I Think You’re Bonkers

We’re phasing out home ed.

Starting with Dino starting school this coming Sept, assuming I can get him a place where I want and can sort any relevant paperwork. Then Mimi will go next year when she’d be starting juniors.

I’m not sure how much blogging there will be between now and then. 

Sorry folks.

Dino’s on the Newsround site!

He wrote a press pack report about his abseil and it’s gone up today.

Read it here, shame there’s no facility to leave comments or rate it or something, that’d be nice.  However, there is a space for comments here if you want to….

Hmm. Watching Dino sitting on the sofa half watching Star Trek with his nose in a book is lovely to see. He’s slowly working at Harry Potter (Book 1) - a few pages a day - it’s painfully slow but he’s doing it.

But tonight it was a book from the library - Pocket Guide to Knots and given his tendency to tie things up I do wonder if encouraging the Cubs thing was such a good idea now…..

I was putting Mimi to bed and after settling her down I wandered back downstairs to find Dino curled up on the sofa with a guinea pig on his lap, Bruce Parry on the telly and the first Harry Potter open in one hand……

"You’re right Mum, there’s loads in the book that wasn’t in the film isn’t there…"

  I have a child voluntarily reading! He’s been eyeing up the HP’s for a while now and I don’t mind really but we did have a short chat about there being some books in the house that really aren’t for him yet and he could do with just asking - but that also I will never deny him a book without a good reason.

I am soooo proud. 

Well, the kids did with the help of another parent at home ed group this morning. I helped with the eating and it was lovely. No doubt there was weighing, mixing and stuff along the way. I did watch both Dino and Mimi rolling out the lasagne sheets over and over again until they were finally thin enough. Other kids were making tagliatelle. Lunch was vege lasagne, tagliatelle with butter, garlic and spinach, garlic bread and some cheese to sprinkle over. Dino loved everything and Mimi at least tried everything and she said the tagliatelle was nice.

There are a couple of pics but I have tog et them off the camera, crop and resize, so, umm, maybe later. 

We do eat a fair few meals with pasta in and I’m wondering about getting us a pasta maker so we can make our own, dry it and use it and maybe even gift it for friends.

I have washing out on the line, the sun is shining and the sky is blue (ish, in patches in between the clouds) - shame it’s still cold really, it’s a lovely day. The ground is still very very wet, so no digging but I may go back out to spike some more lawn in a bit. The washing won’t dry but it’ll air and smell nice!

The kids took a bucket and went slug hunting - feeding them to the hens as they found them. That should help with the slug problem this year. While they did that I got out my new cordless drill and put up a new bird table on the big shed. Then we discovered we have no bird food apart from an old fat ball we found in a cupboard - I have no idea how long it’s been there but it didn’t smell rancid so we hung that up. Then on the table part we chucked a handful of mixed grains (don’t tell the hens!) and a couple of apple cores and we’ll see what happens. We have bird food on the shopping list for next week.

Thinking about the garden - we had a chat about how there’s pretty much no cover round our garden and nowhere for wildlife to live. So this year we’ll be putting in more shrubs, bushes and wildlife friendly stuff, as well as the veg we’ll be growing too. I don’t think another tree will work, we already have three and more might cause problems, I’ll have a think on that. I do like trees though.

I also want a bit of a herb garden, some for eating, some for pretty and some for scent, and some just because…. I think a visit to The Herb Garden near here is in order sometime in March or April.  They do native wild flowers too, which might be nice.

The kids are clearing and hoovering the living room and making a decent job of it - probably because I banned DS time until it’s done to my satisfaction. Also likely a result of the serious talk we had about their sliding behaviour again. 

I knew it wouldn’t last.

I couldn’t settle and sleep last night so this morning I rolled over, went back to sleep and got up very very late. So that didn’t start today well. Then after I’d had some breakfast I tried to get Dino and Mimi working….

Oh the trauma, oh the drama ….. The watched Bamzooki and then I made them sit down and get it done. 

