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

What I want to achieve in 2009:

This past years efforts in HE haven’t really been all that successful and certainly lately we’ve got ourselves into a bit of a rut. Just some rambly thoughts on how we might proceed.

Reading/Literacy etc

This is a tough one. I’m really not sure how to proceed here.

Alex, I think, is still too young at the moment to be pushing the reading. She tolerates Explode the Code and does it well so we’re going to keep up with that. I’m going to try and bring in some more comic books that she’ll like. The beano is very popular with her and I’ll keep looking out for others that will appeal. I’d like to see if she will be more receptive to listening to audio books, she’s always been a bit iffy with them before but as I think M has benefited from them a lot it would be good to try. Maybe I’ll try her at times other than bed time as she def doesn’t like that.

Marcus is reading now but really not much out of choice. I’m not sure how to encourage him to keep reading so he can get more fluent. I’m going to probably try and do as I am with Alex and encourage more comic and audio books and just keep throwing things at him that I think he’ll enjoy. I’m not sure he’ll ever be a kid who devours books but so long as I know he could if he wanted to then I suppose that’s ok.

Maths
This has recently fallen into M wanting to do a page of very easy things and declaring it as enough. I am ok with this sometimes as it’s building his confidence and it’s very easily knocked when doing maths. However we need to move on from just simple adding. I want to incorporate much more living math, games, books etc. We’ve started reading The Number Devil
which they like so far. I have lots of stuff to do, but need to be much more organised with it all really.

Charlotte Mason
I’m going to ease back into our Ambleside Online year 1 which we started ages ago. I like doing this and it eases my conscience when I think other people are thinking we do too little. I enjoy the composer and artist studies too so will get into those. Not much to orgo plan there, all done for me

Science
I’d like to keep up with some nature diaries and study ala CM. I’ve also got the Real Science 4 kids Pre-Chemistry book coming and so we’ll be making a start on that. If it goes ok, we’ll move onto the Pre-Biology. The kids have their own ‘chemistry set’ which they can experiment with to their hearts content so I’ll be encouraging that and doing experiments from books too. They all love experiments so I should do more.

I’d like to do some reading of the lives of scientists and such like. I have a Marie Curie book here and will look out for some others.

Music
Violin has fallen by the wayside here. Alex didn’t like doing the lessons and she was getting frustrated at not being able to make nice sounds. She was starting to think she was rubbish and stupid for not being able to do it so for now we’ve switched to the recorder which is suiting her much better. She loves it and managed to do Jingle Bells for us all on Xmas day. I’d like to continue by maybe getting some music for some simple nursery rhymes (or writing it myself if I can) and going forward with that.

I’m not sure how to get M into anything. He doesn’t show much interest. I guess we’ll just see if he does. We have the composer study for exposure to different stuff at any rate. Actually I’m sure the history of music will be more up his street!

Foreign Language
Have done terribly with this. I’d like it to become something we could work on though. Hmmm. Maybe I need to look at the schools library. I’d like to do a little Latin too with our Minimus books we got.

Groups
Continue going to weekly HE group when we can as both really like it there. Monthly nature group too. There’s a soft play meet up which is really nice that we can go to while M is still 8 so will continue with that.

Alex wants to join brownies so I have some phoning round to do on that. She would also like to do Karate or some sort of self defence. Will be looking into that soon too. M doesn’t want to do anything. No surprises there then

Hmm, not sure what else. Might come back to this later

went by with no blogging. Oops. Just going to fill in a few blanks, mostly for my reference as it’s nice to look back and remember what we did.

August
Jan and Jonathans party. Was lovely as it always is! Unfortunately the weather wasn’t so much and our tent collapsed in the high winds.

Had lots of car problems this month, one left us stranded on the motorway next to the Tinsley Towers. A few days later they were demolished, still quite weird not seeing them when you drive past.

September

Taught Alex to knit, she really loves it and managed to pick it up really easily.

Marcus finished his first proper book - Captain Underpants.

Apple Day - a local orchard holds an apple day every year so we popped down to that aand came back with bags full of apples to do things with! Pear tree from FILs was prolific too so lots of preserving going on!

Went to a friends wedding, James was a best man (1 of 3).

October
Ireland: Guinness Factory & Dublin
Tullamore Whiskey Heritage centre
Walking in the Wicklow Mountains
Visit to BallyKissangel

Alex’s birthday - 7!!!!! Had some friends over for a play.

Halloween. Both kids were very excited at Halloween and duly dressed up as a witch and Darth vader and pounded the streets Most neighbours happy to do the whole thing so was very nice.

November
Fireworks. Didn’t go anywhere specific but wandered round our estate watching them all which was fun.

Nic’s. Visited Nic and Ady and had a lovely time with them. Kids get on so well with hers so always fun to visit. Made a detour to Reading while there to another friends pool party. Hadn’t seen those friends in ages so particularly nice.

December
Helmsley. Wish I’d managed to stay for the whole time here but when it was booking time we were skint. Since it’s so close we managed to go for the ‘Xmas day’ and Nic kindly let us sleep over in their room so we could be there for S’s birthday the day after. Had a fab time there especially as it snowed! We never get snow so this was a big novelty. M had lots of snowball fights.

Nativity play. Went to a local Nativity play which, while overpriced, was very nice and the first time we’ve ever done that as we missed the Pennywell trip back when we went to Okehampton years ago. M predictably wouldn’t join in though (which made the over priced part worse!).

Xmas. Argh Xmas! Should have been lovely but unfortunately we had a bug which Alex got on Christmas Eve Eve, M got on Xmas Eve and I got on Xmas day. Luckily we had Boxing day free of Sickness but J then came down with it the day after. The kids had a good day though so that’s what matters I guess.

Finally to end 2008 we visited Em for a party. I don’t tend to ‘do’ NYE but that’s from having parents who don’t celebrate it either. Normally we go to James’ family so it was nice to do something else. I so love these get togethers, it makes me feel so lucky to have such fab friends. Was a perfect way to end and start the year.