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

which is why I haven’t blogged. I have been keeping notes of all our educational stuff in a notebook as I feel like a fraud blogging what we’ve done if actually what we have done is only a tiny proportion in between a really fraught couple of days. But having the notebook helps me, I dunno why but writing it down physically is much better for me than typing. Only lists though, I’ve never actually written a diary - typing much better for that!

Today has been slightly better as we started with maths and some reading before I asked them to get dressed. If I wait till after they always get distracted by something and then I get stressed waiting for them. I’m not sure it’s a good habit to get into though, but it worked today. We did some place value from the Math U See (they really like this) and then I read some of M’s Bone comic to him. The idea was him to follow the words, but I was going too fast for him. But I think it will be helpful for him anyway as he’ll get the gist of the story and be able to work it out next time he looks at it.

We then got dressed and made our way to the library to get lots of audio books like I said below and I also picked up some comics for M. A Simpsons one and an Asterix. Watching him sit down and really enjoy a comic makes me feel a little better about the reading thing. I asked him the other day if he wanted to read something himself and he said his brain gets too confused if he tries to read. I need patience, but it’s hard, and I’m fighting feelings that I wish he was into ‘proper’ books. But then I see him picking up words here there and everywhere and I’m sure he’ll get there eventually and getting there with a love of books still intact would probably be preferable.

We went to Magna after the library which was the first time since before the holidays that we’d made it inside. There was a new exhibition all about sports and so we were on that for a bit riding the bikes and kicking goals. Good fun. Then off to the other parts which were pretty much empty, the way I like it! I was very good and packed a picnic so we went to the outdoor playground to eat that. Unfortunately it wasn’t long before it was full of school children, lots of them. A local school has discovered asbestos in its roof so the kids were having classes at Magna but that meant that their lunch break was time in the outdoor playground. It was soooo busy and my 2 didn’t know what to do!

It was getting warm so we got the kids changed into sunsuits and they went into the water bit which is just loads of water jets. No school kids there They had loads of fun, only the 2nd time we’ve made it in and I’ve realised there won’t be many more opportunities once it gets cold so will try and go again if the weather holds a bit longer. We won’t get membership next year as they’ve changed the rules now where once you get membership you still have to pay £1 each every time you visit, which kind of defeats the object for me I think.

Home and patch/computer time then play outside with gits on the street time.

We’re reading Stuart Little at night time which I’m not really sure about, but the kids are enjoying so I guess it must be ok. I’m trying to read some Charlotte Mason books I’ve got which I’m really enjoying again (even though they’ve been read before), they’re making me feel much more inspired which is just what I’ve needed the past few days.

Oh and I’m sure Marcus has just had a growth spurt after last weeks grumps and sore achy legs, he’s def looking much taller today!

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!

love The Magic Schoolbus series that we’ve been watching on a morning on Pop lately. As I was hanging out the clothes this morning I was saying to Alex that the sun would help the clothes dry and she said ‘and the wind. Because the water goes into the air and I know that is called evaporation’. My job here is done. Must go into Magna again and look at the (pretty rubbish) water cycle model.

The Titanic Research Guide from the Magic Tree House arrived this morning too. When I first saw them I figured they’d be like activity lessons and stuff but they’re not, they’re like a non-fiction book written at the same level as the story books so kids can read them themselves. I read through it this morning showing the kids some bits of it and I thought it was really good. Made me cry though!

Marcus read the 4th book in his reading challenge, this one was a bit tricky for him and it was a bad time. We were both stressed and too hot. But he did it and we went back to the library to get the 2nd set of stickers and fridge magnet. 2 more to go. While out doing library run M was asking lots more questions about Titanic and Rose and Jack from the film. He’s struggling to remember they weren’t actually real even though the story is real. Also did some maths questions while walking. Mostly car related like ‘ if you are going 5 miles and hour and had go twice as fast how fast would you be going?’ Seems to be working well.

And then when we got home Alex made herself a floating experiment with some berries. Autonomous learning!

