Life is a Highway - it’s the journey, not the destination

cool link

Folding circles

online comic strip

but a long way to go The kids have been taking it in turns to be horrid, M particularly so yesterday. I had to split them up so many times as they were clearly intent on rubbing each other up the wrong way all day long.

Like I say, today has been a bit better, but my throat is really hurting from all the shouting I’ve been doing lately so it’s not perfect by any means We had welcome respite in the form of Jax and kids who came by for lunch. Was good to have a nice chat for the first hour or so till the kids just started being noisy and in the same room as us. After lunch we headed out to the little park to let them let off some steam. It worked well and Jax and I gave dirty looks to the teenagers wrecking the swings.

We haven’t been doing that much else of note I don’t think. Nearly finished The Magic Faraway tree book which they’ve both loved (was supposed to finish tonight but on havign to shout too many times and havign been warned they lost that right due to me having no voice). M is desperate to start the next Magic Tree House book (I need to read something that doesn’t have magic and tree in the title!) but I’m insisting reading this first, nice that he’s enthusiastic though.

Introduced Alex to negative numbers yesterday as she owes me some money Think she gets it.

Also showed both of them about square numbers today. I’m trying to steer away from bloody sums as I’m getting myself bogged down by them, let alone the kids getting bogged down! Made some pentominoes (click right hand side for printable pentominoes) and both helped cut them out then sat trying to figure out far ages how to fit it all in (still figuring…).

Lots of craft going on which makes my heart race due to the carpets, but I got a cheapy art box from the Works and so they’ve been making pictures with it all. It’s been really lacking lately so I’m letting them get on with it.

And that’s about it. I have a day off tomorrow as James taking kids to his sisters with his dad (car gone to get fixed) so I’m on garage sorting duty. Yay. Or something like that.

that I’ll post here as I’ll lose them otherwise (my bookmark folder need serious sorting!)

Cool Math for Kids

Free Books Oh poo - this is only for the US atm.

is about the only way to describe my mood lately. Normally I can attribute it to my time of the month, but I know it’s not that this time. I’m just a grumpy cow

I think it’s mostly down to me doing a *lot* of thinking about our learning styles at the moment and it’s just really taking its toll. I’m finding it utterly fascinating though. I’ve been talking with James a lot about it and for the first time really in the last 6 years he’s ‘getting’ why we’re doing HE. The reason I think he’s getting it is because we’ve been talking about the Right Brain stuff and we think that is what James is like. Which has finally showed him that he’s not as stupid as he’s always believed and as everyone (school, his parents etc) have thought of him. He recognizes so many of the things I’m telling him and it’s like a light has switched on in him. It’s quite fun really! So he’s seeing that if this is a part of the kids in whatever way then school won’t help them either.

I do recognise a lot of RB things in both kids, specifically in M and to some extent in A though i’m not sure how much with A. My dilemma is how to proceed with everything. I don’t want to be pushing them and really that’s the beauty of HE isn’t it? But I think this is what’s stressing me. From what I read about it things like reading and maths computation are going to come later (like age 8-10), they’ll get maths concepts but remembering the facts will be a long slog. But these are the things that I know they are judged on by people like James’ dad and I feel like it’s just not what I need. We were at his house the other day and something was on the telly and he was showing M some words and I said ‘he can’t read that it was too quick’ and straight away he was saying ‘oh he should be reading by now’ and it reminds me how against it all they are. Ugh. I do find it all hard.

Anyway I got a book about it all today (ignore the ADD thing, it’s more just about RB learners, I don’t actually think my 2 have ADD or anything like that) so I’ve been reading more about it and have some ideas to help so I think the next few months are going to be spent watching and trying to work out how they both learn better so I can tailor what we’re doing. Feels like such hard work I have to say!!

just sharing a couple of links I found

StoryNory

and

Activated Storytellers

Not checked out the second yet, but 1st one looks fab!

without me blogging. Oops. Keep meaning to but have had quite a bit on my mind lately.

