Post-Greenbelt doldrums

I always hate the post-Greenbelt feeling - a whole year till I can go again. I love being surrounded by artistic, creative stuff, even though (or perhaps because) I'm not gifted that way myself. I love there being 20-30 fascinating things I could go to at any one time, like talks or dance or comedy shows that I wouldn't normally visit; I love the music of all descriptions all over the place, and I love being challenged in the way I look at the world, and to become aware of issues I don't have the time or space to concentrate on the rest of the year.

So, we had a great time, except that Jade refused to go to any of the children's sessions, despite the fact that C from Stepping off the Path was there. And just a couple of days before we went, Shannon began displaying extreme shyness in the presence of strangers too, to the extent of hiding her face in a parental chest for up to an hour! It was also a shame that we barely got to see J&J, or the TwoRedBoots tribe, despite camping with them. We were all too busy! We have bought our tickets for next year, though. Looking forward to having the RaineDrops there and crossing my fingers for the Katy/Becca combo too!

Now we're back I need to concentrate on the strange task of finalising Jade's school attendance. We have the school dress, the navy trousers, skirt and cardigan and black shoes, and just need some white polo shirts to complete her uniform! Oh, and I need to discuss with the headteacher when she's actually going to go! I think it will probably be a Monday afternoon (for dance/music) and all day on a Thursday. It has to be a Thursday morning because that's one of my work times, but it's a shame really because the class has two teachers who job-share, and I prefer the one who teaches Monday - Wednesday.

Happy Birthday to me!

I've had a lovely day today. I got breakfast and prezzies in bed, then just lolled around most of the morning. This afternoon Bill and I went to Cheltenham, alone, without children!!! It was fab - my Mum has come to stay to look after the dog while we go to Greenbelt, so she looked after the girls while we went out. I think the last time Bill and I went out together without children was when I was having my labour induced with Jade, and we went for a stroll round Cheltenham while waiting for things to get started.

Anyway, I finally managed to spend the last of my Christmas presents - M&S vouchers - by treating myself to some new underwear! And we went in The Works and I got the 120 Great History Projects book plus 2 or 3 others for myself. And we had afternoon tea together in the M&S cafe - tea and scones and jam and cream - absolutely fabulous!!

And tomorrow we're off to Greenbelt. Life is good!

More aaarrrggghhh!

Broadband has gone down. Bill's cobbled together a dial-up connection but it is interminably slow and I am so conscious of the phone bill ticking away.... 24 hours without an internet connection was dire.

Also whenever I sit down Isabelle climbs up for mummymilk and takes aaaaaages so I am doing this with one finger of left hand!

Bill is off work for 2 weeks now and we are off to Greenbelt on Friday so if I don't manage to get back on before we go, I'll be back next week.

NOT a good day!

Don't really want to go into the whole boring detail, but suffice to say it involved more (thankfully slight) damage to the car, more substantial damage to my ego and confidence but, contrary to my fears, no damage to my relationship with DH as he proved wonderfully absorbent this evening.

Also we have tried and failed 3 times to go swimming this week. Today's two attempts ended in (1) the above car damage and (2) arriving, paying for a car park ticket and then being told the pool was closed due to it having filled up with rusty water.

I have been MIA during the evenings trying to catch up on the unbelievable backlog of our finances, only to find that I kind of wish I didn't know what I found out. What with a £250 excess on the car insurance policy and a £110 excess on the home insurance policy, plus both cars needing servicing and repairs to the tune of several hundreds of pounds I am somewhat stressed.

Somebody send me links to extremely frugal meals/recipes please!

So, no educational things to report here. Unless you count the swear words that the girls may well have learned today.

Very quick blog

.... so that certain people know I arrived home safely! Sorry - couldn't blog last night as I was so tired I fell asleep with the girls and never got up again.

So, the girls and I stepped off the path at the weekend, and very pleasant and enjoyable it was too. Got home yesterday around 2pm, only 10 minutes after Isabelle succumbed to travel sickness .... :-(

Shortly before leaving J&J's, I suddenly noticed the middle diamond out of my engagement ring was missing. Katy B had the excellent idea that I should unpack everything out of the car carefully in the dark, with a torch, so that I would see anything glinting. I totally forgot to do it. I foresee my first ever home insurance claim!