I’ve loads of housework to do now so will get on with it, having an afternoon off from the kids tomorrow and can’t wait!

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.

today has been a bit weird. I’ve been up and down all day long. Started first thing, I just couldn’t get myself out of bed and just wanted to snuggle all day long. Eventually got myself out knowing James would have been just setting out on his test. I felt sick all morning, probably due to wondering how he’d do, so when the kids came down we declared a snuggly morning looking at books. Which was convenient, since my Amazon order came Marcus was over the moon with his DK readers (yay!), we got him the Star Wars, Spiderman, Rockets and Sumbmarine books (all level 1) and although fairly simple, probably just right for him. We read a little bit of the Star Wars one taking it in turns as it’s quite long. I also bought some maths story books; What’s Your Angle, Pythagoras?, Sir Cumference and the Knights of the First Round Table and The Grapes of Math. Alex and I looked through the Grapes of Math one, which is lots of riddles to try and get you to count things easier, like grouping into sets etc. Was right up her street tbh, she amazes me with her ability, not because I think she’s a maths genius or anything, they are just so contrasting that it surprises me We were counting in 6’s and I stopped after 6 thinking she’s never know but gave her a chance and she actually came out with the right number. Was very impressed. Other books look good but not read them to the kids yet.

Also looked at seeds in a jar experiment (still not written anything!!), one of the beans has split. Duh duh duuuuuuuh!

News of James passing his test kind of stopped everything and when he came home we went out for a celebratory lunch to Mcd’s Kids well impressed by this!! Then we went to Magna and had a really lovely time there, much nicer than usual. We seemed to have a much more in depth look at stuff than we normally do. I also met another home educating family there and I was very brave and struck up a conversation once I decided they really must be he’ers (4 kids from 5-10!). She made me laugh as she said one of the defining characteristics of He’ers she knew was that they ate hummus!!!! Kids had a good time bombing around outside in the playpark afterwards as it was gorgeous by then.

Went off to James’ aunties house after that and Marcus and I just started to flop, don’t know what it was, probably just changes in the temperature but we just felt awful. Felt better on getting home, basic tea was had and Marcus headed for the playstation and Alex headed for the pc. She;s been playing on some games I found yesterday on the PBS kids site, mostly the George Shrinks game.

Read more boxcar children story tonight, Marcus was very impressed to learn there’s a whole series of stories about them, going to try and get some for him for his birthday maybe. Marcus then went to bed with his lamp on to read (new rules, only reading aloowed, no playing!!) so he was looking at our Britannia book and found the story about the Tay Bridge Disaster. We got a fab book about it last year in Scotland, can’t find any immediate evidence I blogged it though, but anyway, he wants the book again, so looking on our library site to find it. It was a Sparks series book and I remember thinking they sounded really good to have stories about history and I meant to look for more but must have forgotten about it. Just found one on ebay I’m going to get about Vikings and tehre seems a few at the library so we’ll have to try and check some out.

Been to a car boot today Managed to come back with not too much crud which is always good. Got a Mastermind game after seeing Alex playing with it at Hunstanton, a microscope set, a bloody awful car board game and a couple of books and small things. Was actually quite nice although we’d kitted ourselves up for muddyness and it was typically lovely!

At home we had some patch time and Alex and I played Mastermind with her rules which were slightly easier, but still made her think about it all so of educational value still! (need a logic category).

(Em hair fell out yesterday so we decided on a SB hairstyle as I can do that one!)

Marcus sat and played the playstation - *sigh* He is rather obsessed, can’t imagine where he gets that trait from

There was also some looking at some Usborne beginner books and Marcus wanted to do some of the internet linked bits at the backs of the books so they spent a good deal of time playing the Jousting game.

We also did a little bit of science / gardeningy type stuff in the way of “The Bean Experiment”, am hopefully going to get them to write up (narrate!) what happens in a little book. Oh and kids did more counting practice in 2’s with help from the 100 square on the kitchen door.

