Who’s Normal Anyway?

Yesterday we got up early and M played Runescape for a while then did some maths while L and I hung out washing and watered the plants in the garden. We had a fairly shouty morning, although I can’t think what about now. I think mainly we were all tired from late nights and early mornings.

Late morning we went out to the supermarket and had some lunch there and then got the shopping. I remembered to buy some more ice cream, which we usually don’t get because the shopping sits in the boot of the car while we go to music in the afternoon after the supermarket (both in same direction so we do them the same day), as music wasn’t on this week.

When we got home and got the shopping put away things got shouty again because M can’t find anything to do if it doesn’t involve staring at a screen and then he went to call for the boy next door and he wasn’t allowed to play, so M was in an even worse mood. He said he had a funny tummy and was too tired to go to rollerskating. We had to pop out for half an hour and sort out keys for the other Beaver Leaders to get into the building but the kids stayed in the car while I did that. I didn’t go to Beavers because I was supposed to be taking M to rollerskating with A being away and there was no way I was taking both children to Beavers with me! We came home and had pizza and it was early nights all round.

Today we had a better start to the morning (well, once M got over a maths paddy but we’ll gloss over that bit) and played lots of card games. M was asking me about poker and betting but I know very little about either, so we played a simple 3 sets of 3 game and then played Go Fish ina not very successful modified version but M still enjoyed it. Today we were doing about animal classifications and so I printed out these cards and we played the game with those.

Spelling was straightforward (The Writing Road to Reading scheme for sounding out words is still working really well for M and he says he likes doing spelling, he’s learning a lot through his Runescape typing too lol) and then we did an experiment with a candle, blowing it out and then lighting it again from the wax vapour (last week’s Krampf experiment).

L and I went for a walk to post a letter while M played a computer game. He likes posting letters. L is coming on with his signing but isn’t making many inroads into talking as yet. He signs for alot of things like drink and potty but recently is signing much more about what’s going on around him. His newest signs are aircraft (needs a bit of interpretation, though usually one is overhead so we know that is what he’s trying to sign!), milk, teddy, baby (any small child, especially if crying), crying and train. He makes himself understood pretty well with signs and looking and pointing at what he wants, but it would be nice if he would talk a bit more. I expect he’ll get there eventually, he’s so interested in everything maybe its just not a top priority at the moment lol.

When we got back M was bored so I sent him to look for inspiration in his bedroom and have a tidy up. After a little while I went to help with the tidying and suggested starting the Puddle Monster kit he got for Christmas (we were waiting for warmer brighter weather). We made some space on the top of a unit and got as far as putting compost around the pond part (this kit has a section to grow grass round the pond) and then stopped to make fajitas for tea. Fajitas are always popular here and even L ate loads and was covered in sauce. He had a quick bath and I put his pyjamas on and then we all drove to M’s ju jitsu class at the leisure centre about 40 mins away. We listened to our latest Audible download that I quickly put onto CD after tea - Narnia’s The Silver Chair dramatisation on the way there and back and L fell asleep. I dropped M off at the door and then had an hour to read a magazine before I needed to wake L to go in and find M.

When we got home M went straight to bed and I took L to settle down for the night and watched The Apprentice while he nodded off. Then A phoned just as Sir Alan was deciding whether to fire Adam or Paul, so I was trying to talk to A, listen to the TV and explain what the task was all at the same time.

Now I’m going to get another drink and check my beetles won’t eat each other overnight, the progress of my wine making and that my sheep have enough onions in Egypt, and then I’m off to bed

Yes we are still here, I’m just not keeping up with this blogging malarkey at the moment. Been busy with the Beavers and my Egypt game and general life and home ed lol.

A is away on a climbing course this week, so days seem much longer without him coming home at teatime. Today we’ve had a day in at home. L took me outside to do gardening this morning, he was most insistent! M was doing maths - set himself a target of doing 7 pages today so that for April he would’ve finished more pages than in January (he colours in the blocks in the back of the Miquon book) but he flagged at 4 So I was in and out helping M and supervising L. We watered all the seedlings then weeded part of the veg patch and resowed mangetout. Theoretically A put them in about a month or so ago but nothing had grown, so either he never planted them or else the birds got them or they rotted or something. I also planted out the only woad plant that grew from all the seeds I planted - must do some more. When we came in we listened to some Mozart as part of our last week of A Cricket in Times Square (Beyond FIAR) and then had some lunch. L played with his garage and M and I played Civ3 together which he bought a week ago.