Not an end-of-year report!

But really just an excuse to brag.

Sometimes I read other people's blogs with children of Jade's age, and worry a little in case she is not doing as well in some areas. For instance, she's still not really into addition yet, though we've tried a little; she can't swim, even with arm-bands, and her drawing still seems rather simple (head with legs!), but what she *can* do is read, boy she can really read! Today she has worked out 'congratulations' and 'granddaughter' without any help whatsoever, and I notice she is starting to read quietly to herself without asking for help or support, but just for interest. This afternoon she was sitting reading the Usborne Flip Flap Body book.

And really, that is one big reason why we HE. So that she can take each 'subject' at her own speed. The 'one-size-fits-all' National Curriculum hangs over us looming so large, especially as we are going to be flexi-schooling from September and therefore do have to stick to the NC (though what that means I don't actually know!); but we know that each child develops in fits and starts at their own pace, and I just love to see that happening in reality. I know that she will be able to add up soon enough, and that all the other skills she needs in life will develop too, at the pace that is just right for *her*.

I suppose the worry comes in about whether I am doing HE 'right' - am I offering enough, exposing her to enough, involved enough, or am I doing too much of the Lazy Bugger method of HE? I'm very good at buying resources and not so good at using them. I think a bit of orgo-planning and pulling my socks up a little in September would be no bad thing, but really, when it comes down to it, to have fostered a love of reading means I've pretty well done all I have to do! Light the blue touch paper and stand back!

I've not been keeping up again, and it's too late to want to go into much detail. But the edited highlights follow!

This morning started with Geomags, and a jigsaw puzzle of the UK which I've just unearthed from a cupboard. We didn't go to church this morning as Shannon has had a rash for a couple of days and although she seems completely well we didn't want to risk spreading anything. But we did go out this afternoon to a Dogs Trust Open Day (thought there was little risk of spreading viruses or whatever in the open air) so we've had a lovely afternoon in the sun. We met my Dad and his wife Pat and various of her family there. Poppy took part in the doggy dash and didn't disgrace herself although she didn't win either! We looked round the kennels bit and looked at all the dogs needing re-homing - no, I didn't bring any home! We got home to find that Bill had put together Jade's new bed which I drove up near Chesterfield for a couple of months ago after winning it on Ebay. So there's been great excitement while the finishing touches have been put to that and although the rest of the room still needs sorting out, she is very happy in her big girl bed with the tower and slide!

In the last few days we've also had a sleepover of Tamsin's best friend, we've driven over and visited my Dad for a while and we've done various stuff round the house. The odd bit of education here and there but nothing focussed on. I was reading somewhere or other recently how Finland doesn't start formal schooling until the age of 7 and yet they have they highest pupil assessment scores at age 16 of the whole EU. No sweat for another couple of years, then.

Work day

Not much to report today - I was at work all day while DH was home with the girlies! and I would have got to work on time too (for a change) if Jade hadn't had a bout of severe separation anxiety when I was about to leave - she had to be peeled off me, poor girl :-( She seems fine now though!

However I have been spending a fair amount of time reading Montessori stuff. Is it just me, or does everyone else flit from one educational style to another like some kind of butterfly, trying to decide which one to settle on? Everytime I read another blog which says "we home-school in a combination of classical and Moore", or "we are Charlotte Mason style home educators,", I just think, 'what am I?'. I don't have enough time to read sufficient about any of these styles to decide which one to be! I'm just a messy lazy home-educator, that's all. I think I'll have to devise a new style, and call it "The slovenly procrastinator's guide to home-education". Perhaps I could write a book and make my fortune!

A game of two halves

We had an active morning, a moderately active late-afternoon, with a huge slump of nothingness in the middle, so it seemed an appropriate title.

