think a lot. She got lost on the way back to the chalet yesterday which was marginally amusing after the event.

Joe seems to think he’s 8 too, and is quite happy to leave the chalet and go to his session on his own – he doesn’t have Anna’s sense of direction though, and I’ve lost him a couple of times too. He is a complete maniac on his scooter and my legs ache from running to keep up with him! I’ve enjoyed time with him this week though, we’ve had plenty of it and it’s been nice, lots of nice chats, reading together, etc. And it’s been interesting to watch his response to all the meeting-type stuff too.

I’ve had lots of time to read which has been nice, I’ve read that book Joyce mentioned a while ago, and am part way through something else. Also been obsessively playing zoombinis, which I’ll blame on Josiah, he got me back into it yesterday. I must be old though, most of the stuff I might like to get to is on late at night; the After Hours concerts etc., but by the time they’re on at 10.30pm, despite having friends who would babysit here, I just can’t be bothered to go out … how apathetic. Ah well.

Home tomorrow, so will catch up properly then

The only thing I’m still umming and aaahing about is our butterfly box. The caterpillars pupated almost three weeks ago, so they’re due to hatch any day now. One chrysalis has darkened in a threatening manner, I seem to remember that’s what happened just before the butterflies came out. One of the five fell off the top, so we’ve got that one ready to take with us but I’m not sure it will hatch, then again I’m not sure about carting the box to Minehead with us, will the remaining four survive if I move them around? I don’t know how delicate they are at this stage. Decisions, decisions. Somehow I will feel very gutted if Steve texts us a picture of them rather than us being able to watch them. While I was bored one day I uploaded the file of our Caterpillar/Butterfly journal from two years ago, so if anyone’s interested it’s here – crappy photos, but it gives a good idea – how stupid will I look carting that box into our Spring Harvest chalet?

Anyway, I’m taking the laptop with us for Zoombinis-style entertainment, but I doubt there will be internet at Butlins, it’s not as good as Hesfes , so all will be quiet here for a week or so …

We all ended up at home from about half past four onwards, and we’re part way through watching a channel 4 documentary on Henry VIII and his wives, which the girls and I are finding really interesting. Joe and Steve were both falling asleep in front of it before tea We’re planning another instalment after bathtime.

Steve and I are sitting here trying out some different radio stations (his dream come true, I’m sitting next to him while he listens to his beloved stereo, *and* I’m blogging!) – currently listening to PlanetRock, which is classic rock (Nirvana, early U2, 70s/80s stuff) … he’s enjoying it . Tomorrow I’ll put the radio back to R2

I was looking for a new coat – sort of knew that it might be a challenge as the shops are full of summer stuff, but I managed to find one that was sort of what I was looking for, and will do the job, in the sale for £10, so that was good. The kids steered me away from one particular surf-type shop telling me that it was too young and trendy and that I should look in Marks & Spencers … hmmm.

Went to try and swap some games because the children *really* want Mario Party 5, and tbh I’m so sick of MP4 that I didn’t mind a swap. We weren’t entirely successful today but one shop is getting a pre-owned copy in for us tomorrow so that’s ideal. Ended up spending some vouchers that I had in Woolworths on ‘Mind Bender’, otherwise known as a wooden kids’ version of Mastermind – the girls had played it at the Puddles’ in January so it was a popular choice.

This afternoon we’ve had a muddle of activity going on, and Steve’s been around, he got back from work in time for a late lunch with us, and the kids unanimously voted to stay here and chill with him rather than go to the park for our HE meet-up. He’s been working hard lately so I think they’ve missed him! Anyway, Josiah and I played Zoombinis together, while Steve and the girls played Mind Bender, and Downfall, and Connect 4. Somehow just being in the same room together felt really lovely, other than eating and watching films it doesn’t happen very often – is that really terrible?

