A blogpost!

I really have lost the plot here with the blog. A couple of reasons spring to mind - with the lighter evenings the kids have been going to bed later, so by the time I get downstairs after putting them to bed it's 9.30 and I'm knackered and haven't the energy to blog. Also we've been doing almost nothing overtly educational. I didn't plan to stop 'proper' HE over the summer holidays but that's the way it's ended up. No bad thing, I think, because I was in a bit of a crisis with Jade particularly. Anything that looks suspiciously like 'learning' she runs a mile from, and yet I am not comfortable with pure unschooling. The summer break has almost been a covert trial of autonomous learning, to see how it goes, and I'm still not entirely comfortable with it as a complete ongoing approach. I think I would be happy with 90% autonomous learning but just a little insistence on certain basics. I have hesitated over buying any more Sonlight, and won't attempt to stick with the Instructor's Guide again, but might do a kind of Sonlight Unschooling approach with the insistence on a page of maths per day as well, or something like that.

So what have we been doing? Mostly the girls have been playing, of course. Jade is still mainly either playing with horses or pretending to be a horse or a unicorn. She got me to make her a unicorn's horn the other day, and she gallops round the trampoline like a flying unicorn. She enjoyed watching the Olympic show-jumping and has then set up some jumps in the garden which she charges madly round. We haven't watched loads of the Olympics but what we have had on she has enjoyed and been interested in. She has had a sudden rush of interest in practising on her Heelys which she got for her birthday, and in the space of 2-3 days made massive progress. I took the opportunity to point out that she could do that with anything she was interested in - some things may be hard when you very first try them but if you're interested enough in doing it, you can practise and practise and very soon you can do it easily! Hope that lesson sticks! She's had a major reading splurge, too. She got 12 books out of the library last Thursday and they've all been read, along with her re-reading some of the ones on her own bookshelf too. She's enjoyed reading an old book which my Mum received for her 10th birthday present and has passed on to us - called "Hildebrand" by John Thorburn. I remember enjoying it as a child too. It's about a horse, of course! I've also been reading The Barefoot Book of Heroic Children to her at bedtime which she's liked.

Shannon mostly wants to play shops, with amusingly unrealistic pricing - £50 for an apple and 10p for a big book! She loves dancing, particulary to some extracts of ballet music and apart from that usually wants to do whatever her big sister is doing. She has a few books memorised, and it's lovely to see her going through a book and hearing her get it almost exactly right, and improvising when she can't remember! She is funny, totally charming and absolutely full of life. When I'm telling her off she looks sad, says earnestly "I'm so sorry" and then gazes at me smiling and won't stop until I've softened and smiled back at her. She is always saying "Mum, I love you" and giving lovely kisses and cuddles. It's a good job she is so charming, because her aggravating side is certainly present too, mostly incessantly repeating "but I want to" in a whiney voice if I tell her she can't do something.

I've been feeling rough the past couple of days when the cough I've had for about 3 weeks suddenly decided to add aches, pains, high temperature and a sharp pain in my side to its repertoire. NHS Direct didn't think I needed a doctor, though, and it seems to be a bit better today than yesterday, so I'm hoping to be fit and well ready for Greenbelt on Friday! My favourite weekend of the whole year - I can't wait! But the fun doesn't stop there. My most excellent and devoted hubby has taken note of all my moans and groans, and for my birthday present (it's on Sunday) has booked me into a hotel for 2 nights ALL ON MY OWN!!! Oh the bliss - I'll be able to sleep, read, think, swim, have a massage, and do anything I want. It's going to be fab and I'm thrilled and I want to publicly say that I think he's fantastic for organising it!!!! It's for next week - Tuesday and Wednesday nights, and the only thing I'm not looking forward to is telling the girls because they won't want me to go at all.