Living 2008

Master R is back to wearing his patch on his right eye again. He had an appointment last week at the eye hospital and not wearing it at all in the six weeks since the previous visit has resulted in his left eye getting worse. He tried lying to Scott (the opthalmist) about having not worn it but as the words were about to escape his hands flew up to his mouth as if to try and stop them. In our family telling lies results in having bad dreams, as confirmed by both children who have indeed had bad dreams after having told a lie  so we talked a bit more that. I think Master R would prefer the threat of prison to that of nightmares but in the end he confessed all and his conscience was eased. We are struggling a bit to get four hours of consecutive wear with the patch as he tends to take it off for various things but we are probably clocking up nearly four hours over the course of the whole day. He is happy to wear his glasses most of the time now and just takes them off in the evening, I don’t know if they get uncomfortable after a whole day or if his eyes get tired from all that seeing and need a rest.

We have been swimming a couple of times recently. Ms R did a weeks intensive swimming course which she really enjoys but didn’t seem to improve much. She can swim across the pool in her own style and the lessons are now at the stage of just going back and forth across the pool with floats in various positions practicing different strokes. With enough practice she’d be able to perfect them but she has no interest in practicing strokes during her swim time, she’d rather go down the slide, jump in and swim about on the bottom. I haven’t got round to enquiring about weekly lessons and I think if she had the choice between them and a weekly free swim she’d choose the free swim so we’ll try and go weekly together. Now that she is going down the big slide she is pretty independant of me which gives me time just with Master R although she does look small queuing up with all those big children. Master R is very confident to swim around wearing his float jacket which gives me some exercise too. He can stand up in the shallow end of the learning pool and likes to take his jacket off sometimes so that he can launch himself away from the side to try and swim to me. He has also got the hang of putting his face under so does that lots too.

We’ve seen various different friends in small doses and the usual family members. Master R is becoming a friend in his own right now rather than the little brother that tags along behind Ms R. We met up with an internet group, most of whom I hadn’t met before. They seem to be a group with very young children which was disappointing as I was hoping that Ms R would find find some six year olds to play with. She didn’t mind though as there were plenty of babies to touch, stroke and coo over. Master R found his friend A to play with, I think it is his only same aged, same gender friend and they get on great together. A is a fairly gentle character and while they might chase away imaginary monsters they never play rough with each other. Now that Master R is four and would be about to start reception I guess I have to start thinking about home educating him in his own right rather than just letting him tag along as a younger sibling. His needs are different to Ms Rs, at the moment he is spending lots of time explaining things to me and wanting to have sensible conversations. He seems to especially enjoy the little lectures I dole out every so often about how other people might feel and what we could do to put things right, he seems to take them as a responsibility rather than as a telling off.

We visited the last of the Roman Days held at the Roman Palace. The activities were much the same as the last one we attended, the highlight was very much seeing our friends there. At the end we discovered the dressing up area so both the Rs dressed up (twice) to be photographed, so we have two nice pictures which need scanning into the computer at some point.

On a visit to my Mum today she presented them both with an activity book and crayons. Ms R had a Times Table one which promised to take us on a magical journey. We looked at the first page together and she wrote the answers to the two times tables mostly in little boxes, stuck a couple of stickers in and started to colour the page. Master R had a First Alphabet book. We looked at the first page which was a bathroom scene with various pictures and words round the outside. We had to find certain stickers (things like a towel and shower cap) and a couple of words. I found the word ‘taps’ for him to stick in over the top of the same word and asked him to check it and he very carefully checked it letter by letter to make sure each one matched.

On the way home Ms R asked what ‘Times Tables’ meant so I explained that. She understands the concepts when I talk about ‘lots of’ (as in four lots of two) and ’shared between’ (as in six shared between three) but gets totally lost and goes quiet if I talk about times or divided by. I’m sure the terminology is far less important than the concept. Later in the evening she asked again and as we were at home I told her to grab a load of Geomags and put them into groups of three. She was happy to tell me she had four groups of three but that she could also divide them up into two groups of six or three groups of four and she knew that whatever way she did it she still had twelve. I told her to grab some more so that she had eighteen and divide them up into threes and before she had finished she told me that it would make six groups. She wouldn’t have any idea what the written sums would look like and if presented with such sums it would mean nothing to her but she has a good grasp of what numbers feel like and I’m sure that will give her the foundations she needs to build upon. I remember not really getting maths at all and was probably a teenager before I finally grasped that divided by wasn’t scary at all and just meant x number of sweets shared between x number of children. I wonder how I got away with being mostly middle of the class with maths when it made so little sense to me. She has also asked what ‘percent’ meant so I explained briefly that it meant per one hundred. She translated it into money but quickly understood that one percent of two hundred would be £2 and one percent of five hundred would be £5. Somehow she already knew that fifty percent was another way of saying ‘half’ but didn’t at all get that twenty-five percent was a quarter.

