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

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?

and one in which I’ve felt completely detached from the whole world. I get days when all I want to do is sit and thrash out the things going on in my head and today was one, but I never had the chance. It also didn’t help that I had an awful nights sleep, with a really horrible dream. Set me up really badly.

But anyway, I managed to trim some bits in the garden and fill the green bin up, it is so overgrown and I dread anyone coming to check up on the house (we must get a check soon - been here nearly a year). So a little bit better, but really I wasn’t in the mood for it. Kids tidied their room after a lot of prodding and Alex did some of a maths workbook of her own accord. She did about doubling numbers and matching numbers to words.

Watched the GP qualifying and then headed round to FIL’s for the afternoon and for tea. Was a welcome break from having our 2 out in the street. It’s just getting worse, yesterday the boy who we have problems with was trhowing A’s scooter around and has managed to break it Why must one stupid obnoxious little 8 year old ruin everything? I mean I hate the house here anyway, I’m covered in bruises from knocking into things cos nothing fits right in the house and there is just no room, but it did feel nice that at least the kids had friends, could do the whole playing out thing and everything. But argh, I’m just hating it all atm. Kind of wishing winter and bad weather

Watched Stuart Little and Italian Job then home and baths before bed. Seemed ages ago that though. We’ve nearly finished the Stuart Little book and we had a little history and geogrpahy tonight in the form of Warm as Wool story (M recognised Pennsylvania from the Magic Tree House books - must check where it is on the map!) and more Maths in Tally O’Malley.

Supposed to be going out for a drive somewhere nice tomorrow but as car just been fixed and has cost a further £100 maybe we won’t. can’t face a day in the house though I don’t think

I’ll see if I can remember what we did. First of all I had a sleep in, I’m still feeling a little out of sorts. Not ill, but certainly very tired. I feel really weird tonight but am blaming it on the heat, is very warm in our house tonight.

So we had a late start and although I had written down stuff I wanted to do this week, I don’t think any of it was done today. I started well on Wednesday, but hey. So this morning Alex wanted to play Ooky Spooky so we did that for a while. Then she wanted to do some reading (actually I can’t remember who instigated the reading, but anyway) so we decided to print a nursery rhyme and learn it, so we looked through her nursery rhyme book and she decided on ‘Heads, shoulders, knees and toes’. Printed it out and cut out the words and then put them all back in order. She liked it anyway!

Then the post arrived and 2 graphic novels I ordered arrived with it. First one was for Marcus and is called Bone and I got Owly for Alex. They both absolutely loved them and M sat for ages looking at his (I had a little read too and it was really funny.). Result.

Spent rest of the morning with the lego set, built a pyramid and helped M make a car of his own design. he’s really good at doing that.

before lunch we did some looking at Google Earth and then while lunching we read some Story of The World about the Pyramids so that sparked lots of discussions and we then looked into another book we had to see what was in there. I tried to convince M that we should try mummifying a chicken as per the sotw activity book but he wasn’t having any of it. rofl!!

Rest of the day has been them playing outside really. Been gorgeous today. Weekend is busy - Monsters birthday party tomorrow and then we have to be leaving dead early on Sunday to get to the Renault World Series day at Donington Park.

a bit bleurgh lately hence the lack of posts. Seems to have been going round, James had it at the weekend and James’ dad had it too.

Monday seemed for some in blogland the day to get back to ‘work’ but I figured I’d wait till Wednesday as that was when the local primary schools round here went back. So Monday we spent in Conisbrough up at my mum and dads new paper shop. Kids did loads of jobs and earned money which was promptly spent in the shop again! Loads of sweeties in there. We were in Conisbrough to meet up with Michelle from the Manor Born as they were in the area doing something with bikes or somesuch So we decided to go to the castle which was really nice. It’s been a while since we’d been there and the kids had been asking to go back for ages. M never made it to the top of the castle, he has a real fear of heights. A had no such problems and made it up at least twice (maybe even three times?). Marcus made friends with ‘Big’ Marcus and was having arguments as to what certain parts of the castle were for. M thought everything must have a fighting aspect! Anyway, was lovely to have a day out especially after keeping away from such places in the summer hols.