Ok boring stuff first so I have a record. Wed - er… Oh bollocks. I can’t bloody remember can I? I think we’ve done reading practise and probably a bit more of maths story books. Ugh.

Alex’s reading style has been puzzling me a lot lately and I’ve been looking round the internet trying to gather ideas on how to help her read. On one of the groups I’m on I saw something about Right Brained Learners. Initially I looked into it when M was not doing great with his maths but I discounted it as I figured he could do phonics pretty well and there was other stuff I didn’t hink fitted either. I came across it again when thinking about Alex and it’s got me really thinking about learning styles and stuff. It’s kind of all spinning round in my head at the moment and I’m not sure if any of it is really applicable to my 2 but I’m thinking that in some areas at least they may be more ‘right brained’ and so have been looking for ideas and information on it. I’ve a book coming soon about it and hopefully that will help me work out some more. I’ve joined a(nother!) yahoo group on homeschooling creatively which has a wealth of ideas too. I’m always a bit wary of labels, not because of the label itself causing problems, but sometimes it’s like I think I’d actually like something that would explain why we’re not progressing in whatever (reading, maths, whatever) as it would stop me feeling like it was just me being crap at HE. So before I read too much I started writing down stuff about both A and M even if I had no idea if it was a RB thing or not so that once I did look into it, I didn’t just home in on the stuff that did fit. Don’t know if that makes sense at all. I have been doing *a lot* of thinking!! I’ll probably write some more on it once I’ve thought some more but for now that will have to do.

Animal School

(not sure how to add the video into the blog, but there we go)

as I wasn’t feeling well. Time of the month (or 3 weeks in my case) and have had awful cramps today. So we did our work on the couch all snuggled up this morning which was nice.

Maths was a game from the Games for Math book. Just keeping going with addition atm. Also tried to concentrate a bit on the adding of something (1-9) to 10 as so far they haven’t noticed any pattern.

Then we did some reading practise. M read the first one of the ORT Stage 5 and then Alex read it too. Checked their knowledge of some tricky words from the Jolly Phonics manual. M doing well and knows quite a few, Alex hardly any! Which doesn’t surprise me really, she really can’t read words if they are on their own, she needs pictures and context so she can guess! Shall have to do some googling tonight and see if I can find any ideas on how to approach this reading. She reads the books after M and I don’t want to discourage her, but I feel I should be doing more. I sometimes think she’d be the kind of kid who could learn to read on her own eventually as she is always picking up words from when I am reading aloud. Hmm lots to ponder about. if anyone has any ideas do shout!

Then I had had enough of making them do stuff so read them the last few chapters of Alex’s Fairy Chronicles book. Am steering her away from the Rainbow Fairies They both really liked this book which is a surprise, I didn’t expect M to like it and actually he didn’t hear the beginning as I think I read it to A when she had pox.

I went for a lie down and the kids played for a bit. The french dvd went on again, A really likes it and I found her out the book that I had that matches (it’s the usborne french one). She reminded me I have a tots tv french video somewhere so I’ll look that out. Then all I need is to connect the video player and we’re sorted.

M at some point sat down with me and tried to read some more of Yuck’s Big Bogeys. He still finds this kind of thing really hard so I’m not pushing it too much, I think I’ll leave it for a while longer and concentrate on the ORT stuff as he’s doing great with that. I guess I’m a little impatient, I’ve made an extra effort to have some good boy books on his shelves in the hope he’d pick them up and read them, but so far he’s not biting.

Can’t remember the rest of the day. James fixed M’s bike as he’d worn out a tyre by skidding on it too much, so they both played a while on bikes. Then xbox was allowed and I found out some old cd’s I had bought ages ago for the kids. Alex decided to put them on and has been listening to them this evening. So we’ve had Peter and the Wolf, some Sleeping Beauty Ballet (complete with dance from A) and lots of Putumayo World Playground 2. Even M came down to dance to that one, he likes it too. I reckon I could tick off PE if I had a category for it, but I don’t!

