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

I found this speech by Dav Pilkey, the author of Captain Underpants and really enjoyed it so am sharing

well, it seems to have been a while! I meant to update at the end of last week but things turned against me. Last week started with a trip to the theatre to see Hamlet in a Shakespeare for Kids production. Really enjoyed that, but Alex didn’t really enjoy the ghost of Hamlets father and it scared her for a while after.

The rest of the week was taken up with the Film Education week which I’d foolishly booked too many! I think I got carried away, by Friday I was filmed out But we did see The Simpsons, Bridge to Terabithia (kids loved this and we immediately ordered the book when we got home), Charlottes Web and The Little Polar Bear 2 (That was a complete load of rubbish!!!). In between all that we had another trip to the home ed group which I’m feeling much better about. The kids are really enjoying it and I’m being braver Kept up with our Ambleside Online readings but really did very little else education wise!

Saturday we had a birthday party at Barbara’s which was lovely. M was feeling rather ill by the evening, but I put it down to a long day and much excitement. Unfortunately by the time we got home he’d been sick and was up the rest of the night being ill. Sorry if anyone got it. Hope not.

Sunday, M just flaked out and Alex and I went to see some football with my dad. It was Doncaster Belles (ladies team). A was fine for about 20 minutes and then just wanted to go off an do something else, namely get in with the teenagers that were hanging about rofl! She has no attention span at all.

Monday and Tuesday, M was still bad, but by Tues he was pretty much better, but we didn’t risk going to the HE group which was a shame. James was ill Tue and Wed and so had a day off. Typical, just before our holiday he’s ill so we have less money. Argh! We’re doomed when it comes to holidays this year. We’re half thinking about a trip to Venice for our 10th anniversary of being together, but I’m not sure I dare plan anything.

So again this week education wise I don’t feel we’ve done too much, read our stories and done a small bit of copywork each and a little bit of maths. Trying to work on sums like 2 + _ = 5. Half of the time they are fine with them but sometimes, esp M, they just look at the numbers and add up what they see. So today we looked at them again but I concentrated on showing them what ‘=’ actually means and shwoing that it has to balance each side. I’m not sure they got that before.

Off out in a mo to take M to buy A a birthday present. My last day of having a 5 year old. Sniff.

Britains Brainiest Family

M and A have been very boisterous today but in a kind of good way. Me, I’ve been having a dreamy day and so have been on another planet, not really the kind of mood that is good for dealing with the kids. But really they’ve been happy enough and I do like to see them playing together as siblings, sometimes they have off days but when they do play nice it reminds me of why we’re home and together. If only they’d be a little quieter, then it would be great. And I also wouldn’t go upstairs in too much of a hurry to sort them out (after a paricularly noisy eposiode) and hurt my foot on the stairs. Oh well.

Btw - thanks for the hugs, made me feel much better!

isn’t it always the way. Nothing ever really goes all ok together does it? HE is going well now, feels like all is being positive and steps in the right direction (will all fall apart tomorrow now!), but ugh I feel so crap as well. Feeling so unhappy with myself, so down Not helped by being on and off unwell-ish (I say that as always seems to be little things, nothing big) for ages and as a result James is being really git-ish as he has no patience for me being unwell. I just want to be back on top of things. Might help if I could lose some weight, I may actually like myself then. SO if anyone spots me with chocolate, just shout at me ok??

Now watch, now I’ve written this, next week HE will be crap, but I’ll be happy again!

;)

Or something like that anyway. What I love about HE and the way we’ve been doing it lately, (through books, using Charlotte Mason and all that jazz) is the way some things just mesh together and the ‘hooks’ it gives the kids quickly have other things hung on them.

Dunno if all that makes sense But this past month or so loads of stuff have come together through no contrived unit studies or even thought on my part (which for me is very good, I’m a bit too controlling I think sometimes!). Today we’ve been to the museum in Sheffield. It’s just across the road from the Childrens Hospital which we were at for the kids eyes, but normally when we go to the museum we’re all a bit tired and fraught. Today seemed to be a bit different. The kids spotted a new exhibition on our first trip in (we were early so had a quick scoot round before our appointment then came back later) which tbh I thought looked boring for them. It was about Yemen and the people who came to live in Sheffield from there. Anyway, we went in and looked at the photos on the wall and the displays. Alex found a drawing bit with some pre-printed house outlines and the idea was to decorate the houses like those in Yemen which were quite colourful. She set herself up to do it with no coaxing and spent about 30 mins colouring. ALex doesn’t really do concentration much so it was quite impressive. Marcus came and did some too and although he didn’t spend quite as much time he spent a good lot of maybe 15 mins drawing. While they were doing that I looked at some books on a table and sat down on a sofa. I showed M the books, one was Ali Baba and the 40 thieves and while we were waiting for A to finish her colouring we read it. We’d been introduced to the 1001 Arabian Nights from the Ambleside Online Composer Study section which this term is Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. I downloaded this cd a few weeks ago and listened to it when we were in the car, so this tied it all in with that. M also picked up an audio book of the 1001 nights and recognised the ‘arabia’ part. We looked at the maps on display and spoke about how close it was to other countries we’d looked at recently in the Story of the World book. It all seemed to fit in together and brought so much more to this small exhibit that I would have dismissed myself. It actually doesn’t sound much written down I don’t think, but I loved the fact it was all so natural. If I’d said let’s do a study on the Middle East and took them to it on purpose I’m sure it would have been a dead loss and deadly boring too.

