Living 2008

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.

We had home ed group today. It takes us about forty minutes to get there by car so plenty of time for conversation or music on the way. Today we conversed. Ms R was wanting to know what a quarter of a year was. She knows about halves but didn’t know about quarters so we talked about how sometimes I cut the sandwiches into two pieces and sometimes I cut them into four. We talked about a quarter and three quarters which was fine and how we say half instead of two quarters which took a bit longer to understand. So she now knows that she is five years and a small sandwich old.

For some reason marriage came up again. Ms R is thinking that she’ll marry her best friend when she is grown up and just borrow some seeds when she wants to have babies. She’s thinking that Daddy probably has loads of seeds left over because we only used two of his and you usually get loads of seeds in a packet. Master R really wants to marry Ms R when he grows up and is quite happy to let her have some of his seeds to make babies although his not really sure where men get seeds from, maybe Daddy will give him some when he’s bigger. Ms R is grateful for his offer of seeds but thinks he needs to find someone else to grow his babies for him as she’ll be having her babies with her best friend and he needs to find someone else to marry because when you grow up you need to find a new person to bring into our family. It seemed that I wasn’t really needed in that conversation so I mostly kept out of it other than to say that usually men didn’t give their seeds to their daughters or sisters and that was why it was best to find someone outside of the family to marry. I’m not really sure where the marriage thing has come from, we are married but it’s not something I’ve been especially promoting.

Screen printing (aka putting pictures on t-shirts) was the activity at home ed group today. I really enjoyed it and the Rs loved their t-shirts. It was lovely to see the children running around in a group outside afterwards. From what I saw Ms R was an active participant and Master R was managing to keep up. I was told of their kindness for making a new person feel welcome so that was good too.

After we got home we visited my Mum. Ms R cycled her bike and I cycled mine with Master R on the back. It’s quite a long way for a first cycle ride but Ms R did really well and was clearly very proud. She cycled along mostly on the path ringing her bell everytime she saw a pedestrian and singing a made up song about how happy she was riding her bike which got smiles from everyone we passed.

Mum has a new kitten, it’s ginger and gorgeous.

At bedtime Master R is enjoying our set of lift-the-flap Noddy books and I am reading Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator for Ms R which I’m enjoying because I’ve never read before but I think she is struggling to follow because there are so many words that she has never come across before (like president and bomb) which probably make it incomprehensible. They also both requested a poem after their stories although I suspect this is more to do with delaying sleep time than a genuine interest.

We used the seafront bus to get to the swimming pool. It was busier than I expected and we couldn’t sit all together but while Ms R wimpered and insisted on holding my hand across the aisle Master R was in his element sitting in between some senior people all independant and grown-up. It’s great being able to look out of the window instead of concentrating on driving and being higher up we can see more, it always prompts lots of conversations. They run every ten minutes and I love the idea of using them but it annoys me slightly that the prices are always different because they seem to charge us for travelling between two completely different stops than the ones we are actually travelling between. I’m not sure if this is down to human error or if they are on commision.

The swimming was great. Ms R spent lots of time swimming under water, sitting on the bottom, jumping in and coming down the slide as fast as possible. She also managed to float on her back which had eluded her up til now. Master R is eager not to be left behind and although he wouldn’t go down the slide by the end he was dunking himself under too.

Ms R started Rainbows, I sat and watched. She was a bit quiet and at one point I thought it wasn’t going to work but when given her options she chose to join in. Theoretically it ticks our box for socialisation but in practice it ticks our boxes for structure, following instructions and learning in a group. Not that I really have boxes to tick because I’m not that organised, but if I did…

The Rs have enjoyed doing a mini painting-by-numbers kit. Ms R got the right colours in the right places and was very proud of the results. Master R splodged colour all over his, not worrying about the lines but making sure he didn’t leave any white bits and he was also very proud of his. Ms R wanted to know why she had to use certain colours in certain places and I explained that she didn’t, but if she did she’d get that result. She also wanted to know why she had to do what the Rainbows leader said and again I explained that she didn’t, but if she wasn’t going to join in there probably wasn’t much point in us going. Sometimes she seems to want to be told what to do but when she is she questions it, which is great.

