Living 2008

Ms R drew a picture of stick people next to a building with many doors and across the top wrote "WoT doo Hd THE ENT" which translates to ‘What door should they enter?’. I also notice that the building has extremely straight lines so was probably drawn against a ruler or something similar. I am very proud that she has written something that she can read.

We’ve been visiting and hosting friends, making ice-creams out of yoghurt, playing in my Mums big paddling pool, visiting the pick-your-own farm and seeing relatives. I’ve had to explain phrases such as ‘Five minutes or so’ and ’Yes, no doubt’ and we’ve had quite a lengthy conversation on illness, the immune system and vaccinations.

Both of the Rs are now sleeping all night in their own beds after a couple of nights of me keep returning Ms R to her bed. Master R is trying again without a night time nappy and so far has had one dry night.

Ms R thought it great fun to try and read words that I wrote on a piece of paper so after a while I printed out a list of the forty-five key words that she would have learnt in reception had she been. She was thrilled with it and read all of them bar five. The ones she couldn’t read were oddly spelt words like ‘our’. She was really pleased, she talked excitedly about how being home educated was really great because she still learnt things but she could stay with her family and play with her friends. It was really sweet to see her so enthusiastic. It wasn’t a deliberate test but she was happy to see a measure of her success as well. She wanted more words so I printed out the year one words of which there are lots more crammed into the same space. They got progressively harder and we got bored less than half way through them so they were abandoned but interestingly we came across the word ‘too’. Ms R read it correctly but then told me it was wrong so I explained about the three different spellings and their meanings and she recognised ‘two’ further on.

Master Rs eye appointment was disappointing as the person he was supposed to see wasn’t there meaning he only had a partial test and no glasses yet. We did gain something out of it though, a parking ticket.

There’s probably loads more I should be blogging but my minds blank at the moment.

We’ve been reading the same books over and over. This is good because Ms R learns to sight read sentences.

(Edit: I’ve just proved that theory by writing the word ‘flight’ on a piece of paper and asking her to read it. She looked thoughtful but only got as close as guessing fish. On the other side of the paper I wrote ‘A flight of stairs’ and she laughed out loud before reading it easily)

Anyway that sentence is from ‘Don’t Forget The Bacon’ by Pat Hutchins which we read everyday until the point when Ms R took over the reading of it and read it to us. She spends quite a long time on each page trying to get the expression in her voice just right.

We’ve also been reading two of John Burninghams books (Avocado Baby and Mr. Gumpys outing) both of which we’ve had out before but this time were Master Rs choice. And we’ve enjoyed ‘Mog The Forgetful Cat’ by Judith Kerr. It irritates me slightly that two out of these three books have burglars in and one has bullies. It’s surprising how often bullies crop up in the picture books that we borrow.

So today we joined the masses of school educated children in the library to sign up for the summer readig activity where we found Mrs. MonsterTeeny being ever so patient and kindly.

We spent a weekend in the midlands visiting Daddys family and that involved a day at Alton Towers. I was initially a bit disappointed to find that Ms R didn’t want to go on all the slightly bigger rides that she is now big enough to ride on. I’d been looking forward to wurlitzer and mini roller-coaster type rides only to be told that they didn’t want big, fast or scary. Didn’t go down well with my ‘lets get our moneys worth by scaring the sense out of us all’ attitude but I recovered quickly and enjoyed the more sedate rides. My favourite was a ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ ride which involved a gentle boat ride and a flight in the great glass elevator. It was very clever and didn’t involve much movement but I guess if you are five and under and the graphics are really good then you might really believe that you were shooting through the roof of a building and that would, understandably make you rather hysterical.

After a couple of days at home we then packed up our tent and headed for a tiny Park Resorts in the middle of nowhere. The lady in charge of the campsite side of things obviously ran a tight ship and returned to lecture us and scold us more than once while we were pitching the tent but then thankfully left us alone. The entertainment manager took a liking to us (possibly because we were often the only ones there) and so we got a pretty personalised entertainment plan. Sparkle, Sparky or Narky visited us depending on who we’d expressed hope in seeing and both children were known to everyone. They won medals, stickers and t-shirts and over the busy weekend took part in a dancing competition which found them blinking under the bright lights of the stage and expected to perform. Ms R has learnt from somewhere (I’m blaming Cbeebies) how to wiggle her hips and shake her shoulders and Master R tried to copy an older boy doing break-dancing. He won a prize in that comp based on trying to stand on his head while waving his arms and being the smallest. We visited another theme park for more thrills and spent lots of time wandering along the river bank, spotting rabbits after dark and fliying kites. We swam most days, Ms R practiced swimming under water. And they made friends with three older girls who mothered them lots.

