Another wonderful wise up

Tuesday club again was fab, the kids really just throw themselves into it, enjoying whatever takes their fancy at the time. Today it was endless games of pool for Connor in between chasing Jack around not advisable as it annoys the YMCA although Jack was obviously enjoying it... Jack is Torrins older brother.( Im sensing a tollerance /enjoyment of being annoyed here!) and for Sophie it was more cross stitch, Discussing the latest happenings in Doctor Who with her girlyfriends and a fab Manga drawing workshop which really grabbed her. She spent hours when she got home trying to recreate the things she had learned and improve.
She was less than impressed when I got curry on one of her creations... well I DID tell her she shouldnt be eating with one hand and trying to draw with the other and perhaps it was high time she gave it a rest for tonight! She now intends to run her own Manga drawing workshop at Glastonbury.... nothing like aiming high then kiddo!

Talking of Glastonbury, Darrens car has been comandeered ( its a 4X4) and packed to the gills, so much for alledgely travelling light ( and no, its not all booze just in case you were wondering!)
But I guess 5 peoples stuff, trolleys, tents etc doesnt exactly equate to travelling light does it?
I havent even got onto packing the clothes yet.
Chloe announced helpfully at about 7 tonight after Id done a shift in work and was knackered..... ( on phone from school) err mum, you did wash all my clothes, you know the filthy ones I left in my suitcase under the bed?????? ARRRGHH YOU WHAT????! No dear I didnt, you know why? because you swore blind to DH that everything was clean and nothing needed doing last weekend... and now Im sat here with the tumble drier going at 11pm..... HMPH !!!!! GRRR and I have to be up at 5am!

see you all next week !

Reflecting

OK so today wasnt the easiest... Soph calmed down, we popped to town and did some last minute glastonbury shopping ( earplugs for the night time) and once we were home the kids just chilled Connor, being sick zonked out for a few hours Sophie played on education city and most was left unsaid until Darren returned...

We discussed it and agreed, they are all different kids with different needs and its our job just to go with it and do our best to meet their needs, however we go about it.

So if she wants wycliff, then thats what she gets, if thats really her decision. We will ask her after the weekend and see. If she wants to try again at the smaller homeschool group thats fine, if not, thats fine too. ( I think we've probably been here several times already so weve promised ourselves for our sanity this will be the decider!)


My friend J sent me this tonight, she thought( and I agree) and it sums up today so well, I thought I would share it! from

www.enjoyparenting.com/dailygroove


"What's GOOD about that?" ::If it's raining, you're supposed to call it "bad weather" and complain.Complaining makes you feel bad, but you've been led to believe that thesource of your angst is the rain-- the weather *conditions*. That's conditionality

.UNconditionality means wanting so much to feel good that you stop usingconditions to justify feeling bad.

One way to practice the Art of Unconditionality in the face of "bad"conditions is to ask yourself, "What's GOOD about that?"What's GOOD about the rain? It vitalizes the soil and plants... It makes theair smell clean... It's fun to get drenched and then go take a hot bath!

What's GOOD about children "misbehaving"? It means they're trying to engage,explore, connect, create, etc... It means you get to practice loving andfeeling good unconditionally, which is the key to your Authentic Power.Eventually you'll realize it's neither good nor bad -- it just IS.
Welcometo Reality. :-)

OK. strike that ( maybe) and rethink

The kids were up bright and early(ish) this morning ready to try a session at the little school group..Connor isnt well so we decided he wouldnt try it but for Soph all was going well until we arrived. On the way she'd been chatting about wanting to try it on her own and stuff anyway... We met two other mums who were lovely and introduced themselves and said they hoped mine would love it as much as their kids (promising start by anyones school gate experiences I think!)

Got through the door and she just crumpled, refused to stay sobbed and even the offer of one of the little girls birthday cakes wouldnt placate her.. she sobbed all the way home and said quite steadfastly she wanted to go to Wycliff ( the school further away)
Connor then said later he wanted to try Cross and Crown but not without Soph ARRGH !!!

The teacher was nice about it but it was cringeworthy with Soph sobbing, refusing to calm down ( from nowt to howling in about 0.6 seconds!) and knowing Soph she will refuse to try it now because she'll feel embarassed... so wycliff it will be then I guess, god knows whether we will be ok doing it or the impact it will have but with a bit of luck it means shes actually made a decision.
*shakes head*
Oh well, they are watching MrBeans Holiday while I pack and I try not to think too much about it all!

Time to catch up!

Its been three weeks since I blogged anything! I knew I;d been busy but hadn't realised quite how busy until I promised a friend I would blog 'tonight I promise' 3 days ago and still haven't got round to it!