In the afternoon we went for a short drive to drop off some Beaver notices and to get L off for a sleep easily, then M did some painting for a while. We sorted through some photos and got together the things for a Cub badge he wants to do - it’s Cubs this evening so he can take everything with him to show Akela. When L woke up we went out into the garden again to bring the washing in and tidy up and then I made some fish pie for tea while L went to play with the lad next door. We’ve had tea and walked to the shop for ice creams, though L dropped his on the ground fairly quickly. L’s been amusing us by chasing us and blowing raspberries on our legs, something he’s come up with today by himself because we didn’t start it! Now I’d better stop this and go chase M to get ready for Cubs lol.

As part of his Cricket in Times Square topic at the moment M did a bit of a project on Italian food, finishing off by making his own Italian food last Friday.

He decided to make pasta for a main course and weighed and mixed it all himself.

When it had stood for a while I helped him get it started with in the pasta maker, and then together we rolled it thinner and thinner. A came in from work just in time to do the strip cutting right before we cooked it for tea. I made some meatballs to go with tomato and chilli sauce and we had that with the pasta - yum!

For dessert M chose to make ice cream. We found a recipe for vanilla ice cream and set to with separating the eggs. I wanted M to manage it all himself but every egg he cracked he split the yolk. We had a fridge full of broken yolk eggs very quickly! He must have done about half a dozen that way so eventually I took over the cracking part and then M separated them LOL. The rest of the ice cream making was much simpler. I was surprised how well it worked just putting the mixture in the freezer and stirring it every hour. M added some choc chips just before it froze completely.

It was ice cream to die for. So much more delicious than bought ice cream. We will be making it again

Last week started off quite well and then went downhill rapidly And I started writing this and then had it in draft for ages, so now I’m forgetting the details lol.

On Monday M started Beyond Five in a Row with the book A Cricket in Times Square. So far that’s been going really well - it’s like FIAR but with a chapter book and slightly more involved activities to do based on the chapters in the story. We have much more successful mornings when I have some things planned. L pottered about as usual. He is very into felt tip pens at the moment and decorates all sorts of things with them, though not often things we’d like to have decorated with pen lol. Monday evening was Cubs for M. They’re doing an ongoing project about the environment and global concerns at the moment.

Tuesday was a busy day. We did a few things at home then rushed out to the supermarket for food for the week. We got some lunch there and went on to music, which this week was a samba session. The teacher had everyone joining in so L and I were on cow bells (though after initial enthusiasm he wandered off to the table and the colouring things) and M was on a tamborine. We learnt some rhythms and marched around the hall playing together. In the evening M, L and A went to rollerskating and I had Beavers. This week went much better than last - must’ve been testing us last week I think. Also we didn’t have as much to fit in this week (the week before we had a swimming up ceremony and lots to remember) so everything was calmer.

On Tuesday evening L went to bed OK but woke up burning hot and cranky just before I went to bed. We ended up dosing him up with ibuprofen (he won’t take paracetamol usually and even the ibuprofen takes alot of coaxing and I often end up wearing it!) and had a rough night.

By Wednesday he was not himself at all, very hot and upset and couldn’t sleep without being held. I think he had a sore throat and he had trouble swallowing. That evening he started with a rash too. He was also pretty bad on Thursday so we were all tired and fed up of staying in the house. I can’t remember Friday now, but I think he was starting to improve a bit.

Saturday morning I was desperate to go somewhere and do something other than sit and feed and cuddle L and L was more perky and getting his appetite back. We had a drive out to pick up some Scout stuff and visited a new garden centre which we’ve only ever driven past before. It had a good range of all the gardeny things we usually look for and L pottered about the plants happily. Their cafe was also very good so we had drinks and cakes in there before coming home.

We’ve had a good day of few arguments and getting stuff done we wanted to today M did all his maths with no problems and didn’t get frustrated with himself. He also typed up an amazing page of things he’d found out about some sea creatures and added pictures. He wrote it very chattily, calmly asked for help with some spellings (though he did think the computer should’ve recognised that moonjellies was a word LOL) and sat and tapped away happily for quite a while. He was upset when L found his printout and drew all over it before I noticed , but thank goodness for saving and for printers! Meanwhile L pottered about.