I’m sure if I could remember every detail I’d be able to put lots of educational spin on our trips. I remember Ms R getting pretty good at reading grid references from the road map ("There’s a picture of a duck in C3") and she finished her Maths workbook during the time we spent travelling. She finally got the hang of number lines but didn’t see the point in them when she already knew the answers and also finally got the hang of working out what the missing number was. She hasn’t asked for another one yet but I think by the end of the book she was getting a bit fed up of it. Thirty-two pages of sums totalling no more than ten was pretty boring.

The Rs washed the car this morning. Or at least they threw wet sponges at each other while I washed it.

Ms R seems to be ‘collecting’ money so that she can buy us all an ice-cream. Last time she counted the copper in her little bag she had twenty-nine pence. Today she tipped it out to count but said there was too much to count. I was busy so not taking a great deal of notice but heard her have a lightbulb moment and decide to put it into piles of ten pence. She called me to help and told me that she had four lots of ten with three pence left over and then after a pause told me that it was forty-three pence. We talk about larger numbers as ’so many lots of’ ten because she seems to understand that concept and later we talked about adding up in tens which she got pretty quickly.

Ms R had rainbows this evening. They spent some time outside and on their way out of the door she yelled for me in a slightly panicky voice and sort of got shuffled along by an adult helper but I told her I’d follow her out. Once out she was fine so after a couple of minutes I told her I was going inside and reminded her where the door was if she needed to come and find me. She raced in a bit later to let me know that they were going to do show-and-tell outside too and that I was to stay inside. I guess I wasn’t needed. She took a First Dictionary book that my Mum gave her and apparently told everyone how to look up a word after I’d explained it to her on the way up.

At bedtime Ms R wanted me to read Tom and the Tinful of Trouble by Nick Sharratt and Stephen Tucker but as I held the book up and took a couple of deep breaths she started for me. She read the first half pretty fluently and then started stumbling over words like ‘and’ and ‘the’ so I took over and read the second half. It’s very fluently written (and we’ve read it about twenty times) so her reading isn’t all about decoding individual words but some of the time she used her fingers to point along the line of words. She’s definately reading the words even if some of them are unknown and being filled by memory of the story which is completely different to Master R who can appear to be reading a story very well to somebody who’s not aware that he’s actually on the wrong page for that bit.

Master R has his eye appointment in a couple of weeks, I can’t imagine what seeing might be like for him but it would be great if something is done to make things look clearer.

I did housework this morning while the Rs played although Ms R demanded help with learning to play her little recorder half way through the washing up. We now know about semibreves and how to play an A. There are two lines of music of B and A notes, crotchets, minims and semibreves to play. I really wanted to ’show her how it’s done’ but she refused the offer.

I heard the Rs decide to play Toy Story. It’s the first time they’ve enacted out a scene from a story, usually they make things up as they go along. Ms R quoted huge chunks of the script including an american accent for Andys mother. A bit of a surprise as they haven’t watched it for ages.

And then we spent the rest of the day with friends. I sat quite still using only my talking and coffee drinking muscles. The children played. Interestingly they’ve started including some organised (playground type) games into their time. The weather was great so they spent quite a bit of time outside and Master R wandered round on his own to check out the hens. They were all on top form which meant they managed to smooth out their usual niggles without too much trauma. It’s a pity I don’t have more to say about it because the amount of learning, enjoyment and satisfaction they get from spending hours playing together deserves more than three sentences.

Master R got tired and needed to go home before Ms R was ready so she asked if she could say. She was a bit surprised when I said she could and questioned me quite sincerely on whether I really would leave one of my children there. So she stayed for a whole twenty or so minutes while I took Master R home, organised him some dinner and then handed him over to Daddy. He was asleep by the time we got back and Ms R went to sleep very quickly.