Tuesday was fairly non eventful as the local kids were still about so most of the day was spent playing with them. I’m writing down what they do cos I like having notes and M did some drawing while A played with our electronics set. Both of them watched some MathUSee which I’ve managed to get second hand from BringandBuy. It only arrived so I was watching to see what we thought (I’d already seen the trial video) and they really liked it. I’m going to get some blocks next week from the UK rep as she lives nearish to me and we’ll make a tentative start with it. Not planning to do much with it, but to have it supplement the ‘livingmath’ we’ve been doing.

So today was the start of ‘not being back to school!’ Yay! Not that it’s that much different to what we’ve been doing lately, but anyhow. We read some African picture / math books and learned how to count to 10 in swahili. Kids loved this one, I didn’t think they’d be that interested!! Then we looked on the map to make sure they knew where africa was - they didn’t! So I showed them, talked a bit about continents and M started looking at some places in USA. He found New York and I told him that lots of places in America have English names and that there is Sheffield and London over in the US among others. Read some of Zero to Ten as well which is going back to what we’d been looking at last week (or whenever) about the history of numbers).

Showed them how to play Mancala which went well for about 10 minutes till M just went mad and assumed he’d lose so he had the most enormous tantrum I’ve ever seen him do. He spent at leat 15 minutes screaming around and throwing himself about saying he hated us all. I just didn’t know what to do or say to him This past week he’s been so angry and has been constantly bickering with A, it’s been a bit of a nightmare. It could be due to the cold thing that wiped me out on Monday and James at the weekend, or I suppose it could be hormones. Is this the time for hormones with boys? I dunno. Anyway, it’s all a bit bluerghy there.

We had to walk down to the bank before lunch so I braced myself for M behaving awfully, but he was fine and I think the fresh air helped him. Sent them round Sainsbury’s with their own little list to read and get stuff.

Home for lunch and patch time which tends to coincide with computer time. A helped me make some cookies, M wasn’t interested in helping today. Once it got near school finishing time that was it, they were out on the street waiting for their friends to get home. So they’ve even socialised a bit too

It’s been a long day

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!

if M can read this blog. He’s come out with so many mathsy things today I’m in shock! He never says anything about numbers. Ever. And today he’s mentioned being able to divide 10 sweets between 5 people (he did get a bit confused by the answer, but at least he was thinking it), and was adding up money and working out how much he’d need to buy 3 ten pence mix ups. Oh and he said earlier that ‘4 times 3 is 12′ as he had a load of cars in a carry case in 4 lines of 3. Weird. Wonder if he’ll keep it up.

We’ve had an ok day today, some science kits arrived from Boots so we had a quick look at those. The biology kit went down well and Alex has taken to the skeleton model (it’s called Skelly) and has been carting it round with her many cuddly toys. We do have a couple of older science kits that are space related and I’ve been thinking we could do those and loosely try and learn something about space. M likes science, so think it could be good to concentrate a bit on. So Alex got down a kit we got from Magna ages ago which shows the moons shapes and how the sun moves. Took a while to set up as it we had to build it all and wire it up (an experiment in itself!) but looks pretty good. We didn’t look too much at it, but will do soon.

Made A stick a small pic of the titanic magic tree house book on the map before I forgot and lost it. Have a worksheet thing for them to do if they’re interested in it (and I can pin them down). We read the next book called Buffalo Before Breakfast the last few nights. It’s about Native Americans and the kids have learnt how to say ‘friend’ by sticking up 2 fingers (and how not to say friend also!). We’ll stick that on the map too once the hallway gets cleared of boxes as the large ones are right over america.