The boys have disappeared upstairs now to play drums and the Wizard of Oz respectively – Steve has his kit back here now, up in the bedroom. He likes to claim that having booted the rowing machine out onto the landing to make space for it, playing the drums will keep him fit … not sure about that one, but it’s nice that he has it here anyway. I have a thing for drummers

The girls and I are listening to the radio, they’re drawing and I’m blogging. They do love the Little and Big Toe Radio Shows.

Happy to have a book people parcel delivered this morning – 10 Horrible Geographies for £10, thanks to Alison for the tip-off, and (ahem) of course, another few books to make up the order for free postage – we got a set of history books, Shakespeare Stories (which I am going to attempt to read aloud), and the Usborne Dot to Dot book for Joe – he was very very pleased with that one – more counting!

We have a ‘Goddard Beef Stew’ cooking in the slow cooker for tea tonight so I have to pop to the shops for some suet as the kids have requested dumplings as well. Don’t think I’ve made dumplings since Home Economics lessons at school!

And I’ve procrastinated on the cleaning front, too – Monday is usually bathroom day but Steve is planning to re-seal around our shower cubicle this evening because it has a slight leak, so clearly I couldn’t clean any of the bathrooms, no point, as I’d have to clean the upstairs one tomorrow so I might as well leave them all until tomorrow … the queen of putting things off, me!

Other than our errands for Steve, we’ve been lazing around the house in true ‘half-term’ fashion, despite the fact that it makes no difference to us really. Except it does – all our regular activities stop, yet we don’t want to go to places that we’d normally go to when there aren’t any activities on because the rest of the world descends on those places at half term, so we stay at home! And I somehow feel ok about being relaxed on the educational front and very virtuous if we do actually do anything that might constitute education! I’m probably repeating myself, I’m sure I’ve written this about half-term before!

Josiah has been slightly hot and floppy for the majority of the day (hence my excessive PS2 playing, easy to do with a floppy child on your lap ), he has a nasty cough and is generally feeling a bit yucky, I think. Poor chap. I am half planning to redecorate his bedroom sometime soon as due to a mixup in credit card payments (yet another!) we have a goodwill gift voucher from Courts (they charged our card twice for our dining room furniture) which will go some of the way towards a new bed for Joe if they have any. I’m going to have to go down and see, because they don’t have any kids’ beds listed on the website yet I know they do have them in the shop. Anyway, so if I use this voucher as part payment for a bed it would be worth decorating his room before it arrived … I’m sure it can’t be that difficult, it’s only a little room! Famous last words, eh?

Anna has played Reader Rabbit Yr 2 and Zoombinis, Abbie and Joe did a reading comprehension activity together from a box of story cards that we borrowed from the resource centre the other day, they’ve played outside and with Mollie, we planted our avocado seedling into a pot (finally), and I’ve played PS2.

Oh, and Anna did some adding money activity or other on Eduss, but soon got bored because they were asking her to add money in columns using carrying, and she didn’t want to add and carry, she wanted to add it up in her head, as you would normally do with money! For once I completely understood where she was coming from, it was a daft activity, in my humble opinion – if you’re going to add and carry you might as well use normal numbers … even adding and carrying with decimal points would be fine, but for some reason you just don’t add and carry with money, do you? You start with the biggest denomination and count up, don’t you? Well, at least, with the numbers they were giving Anna she could manage it by counting up, so she didn’t see the point of adding and carrying in the longhand sort of a way, iyswim.

Anyway, I’m not going to blog again till I have some pictures to post, this page is incredibly boring without any photos! Hopefully that will make me do something somewhat more organised (or at least worth photographing) tomorrow …

I caught up with washing and cleaning after the weekend. Steve worked most of the day, Joe went to Start Right this morning. The girls both did music practice, a bit of writing each, and a little maths from workbooks too.

Abbie wrote a Christmas card for our sponsored child in Honduras – early I know, but they go to translators before they get sent to the children themselves.