First thing, Jade insisted on making the cakes with the Dora cake mix packet that she persuaded me to buy in the supermarket yesterday - I must have had a weak moment because I usually absolutely refuse to buy such overpriced crap, but now I have two Dora fans in the household (yes, Shannon does a lovely 'Dor-wa' now and a great dance to the 'We Did It' music!) I gave in. Still, it gave me the chance to do a bit of tuition on cooking temperatures, though not much else.

Mixing, baking, cooling and icing made us late for HE group, though. It started at 10.30 but we didn't manage to arrive till 11.30! So the huge castle made from cardboard boxes was already constructed and very impressive it was too - with towers and a drawbridge! So there was mostly just general playing, running around and chatting going on after that. I met another new attendee who has a 4.5 yr old son and an 18-month old daughter although she had left the little one with someone else to give her son a bit of sister-free time - apparently she drives him mad! Anyway they don't live too far away and are also going to be flexi-schooling mostly because they have only just moved to the area and want to find him some friends. But they might be up for reciprocal visits.

We drove home in the blissfully air-conditioned car, Shannon fell asleep and I parked Jade in front of Nick Jr with the intention of going for a nap myself when the phone rang and it was a long-lost friend. Fortunately Shannon's nap was very long so I still managed some rest after the chat. After getting up I still felt horribly lethargic and devoid of any energy or inclination to do anything. I did manage to sit with Jade and read a couple of her library books - Antarctica and Are you a snail? But mostly I just lolled and grumped.

I did manage to make myself an iced coffee, though, and that did the trick because later on I felt a little energy trickle back and managed to tidy up a little, vacuum the living room floor and set up a big Brio train track layout for Jade, which is a rare occurrence these days since Shannon became mobile. But having spent about 20 minutes building it, she then spent about 5 minutes playing with it so I was not too impressed.

Can't remember how things progressed from there - I know Shannon did a bit more shape-sorter and has noticeably progressed since yesterday's practice, Jade found some old stickers and stuck them on a big piece of paper and did some drawing round them and as usual she spent much of the time with a teddy stuffed up her top pretending to be pregnant. This is a regular occurrence these days as her best friend's mum is about to have a baby. Said best friend is actually coming to stay overnight on Thursday and Jade is in ecstasy about this - several times a day she works out how many days it is till Thursday and goes into hyperactive overdrive for a few minutes with excitement.

Jade read her own bedtime stories again - a very simple DK Touch & Feel book and a Miffy book and is currently not asleep in her room - but then again it is 28 degrees up there so that won't be helping.

ETA - how could I forget Shannon singing the Alphabet Song along with Jade? Well, OK, only a handful of letters are recognisably pronounced, but she's having a jolly good go! Very sweet! Counting 1-10 and the alphabet before the age of 2 - what an upstart she is!!

I heard that sickening crunch.....

.... of metal on metal, or whatever bumpers and car doors are made of these days. Yes, I pranged our lovely Prius. I can't imagine why on earth I did - I was just pulling out of a parking spot at the side of the road and scraped the whole left hand side on someone else's bumper - and I'm normally good at parking and driving and I just don't *do* that sort of thing! Bugger. We have comp. insurance but the excess is probably about £150 and we just don't need that on top of the cost of the other car this week, which BTW cost £530 the other day and still needs about £650 worth of work on it. Good job there isn't still a workhouse or we'd be headed there ....

Until then, I'd been having quite a good day! The first thing Jade chose after getting up was the Geomags, and I sat with her while she made 'pancakes' (!) - or rather various flat geometric shapes with panels in. We then moved on to building a castle with bricks and blocks, while Shannon practised with her shape sorter at which we applauded and said 'Hooray' every time she got one in so she joined in clapping and hooraying at herself! Then Jade moved on to a Learning Land CD-Rom while I tried to do a bit of summer planning - looking at events going on locally and making notes of which I'd quite like to go to, along with more general stuff like swimming and picnics. After that we decided to go for a walk, but why on earth does it have to take so long to get ready? It was about an hour before we were ready to go, what with getting them both dressed, nappy changing, finding shoes, persuading them not to play upstairs but get dressed instead, etc. Eventually we got out and went for a very hot walk out to the duck pond and back, and then a quick lunch was followed by getting Shannon to sleep while Jade watched a bit of TV. Then I sat with her to do a bit of reading, so we went through the 'Please and Thank You book' by Richard Scarry, a book I got from the charity shop called "One World" of which she read the first half, and then we were about to start 'King Arthur' when she got stroppy and hit me and threw the book on the floor so she had to go and sit on the stairs for 5 minutes. I was not in the mood for more after that, though, so had a bit of quiet computer time while she had a bit more TV till Shannon woke up. Then we all went out in the car to do some food shopping and then crunched the car. :-(