And that’s been pretty much it for today, Alex has mucked about with my camera loads, taking quite a few photos of toys and requesting photos of herself. I liked this one:

Back to ‘proper’ work tomorrow again

was good, although I still had a fair old grumpy chops air to me Bonkers Sarah arrived shortly after I blogged, can’t believe it’s been a year since we saw them last. I do wonder where on earth time is going, so many times I double take at my friends kids and think ‘hang on they’re how old? Nah, that can’t be right. Oh yeah and M’s 6 and a half and Alex is nearly 5 and half. OMG - nooooooooo!’ Or words/thoughts to that effect Anyway, they arrived, chaos ensued, pizza was eaten, we tried to persuade Marcus to give Beavers a go since Dino does it, but still no, he’s not even bothered about going to the same one as Dino so it must be that he thinks it sounds a bit crap. I dunno, not worth pushing though (but I’ll still moan about it )

We walked round to the park after lunch and it was lovely to watch them all playing together, hiding in bushes and chasing each other. Just what childhood should consist of much more than it tends to these days imho. Nice to watch and the fresh air no doubt did them good, maybe M will have a growth spurt and catch up to Dino. Or maybe not.

James arrived home as the bonkers tribe dissappeared and the kids decided to go and play with some friends from our street, although it ended up not being nice play with the boy from across the road excluding Marcus and just playing with Alex. So, (and I was back to being grumpy again as I was getting tired) I got a bit angry with them and all told them to play together or not at all. Specifically I told Alex to not stand back and watch someone get excluded, esp her brother. Anyway they went off and played again and Marcus ended up in the house in tears as this boy was trying to trick him into going down his drain (?) and threatening that his dog would bite him. Obviously since Marcus has first hand experience of being bitten by a dog, this wasn’t a great thing to say to him. james actually said something to the boy (not sure what) when he went to fetch Marcus’s scooter. Why do they have to be so bloody rotten?

After tea Marcus and I sat down to have a read of this book on electricity which we picked up at the library purely as it said electricity on the front and not actually checking the content. It actually had quite a lot of experiments to do and some good explanations. We did a couple of experiments this evening, bending water and we tried to make a spark with a pan but that didn’t work so James showed them how to do it with the telly and a bit of tin foil. Thatw as pretty cool and they could def see the sparks, I also showed them the sparks on the gas hob from the ignition and basically we talked lots about it. It’s started Marcus thinking anyway as he keeps asking now how the electric made the water move, so more needed to explain the concept I think.

*edit* just checked our library catalogue online and my local library has 3 more of the series of 5, plus other libraries have the last one so that should keep us going in sciency things for a while!

Just before bed I found out the kids Reader Rabbit year 1 cd rom that I couldn’t get installed ages ago. tried again and it came up with the same error, but I just clicked a few random things and it ended up installing so I had a quick look at the types of games on it and of course the kids spotted me and wanted to have a go themselves. They can do most of it, but with my help, so definitely one that should improve some skills if they keep at it. We didn’t do it all so I promised more time on it tomorrow. Now I need to see if I can make the one zoombinis we have that doesn’t work do the same. Oh and I’ve bid on a Bear and Penguin cd rom as I seem to remember that being talked about by some people so fingers crossed I get that and that will be something else to add to the growing pile of stuff to do.

Feeling a bit better about the maths thing now, I think I’m gettin ghung up on it too much and need to just try and concentrate on bringing it into every day life much more than I have done so far. Hopefully add in games like we’ve done tonight and the odd work books and maybe we’ll get somewhere. I really mustn’t make it an issue and tbh one thing I’m a little worried about is Alex overtaking Marcus in a maths book. That will not do his confidence much good at all and I really doubt he’d use it as incentive to get better. Anyway, we’ll see how it goes.

Oh and finished the evening with 2 stories from 5 true dog stories and managed to end on the one where the dog dies in it. So both kids gone to bed in tears. A succesful day all round methinks

I had been meaning to blog loads of times over the last few days, however I never seemed to get there.

