Who’s Normal Anyway?

We had a fun few days in Elveden forest. Every day we went in the sub tropical swimming paradise for a couple of hours and all loved it. L’s favourites were the small children’s area with the toddler slide and the watering cans. M went down the rapids over and over again and in between times enjoyed the slides. A and I took it in turns to stay with L or go down the rapids with M - we tried feet first, head first, backwards, holding hands… It was very funny. We bumped into The Portico in the pool but then didn’t spot them again in there - such a big place I guess!

The highlight of every morning was feeding our toast crumbs to the ducks and squirrels. L especially was mesmerised by all the wildlife right outside our villa.

There was snow too, though not enough to stick. We wrapped up warm and tried the adventure golf course one day. Luckily M didn’t quite manage to launch his ball into the lake, though he did try

We ate out just one evening, but also indulged in a couple of hot chocolates with “everything” and some amazing pancakes on the last morning. L had his first go at ten pin bowling there too. Oh, and M tried the crossbow session.

Lots more photos on Flickr!

Well I’ve been busy. Thought I’d post quickly because we’re going to Center Parcs tomorrow until Friday, so I won’t be blogging this coming week either LOL.

I’ve been spending lots of my online time exploring Ancient Egypt in my new game and M has been playing lots of Runescape. L loves Jump Ahead Toddler and we recently found Jump Ahead Baby in a box and he likes that too - family of computer addicts!

L is also very into his singing and signing nursery rhymes DVD and asks for it on every day. He signs alot now. He does eat and says “eee”, signs cows and says “moo”, signs dogs, pigs and frogs as well as his previous favourite duck. He can sign for a biscuit and for more, consistently signs toilet when he needs a poo, does all gone and is learning to sign along with Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. He loves us singing that and also Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes. But it does get a bit wearing after the umpteenth time. I’m glad he’s signing well because his words are almost nonexistent, though he is saying his version of words (usually the vowel sound) with some of his signs.

The Beaver leader has resigned and I’ve agreed to become warranted and run the Beaver colony when she leaves in a couple of weeks time. I’ve been finding out more about the Beaver programme and how it’s supposed to run and thinking up meeting ideas alot in the last week or so. A is the GSL and advertised for more help and a couple with a toddler have agreed to both become leaders, one as assistant Beaver leader and the other with the Scouts. Today at Church I chatted to a Beaver parent who has agreed to help out too, and an ex Rainbow Guider who might also be interested in helping occasionally, so that is really positive.

This is the FIAR book we’ve been doing for the last week or so.

Before we began reading the book we’d been for a walk over the Christmas holidays and spotted deer hoof prints in the sand in the woods around Sandringham. We made plaster of Paris casts of them and M has painted them up - they look really nice now.

Wednesday

We read the poem together and talked about the basic story of the poem and the illustrations. M picked 4 British woodland creatures to read about and then draw or colour and narrate a few sentences about. I cut out some bunny shapes to stick the animals to to make a booklet to keep the info together. M started writing out the poem for handwriting practice. He can write beautifully with tiny letters when he concentrates. In the afternoon M watched birds in our garden and drew some pictures of them, using a form from this booklet, which I liked because it has a bird shape to fill in rather than having to draw from scratch, which I thought would be too daunting.

Thursday

The main focus today was on art. We read through the book and looked more closely at the illustrations and M tried to work out from whose perspective each picture was drawn - was it another person looking on, a bird looking down from a tree branch, a small animal looking through the bushes? He took drawing things out into the back garden and sat close to the base of our bird feeder pole, looking up at it. He took a photo and drew a picture of the feeder from a “rabbit’s eye view”.Then when he’d finished he came upstairs and looked out of the bedroom window down onto the feeder, took another photo and drew the bird feeder from a “bird’s eye view”.

We finished off with M writing out the next 4 lines of the poem for handwriting practice and then looking at the arrangement of rhyming words through the poem. If you label each line A, B etc giving a new letter to each different rhyming word at the end, you can see the pattern. In this poem it goes A A B A (know, though, here, snow) and then the B from the first verse is the rhyme of the As in the second verse (here rhymes with queer, near etc) and so on.

Friday

Today we looked mostly at poetry related things. We read poems from several poetry books we have, looking for ones we liked. For some we looked at the pattern of rhyming words like yesterday and others we just read. M was impressed with himself for reading the whole of Sea Fever out loud.

Then we went through Stopping By Woods looking for various poetic devices suggested in the FIAR manual (like repetition, metaphor etc) and finding examples. We’ll look for others in more poems next week too.

Monday

Today we did activities about snow. We read about snowflakes and cut some out online. Then M made a hexagonal prism, the basic shape of a snowflake. He made some paper snowflakes and L covered them in glitter (and the rest of the dining room LOL). We also read a short biography of Wilson “Snowflake” Bentley who was the first person to take photos of snowflakes back in the 1800s.

