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

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.

Another good day here today, helped in part by the sunshine although we weren’t out much in it. Wasn’t it just bloomin gorgeous?? Like summer.

Anyway we started the day with a little recorder practice. Alex seems to really like it but her fingers are just not big enough yet, Marcus was a bit self concious but once he realised I was only after practising one note was a bit better. He struggles as he rushes so much and doesn’t always stop to think what he should be doing iykwim. But a good first lesson I think, not going to go by the book we have yet, but just experiment with rhythms and notes for a bit.

After that we did some maths. I feel this is coming along well now that I’m paying more attention to it. They did a dot to dot from the red miquon book and you had to do it by counting in 2’s. Both of them got the hang of it well, Alex is much quicker at working out the next number though! Sometimes I forget there is 15 months between them as the are quite often at a similar level. Also did a ‘guess my number’ game where they guessed hwat number I was thinking and I had to say higher or lower. More work definitely needed there as it was clear they didn’t have much of a clue about that!!

Also did some Explode the code again, M read another ORT book (still level 1 but gaining confidence rapidly). Actually all of a sudden I’ve noticed M trying to read almost everything, it’s like all of a sudden he’s realised he could do it if he tries. I never realised how long a process reading is and it’s quite an eye opener really (although why I didn’t think it would be a long process I don’t know!!). It seems so long ago that Marcus looked at a word and realised it’s sounds added up to a word, so to still be at that struggling reader stage is quite weird and I suppose a little frustrating. I hope our fairly relaxed last year where we did hardly anything hasn’t kept him back too much, suppose I’ll never know though! Getting some of those DK readers from Amazon soon and think M will be fairly impressed by Spiderman and Star wars books - here’s hoping.

Then we got out some old cereal boxes and did some junk modelling. Well actually what I had in mind was making some magazine holders but the kids had other ideas. Well who can blame them since we hardly do any crafts round here lately? Paint just scares me in this house, so will have to be just sticking I reckon

And then we had lunch And James finished work early so managed to join us so that was nice. I also was looking at some maths games sites so since I was looking at them the kids just had to play them didn’t they? So they did some tessalations, adding, and measuring plus a little more work on higher and lower numbers. Sneaky but good Alex managed to get herself onto some other games that had spanish language in it which kept her amused for a while.

Afternoon was Sainsbury’s shopping (been putting it off as can’t stand to go at the weekend) and then we popped to see W and her daughter and grandkids were visiting. The baby had chicken pox so you never know, we may actually come down with it. Tried to entice M to go closer by saying he could have a day playing the playstation if he was ill, but it didn’t work

Home for tea and telly and M has just read James his book from earlier on so all happy

Have to say really enjoying being back into blogging again and think it’s been doing us good as I’m def takin gmore notice of what we’re doing and wasting days less (I think!)

Kids had been requesting to go to see my mum and dad for ages but since we don’t have a car it’s been out of the question. So anyway I asked if they’d come and collect us for a day at their house and that’s what we did yesterday. While waiting for our lift, Marcus read an Usborne Farmyard Tale (the top parts of the writing iykwim) which he did well with, but there was a bit too many unknown words. I suppose practise will help here? Once we got to my mums Alex helped us to make cookies and Marcus dissappeared upstairs with my brother to play the playstation. Hardly saw him all day! Cookies were lovely and Alex helped my mum bake some more (my mum’s new obsession is baking!), we walked the dogs and basically chilled in a different setting! James was late home (very late ) so we had to ask my parents to take us home again oops. Was going to pick a bike up for Marcus on freecycle but my mum reminded us about a bike we got ages ago from Dottyspots which for some reason I thought was much bigger than it actually was. We tried Marcus on it just before going home and it seemed fine, just a little big, but I think he’ll be fine on it. So we wedged it in the car and took it home. Marcus was desperate to ride it again but it was getting dark.

Today has been a mixture. I could paint it rosy I reckon, but mostly I’ve been on a different planet, not feeling very well and just being down. The kids woke me up early which wasn’t too unusual, but what was different today was that they both got dressed while I was still coming round. They wanted to go out and wash their bikes and play on them. *sigh* shouldn’t complain really eh? Marcus must have done something to his brakes though as I’m sure they were working yesterday but there was a bit broken today, so he couldn’t practise on it. They were fine with washing though and managed to get plenty of fresh air while it was still sunny this morning. They continued to play while I tried to finish tidying the kitchen (started last night sorting shelves and took me too long!) and then they decided they wanted to go to the park so we headed there. It was freezing by that time so we weren’t there long!!