Did some sweety maths. Todays game was ‘what did I do’ where I showed some sweets in a bowl, kids had to close their eyes and I took some away or added and they had to work out what I did. Of course it went down well as sweets were involved!

New bikes came today so that was the big excitement. James completely mucked up putting stabilisers on Alex’s. I shall be the very good wife and not roll my eyes But it’s all sorted now. So they’ve been outside lots. Alex had a bit of a strop and so managed to get banned from going out again after tea. Wasn’t so bad as we were reading some of her book she got the other day ina series called the Fairy Chronicles. It had really good reviews and A seems to like it, but it feels very slow going to anything exciting so far!

Just before bed Marcus attempted to read some of his Yuck book I got him. And then we read some of the Enchanted Wood book before bed. Kids fell asleep straight away. been a busy day and tomorrow James and I have to put up new beds - ugh.

Oh and I’ll try and e-mail people about the postcard swap soon, please shout at me if I forget again!

Today’s been fairly busy even though we’ve not been anywhere and not done half the things I wanted to!

It started lazily (as always *sigh*) but then Marcus launched straight into some questions about the Tay bridge disaster having remembered about it last night. So we looked on google for some stuff about it then he compared it to the Tacoma Narrows bridge which we’d seen as there is an exhibit at Magna about it (actually not sure he even looked at it yesterday, but he has seen it lots of times before) and so we looked up stuff about that, when it was built, if they built a new one, where it was etc etc. Marcus thought they were really ’stupid’ for having built it wrong so we discussed about mistakes being the things we learn from (and I’ve been saying this lots lately about loads!), looked at what was different about the new bridge and gave an example of the Titanic and the Zeebrugge disaster which had been on the news not that long ago and how things had been made better because of them. Cue talking about those for a bit too! We looked at pictures of the Titanic in the Britannia book, spoke about the brave musicians who played till the end and about it being the cold that killed most people not drowing. And just to keep the disaster theme going he then wanted to know about 9/11 so we looked at pics of that too and had a quick run through of it. Phew. And then we had *breakfast*!!!!

Maths consisted of sharing out a packet of refreshers between 3 bowls! Then we baked a lemon drizzle cake and the kids helped quite a lot with the measuring and talking about halves for working out how many eggs to use. More maths! Then as the kids were licking out the bowl and I was off to head in the shower I realised it was nearly 1pm! Argh, where had the morning gone???

James called to say he was finished once I was out of the shower and we spent most of the afternoon tidying the tip we live in. We have so much stuff, but I’m so crap at decluttering. Argh. While we did this the kids played outside (cos I kicked them out!!) with lego, and that kept them occupied pretty much till evening.

I was a domestic goddess all day long, what with doing lemon drizzle cake earlier (kids not impressed, but James and his dad loved it) and then doing ‘The Beans’ veggie curry for tea. Was gorgeous, could have eaten twice as much. But then I am a greedy so and so. Also made some naan breads too, yum.

James’ dad came over in the evening so it’s been a fairly late end to the day. Alex spent ages reading some of the word lists from the ‘I can read it’ Sonlight books. She did really well, all 3 letter words and she’s getting much better at the end sound but she still adds whatever she feels like sometimes! I wish I could find our book 1 of it though, Alex can amble through that one and I think it would be good for her to have her own book that she’s reading as she tends to want to do what Marcus is doing but it’s often way beyond her. Marcus never finished it, but on looking at book 2 I think he’d be ok to start with that one. must look harder for the first one.

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!

today hasn’t quite been as good as the past few days, but it’s been down to me as apposed to the kids. I woke up funny and early so that set me up badly. We did sit and do some explode the code, the new workbook was really good for M, he’s improving so much day by day so I think the sitting doing *something* every day has worked. Did a bit of counting in 2’s which as normal wasn’t received well by M but A loved. Then the postie brought some more reading books from Sarah so that brought a nice end to everything and I just moped about making soda bread while the kids played ‘war’ outside. Had afternoon baths and Alex sat and did a maths workbook with me (her request) but I transcribed her answers as her writing is hard for her sometimes. We also looked a little bit at some of the dogs in ‘5 true dog stories‘ (last few nights bedtime stories) and where they came from. Going to stick some pics of the dogs on the map at some point.