So what have we been up to?? LOADS!

Our Sonlight Core arrived( world history and geography) and the kids are really enjoying it, especially the geography songs on CD :) I'm glad I didn't buy a whole great big package though with Maths, handwriting etc because Connors doing really well with his Miquon programme and Sophies started practicing her tables every day when she realised she just isnt managing her maths any more because she doesn't know them.

I'm going to look into getting some of the 'optional' language arts workbooks for Connor though because IMO they shouldn't be optional, the language arts frankly isn't very good without them!

Connor likes his reading books though and Sophie is reading aloud some of the bits and pieces of history etc instead of me doing it. I initially intended the core for Connor and thought Id get a different one for Sophie but shes enjoying it all and it doesn't seem too 'young' for her. She has her Galore Park English which she can do to differentiate the language arts bits anyway!

I'm finding the first 'read aloud' novel rather boring but they love it so I'm guessing its just me then....!

We don't do it all every day, if its too much for them to manage all at one sitting so we just pick it up as we feel able to and leave the bits we don't want for another day when they are more interested.

Its definitely led by them though, they ask to 'do work now please' and are able to say "actually I don't want to do this bit, can we do something else now please?"

I'm glad I did bite the bullet and got it though, their demands to "do work now please" were difficult previously because whatever I tried to conjour up nothing seemed to satisfy them for long. Sonlight really does seem to fit the bill in that respect.Its nice covering so much with so little perceived effort on everyone's part and I certainly don't feel I'm 'teaching' them really, just reading to them or guiding them through whatever is on the schedule for the day and keeping track of whats next if we stopped and pick it back up again at a different time.

They gave up on Education City for a while but its been redone lately to meet the needs of home users better and they are both really liking the new format and games etc so have been using that quite a lot too.

Other than the home ed stuff we've been meeting up with other home edders both locally and further afield.

Wise up has held another couple of Brilliant sessions, a Water play session which the kids both absolutely loved and threw themselves into with great enthusiasm. The session went on for hours while most of the mums managed to stay dry and clean by lounging like seals in the sun while the pups splashed, raced, slid and bounced around soaking each other and getting plastered in mud and bubbles! There were several exclamations of "Amazing, brill! etc and Sophie made me well up when she announced loudly "I LOVE my life!!"

Tuesday club last Tuesday was another great one. Connor spent most of his time in the Dojo with Jon the sports coach and Sophie spent all day with the girls doing arty bits, producing a lovely poster of a Dalek and doing some Cross stitch and tormenting Torin ( which appears to be an activity in itself) fortunately Torin appears to be enjoying it as much as they are! Ill put links to the piccies up at the end, I always manage to mess up the formatting!

Locally we've been Swimming with another family who live nearby and the kids are keen to go again. I'm hoping maybe we can make it a regular activity as other friends have also said they'd like to come along :)

We also went birdwatching at The museum of Welsh life in St Fagans which necessitated an early start... up at 4.30 to meet at 5.30! OUCH! It was well worth it though, the guide Gareth taught us all what to listen for before we set out and over about an hour and a half we saw loads of different birds The kids had a tick sheet and managed to tick off almost all the birds and had to add quite a few to the lists. We also spotted rabbits in the clearing, newts and fish in the tannery pond. It was lovely to go when it was so peaceful and still. I hope we can repeat it sometime.

They are still enjoying their activities , Connors sticking at Tae- Kwondo and is trying hard to learn to count in Korean.

Sophie has joined the cheerleading sessions and is working hard in her new swimming club. Shes been a bit blah about Trampolining this term but she does this every now and again so I know it will pass. I didnt think she would want to add anything else in activity wise but living so close to the leisure centre she takes herself off down there to do whatever it is she wants( lovely for her and for me!)It also means no running round after her apart from Trampolining.

Sophie is still wavering about school. We have to make a decision soon, sometimes she wants to go, sometimes she doesn't. Unfortunately the cost of petrol is starting to make it prohibitive for us to actually get her there every day and its too far for her to get public transport back home if one of us can't get there to collect her :( We had hoped she could go to MIL's house but things have been 'difficult' in that dept lately so its not an option.That makes the decision all the harder and petrol doesn't look like its getting cheaper either!

There is a small Christian school closer that we've discovered and visited, its only just starting up with about 10 kids aged between 4-13 and 2 staff its designed to be for either full time or home educated and flexi school so the kids are going to go and try a session and see if they like it.

Ive realised lately working as much as I do after being with the kids all day is just unsustainable for me physically. I'm exhausted much of the time ( and thankfully Darren has realised this too) Several times a week I do a full 'days work' after having spent all day running round with the kids!