Around teatime Jade found a stray notelet card lying around on the table so decided to write to my Dad - "Grandpa, I love you" so that was a good bit of writing practise, although after all that effort she couldn't manage to write her own name so I did that!

Around bedtime she started to sort through her Letterland alphabet cards and to lay out all the capital letters. I was a bit surprised that she needed to keep asking me which ones were the capitals as opposed to lower case, as I thought she had that all very clear, but anyway she got fed up by about F or G and messed them all up.

Oh, and she mostly read her own bedtime stories, too, by choice!

Not so bad after all

We're all still here - no-one's killed anybody else off!

The electricity went off about 9.45am, but came on again just before 1pm, although they'd warned it would be off till 4pm. The worst news was about Bill's car which has cost over £500 to only partially fix .... yikes!

After breakfast, the morning started with some reading. Jade pulled out a Learning Land magazine and we went through that, although she did skip the page about numbers saying "I hate that bit!". We did some reading exercises, she did a tiny bit of lovely writing, and then did the 'healthy eating' exercise during which I talked about needing the right kind of fuel in a car otherwise it breaks down and the same is true in our bodies. She also did a drawing of a 'healthy lunchbox' and drew a sandwich, a banana, a drink and a chocolate bar which I thought was pretty OK!

We moved on to Spanish after that, when I got out our little collection of fun Spanish activities that I'd got from The Book People a while ago. There are three bilingual stories so she read the English and I read the Spanish - with guesses at much of the pronunciation! We practised some of the words together and discussed the Spanish -v- English words.

Then I remembered reading something lately about how short breaks of physical exercise improve learning, and I was certainly beginning to feel a bit sluggish esp. with the heat, so I took them upstairs to bounce on the bed! They started having fun, but fairly soon Jade went into a very moody/grumpy state, and started shouting at me to go away and leave her alone and shouting that no, I didn't love her after I said I did. She curled up on my bed, and shortly after that started crying, but still didn't want me anywhere near. So I pottered around nearby, putting clean washing away, while wondering and praying about what was wrong and totally at a loss as to this sudden mood swing which is not completely unusual as she has been rather volatile lately. And suddenly it hit me - she'd had porridge with honey in it for breakfast and had then continued eating more honey - more than I'd realised before I'd stopped her. So she was having a complete sugar meltdown! And it might well be that the rest of her behaviour lately is perhaps partly due to sugar issues too. Time for some serious sweet-limiting action, I think. The sugar intake has very slowly crept up from just one piece of chocolate per day, to that plus lollies/ice-creams in the hot weather, and biscuits, and sometimes the next-door-neighbours give her something as well without checking first ... (Grrr). And it certainly won't do me any harm to completely cut down on sugar either. Anyway I brought them downstairs for a healthy and hearty lunch and playing out in the garden, so peace and harmony were resumed.

Straight after lunch I wanted some peace and quiet sitting at my computer, so Jade did a Learning Land CD-Rom and Shannon pottered around with bits and pieces. During the afternoon they've played on the swing, climbing frame and slide, although I limited Shannon's time on the swing as she threw up again on Tuesday after a long swing so I am fairly sure she's getting motion sickness from it, although she protests like mad at being taken off. Jade and I played Snakes & Ladders this afternoon, and as I made tea they've watched about 45 mins of CBeebies. Jade read a library book to Bill when he came in and only needed help with 1 word - disguise - so we've started to fill in her "Reading Mission" card from the library that we got last Thursday.