well I suppose it’s not even over yet, but there we go! I’d been feeling ill all the 2nd half of last week with some kind of virus (thankfully no-one else has had it yet) and this week I’ve just felt wiped out. So tired. I normally get up really early with James nowadays but haven’t done all week, I’ve just needed to sleep. Feeling much better today though

So all week, we’ve been a bit lax with anything too heavy workwise. I’ve been keeping up with our reading from AmblesideOnline, we’re on week 4 now, which went well and made me feel like I’ve not wasted the time. M wanted to read the War Boy book I blogged about before so that’s been our history this week. Which reminds me, was supposed to put it in the timeline book - shall do that later this afternoon. Have hardly done any maths, although did a lesson from MUS this morning that went down well. I also got a book about infinity for them called The Cat In Numberland which although we haven’t read yet, looks really good. They’re both kind of obsessed with infinity atm! Also read Katie and the Mona Lisa to keep some art appreciation going But all fairly relaxed tbh.

Wednesday we went out to the nature reserve home ed meeting which was really nice. Managed to speak to some other people. I feel like I’ve been around for a bit and know a few people by their faces, but I don’t know them well enough to chat so sometimes I feel a little awkward at groups. But getting better. Went off to my mums afterwards for a change of scene listening to Bindi Babes (Alex’s choice) on the way. Yes we have more audio books on the go Not so many this time, 3 each. A is getting more into them too.

I’ve been quite enjoying watching M read a few more things lately. It’s been over a month since I decided to stop the reading of ORT books every day and take a step back to see how things would go. I never said anything to M about why, but when he turned round to me one day and said that he gets all confused in his head when he tried to read I took it as meaning I was probably doing the right thing. He doesn’t ever ask to practise reading, but he picks up comics often and will attempt reading lots there. I don’t think it feels as hard for him. The other day we were getting petrol and he read ‘Have you checked your oil?’ only pausing to check he had ‘checked’ right. Ok hardly earth shattering, but what I liked about it was he wasn’t doing it for anyone but himself and that’s how he generally is, doing it for himself. Oh I saw this Artemis Fowl Graphic Novel and think it looks fab. Might have to get it.

And now I’ve lost my train of thought as the kids were fighting over the playstation so have been sent upstairs. Humph.

We have 2 war ‘nuts’ in the family so far, James and his dad. I think we may have another one soon enough. Marcus caught the end of ‘Kelly’s Heroes’ on Saturday and loved it so on Sunday James’ dad brought out a video of it and they watched it all. He likes the tanks, the guns, the aeroplanes and weaponry, pretty much like his dad and grandpa then

So this morning, after a late start, he brought down a book that’s been on our shelves for a while. It’s called War Boy and is the childhood story of the illustrator Michael Foreman. It’s a long book so we’ll have to read it in a few sittings, but the pictures are fab and I don’t think I’ve ever had M interested in a book like he was today. He loves stories, being read to but today he was on my knee the whole time lol! It’s set in Lowestoft so he was excited to see it in a place he knew of. We looked at how close that was to Holland on the map too so some geography crept in

I was wondering if I should try to do some sort of more in depth study of it all with him, then realised how much we’ve actually done in the last year. We visited Eden camp last October which we all really enjoyed, I wonder if we could do another trip there one day, I really enjoyed it. We’ve visited the Imperial War Museum and the Royal Armouries and we’ve also had a couple of visits to the Aeroplane museum in Doncaster which has lots of WW2 planes and exhibits. We’ve read a couple of books about WW2 - twenty and Ten and also Make Do and Mend ( franklin Watts book - why do they do such fab books and then a year later they are out of print?? I only bought them last year). We have a couple of other books in that series which we’ve still to read too.

So add that to all the discussions that come up and it’s amazing what you get through when you don’t try eh?