We rearranged the TV and stereo area in the living room to put the DVD/video stand behind the TV unit right in the corner where L can’t reach it, because I found he’d cracked one of his DVDs. Though what to do with the drawerful of videos he can still get at? So I had a good vac out behind there and tidied up.

L joined M in doing some art with some oil pastels. M practised drawing a boat and then did a boat on the sea at night, with waves and reflections. L sat up to the table in his highchair and had some paper like M’s and was enthusiastic about using the oil pastels too, so that kept him engaged for ages My little righthander LOL - going to be the odd one out!

We made some chocolate biscuits together and then later I made tortillas for our chicken fajitas for tea. In and among we had a short walk out to the park too.

This evening A and M have been out to ju jitsu and I took L to church for the Ash Wednesday service. He was very well behaved in church but still rather a distraction I think, rustling his plastic bags of cereal and raisins and pushing his car around. Then he spent a while emptying out wet wipes, washing his head and then the carpet. He was taking it all in during communion and the bit with the ashes though. I thought I’d have him playing quietly on the floor of a pew where no one would see him but it turned out we were all sitting right up round the altar as there were only a few of us, so everyone got to watch his antics. I stopped for a quick coffee afterwards (L had a nap so I knew he wouldn’t be early to bed) but when he decided spitting on the tables (where do they get these ideas?) was fun I decided it was bedtime

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.

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.

I’ve been distracted from blogging this week by playing a new game when I have time to get on the computer. M’s been playing Runescape alot and persuaded his auntie and some friends to go on at the same time as him and travel round together. Runescape is starting to annoy me now though with the quests all being to do with killing higher level monsters. I can’t be bothered going around killing things just for the sake of it. But I think I have a short attention span or something and don’t like sticking with one thing for ages LOL. So anyway I went off and Googled for non violent role play games and found A Tale in the Desert 3 so I’ve been trialling that this week. It’s set in Ancient Egypt and is a co-operative game where you chat to people and share skills to benefit the whole of Egyptian society and work your way through tests. Don’t know how long I’ll stick with it, but it’s distracting me from Christmas preparations for the time being LOL.

Apart from computer games, this week we’ve been writing Christmas cards, making decorations and starting decorating the house. On Wednesday we read about St Lucia and made St Lucia buns and I tried making those Swedish paper hearts but they were so fiddly I only made one and gave up on the idea of doing some with M.

We put the tree up last night but only got half the lights on. We’ve finished it off this evening.

We’ve also been into Norwich today to a Christmas through the ages thing in the cathedral, followed by a candlelit procession round the cathedral telling the nativity story and singing carols. I think we’ve got presents all bought now, though not wrapped yet. The food shopping is going to have to be done late this week so I hope the supermarket is not too heaving. We’ve at least got a turkey and a Christmas pud in the house now though, so doesn’t matter if they sell out of those LOL.

On Sunday we went to Church in the morning for the Christingle service and then in the afternoon we went to the Gressenhall Christmas fair. I was expecting it to be very busy since it was heaving at their Apple Day, but it wasn’t bad at all. We met up with some friends there and had a play in the adventure playground. We all got a mince pie and glass of fruit punch with our entrance ticket, which helped warm us up. We walked down to the farm but there wasn’t much there except for Christmas biscuit baking in the farmhouse. In the main buildings there were some craft stalls and I tasted some strawberry wine which was very drinkable! We finished off by listening to a group of singers doing Christmas songs and poems in the chapel.

On Monday we had a day at home and made some sequined bauble Christmas decorations. They were a bit fiddly to start with, especially glueing on the ribbons, but once we got the hang of fastening on the sequins it was quite therapeutic. Even L had a go with stabbing the pins into the polystyrene balls. M sewed his latest badge onto his Cubs uniform ready for Cubs in the evening. They made Christmas cards I think, but I’m not allowed to look!

We had a fairly busy morning on Tuesday and I put a stew on in the slow cooker ready for tea time. M did some multiplication and some Christmas themed spelling words and we listened to Words Alive from BBC Schools Radio about the story of A Christmas Carol.

We had an early lunch before going out to the music class. This week the teacher brought in lots of brass instruments and a digeridoo and they talked about size changes and lower and higher notes and about sounds being due to vibrations. L fell asleep at tea time and slept for a couple of hours, then didn’t want to go to bed until 10.30. It seemed a bit mean to wake him up though - he really can’t quite make a full day awake every day yet.