Dino did ok in the end. He worked well, reasonably willingly once he got going and what he produced was good. Mimi on the other hand refused to sit still, refused to do anything with any degree of willingness or effort and as a result her work was a mess. Yes, I know, she’s only 5, but she can do much much better and I sat her down and showed her. She wasn’t happy. 

We will crack this and they WILL sit and do something educational every day in the week. I’m leaving weekends as weekends as that’s when we see Daddy, go to the cinema and stuff. And I think the differentiation in routine helps. 

Nintendo ds’s are banned until work is done, and under other conditions but that’s not education!

We have all sat here and worked for a while this morning and while I have several tasks left on my list, the kids have one each left - all the others are done! Their project task for today is to find a book on the chosen topic in the lbrary this afternoon. I could do with setting Dino some spellings for the week too. 

But on the whole it went well and we have this afternoon free for food shopping, ds’ing etc. 

We’ve drifted a bit into dossing about and doing nothing with spurts of doing things with no real purpose, direction or plan. This applies in business, writing, home ed and life in general. Actually it’s been quite good doing that but I am now feeling the need for a bit more structure and direction - at least in the home ed and business arenas. I won’t bore you with the business stuff here though.

But the education thing needs a metaphorical kick in the pants. 

So, from Monday and with allowances for days out, visiting, going away and home ed group now and then….

Dino will be doing every weekday:

•  Some sort of reading
• Some work on language strusture - grammar, spelling, punctuation etc
• Write a story
• Something mathsy (need to think about that one)
• A project of his own choice - he says planes.

Mimi will be doing:

• Reading with me - she needs lots of help still
• Some writing - she needs to work on letters and maybe some easy spellings
• Story - I’ll write and she’ll copy
• Maths - see above
• Her own project - she says butterflies.

Around that we’ll be gardening, going out, shopping, living, cooking and whatever takes our fancy. They still have Cubs and Rainbows and Dino wants me to find someone to teach him to play his guitar. We’re all knitting as well and we’ll be making things through the year - maybe for Christmas/birthday, dunno yet. 

How long this will last is anyone’s guess but we’ll start and try. 

Dino and Mimi drew this and it took them literally hours of discussion, planning, rubbing out and revising. They’re very proud and so am I. It’s a plan of how they think The Big House might look.

So, from the top ….. There are two cars and a house. The smaller car is ours and it’s a hybrid of some sort and the bigger one belongs to Kris and her family, who are going to live next door. The house is really two houses stuck together.

Underneath that is the garden, yes it’s HUGE, but it’s been carefully planned, with much consultation and discussion. On the left at the top is a rectangle with a smaller square and some dots in - that’s a deck area/patio with chairs and tables. Directly under that is a round thing with a stick person next to it - that’s me next to my dome greenhouse. The thing that looks like a grid is an outdoor run for guinea pigs and rabbits although they weren’t too fond of the idea of rabbit pie. The empty rectangle above that is a storage shed/barn.

Back to the top and there’s a long thin bit on the right with a pig and some pink spots in - that’s the pug pen with sow and piglets. Now the bit to the left of the pigs looks empty but it’s actually a HUGE polytunnel and there’s nothing in it because Kris and I have to decide what to plant in it - so I’ve been told.

Under the polytunnel there’s the orchard, you see the trees? All fruit and in there is Mimi, climbing them. Under the orchard there are two pens the same size and one smaller one at the end of the pig pen - those are for the chickens. One is for specially chosen layers, the kids would love to choose some that lay blue eggs, a couple of pretty speckledy hens, and rescue some ex battery ones too. The other pen is for the hens for eating, so they don’t get mixed up. The really small pen is for when we don’t want the cockerel in with the hens, or when hens get sick, bullied or need some space to be broody.

Then right at the bottom, although the positioning and design is currently in dispute, is a bungalow/log cabin/something for friends and relatives to come to stay so they can have their own space and peace and quiet if they want it. Of course anyone staying with us is always more than welcome in the main house too, but in case you need the peace….