Buzz always comes up for storytime and lays in the middle of my bed purring while I read. When the light goes out she stops purring and when all three are asleep I creep away. Tonight the Rs went to bed seperately into their own beds. When I went back up to check them she was asleep on the floor between their bedroom doors.

Master R wakes up in the morning and likes to sit very quietly for about half an hour before starting the day. Ms R starts talking almost the moment her eyes open, Daddy often sends her back to bed because he can’t cope with her bounce first thing. This morning he overheard this at 6 am.

Ms R "Do you know what two and two is? No? Is it four or is it two?

Master R "Two"

Ms R "No it isn’t two, look at my fingers, two and two is; one, two, three, four. See it’s four. Did you know that? Two and two is four. Can you say four?"

Master R "GO AWAAAAAY!!!"

I caved in and let Ms R have a new activity book. It was only £1.50 and has a practice book inside it and a page full of gold stars which made Ms R feel like she got really good value for my money. It’s basic addition and subtraction and involves lots of counting dots on dinosaurs and adding them together or working out how many sweets you had left if you ate so many etc. What it does seem to be good at is working on the translation between numbers of objects and written figures. She loves it and took it to my grandparents to do, since then it’s stayed in the car and whenever we drive somewhere she reads out the letters at the top of each page so that I can tell her what she’s supposed to do. I’ve not really looked at what she’s done but on listening to her mutterings it sounds easy enough for her.

It was a surprisingly calm visit to my grandparents house. Ms R impressed them with her keeness to do ‘work’ (which earned us comments about homework when she’s older) and I did some Magic Painting with Master R. Afterwards we made an unplanned visit to the pick-your-own farm. The tractor ride prompted lots of questions about tractors, why they have big wheels, why they don’t go very fast and tractor machinary. The raspberries initially looked disappointing but then we seemed to get lucky and found loads. They both like raspberries although I’m not keen. I talked a bit about how people may once have had to forage for food and Ms R seemed to think I was talking about my grandparents. We pottered along and picked some peas, Master R was eating instead of saving but eventually we thought we had enough so went on to pick strawberries. We talked lots, the Rs waved and smiled at various babies and small children, they pretended a building on the hill was a darlek (now that I work Saturdays they watch Dr. Who) and the tractor-stop shed was a tardis and we spotted butterflies. With no clock to watch and the freedom of the fields time flew by and on returning to the car we realised we’d been there for three hours.

We cleaned Ms Rs fish out this morning and afterwards sat on her bed looking at The Usborne First Book of The Recorder. We got to playing a B and learning about crochets and minims which I found fascinating because I’d never understood music at school. We clapped some rhythms and then Ms R has been practicing playing them. She was really keen to move on to learning more notes but Master R was getting bored and had his fingers in the fishes mouths.

We cycled along the cycle lane to the swimming pool. I suggested taking the trailer but Ms R wanted to cycle and Master R really likes sitting on the back of my bike. It’s just under two miles but took us well over half an hour. We had to have a stop on the way when Ms R wobbled onto the stones and fell off but she made an excellent recovery and we were soon on our way again. We were told that the swimming pool was slightly colder than usual but that didn’t deter them. Ms R practiced her swimming, she seems to be able to doggy paddle for a little way but her legs sink and she holds her head so high she ends up as just a face peeping out of the water until eventually she disappears completely. Master R splashed around loads on his tummy with me holding him and did quite a lot of jumping in. It was drizzling when we came out and we were hungry so we got chips to eat and sat in one of the shelters looking out to sea. The ride home in the drizzle seemed to take forever. Ms Rs legs got tired so we walked the last little bit and Master R had nodded off on the back of my bike.

We visited Nana and the Rs played with an older girl.

We finished our Roald Dahl book so read picture books at bedtime. Ms R didn’t go straight to sleep, first she put loads of soft toys and books into a box because she doesn’t need them anymore and then I sat and talked to her about Master Rs eye appointment. She gets quite squeamish whenever it’s mentioned so I’ve explained everything as best I can and have asked her to be positive and supportive. He looks up to her and trusts her judgement, if she acts like hospital appointments, eye tests or wearing patches are bad things then he’ll think I’m trying to con him and will be scared an unco-operative.