We didn’t get around to reading the story of St Nicholas on Tuesday evening and when M and L came down on Wednesday morning they didn’t notice their chocolate Santas in their shoes. I think they were undisturbed til about mid morning. L seemed uninterested so we put his away. He had a bit of an upset tummy anyway with frequent sudden dark and runny poos (TMI?) so avoiding more chocolate was a good idea. We read the St Nick story in While the Bear Sleeps and did various crafts from both the St Nick site and from craft kits we got from Yellow Moon (and if you decide to buy please email me or leave a comment for the code if you’d like M’s charity of choice to benefit).

Late in the afternoon we went out to our local Christmas tree lights switch on and sang some carols and ate mince pies and drank gluwein. L fell asleep in the carrier and remained out of it even when we came home LOL.

We’ve been in Norwich today for some home ed events, which meant we needed to be out of the house just after 8am. I had to wake L and put him straight in the car. We used the park and ride and then walked to the Regimental Museum with L on my back in the Mei Tai. He had on his fleece hat and he has a bad habit of pulling it off and dropping it. M and I were supposed to be going to keep checking he still had it on, but we got talking and forgot. When we got to the museum I realised L was hatless and we ended up walking right back past the castle and up the road searching for it. Luckily we did find the hat discarded in an alcove and managed to get back to the museum in time for the start of the workshop.

There was a mixed age group of home ed people from little ones up to teens but we’dbeen put in with a school class who looked about 6, so it was probably aimed at key stage 1? The museum receptionist didn’t look too pleased to see us and couldn’t make sense of an “Education Otherwise” group, she was convinced she had 2 school groups booked in. The education officer was nice though. We rotated through 3 groups but it was all very basic. M said he was glad he’d gone though, so that’s the important thing. The first group was about living in Norwich during the second world war and there were artifacts to look at like a gas mask, a chamber pot and some old toys. The next group was “make do and mend”, making flower posies using wire and buttons. M managed to cut his finger on the end of a wire. L made friends with another of the babies there. The last group was about evacuation and what evacuees were allowed to take in their suitcases. They seemed to have to fit in some writing just for the sake of it - filling in labels with their names, favourite toy they’d take with them and their favourite food. I’d rather they’d spent longer learning about something interesting but never mind.

We went to McDonalds for some lunch and then walked across to the Forum for the ice skating session that was booked for the home ed group in the afternoon. The current session was almost empty so they let us on early. M got on to the ice and realised it was much more slippery in ice skates than he remembered. It took a while for him to get some confidence but at least he let go of the edge. You can’t balance and hang onfor grim death at the same time and going around the edge meant he kept having to skate round people with random limbs all over the place. L wanted to go on the ice too but had to make do with watching through the perspex and then he found some puddles to splash about in and got his trousers soaking wet. I was just about to take L off to the library for a bit when M came up and grabbed on to the edge to stop closely followed by another boy with even less balance who grabbed, missed and took both of them down. They clashed heads and M hurt the edge of his eye so came off the ice for a bit. One of the marshalls fetched some ice and filled in the accident book but he was fine really. He went back on and was soon skating around again so we went off to the library.

The library was full of school children having a tour(??) but we sat and looked at some books together until L got more interested in a little girl’s balloon. I found some different Asterix books to take out for M and then went back and found The Secrets of Vesuvius for him because I remembered he’s just finishing the first one. When we got back to the ice rink they were just coming off the ice. Then I realised I’d lost M’s cap somewhere. We walked back to the library and looked around and eventually spotted his cap. I’d put it in my pocket while he was on the ice and it must’ve dropped out while we were looking at the toddler books.

We went for a coffee and cakes in M&S. I was carrying L on my back again and once I’d paid and found a high chair I unfastened the carrier, grabbed L’s arm and swung him down into my arms - he was sound asleep! Some little old ladies stopped to chat and remark how they couldn’t believe he was still asleep after how I’d taken him off my back! He slept on my knee through latte and cappuccino cake. I asked M to hold L while I went to the loo and when I got back he was awake, in the high chair and happily munching on M’s crisps. So we finished up there and went for the bus.

This evening M has been out to roller skating - he’s going to have such sore legs and ankles tomorrow! I made leek and mushroom pie for me and A and a small pizza for M and L and then we’ve done baths and bed. Which is where I really ought to be and get caught up on some sleep!