Anna did another page for our London scrapbook/folder, and I helped organise all our bits and pieces into the folder too. Only another couple of pages to add and then that one is finished. Strangely, after the ordeal of the last writing episode, she was absolutely fine about doing it today, and produced 5 sentences in no time at all. Even Steve has contributed a page of writing to our project, which is a miracle in itself!

Over the weekend Steve’s Aunty Jacky offered to do another project with the children (she did the Romans with them about 18 months ago now) so we’ve suggested the Ancient Greeks thing that Anna expressed an interest in – and she thought that was a great idea, so I’m really pleased that she’s going to take that on! I’m planning a trip to the resource library to see what I can find on the subject – any other suggestions for good books etc. would be gratefully received!

Abbie’s maths was just general number bond practice, oh, and some basic shape naming stuff – which she could do standing on her head. In fact the hardest bit for her was writing the names of the shapes down – I’ve been looking at the Draw Write Now stuff as well, after all the muddlepuddle recommendations, I think we might well indulge as well .

Anna was doing division with remainders, which was interesting. She persisted in working out the remainders the wrong way – so for example, given the sum 24/5, she would say 5r1 rather than 4r4 … all the time?!! It was obvious that she was just working the wrong way round … working out how many she needed to get up to the next one, rather than how many left over, iyswim. I think she had just about got the hang of it by the end! She’s now playing Zoombinis Island Odyssey …

Picked Josiah up from nursery and Anna went off to school for dance & drama – the rest of us went shopping, and finished off errands at home. Steve picked Anna up from school and came home (via a digital radio shop?!?) at 4ish so that was nice. Then the kids played outside with Mollie for quite a while – poor old Mollie is a bit pickled with chickenpox at the moment, but as my 3 have all had it we don’t mind .

Had tea, now it’s bathtime (in fact I’m being yelled at to help with Zoombinis and drying small people so I’d better go), soon to be followed by bedtime .

The girls’ computers are now networked, and they are very happy about it. We’re very happy with the screens (especially the headphone sockets!).

It’s been a lazy day here, we’ve seen lots of friends, Anna had a cello lesson, Abbie has read some more of her book, Joe’s played with his trains and with the Geomags … Steve put up some child-height coat hooks and sorted the computers. I played Zoombinis for a while, made soup and rolls, now my friend and I are about to pop over to a neighbour’s house for some sort of Christmas gifty party thing … all very pleasant.

Hello to anyone who has come from the Well Trained Mind message board … unfortunately I’m sure you must be in the wrong place – because my mind is far from being well trained, and our home education is far from it as well!!! Still, by the grace of God go we.

We’re still watching way too much tv here, but my hand exercises this week are really hurting and wearing me out, so I haven’t been bothered to do anything but the bare minimum with the children. Also it absolutely kills in the cold weather, so even going to the park is somewhat torturous. I still can’t quite believe how much hassle one little cut has caused. Anyway, I think we’ll all be glad when things get back to normal at the beginning of January.

We had friends round to play this morning and hama-ed for the first time since I hurt my finger. Josiah managed not to throw beads everywhere so it was relatively stress free. Abbie and I played more Slug in a Jug and Magic Cauldron – it seems we can’t play one or the other, we have to play them both or not at all! Anna played Zoombinis with her friends and got very frustrated when they didn’t ‘get’ the logic problems. In the end she just gave up and left them to it, then said ‘I told you so’ when they moaned that they’d lost all their Zoombinis!! She has obviously inherited her mother’s patient temperament ;o)

Another friend is coming round for dinner tonight so I’d better get on, have to cook dinner myself today!

Zoombinis is completed, but as I suspected, it was a bit disappointing. I got all 425 to Zoombiniville but there were no fanfares or anything at the end, I’m wondering if it’s because I didn’t get to the hardest level on the last stage. I don’t know how you go up the levels, maybe I’m just stupid so I didn’t do it well enough so I didn’t get to it? Anyway, I give up, I’m off to make a mini Hama angel …