Sunshine and Glory

We've had a fantastic day at the Botanic Gardens today, which has become a Wednesday ritual. The girls are rosey and tired from playing, running, climbing and breathing in the fresh air. One of the staff 'told' us that the children had to come out of the pond after they'd already been playing in there for about two hours. His claim was that they put chemicals in the water, that there's wildlife in the water and that 'they just shouldn't be in there in the first place'... OK Sir. The children all came out of the pond and played on the grass instead. It seems that nowhere is really geared up for children. It's obvious that there's no wildlife in the pond at the Botanics - if there is, the 'chemicals' will have killed it by now, paticuarly if said chemicals are dangers for children. I think that if he'd delivered his request to have our children vacate the pond in a friendly, warm manner instead of in a miserable git manner then I wouldn't feel annoyed about it. It's not getting out of the pond that's the problem, it's his attitude! Ah well, the day was still glorious and continues to be. My girls are now in the back garden, naked, faffing on ith the hose pipe. Happy days!

Sewing

I've decided to take a break from sewing, and I feel good about the decission. I've been working literally all weekend for the past year and it's as if Mark and I have had seperate lives. I know this isn't a rare family set up, however, my profit from last year, (taking into account the dip in tax credits due to my working) was less than £1000 and really, we can cope without that money... it's going to be tight, but we can do it. I need to find something that brings a high profit without taking every waking hour. Some days I think of nothing but work. It's started to come before the children, before my house, before my husband and I feel run down and sad! I still have my sewing machine and all of my supplies so it's not like I have to give up forever, just for a while until I figure out what's what and how I feel about things. I've always, always wanted to write a book. Perhaps that will be the next adventure?

Mothers Day

Mothers Day was lovely. We went to Weatherspoons for an early breakfast then headed to 'Down at the Farm'. If I hadn't forgotten my coat we'd have been out for another couple of hours. I'll remember it next time!

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Yawwwwwnnn

What was that about being more energised today? I'm shattered this morning and I'm not sure why. I can't remember how many times Anna fed during the night but I doubt it was more than usual. I'm sneezy, tired and feeling groggy. It must be time for more coffee!!! The mummy drug of choice! We're off for our weekly visit to the Wetlands Centre this morning, which we're all looking forward to. Sylvie came downstairs 'asking' to do some school work this morning, which is a first. We did a bit of Singaore maths then she decided, as did Bea, that it was time to watch Stuart Little 2! I'm too tired to argue and I fancy doing my hair and taking 10 mins for some quiet to catch up with myself so that's fine. They'll be doing lots of exercise at the Wetlands Centre to make up for it. I've got my weekly Slimming World weigh in tonight. I say weekly, but I missed last week as I had lots of work to do and then Mark told me he was going to the pub! I'd had a bad food week anyway so I'm not too bothered. I don't think I'll have lost anything this week. I've not been very organised with food and I've felt a bit overwhelmed by the amount of shopping I've had to do, (yet the fridge is still empty) therefore quick decissions have been made which aren't really good for weight loss! Ce la vie - it's going to be a slow process as I've got lots to lose so I need to relax into it. I don't want to lose the weight then put it all on again like last time! The battery is running out so that's me done. I'll be back later to post pics of our day out.

Slow, Slow..... stop

We've not been up to much today. Sylvie really struggled to fall asleep last night and as she was up with the larks this morning she's been knackered all day. As a result we've not done much of anything! The girls have played out in the garden and had quite a few barnies. Bea pushed Sylvie over at one point and all hell was let loose. Goodness knows what the neighbours must think, (that sounds like something my mother would have said!). We made it to French this afternoon. Sylvie rode there on her bike, Bea chased after her but never caught up and Anna plodded along at toddler pace. Lovely. Everyone's asleep now so hopefully tomorrow will be more energised and positive with less fighting, (I can dream, can't I). Goodnight!

A Trip to the Garden Centre

We headed to the local garden centre to pick up some seeds and to play on the climbing frames and the slides! It was a lovely sunny day and we bought quite a few packets of seeds. We came home and dug up LOTS of weeds from out the back. We moved the hen house, sorted out the borders and though about where we'd like to plant our Peter Rabbit veg patch. My dad came down to lend a hand but ssssshhhh I didn't tell Mark - he thinks I did all the work myself, (with a little help from the girls of course!)...

Photos to go with the last post...