Tuesday

We talked some more about poetry and what makes something a poem. We read more poems together and M had a go at writing his own after initially being sure it was impossible. We found some more examples of various poetic devices to make a booklet about them. M finished writing out Stopping By Woods.

Wednesday

Today we read about Robert Frost’s life and M narrated back the bits he was most interested in - such as Robert Frost dropping out of first and then second grade after a few weeks and being home educated! We also listened to Robert Frost reading Stopping By Woods.

Thursday

This was a finishing off day and I helped M with putting all his things together in a lapbook type arrangement.

Or more properly though, Three Gifts for the King Day I suppose, given in the Bible it doesn’t mention either kings or there being 3 of them LOL. Or go the whole hog and call it Epiphany. Anyway… in reading up about Christmas in Mexico (to do with some stuff we did in Advent) and also in reading The Thirteen Days of Christmas celebrating Three Kings Day was mentioned. Both traditions involved cake, so it sounded good to me. This morning me and the boys mixed up a chocolate cake and I put 50p in it just before it went in the oven. The idea is that whoever gets the piece with the item in gets to be King for the rest of the day.

Apart from baking we’ve done computer game playing and we also blitzed the upstairs of the house in terms of dusting, vacuuming (Dysoning? not strictly a vac is it?) and bathroom cleaning. This afternoon we had a drive out which was going to be to the shops to take some pictures for framing, but it was raining so hard when we got there that we only stopped in the DIY shop for some screws and brackets for ashed bench A is making and then drove home again.

We dressed up as Kings then for cups of coffee and the cutting of the cake. M got the piece with the money in and was chuffed not to have to do the setting and clearing of the table for tea this evening LOL.

At bedtime we read the last chapter of The Thirteen Days of Christmas and it feels like we’ve finished off the Christmas season properly now. I like the cake idea, I think it might become a new tradition. The story book was fun too. The story is set in the past and combines the wooing of the main character along the lines of the Twelve Days of Christmas song (in a funny way) with the telling of old traditions and carols for each of the 12 days of Christmas.

A went back to work on Wednesday and it was kind of nice to start getting back to “normal” for a change. We’ve got back to M doing some maths and English and what-have-you in the mornings and then this week he’s spent a lot of time in the afternoons either playing or thinking about playing Runescape. He’s persuaded his Auntie Di to play with him a fair bit too which he loves because she follows him round and chats to him and joins him in mining and whatever else he fancies doing. Whenever we have a computeron L wants to playtoo though, so he’s had sometime on Jump Ahead Toddler and has figured out how to “chat” in Runescape and ATITD by randomly hitting letter keys and then pressing return - arghhh….!!!

Yesterday I went for my broken tooth finally filling at the dentists - only taken a couple of months! Thankfully A sorted out to come with us to the dentist so he sat in the car with L and M and waited for me. I was in there a good 45 mins so it’s just as well he came along - Lwould never have sat for that long and I think the drill would’ve scared him. I thought it was bad enough! She drilled for about half an hour because getting to the back tooth was so fiddly and she had to stop for a few mins to top up the anaesthetic cos I didn’t like how it was twinging. It feels OK today, I hope it will last alright, I don’t fancy all that again any time soon!

Today the computer I use the most has gone to have it’s CD drive repaired or replaced because it wasn’t seeing CDs anymore, so I’mlost without my computer. A is letting me use his laptop when he’s not using it, but I find laptops a bit strange after a proper keyboard and I’ve been fiddling about trying to sort out the touchpad and what not so it doesn’t frustrate me too much. Hopefully the other PC will be back in less than a week.

You know, I think new year’s resolutions are a good thing. I don’t think it matters whether you make them at new year, but it’s just a handy marker in the calendar to think about whether life is going in the direction you’d like it to and step in to try and change things a bit to aim for your goals. I think you need to have some goals or else you just float along either not achieving what is actually important to you because you’re swept along in everyday life and don’t stop to think about it or you get self satisfied. Of course you are likely to change ideas as the year progresses and different things come up, but at least you had some aims. So this is a round up of last year’s resolutions. I may write new ones for this year on the blog or I may not - haven’t decided yet. Not sure I can write 101 at the right kind of tickoffable level to do the 101 in 1001 though

5 personal goals for this year

Write the articles I’ve got in mind in my head but haven’t got around to committing to paper/computer - I did write the one article that was bugging me, there are still more I could get down on paper though, but that will probably always be the case, so I will call this one completed.

Find something to do just for me, just because I want to - hmm, got part way to making this happen and then gave up. But at the moment I’m playing ATITD3 and enjoying zoning out in that, and it’s just for me.

Reply to emails as they arrive - stop procrastinating - failed on this one, but it’s still a goal. I either reply immediately or else emails just move on down the inbox to be forgotten until I guiltily consult my flagged emails.

Fill in L’s baby book before I forget stuff - yes, well, hmm…

Keep on top of the ABM website / emails - didn’t manage this and I’ve decided it’s time to move on, so I’m currently waiting for a replacement / to hand everything on. There’s no point trying to keep enthusiastic about doing it when I’ve lost inspiration.