When queueing to buy toilet paper Ms R told me how many rolls there were by working out that there were six in each of three layers. I pointed out that it was written on the packet as well and she seemed genuinely surprised. I’m confident that she knows and understand values up to twenty. It’s interesting that once she knew there were eighteen she talked about eighteen being made of three lots of six so she can see the sum both ways. I never really got maths at school but maybe that was because when I was doing multiplication I certainly never understood that the answer divided by one of the numbers would equal the other number (and even as I was writing that I had to check that it really worked). My maths only improved once we were given formulas to work out answers, then it became easy. As long as I could remember which formula I needed for which sum I could get them all right.

We’ve planted some more flowers. They both really enjoy planting and watering and take delight in seeing them blossom. Most days they get excited because they’ve spotted another flower on the tomato plants or the peas have grown taller. We rooted some mint in a glass of water and they were pretty impressed by that.

We saw and listened to the local secondary school band playing on our beach green over the weekend. The music was awesome and we talked about the variety of different instruments. I think Ms R would have sat listening for a lot longer, I know I would have done, but Master R was impatient for the promised ice-cream. We are no closer to getting a sound out of the plastic flute which is a pity because we’d all love to play a tune on it.

The Rs have been doing a lot of dancing to Elvis Presley at Nanas house and they love his music. We’ve been listening to Queen in the car and they like clapping along to the beat. We’ve been looking after Nana while my parents are away so have spent quite a bit of time in her company. It means that they’ve had plenty of opportunities to play with the children from the flats. Ms R has a special friend there who has just had a birthday (I’m guessing sixth) and they spend some time chatting together and some time playing in larger groups. I keep an eye on them from inside Nanas house and they are often sat in a large circle playing a game or running around in a gang. I don’t know which of the women is the Mum of Ms Rs friend and I don’t even know the girls name. I feel I should find out because it would be nice for the girls if we met up in the school holidays but maybe part of the magic for Ms R is that it’s a friendship that hasn’t been orchestrated by me. There hasn’t been any tears but today a toddler was trying to hit Master R. A couple of the older children did a good job of keeping the toddler distracted and one girl came over to assure me she’d look after Master R so all was well.

One of this weeks library books is Tom and The Tinful of Trouble - Nick Sharratt & Stephen Tucker.  Ms R read the first couple of pages by herself, it sort of happened because the first word was Tom and I pointed at it and said "Oh look, you know that word" so she read it, and then read the next one and next one. She read words that I didn’t expect her to know and made logical guesses at words she didn’t. When she reads it’s clear that she sees past the words and into the story, she doesn’t punch each word out as an individual test. While reading chapter books is good for the story content and my interest it seems that reading picture books are good for helping her to read. I found a poetry book for 30p at the library, I wish I could dine with a porcupine by Brian Moses which we are enjoying and we’ve also just returned Seaside Poems by Jill Bennett & Nick Sharratt. Ms R likes the musical and rhythmic sound of poetry and is asking lots of questions around the subjects of the poems.

Buzz is growing and now has the shape of an adult cat. I heard a female cat calling the other evening and panicked a bit that it was Buzz but when I did the box shake she came running from upstairs. We seem to have a couple of extra tom cats passing through our garden and I’m aware that we need to make a decision fairly soon about when to sterilise her. She is developing a warm, soft, bulging tummy but as she’s only about five months I’m thinking that I’m probably over feeding her. We’ve been taking her to visit Nana with us which she doesn’t overly enjoy. Today we needed to have her out of the house for a couple of hours so I took her to Nanas and after carefully taping up the catflap left. When I returned she didn’t immediately come to greet me and I feared the worst when I saw the lounge window wide open. Thankfully she was on the bathroom window sill but Nana had also thought she’d gone missing at one point and had gone outside (leaving the door open) to try and find her. It would be really great if Buzz could get used to Nanas house so that she could stay there while we went on holiday but I know that Nana can’t be expected to spend a whole week with all the windows and doors closed. The other option is to try and organise someone to come to our house twice a day to feed her. Mmmm, still thinking on that one. 

Oh we did so much today.

