Enjoying the Weather

There hasn't been a lot going on here as the weather has just been soooo glorious, I couldn't bear to be inside. Our lessons have been taking place outdoors, with reading and comprehension, nature study, art, and a bit of gardening ;o)

Here are a few pictures of our day yesterday, most of which was spent just making the most of the warm sunshine as I knew it wasn't going to last!

We had the little paddling pool out for Callum, but Tiegan and the dog enjoyed it too :o)

There was lots of trampoline bouncing...




More pool playing...




and some resting in the shade...

I've just noticed that Kira has managed to sneak on all of those pictures, little monkey! Just goes to show how much a part of the family she is :o)

The weather is going to be changing for the worse tomorrow sadly, so it will be back to the normal grindstone.

My parents are over in Spain as I write this, on their holiday/house hunting search. My brother has put his house on the market and is selling his posh car and even his private number plate which suprised me. It appears to be all systems go for their new life in Egypt, it will seem very strange without family around us here. Still, we are all very excited and hugely looking forward to our new start "up North". Nothing to report as yet, still very much playing the waiting game to see what happens with my parents.

Busy Days

On Friday we met up with very good friends in the park and thoroughly enjoyed chatting for a couple of hours whilst the children played. My dad came over to work on our car and prepare it for it's MOT.

Saturday was spent working on various activities. I did a bit of crafting, as did Chelsea, Tiegan and even Callum. Joseph spent time doing some work for his cub badges. My parents came over in the afternoon and dropped the bombshell that they are planning a move to Spain. They have had a holiday booked there for a few months, but have now announced that the time will be spent looking at properties and getting a feel for the place. They have a definite idea of where they want to be, as they have friends out there already. At the same time my parents said that my brother was near to finalising a deal on a fantastic sounding house over in Egypt.

On Sunday Joe headed off on a coach to the St Georges Day parade and service at Buckfast Abbey, leaving the rest of us at home. It was his last parade as a Cub, and as a sixer he had the privilage of carrying a flag, which I think he enjoyed. In Joe's absence, the rest of us took a long walk with Kira, played around on PSP with some photos, and talked about what life will be like without any family nearby.

Yesterday dh and I had a long chat about our future. Without my parents here, I feel as if there is nothing really keeping us in this area. We have looked at moving in the past, but it always got put on hold as I didn't want to leave my parents and take their grandchildren away from them. Now that my parents have made the decision to leave, it has opened up a whole new trail of thought, especially as my brother won't be here either. Dh has always longed to move back to the North which he still considers as his home. In the (almost) 13 years that we have been married, he has never been able to persuade me to move there despite his best efforts, but I feel the time has come to give in and think of his happiness for a change. He has 3 brothers up there that he hardly ever sees, and his dad of course. I am nervous, but excited at the thought of starting afresh. These past few years here haven't exactly been happy ones for us for various reasons and I have become very lonely. A new fresh start maybe just what we all need, and I'm looking forward to facing all the challenges that will no doubt go along with it.

Today, we had the fantastic news that the car has passed it's MOT!!! Hurray! It feels like such a long time since I've driven, I think I've forgotten how ;o) Sad to say we are over £600 lighter and have a very empty bank account, only just managing to pay this months rent! But we have wheels again which feels good :o) Whilst dh was doing the all important test sorting, the children and I were trying to concentrate on schoolwork. We did a few pages of the MEP maths, a bit of artwork, science discussion, and have made a start on Tiegan's "word tree", where we will add a leaf to the tree for each new word she learns. It is something I did with Joseph, and found that he enjoyed seeing his own progress in such a visual way.

I have managed to join the MADCOW list for the Manchester district home-educators and have been very pleasantly surprised by the amount that seems to be going on up there. I have also been very reassured by how friendly those that I have communicated with so far have been. Such a relief :o)

We are on the Move!

Well, planning to be anyway :o)

My parents came over to see us on Saturday, and announced that they are planning on moving to Spain. Then my brother phoned and announced that he is planning on moving to Egypt!

There is nothing else keeping us in Devon, apart from a couple of lovely friends who will be greatly missed. We have often discussed moving, but the thought of moving away from my elderly parents has always held us back.

I personally would consider a move anywhere in the country, but dh has his heart set on heading back to the Cheshire/Manchester sort of area, so it looks as if that's where we may well end up.

My one stipulation is that we are somewhere with other home-educators/groups as that will be the easiest way of us making new friends. I don't like the thought of dh being out at work all day whilst I'm home all day with the children playing billy-no-mates.

If anyone has any ideas on areas, that would be fab. I've been trying to find details of the MADCOW group but the website is on a major go slow and the email form doesn't seem to be going through. If anyone can help I'd be ever so grateful.

Back to the Grind Stone

Well, it was our first day back "at work" today and it was quite enjoyable actually. The sun shone for most of it which always helps uplift everyones mood doesn't it?

We did a bit to celebrate Earth Day first. We read a thought-provoking story and discussed it in depth. Joseph had to fill in a form for his cub-scouts which was all about recycling and saving energy, so that fitted in nicely and led to a nice discussion about the whys, wheres, hows, and how every little helps. The children then wrote their own Earth Day stories, which Chelsea is yet to finish (as she writes in chapters rather than pages lol). We will be continuing the theme tomorrow with some art work.