Yes, that is a pair of tights on Bea's head. She was pretending to be a rabbit called Elliot... This went on for quite some time!!!!

Sylvie loved doing this activity. It's part of the 'Ready to Read' download from the Moffat Girls blogspot. Love it, and more to the point, so does she!

Ready to Read?

Everyone was up very early this morning, as is now the norm. Annabelle was not impressed with the early start and demanded an extra hour latched on in bed before she could function without being miserable! All is well now though. Due to our early start we've done quite a bit of reading and maths. We started the day with a bit of 'Ready to Read' - a scheme of work downloaded from which seems to make sense to Sylvie. It's very simple, however, I'm happy with that as anything too challenging puts her right off. Sylvie knows numerous site words and picks them up very quickly - she learnt 6 yesterday, but when it comes to blending words and figuring things out even the basics such as 'hat' and 'sat' baffle her. I'm not concerned about this - she obviously doesn't learn according to the rules of phonics and that's great - she enjoys learning site words and is a fab kinesthetic learner so all of the running around we incorporate into the learning suits her well. As a visual learner I sometimes struggle with Sylvie's style which is more biased towards the aural and kinesthetic. It bores me to death to have someone tell me how something works - I switch off but Sylvie's fine with that! This style suits Mark down to the ground. He loves to explain things and doesn't have to be hands on or immersed in pictures so he and Sylvie are the perfect match. She did lots of colouring this morning and had a look at some 'an' and 'at' words before moving onto Miquon maths. She was doing great but then she got a bit stuck and lost her concentration. I think she's done enough for now though and a break is a good thing! Bea has been tracing numbers and telling me numbers. She's also done a lot of colouring in and a few dot to dots. I really worry that I'm leaving her out, however, I'm doing my best! Mark's going to take Sylvie swimming tonight so I'm going to snuggle down with Bea and Annabelle. I think we might watch a film but I'd rather read stories and give Bea lots of attention. She's been a challenge over the last couple of weeks... you know the saying, 1 step forward, 2 steps back, well, that's where we are so I'm hoping a lot of love and attention might give her a spur in the right direction!!! I took photos this morning but I'll upload them later.

Plans for Today....

Sylvie stayed at my dad's house last night. She loves it there - it's a good chance for her to sink into some peace and quiet, and dad really enjoys having the company. No doubt he'll bring her back VERY early this morning as she's started rising with the sun. A few weeks a go I felt as though we couldn't get anywhere until 11am - the 11 o.'clock rule, but now that the sun's rising earlier and we're all up and about by 7 at the latest, we're back on track so the earlier we're out, the better. The Tees Valley home ed group are heading to Preston Park today. I want to go along as one of Sylvie's girl friends will be there but it's too far given the cost of petrol so we're going to stay home. Plans for the day include: - Going to the garden centre to buy some seeds. There's a nice play area at the back of the garden centre where they all love to climb and slide so no doubt we'll be there for quite a while!!! - We need to plan and start planting our Peter Rabbit garden! Our garden's awful at the minute so there's lots of cleaning and digging to be done. - Learning three or four new sight words so that Sylvie can whizz through her Peter and Jane book with confidence. - Making a big salad for lunch with tuna fish and boiled eggs!!! ... and that's about it! Enough for one day, I think!!! I'm starting to think about what we'll row next. The logical book seems to be 'The Carrot Seed' which is a Before Five in a Row title but which is very relevant to what we're doing outside in the garden. The wonderful Michelle at Delightful Learning has already rowed this book and had loads of ideas on her blog so I'll be popping over there for hints and tips. Thank you, wonderful mama, for sharing!!!