Today Ms R completed the summer reading challenge. We hadn’t actually got round to reading the books she had planned to talk about as they are both too long to be read in one sitting (Magic Kittens) so before we left she grabbed the two books that I’d chosen from the rocket section and read them to herself. She didn’t seem to think it was any great achievement and was almost embarrased at my verbal praise and pride although she did ask if I’d show her where that section in the library was. She recieved a medal and a certificate and a dvd voucher which she used to borrow Shrek 3 on the basis that it has a baby on the front of it. Master R got his second set of stickers and a bookmark although neither seemed to talk about their books and both got a bit confused about their surnames. Ms R told him her middle name as he apparently asked for her second name and Master R forgot completely what his other name was, leading to the reading scheme person to not be able to find their cards and to think that we were somehow not related to each other despite them both calling me Mummy. We joined in with a nursery rhyme sing-song with our good friend Nic. I am so thankful that we have passed that stage of our lives and will never have to revisit it. The toddlers present didn’t seem to get much out of it at all and probably thought all the adults were bonkers for sitting around singing senseless, repetitive songs but I expect it’s good preparation for when they go to nursery and have to sit around listening to adults. I do imagine though that the library story times and nursery rhyme sessions are an almost life saver to some Mums who mightn’t otherwise have a reason for leaving the house or the chance to meet other Mums. I remember life with my first baby being very lonely.

As a baby Ms R never met her milestones slow and steady, a graph of her progress wouldn’t have shown a smooth upward incline. No. She’d do nothing of any interest for weeks at a time and then suddenly, three new things all on the same day. Her graph of progress would have shown big chunky uneven steps. She is still like that now and it still surprises me when so many new things happen at once. We discovered the first new thing this morning when I brushed her teeth. I don’t brush her teeth every time but try to do it most days. Today in the back of her mouth she had great big white shiny new teeth. Two at the bottom still partially covered in gum and one at the top, it was quite a shock for both of us as there had been no warning signs and I didn’t even realise six year olds grew new ones. So now she has five of her permanent adult teeth .

Later we visited my Mum and took advantage of her having a Wii Fit. I played first and at one point Ms R said I had a personal best. I asked her how she knew that and she pointed to those words on the screen next to my name which did indeed say ‘Personal Best’. Given that my part in her learning to read seemed to involve little more than me sounding out cvc words like ‘cat’ and ‘Dad’ and more recently, randomly telling her that the letters P and H make a ph sound as in photo (I get these wobbles you see) it is pretty amazing that she should be telling me what words like ‘personal’ say. The whole reading things seem to be happening in a rather snowball effect way, I guess each new word shows a bigger part of the puzzle and eventually you can see enough of the puzzle to know what every word says. But as if that wasn’t enough later she knew that she had scored one hundred and four. She must have read my look of disbelief as me not believing her so she explained how fifty two and fifty two make a hundred and four in a way that was almost challenging me to try and prove her wrong. And there was me worrying whether she could add two numbers up to make twenty or not, maybe I underestimate her . I’d really like to stop now but I can’t because there really is more. This evening she was riding her scooter with Master R up and down the pavement outside when she decided she wanted to put her skates on. I didn’t like to remind her that last time she wore them she needed to cling to me for balance but I did explain that I wasn’t planning on walking up and down with her right now. So she did it herself, just skated off.

Master R has also been coming on in leaps and bounds. He can all of a sudden pronounce the letter ’s’ at the beginning of words. Sometimes he gives a very slight pause before saying particular words so I’m thinking that it is a fairly conscious thing. He has also very recently started to recognise that words are made up of different sounds and can tell me the first sound of any word. It doesn’t sound like a big step because it is something that is so obvious to most of us but it wasn’t to him. Just a few weeks ago I was getting quite frustrated because while playing eye-spy his choice always started with ‘err’ and he just didn’t get that ‘car’ or ‘grass’ or ’sky’ doesn’t start with ‘err’. He has also taken to being completely independant in the bathroom. I don’t know if it’s because I wasn’t available one time and he realised he could do it himself or if he just decided but I’m very happy and quite relieved that he didn’t need constant coaching and support like Ms R. He even flushes when he’s finished.

I’ve talked to Ms R about possibly going to school next September, it’s a nice long way away and I like having a boundary, the idea that home education could go on forever and ever is too scary. She believes and has told me on many occasions that there is a missing number between six and seven. Apparently when you are six you are still a young child but when you are seven you are on your way to being a grown-up. Maybe she is feeling herself become more independant, I’ve noticed it. She needs me less during the day and reports back to me less often, when I’m away she doesn’t seem to miss me so much. She still struggles to fall asleep without me though and while it is tiresome that she needs to smother me at a time of day that I’d rather be left alone I’m aware that it might not go on for much longer and that I’ll sorely miss it when it stops. Ms R, please stop growing up so fast.