It's Jade's last day of playschool tomorrow. She seems fine about it, but she has loved it so much I wouldn't be surprised if we have a bit of an emotional rollercoaster tomorrow!

It's going to be a tough one...

Today I will have no electricity, no car, no Grandpa visiting, and it's too hot to walk anywhere. Pray that we all survive!!!

Really must blog....

But somehow by this time of the evening all power of thought seems to have disappeared and I just can't think what to put.

Today was a playschool morning for Jade, and Shannon and I just pootled around not doing much - a bit of tidying up, a little book browsing, a bit of computering and finally, a long swing for Shannon while I chatted on the phone with a friend. She loves staying on the swing for ages these days - an hour if I can stand it. Usually I swing her high and then go off and do something, and then go back to her when she's slowed down, but combining it with a phone conversation seemed a better way to do it. She was enjoying it, as always, and towards the end (after about 45 minutes) seemed to be getting drowsy and it was approaching her normal nap time. She didn't want to get out, though, so I lay on the grass next to the swing and pushed her lazily with my foot ... and only just avoided it being thrown up on. I don't know if it was motion sickness or something else that disagreed with her. I'm very prone to motion sickness and actually felt slightly unwell just from pushing and watching her while she swung. She still didn't want to get out of the swing, amazingly, but I made her do so because it was time to go and get Jade.

Shannon fell asleep in the car on the way, so when we got home Jade and I got some food and I offered to read to her but she never did bring a book for me. We had a very lazy afternoon in the extreme heat, mostly staying indoors. I felt very lethargic and unmotivated to do anything but did manage to do a tiny bit of tidying. After school time the girl-next-door came round and fortunately she and Jade had a great time mopping my kitchen floor and vacuuming the living room floor!! Oh, this was after Jade had another spell of appalling behaviour after L appeared, stomping off into her bedroom, refusing to let L in, playing with toys but saying L couldn't play with them, and generally being exceedingly unpleasant. {Sigh} - wish I knew what it was all about. Later a bit of painting (on paper, and a mug-painting kit) got done and just miscellaneous playing.

So, that was such a boring day it probably wasn't even worth blogging, but maybe it's a start that'll get me going again.

***What Your Soul Really Looks Like***


You are very passionate and quite temperamental. While you can be moody, you always crave comfort.

You are not a very grounded person. You prefer dreams to reality. For you, it's all about possibilities.

You believe that people see you as a bit small and insignificant. People pay more attention to you than you think.

Your near future is calm, relaxing, and pretty much what you want. And it's something you've been anticipating for a while now.

For you, love is all about caring and comfort. You couldn't fall in love with someone you didn't trust.


Inside the Room of Your Soul
http://www.blogthings.com/insidetheroomofyoursoulquiz/

Musical interlude

A musical education has been going on here today, for a change. After getting home from our church group, when Shannon was asleep in the car, Jade wanted some music to listen to so I dug out something we used to play when she was a baby, Medwyn Goodall. Although this is supposedly New Age music, it doesn't sound like it - it's just basically lovely Celtic stuff like Enya. And we danced together - lovely! And after that was finished, she wanted some more, so, being thoroughly sick of 'kids music' I put on Carnival of the Animals/Peter and The Wolf and we listened to it quite closely, discussing the instruments being used to denote each animal and incident and we both really enjoyed it! It's the first time she's listened properly to anything classical, so it was good it grabbed her attention. Not that it's vital - I think I was thirty-something before I wanted to go near classical music with a bargepole - but it's nice to be able to introduce her to a wide range of experiences and have her evaluate them for what they are in themselves and not what popular culture says a child ought to like.

We then did a little bit of reading "Why is the Sea Salty?" and other questions about the oceans, but didn't get very far with that before she got bored. In fact, at one point today she declared "I hate reading books", which I don't really believe at all but just put it down to her contrary mood lately, or maybe just heat and hunger. or something.