Photo update of us rowing Peter Rabbit

Lovely, busy day today. I'll post photos later. I have to find the lead that connects the camera to the computer first!!! We're busy 'rowing' Peter Rabbit and we're also doing a bit of a project about frogs... yes, a mix and match bundle of stuff. I think we're all loving it, I know I am! I feel like we're making huge steps forward in terms of Sylvie's learning - or it could just be that I'm making steps forward when it comes to understanding 'how' she learns best. We got up early today and I think we were all over joyed to see the sun shining. The girls put their wellies on and headed into the garden with some new gardening tools and a desire to dig! I left them too it while I made brekkie and had my 'mummy juice', i.e. strong coffee, then I joined them for a bit of digging and seed planting. We managed to plant some lettuce, some sunflowers and a bit of corriander. There's loads left to plant but the garden's such a mess that I felt a bit overwhelmed by it so came back inside. I left the girls to play a bit longer then called them if 'for school', which went down really well! Our new super huge table is just mint. Sylvie sits at one end, I sit near her with Bea at the other side of me then Anna sits ON the table. This means that they all have their own space to plod on with what they're doing and it also means it's easier to give them all different things to do! I pulled out the Peter Rabbit folder and we looked at some stuff I'd printed from Delightful Learning I LOVE the Delightful Learning blog. A huge, huge thankyou to the mama that's documented the learning journey of her children, it gives me so much help and inspiration. THANK YOU!!! We looked at pictures of seeds - the embryo, the food store and the outer shell and coloured all the bits in, then we looked at the kind of seeds plants grow from, for example, an acorn into an Oak tree. We discussed how seeds end up where they do, for example, an animal may eat some seeds then pooh them out again somewhere else or a human might buy seeds/harvest seeds and plant them. Sylvie loves discussing things and really enjoyed thinking about this. Both Sylvie and Bea coloured in a diagram of a seed growing up into a stem with leaves... they loved doing that! We did a little bit about where Peter Rabbit is set and about the life of Beatrix Potter which was nice then Sylvie sorted pictures of Flower seed packets and veg seed packets into the correct rows. She did loads of letters - tracing and forming her own and filled a basket full of cut out veg and a bit of colouring in. We had a a lovely snack in the garden this morning and after lunch we played 'The Gruffalo Snakes and Ladders. The girls found this a bit tricky and I got quite stressed so we ended up putting it away and going out to play again! Some new books were delivered from Amazon, Jack's Garden and another one about seeds, so we had a look though them but Elliot put us off when he started chasing a frog around the garden. Urgh, nightmare. I don't htink he managed to catch it, thank goodness. I remember when the chickens caught a frog... it was horrific. The poor thing screeched! I had no idea frogs could screech like that - ugh, I never want to hear it again. Once Elliot was out of the way we all sat very quietly to listen to the frog's croaking in the neighbours garden! We've just been out to our French lesson, 'Lingoto' and now we're going to make the tea. The Royal We that is... me. I have to work tonight which is a bit of a pain but I should be able finish off what I'm doing so that the rest of the week is free. Ooo, we've also put a celery stalk into a glass filled with red coloured water so we can see how the celery drinks!

The last couple of months seem to be weighing heavy on some friends. Money worries, redundancy, poorly relatives and decissions to be made with far reaching consequences. I'm glad that here, at Chez Gibson there is no great drama at the minute! Things are ticking over nicely and we're all doing OK - I think we're very blessed indeed!!! What have we been up to? Well, there's 'the usual' - numerous trips to the Wetlands Centre and the Botanic Gardens which we all adore and can't get enough of. Meetings with friends, old and new and also with some new mamas who've helped to make the home ed gene pool a bit bigger! One of the mamas has eight children!!! I'm pleased to say that at least one of them is a girl of a similar age to Sylvie. I don't think boys and girls can't be friends, I just think that it would be nice for Sylvie to have a female friend with whom her intrinsic feminine based instinctive play can be shared. She's not into Lego and I have the impression that Lego is a universal passion shared by all young boys - probably the precursor to football. Sylvie and the boys play really well together when they're outside chasing each other, mock fighting, playing 'tag' or hide and seek, but it's the more intimate, quiet space that she doesn't share with them. I have no worries about Bea. I'm not sure that Bea realises other children exist. She's got no interest in other kids at all. She is a law unto herself and she's very happy to live that way so who am I to worry?? She's fine - she's just a bit quirky!!!! We've been looking at the Delightful Learning blogspot quite a lot lately which has proved really inspirational. We've done a fab project on the Universe, (I know, a huge subject, but we managed to condense it down to a bit of art and copy work!), a bit of work on frogs, (with the help of the Wetlands Trust) and we're now rowing Peter Rabit, which is going to help us plan and plant our back garden. I've been collecting egg cartons to use as seed pots and can't wait to start putting them to good use. Sylvie's still reading Peter and Jane books - begrudgingly. She's also doing a little bit of writing but she doesn't really like it so I'm not going to push it. OOh, the best thing that's happened over the last couple of weeks? The delivery of our new, 288cm long table! Wooo hooo, I love it and it's made life much easier. i'm off for now... MArk's having some kind of fit over dinner. Time to save the day!