We visited the little (soon to be not anymore) post office to post a letter and buy penny sweets. As I was queueing to post the letter Ms R helped Master R with sweet counting, not sure why but she told him before he paid that he might have change and he did. It was lucky really because she overspent by a penny and when the lady told her Ms R just froze on the spot looking mortified. Thankfully Master R raced over with one of his pennies.

For some reason the conversation on the way to home ed group turned (once again) towards marriage and babies. Ms R really wants to marry one of her cousins because she doesn’t want to marry any of the boys that we know and she really really doesn’t want to marry a stranger. I explained that in mine and Daddys case we started out as friends and just got more and more friendly until we ended up married which seemed to reassure her. She then decided that there was a female friend she’d be happy to marry but wanted to know if she’d be able to have babies if she married a lady so I explained that she probably would be able to have babies but would require the help of a man. Master R then wanted to know if he married the said friends brother if he’d still be able to have babies. I explained to him (once again!) that he’d need a lady to grow his baby for him and he said that maybe Nanny would do it as she was good at growing things. I don’t know why or how we get into these conversations and I really try not to offer fuel for more questions when answering them. Whatever next?

The home ed group was good, we all played with playdoh for a bit and then went into the hall for a drama session. Both the Rs seemed quite into it but I needed the toilet and took the opportunity to make an important phonecall, Ms R couldn’t stay in without me. She wanted to do the drama but needed me to be in there with her. She knows the venue and the adults and the children yet still she couldn’t join in without me being there too. It’s perfectly inline with who she is and wasn’t unexpected although as she now appears so confident in so many areas I half thought she’d stay. Master R did stay for a while but when he noticed that we’d left he came to make sure he wasn’t missing out.

After the group we popped by to see my Dad, he was very welcoming and chatted to the children. Ms R found a scratch card and was looking at it with him and telling him how much he could have won if he’d got three of other things reading numbers like twenty pounds and seventy pounds and knowing that seventy was more than twenty which isn’t something we’ve done heaps of. She then settled down with a piece of paper and pen and wrote Mummy and her name underneath, then she told me how many letters her name had, how many mine had and how many they were different by. I’m guessing that seeing her do this sort of stuff is very reassuring for my Dad that she isn’t missing out educationally by not going to school and I just love that she does it in front of him. If there’s anyone in the world I want to impress then it’s my Dad.

We left Dad for the library to return most of many books. I try to set a one book rule but they always find another and another that they just have to have. We seem to be choosing quite well lately. Master R chose Library Lion by Michelle Knudsen which I absolutely fell in love with, it was so sweet that I was struggling to keep my voice steady as I read it and I’m not usually such a softy! Together we chose a childrens non-fiction book about foxes which we all enjoyed, it sort of backs up what we’re reading about in The Children of Cherry Tree Farm and will hopefully reassure Ms R that foxes don’t eat people. I picked a first experiences book about visiting the dentist in the hope that it will encourage Master R to open his mouth next time we go and he was very interested in that and there were a couple of other books which we haven’t read yet.

A morning at home to play. They switched the television off and played all over the house, they set up a ‘holiday’ in Ms Rs bedroom involving all their bedding, all of Master Rs clothes and plenty of toys. They did play-doh in the kitchen. They ate loads. Master R had cereal, two boiled eggs and a bowl of fruit for breakfast but then lunchtime came and went without mention of food.

Ms R gave me two notes, one said ’sit here’ and the other said ‘Playskool’ and then she asked me what they said.

In the afternoon we popped out for bread and milk. We tried to visit the library as we very often do on a Wednesday afternoon and as is always the case it was closed. We visited the penny sweet shop and I gave them twenty pence each, telling them if they only spent ten pence then they’d have ten pence for next week and they were both happy with that. We popped into my parents house to find everyone out but Master R tore up a sheet of paper for Lucky the kitten to play with and Ms R found some paper and drew a family picture with lots of presents. Once home they emptied out their piggy banks which are surprising full considering that we never give them any money, I spotted a few gold coins and descreetly rehomed them. We talked about how to recognise English coins and Ms R made piles of same coins.

Ms R told me that three fives are fifteen, she said she knew because she counted on her hands. It’s interesting that she thinks about these things and lovely that she tells me of her discoveries.