5 home ed goals for this year

With M, pick some projects to work on and make something of them - even finish some of them! We have done some longer project type things together this year. Still working on finding what inspires M. Doing history topics with narrations of various sorts and doing lapbooks and FIAR has worked well last year, so we will continue to include those.

Write an ed phil and in the process review what we’re doing and if our priorities are being met - hmmm… well it’s written in note form but ended up being more philosophical than I expected and I got stuck between what I think is an education and what I think an LA might find acceptable in an ed phil, so although the main aim of writing it was for us, I got side tracked. Must finish it!

Build up a home ed network for us where we are moving to - getting there on the workshops and educational opportunities front, the social groups side of things is hard going for several reasons but mostly the geography of Norfolk and me having children of such different ages.

Use the BA science things and do science more often because M loves it when we do We’ve done more science this year, using the BA scheme and other ideas, and it’s something M has been pretty much always enthusiastic about. I plan to keep this up along similar lines.

Start fitting in more German and more music The German has got nowhere but music has improved because we’ve started going to the home ed group music lessons. German is such a silly thing to not get on with though, given a BiL in Germany, so need to get inspired on this this year.

5 family goals for this year

Eat all our meals together at the dining table Yes, we are eating most meals in the dining room and I would like us to keep this up.

Start a weekly family night in with games or a family film Ths fell by the wayside, so is a goal for 2007.

Invite friends to visit and fit in visiting them too Not enough of this done, though fitting it in proved harder than expected - I think with A working days all the time now so weekends are fuller of family things.

More geocaching than we’ve fitted in this yearWe have done more geocaching recently.

Explore and do things together at weekends - don’t waste them on shopping and TV I think we have succeeded at this too.

5 house and home goals for this year

Stick to the routines we decide on until they are routine and then maintain them, especially for keeping on top of housework Housework routines work well until I get bored or we have some kind of holiday and then they take forever to get back into the swing of.

Involve M in a way that helps him feel useful, needed and important, but not put upon Need to work harder on the appreciating him part I think this year.

Work on settling in to our new house and make it feel like home Yes, I think we are settled in now.

Plan and develop new garden with A (and allotment? must enquire once we’re settled) and grow bedding plants and veggies We did lots of gardening and the garden is transformed from what it was, but there are always new plans LOL.

Sort out an organic veg box and regularly cook home made healthy meals We were getting a weekly box of organic veg until a couple of weeks before Christmas when the farmer packed it in - need to find another scheme.

T-bird tagged me, so here goes:

Name 3 things

that you had hanging on your tree:

Lindt decorations containing chocolates, from Germany
Individual handmade decorations given by my mum and sister over the years
Knitted santas

that you have eaten/drunk lots of:

chocolate
lebkuchen
decaff coffee

that you didn’t do this year but want to do next year:

read alot of our Christmas books together
see if there is a local nativity event we can go to like the one we went to in Dec 2005
Make our own mince pies

favourite presents this year:
(ooh, what a loaded question!)

Knitting bag and needle case
Chocolate brazils
Underwear

that you’re glad you didn’t get for Christmas:

Wrong size knickers
M & S smellies
Toffee

I’m not going to tag anyone, because I think by now most people are probably well into the “taking the tree down and moving on” stage of Christmas, even if it isn’t twelfth night until Friday!

We’ve had a fairly quiet Christmas at home, just the 4 of us. On Christmas Day we opened presents, went to Church, played with presents, ate too much chocolate and had a second Christmas dinner. Nothing out of the ordinary but it was a good day. L was a bit off colour and not quite with the opening presents thing.

On Boxing Day M was feeling ill and he threw up a few times, so that put a bit of a dampener on things. Then on Wednesday he felt a bit better and we went to Peterborough to see a panto. The traffic on the way in was dreadful and on the way home the road was closed, but the panto itself was quite good. M laughed loads and L fell asleep just before the interval (though kept jumping at the loud noises).

M got a bath bomb making kit for Christmas so one afternoon he and A did that together. He also has a new Lego RC car that he loves and is eager to take to the park asap but we haven’t got there yet. He got lots of bits and pieces for Christmas, including some money he’s excited about as he can buy a big Lego kit he’s been after (still need to order it online though) and has been reading his Bionicles and Stormbreaker books on car journeys.

L got some new bath toys and lots of wooden puzzles and a pushalong toy he’s playing with alot. He also got some cut-upable plastic fruit that has been a huge hit, though there are bits all over the living room LOL.

Today we went out geocaching and took some plaster of paris with us to try and take impressions of tracks. We got some fallow deer tracks and explored a new place. L got cold and tired and we ended up doing a toilet stop and feed and cuddle in the woods, which was a bit damp for my behind

I must get around to blogging about L’s new signs (really blossoming at the mo) and my thoughts on new years resolutions, but I’ve got blog apathy at the moment.