Her behaviour lately, though, has been particularly horrible. I have noticed that other bloggers discuss the 'phase' or age that their child is going through when difficult behaviour occurs whereas I immediately blame myself for being irritable, bad-tempered, a bad role-model and teaching her inappropriate ways of dealing with anger and frustration and conclude that I have already ruined her for life. Whichever is the reason, she's been behaving really horribly quite a bit, especially with Lauren, the girl-next-door who comes round almost every day after school. Jade is extremely bossy and rude some of the time, and can quite often go into major strops where she screams at Lauren to go home and never come here again. It's difficult to know what to make of it really. I know kids have to learn to get along with each other and sort out their differences, but I don't know if Jade is behaving worse than one would normally expect. I only really have Lauren to compare her with, and she seems pretty even-tempered and certainly doesn't go into the strops and tantrums and bossiness that Jade does. House of Tiny Tearaways, here we come ......

Wiggle wiggle

Big excitement here today, as in a mad moment a few months back I had bought tickets for The Wiggles live concert in Oxford. So I picked Jade up early from playschool, dropped Shannon at the childminder's and off we went. We parked at the Park & Ride and caught the bus, which for Jade was probably as exciting as the concert itself! The bus was full of hordes of over-excited small children all heading the same way as us! The concert itself was pretty good if you like dancing dinosaurs and dippy kids' songs, but in the interests of scientific research I can confirm that Greg is the only Wiggle worth looking at although the others are good for amusement purposes. Jade's reaction was really funny because she was totally overwhelmed by being in the actual presence of the 'real' Wiggles. She said "I feel so funny I want to do something but I don't know what I want to do!" So she just stood and stared.

Gotta go - shannon is wailing!

5 things

I've been tagged by Kath, and Katy (passworded blog!):

5 things in my fridge:
Red seedless grapes
Half an avocado
Organic butter
An opened bottle of dessert wine
A box of yummy chocolates from the Chocolate Tasting Club

5 things in my wardrobe:
Most of my clothes (apart from the ones on the floor in front)
The jewellery I'm hiding from DD1
A big wooden cross
My wedding shoes which I've never worn since (16 years ...)
Moths (judging by the holes in my jumpers)

5 things in my bag:
Purse
Travel sickness pills
Mobile phone and car charger
A Shewee
A book - "Cancer-causing chemicals in cosmetics and daily use products"

5 things in my car:
A buggy
Several stones and pebbles in the glove box
2 child car-seats
Sun blinds
Lots of crumbs

5 people I'm tagging:
Ali
Erm, can't find anyone else not already tagged!

I wish I could write like this:

But I can't, so thank Goodness there's Jamie.

I'm lovin' it!

Tamsin is at playschool, and Isabelle has been asleep for 2 hours so far!

I adore my girls, but I just love time on my own at home too, and I get so exceedingly little of it that I'm just basking in the wonder of it!

I seem to do so little HE at the moment that there's not much to blog. We hardly seem to be at home. And when we are, the new girl-next-door comes round to play after school and just about all weekend (rolls eyes)! I don't feel as though I get much quality time with Jade at all.

Anyway, despite all that, a few things have happened today. She requested the Reader Rabbit CD-Rom this morning, which she is far beyond now in terms of phonics/reading but she thinks it's fun anyway. Then we went out to the women's group at church, and then came home and we did some reading - she read an early reader book we got from the Library and I read her something or other - can't remember now.

While I got lunch she played with Shannon, and then we all sat at the table. Memo: don't serve soup to a 19-month old - it gets messy! We then walked into town to post an important letter and to try and get Shannon to go to sleep in the buggy - no luck! Back home at about 4pm and girl-next-door immediately arrived. Much loud playing and throwing of water around in the back garden followed, clothes divested, and much mess made. After dinner, though, at which Shannon fell asleep at the table and was put swiftly to bed, Jade sat down with me and we read through April, May, June and July in the Year at Maple Hill Farm, and a section of the Berenstain Bears Book of Science and Nature dealing with matter and its 3 states - solid, liquid and gas. So that was timely, as DH had talked at dinner-time about her drink being liquid and she had denied it! Then, to wrap it all up, at bedtime I read her another of those Laurence Anholt books about famous artist - Camille and the Sunflowers