Home and hot baths for them 2, while I tried to work out how we were going to make it to Hunstanton next week. I was sure it would be closer than what it was but on looking at the AA site it’s 3 hours away - ugh. Was planning on James taking me after work on Monday and picking me up on Thursday but if yesterdays finish time was anything to go by then it won’t really be fair to get him to do it. Well it might still happen, not sure. But anyway been looking at train fares which might be comparable with driving 4 journeys, except it only takes us to Kings lynn then we’d have to get a bus. Not sure what I fancy doing atm, I do like train journeys though and would be an adventure!

I started to go downhill from then on and felt awful (still do ) so prescribed films. Alex chose a dora dvd and Marcus wanted to watch Home Alone, his fave film. Actually they really surprised me at one point as they were watching an extra where they dub over bits in lots of languages with a flag at the bottom and the name of the language. They’d only ever watched it on their own but could identify Spanish, Italian, French, German and Chinese. I don’t know if it was the flags, the language that they guessed or if M had tried to read it or all three, I was impressed anyway. That film makes me want to cry though, so I couldn’t watch it with them even though I needed to lay down.

I was starting to think about a chippy for tea but james phoned to say he’d be late again so I had to make something. opted for pizza as no bread left for normal beans/eggs on toast emergency stuff. So hauled myself up to set breadmaker going. Alex spotted the scales and proceeded to weigh lots of stuff, Marcus decided he wanted to do some maths games on the internet so we tried to find a couple. He quite liked a noughts and crosses game we found that he could play against the computer. I must make them up a links page with some games that are a bit different to teh cbeebies/cbbc websites. He played a bit of Hotwheels website too.

Telly was on by then though so it’s been bamzooki, simpsons and now we’re settling down to watch RND. Well I might just go to bed, will see!

I must write up something before another day goes by with me being too busy. Since we got back from tenerife we’ve been really trying to get some “proper” educational stuff done simply because I feel it’s been lacking too much and we’re constantly getting bad feedback from James’ family about HE and I’d really like to prove it does work. For some reason Marcus has also turned into a 6 and a half year old and I can’t quite remember that happening, it does feel very ‘big’ and as such I feel he should be doing a bit more work. Although, this being me it isn’t normally that much!!

So last week we sat down and talked about stuff we wanted to learn and so I have a big list of possible things to do. Funnily enough learning to read didn’t come up for either of them, but they’re both getting there with it all. I wish they wanted to though. Actually my mum was really impressed with M on holiday as he quite often draws and writes stuff to go on the picture and instead of always asking how to write something he just thinks in his head. most of the time it’s wrong, but that’s to be expected with our language!!

It’s become apparent that M is really struggling with the concepts of numbers, adding and all that stuff. We don’t follow a set curriculum or anything, but we might look into something in the future. Anyway, yesterday morning I took our base ten block s and went way back to basics with him and we just counted out the right numbers of blocks for each number up to 12. Then we looked at swapping 10 cubes for a ten, etc etc and I think he stared to get some of it. It was kind of nice just to have a maths session without him just looking all confused!! He managed to work out that 100+100 isn’t something like 100100 or whatever he normally thinks. Nothing spectacular but a big break through for us. Alex did the same after too and didn’t flap and wail so that was good too!!

Also yesterday we finished the Spain project we started just after coming back from holiday. We’ve been looking at maps, themoney they used and writing down what language they learnt over there. We also read The story of Ferdinand and Marcus narrated back the story (with some poking and prodding).

We went down the library and managed to get some books on future learning ideas - dolphins and electricity. Wonder if you can work out who wanted which Actually M’s list was all physics-y kind of stuff which is crap for me as I never did it. But James did electronics at college so he knows what he’s talking about. On the way to the library was lots of nature spotting, M remembered about ‘lambs’ tails’ and we talked about spring starting with all the flowers coming through.

Back home and it was patch time - both of them have to have them for 3 hours a day - ugh! horrible, but actually yesterday wasn’t too bad. I think they’re getting used to them. They can play their computer games while they have them on and I think this helps Although I’m not sure the whole 3 hours is good for M to have on a playstation, we’ll see about maybe dropping it. Alex at least isn’t that obsessed with her ds!

Alex spent some of the evening pouring through a book on ocean life and looking at the sizes of the fish/whales/dolphons compared to humans and trying to read the sizes (so work on cm and metres - yay!)

Finished the night with few chapters from a book from Sonlight - Dolphin Adventure, that I happened to find on the shelf and fitted nicely with our ‘theme’

So a good day and I wanted to record it!

Oh and the hot socks refers to James’ bad neck so I made him a rice thingy that you warm up in the microwave with a sock. Of course the kids then wanted one each to take to bed so have been wandering about with socks all bloody day!!