I think we’ve covered a fair proportion of my categories boxes today I started with a plan of what I wanted to do so no pretending it was autonomous - anything but! First off they both did some copywork, I only wanted them to do one thing each (a proverb for M and some letter practise for A) but they wanted to do at least 3 times what I planned. Then they did a couple of pages of Explode the Code each. We then looked at a new book we got last week called The History of Counting and discussed about numbers being invented and how people did it when they had no language for numbers. Quite interesting. Also showed them about Lebombo and Ishango bones. We made our own out of salt dough later on too.

But before that I took them to the schools library again and they chose some books each. A got some dolphin books and M some car, ship and bridges books. I was looking to see if they had anything for teaching latin but they didn’t. I did however pick up 2 French videos so we watched one when we got home.

I tried to air the tent out a bit, but it’s tricky with a tiny garden. It was sopping wet though so I was thinking I ought to do something, anything! Almost dry, shall try again tomorrow to get any other damp bits.

Then we did shopping when James got home, I got myself into a foul mood so this evening he made himself scarce. I printed out some (v. easy) sudoku puzzles for the kids and stuck them into some work books for them (otherwise I lose them). Alex made a start right away and did about 7. M eventually did 2 although I never asked him to he just did eventually. Got some cheap sudoku and kakuro books at Sainsbury’s (£1 each) so am training them up

Anyway, time to get kids out of the bath and do stories.

I really meant to blog before going away this weekend, but managed not to. However there was a few bits and bobs I wanted to make sure I wrote down so I’ll try and remember what I did. Prob only interesting to me though (keep thinking I ought to record something in case an LEA inspector does decide to call).

Last weekend seemed an age ago but we did venture out to Creswell Crags which was a lovely walk and prompted lots of conversations about early people, where they came from etc etc. I’d like to visit the caves too at some point, but M is slightly worried about caves since we went to the Mining museum and went down the mine. he doesn’t like underground!

Monday I headed off to Barbara’s house and we managed to leave my kids with chris while B and I checked out the Schools Library. Wow. What a resource. I could have spent all day there! It was mostly non fiction books but a selection of ficion too. I picked up lots of maths books, some more ‘Katie’ books (the ones where she visits paintings) and a couple of space type books. Am going to take kids one day and it will be so nice knowing that whatever subject they want to know about, we should be able to find books on it. Our local library has had it’s cars, boats and machine books exhausted by M so I think we should be able to find some good stuff in the Schools one.

The rest of the week seems like a blur now, but workwise we’ve started off some copywork. m has really good writing which I think is unusual for a boy, but we don’t do any practise. He idn’t mind doing this as it was nice and quick. The Story of the World book arrived and we did some chapters of that along with spotting the areas on maps. this tied in nicely with the Creswell Crags visit. Our new Electronics Kit arrived so we’ve done some of that too talking about circuits and conductors. We loved the Beans kit and so when a little bit of money came our way I decided that it was going to be spent on that. Also have spent some but not lots of time on maths, been looking through books and finding any maths in the books so lots of looking for patterns, shapes etc.

M read 4 of the level 4 ORT books last week. These were the books where the ‘Magic Key’ was found so great excitement there and have ordered the next level books where the first adventures are had. Definitely getting there with all of it, don’t really want to take too much time off the practise as I think it is doing M the world of good.

And so we come to the weekend spent in a field Off The Path which was lovely despite the weather being slightly against us. It’s always nice to have the kids potter off with all the other kids there and be able to chat with the other adults. Def a plus since the kids have grown up a bit. We did have a small break as we had a cousins birthday party. What a difference! Full of hyper children and an awful dj/party bloke, was glad to get away! I didn’t sleep too well in the tent though, was v cold so on coming home today I had a bath and fell asleep for about 2 hours.

Oh and I managed to borrow a couple of books from Jan - the Time and Space of Uncle Albert and Uncle Albert and the Quantum Quest which are story books about lots of physics-y type stuff. I started reading the first one (just for myself) as soon as we got home and am enjoying it immensely. I know absolutely nothing about these kinds of things so it’s nice for me to learn about stuff!