Tuesday felt like it was a bit of a wasted day, mainly because I’d planned to go to the Home ed group but was feeling decidedly shaky and too tired to face the tram and bus to get there so we never made it. It was a pity as it was a lovely day and they apparantly had a climbing wall available. Anyway I declared it a ‘lazy’ day and I sat on my computer. I half expected M and A to laze about too and watch telly but amazingly it never went on. They found some lego and played fantasticly together making up games. To say I was surprised would have been a bit of an understatement! So we didn’t do any work that day but when James came home from work it was still nice so we headed out for a drive to Chatsworth where we had a look round the garden centre and had a nice walk and play with the frisbee.

Wesdnesday was back to work and we did some 3 letter word practise for Alex, just trying to get her to think about the end sounds really. Marcus did something, I think it was reading Stunt Duck from the phonics book. We also did a bit of Maths too from the Orange Miquon book. Think that was probably the most of it in the day time. At around tea time James’s cousin came over and saw the abacus sat on the dining table and decided to sit down with Alex and do some maths with her. Half of me felt like he was testing her to see how she does with it, another part of me was just happy that someone was taking time to sit with them and do stuff and it made me realise how little they get in the way of time with others doing anything. My parents certainly don’t spend any time with them talking about anything other than what’s on telly, james’s dad definitely doesn’t either, although I imagine at a later date he will be useful when we want to learn about the war and all that stuff (he’s really interested in it and knows all sorts of useless facts ). Even James isn’t that great at doing anything with them. Anyway, Alex surprised me by catching on to counting in 2’s and generally just being good She definitely has a different maths brain to Marcus and can pick it up much easier.

Thursday I read the riot act to the kids. All week long when they go and get dressed in the morning they know I’m waiting for them to come downstairs and start work. We don’t ever do too much, really only about 15 mins of reading and maths plus whatever else I think they might like. Anyway, they always end up playing upstairs and leave me waiting which just riles me as I think it’s bloomin rude. They have all day long to play, I hardly nail them to the table to do work! So I went off on one and probably made too much of it, anyway I made them do lots of work. Marcus did some Explode the Code while I sat with Alex reading through some very basic Usborne readers we got from Barbara. She did quite well with them but got fed up by the last one so we left that. Marcus had a go after that and did really well too, I think it really was a bit simple for him, but was a good exercise in looking at the pics to get a clue to the word. While we were doing this some parcels with some Oxford Reading Tree books came (thanks Sarah!) and we had a quick look through them (not reading just looking at the pics) and I think they’ll be perfect for Marcus. He’s doing well, I think it’s helping making him focus on it once a day. After reading I made them do some maths (I was still being evil) so made Marcus do a page of sums (only about 6 though). Alex did about 4 pages and wanted to do more - she really likes them atm. I really wish I cold find something to help Marcus come along with it, he just doesn’t seem to ‘get’ it all. We’ve been doing some adding in little chunks for over a week now and he still looks at it as if I’ve asked him to perform brain surgery and he just can’t remember what to do at all. I dunno, I’m really struggling with it. Maybe a computer game or something might help. Shall look to see what we have and get him started, I know we have zoombinis. Anyone have any other recommendations? In fact if anyone has any good ideas for things to do with him shout, cos my brains seized up. Don’t want to make it an issue, just want to find the best way to do it with him.

We went to the park afterwards as again it was a lovely day, they took their bikes and scooters down and I read a book on the bench. Came back for lunch and then Alex and I sowed some seeds while Marcus played a bit on his playstation.

This morning we’ve all been up early as I wanted to tidy up as we’ve visitors coming soon. How come no matter what time I get up they’re up with me? But i’ve been grumpy this morning and already had a go at marcus because he has said he still doesn’t want to go to Beavers tonight and tbh I can’t be arsed to waste any more time on it. I can’t help feeling dissapointed that he doesn’t want to give it a fair go. But then I feel bad for getting angry at him and feeling dissapointed, I don’t feel like it’s the right thing for me to feel as his mum, but I do. So that’s got me down a bit. We’ve already done some reading practise but really I can’t face much more at the moment as I’ve very little patience. I hate feeling grumpy