Bleurgh, sounds crap dosn’t it. Mostly what’s getting me down is James’ new job which is just crap from what I hear, feel really weird about it all, something is so not right. So have gone out to get chocolate to cheer myself up.

On Tuesday we started off the day with a bit of reading practise. Alex was first as she’d got ready first after breakfast and for once we didn’t have a performance while she was giving it a go. I think the early start helped. She did quite well, but has a way to go I think, but practice will help. Marcus did some after (the same book, a basic ladybird phonics one) and did well too, again more practice just to reinforce he can do it and to keep the momentum going is needed I think. They both did some Explode the Code too after that.

With Alex looking at her ocean life book last night and the relative sizes of the animals and fish in it, I thought we could maybe do a bit of a measuring thing. So we decided to measure ourselves (actually I should have got them to do me too) and then I cut some bits of paper to scale to show us next to a dolphin, green turtle, orca and blue whale. I should have done it smaller though as the blue whale will cover all our kitchen wall!!! Oh well, a lesson in scale And maths that didn’t involve adding which is also a plus.

That was about it for yesterday. They did patches early and have all of a sudden stopped complaining about having them on at all, even with them being stuck on the eye. Very impressed with them both, and I think it just shows what a difference a year can make in asking them to do it. I just have to hope it will make a difference when they go back to the hospital.

Oh I forgot, we did a few puzzles I printed off the internet. Need to start dating and keeping hold of stuff, never know if I may need it.

Today we were up early as we had visitors in the shape of Barbara and kids and I had to tidy! Trying to gradually get up earlier, I can sleep fairly late consistently and the kids just follow along side me. If I try and get up earlier I’m hoping they will too and we’ll actually get stuff done at a reasonable time. Alex woke up with me so again I set her off with some work this morning once brekkie was out the way. Today we just did some basic sums working out with the base 10 blocks. When Marcus graced us with his presence he surprised me that he actually remembered some very basic sums (2+2, 5+5, 3+3, 10+10) without having to work them out. I know this seems very easy, but it’s a big deal for us especially as no matter how much I show him things, it never seems to stick. I do think he’s needed his own pace with this though and I really don’t want to make maths a huge deal. The problem we’re having is that for the family who don’t agree with HE (and for some reason I’m feeling more like the concerns are being said louder lately) it’s the academic things that they will base their opinions on and if he’s not reading or showing great competence in maths then that will speak volumes to them. It doesn’t matter if he would have been the same in school, it’s just ammunition for them. It also doesn’t matter that he knows loads about cars and types, or can draw 3 dimensional cars or whatever he has an interest in, cos it’s not reading and writing. It gets me down quite a lot. (also substitute he for she soon as it will start with Alex soon too)

When Barbara called to say she was on her way with kids and ds’s my 2 rushed to get their patches on, but I was evil and wouldn’t let them playwith them till B got here. Muahahahah! But once they arrived that was them all sorted for a while, can’t say they were quiet though I sat Barbara down with a cuppa and LOTS of photos and forced her to look at them Was really nice to have them all round

Felt really like putting the telly on once they’d gone, but decided against it. Instead I told them they could do a kit I bought at a toy shop a while ago which makes a stick puppet show. The attraction wasn’t in the puppet show but the sticker maker that was included that made the actual puppets. Anyway, that kept them busy for ages, and meant that I could investigate the public transport options in sheffield so we can make it to some HE groups soon while I actually want to.

This evening after James got home we watched something about hurricanes which sparked lots of discussions, I don’t think my lot are hugely keen on going to America now!! More dolphin stories at bedtime too