Financially we cannot afford for me not to. If I didn't the kids would have to go back to state schools and Id have to work in the day.( really not an option) so hopefully if they can spend a couple of sessions a week somewhere then Ill get a little bit of time off to catch up with things in the house or just to sleep if necessary!

Chloe's home this weekend and thinks the idea of going to school for just some of the time is 'wierd' but seems happy to keep her counsel for now, I think so long as shes happy shes stooped worrying what the others get up to without her. Shes very keen to go to Wise up and see what goes on at Tuesday club. She'll be with me every weekend now, then breaks up in the 2nd week in July for 2 months before moving to the upper school ( shes scared she will get lost and its too big... she doesn't realise how small it is compared with most schools!)

We've both been in stitches watching the new comedy 'Summer hills high' on BBC, set in an Australian High School.. and one actor playing the three main, very different characters ( a gay drama teacher with aspirations, a bitchy pretentious new girl and a Polynesian lad who is trying to drop out and disrupt in every possible way as he 'entertains' the class)

This evening I cringed and waited for a bad reaction when there was a scene in a 'remedial reading lesson' where the main character was learning to read the word 'Circus' ... "sound it out"said the teacher and the kid said "C" ( as in Cat) and corrected by the teacher said "It doesn't begin with a F***ing S"... cue Chloe Falling about laughing and says See! See?? That's what I think when I'm in speech and language doing my THRASS ( specialist phonics for severely dyslexic kids)

It could have been such an awful moment but it was so funny and so special that we can all now sit and laugh at the ridiculousness of parts of the English language and what used to be such a sore subject is something she now has the confidence to find hilarious. We are also loving the bitchy girl from the private school on the exchange programme and how awful she is.

anyway... heres the rest of the piccies from the Water play session

http://s119.photobucket.com/albums/o126/JenGriff_photos/Water%20Play/?albumview=slideshow

Ill probably go quiet again after today for a week as we're off to Glastonbury this week... Im taking 4 kids, inc Chloe's friend Charlotte ( I must be mad)
I'll make sure I don't leave it so long before blogging all that when I get back!

A Happy 'half term'

Chloes been home for 10 days and we've had a remarkably calm week, minimal fighting which is unusual but a real blessing and the kids have had lots of fun.
We havent really done alot, thanks to Sophies broken finger alot of activities had to be curtailed, including a fab 'den building' session wise up organised. I was gutted to have missed it, it looked loads of fun! But we've done quite alot anyway!
Mondays concert fun took a day to recover from, we were all worn out. We had planned to visit Longleat but the vouchers from tesco didnt arrive so thats on hold for now, much to the kids dissapointment so Tuesday saw us all just mooching around, having a pleasant lunch out and sorting the caravan a bit.
Usually we find the younger two dont do much structured stuff in Chloe's half term as 'its holiday time' but this week weve managed to do a fair bit. Chloe has reading and diary writing to do so we included her in whatever we were doing. She asked for some maths to do and so I printed her off a set of worksheets.. she did what I envisaged would maybe take all week in 15 mins!!!
They all had fun measuring angles with a protractor as that was in Sophies maths book and both Sophie and Connor have spent lots of time playing with an angles game on the woodlands school website . We intended to watch Springwatch but havent had time! Ill have to get catching it up on I-PLayer this week

On wednesday we went to the local home ed group and the girls got crafty with wool while Connor munched his lunch, played ball and whinged he felt ill so we went home cue a killer headache and him retiring to bed at about 6 ( he must be ill!) Sophies made some lovely cards using her 'draw write now' bookand the girls got right into the 'Flat Traveler' project recommended by Bridget and Linda and got busy making their flat travellers. Their first traveller is soon to head down under and were going to organise the journal and scrapbook this afternoon

Sophie joined in her first swimming club session and is excited about the Gala which will be held at the end of June which she has been told she will have to practice hard for. Connor moved up a level in swimming and impressed his new teacher with his backstroke which pleased him no end!

We spent yesterday visiting my middle Brother, we dont see him very often so it was nice to catch up again and spent the evening in a complete talent show slob fest in front of the TV first watching "I'd do anything" then "Britains got Talent" finals. I usually hate these shows with a passion and I tolerated the BBC one for the girls but enjoyed Britqains got Talent and we were all thrilled when George won. The kids agonised over which results show to watch but finally settled on ITV. They can watch the BBC one when Im at tesco! I can shop in peace! Meanwhile the girls are making 'Beautiful music' after finding the recorders and book... time to go shopping! My poor ears!