Then we sat and did a bit of the MEP maths pages, followed by lunch :o)

After lunch we went out into the garden with our books and read a little, then the kids had a football match whilst I tidied the garden a bit and printed out some more things for them. Then everyone mucked in to help cook dinner, before Joe headed off to Cubs. He has got the St. Georges Day parade on Sunday.

Phew it's hard work

all this planning stuff. I have spent what seems like the entire day at the laptop finding new websites, printing out various worksheets, posters, and snippets of information and ideas, all in preparation of the new "term". I think I was hindered somewhat by having an extremely enthusiastic 6 year old "helping" me. Tiegan was completing the worksheets almost as fast as the printer was printing them! Still, it's so nice to see her happy and working :o)

I have had to put some thought into how to best entertain Callum, as he very much wants to be involved in our schooling now. He is currently fascinated by shapes, so I have printed out some colouring and activity sheets just for him to do (with a little help of course!) I have also printed and laminated some shape flash cards, and some posters for the walls. I'm going to put together a little art and craft box for him as well. Now we are working in the craft room, there is lots of desk space for each of us to work at, so Callum will be able to spread his creativity far and wide ;-) He is also going through a real story obsession at the moment, and is liking nothing better than snuggling up with me (and often one of older siblings) whilst I churn out book after book. Once each one has been read, we talk about the story and what we thought of it, and then he will say "another book pwease" in that adorable way that only little people can. He is also going through the "But why....???" phase, and always has us laughing no matter how many times he says it, he is just too cute to find annoying.

Joseph has spent most of his day out in the garden with his dad today. They have been building a couple of planters (in the shape of a wheelbarrow and wishing well), and then they gave the garage a thoroughly good clean and tidy up. I do like it when they have "boys time" together, as Joe seems to get such a lot from it. I leave them to it as much as possible, just interrupting to provide tea and biscuits which they don't seem to mind.

I'm heading off in a minute to collate all the sheets I've printed off into the various folders. I think I'll do it in front of the TV with a cuppa :o)

All smiles here...

We have had a lovely couple of days, so I think I will blog them. Hopefully by the end of the year I will have a positive sounding blog where the good stuff outweighs the the bad.

Yesterday we watched the BBC programme called Pompeii - The Last Day. We had watched it first time around, but it was on BBC4 recently and so was showing on Virgin Catch up TV. The kids showed a greater interest in it this time, and were able to remember snippets from the Dr Who show which made more sense to them after delving into the history. Afterwards we took the dog out for a walk to the local fields and countryside. Kira is fantastic off lead, and I don't have to worry about her once we are away from roads. I sat and threw the ball for her, whilst the kids practised for their "Olympics". They did long jump, sprinting, and javelin yesterday *smile*

When we got home again we had a marathon read-aloud session, which was great, and we all commented at how much we had missed the daily read-alouds. When I was feeling ill, the last thing I wanted to do was to read out loud, in fact, when I tried I found it almost impossible as my throat was so sore and my eyes seemed to strain. Nice to be able to put that behind us now and start our reading routine again.

Today has been fun, with lots of garden playing time. The weather has been so beautiful today. I took all of our workbook resources outside and sat on a rug sorting through them. I made a note of which suited which child, and got rid of those that were filled up or no longer suitable for our working style. The children kept coming over and checking on my progress, and with dh and my dad working on the car, and the dog running around like a loon begging people to throw her ball for her, it made the time quite fun and not at all like the usual humdrum task :o)

Once that was done, I surprised the children by suddenly jumping up on the trampoline, it was such fun! The first (and consequently only) time I went on our trampoline, I felt sick. A sea-sickness type feeling, which was horrid. This time I felt absolutely fine though, and I realised what a fab stress release it would be! At one point there were 5 of us on the trampoline and I was so worried that someone would fall off! Fortunately we were all very sensible though, taking care that the younger ones were away from the edge and we all just bounced lightly. We still had a good laugh.

After lunch we sat on the trampoline, basking in the sunshine, and read 2 chapters of Little Women. Being the classic version, it does have rather long and sometimes complicated words in the text, but Chelsea and Joseph both handled them brilliantly. I liked the fact that they both asked for an explanation if they didn't understand a certain word. Joseph sometimes has the habit of just skimming over things and wanting to get his reading over as quickly as possible, pretending he understands everything.

More trampoline jumping after that, and then I left the kids to it as I set about sorting through some of our other resources and trying to make room for everything. I currently have a craft room, which I adore, but want to somehow incorporate some of the school things into it as well. At the moment most of our school stuff is in the room downstairs which is a fab space, but I do tend to think we don't use it to it's full potential as you can't access it from the house. Often we use the dining room to work in. Our main two bookcases are stored in the shed and we just go out and fetch in what we need. It works well for us and it saves us being surrounded by hundreds (I'm not exaggerating) of books that get very little use, and gives us extra storage space inside the house. We use the library such a lot, so many of our books are redundant really, I just can't bear to let them go as I know they will be of use *someday*. After my re-arranging today, I now have many of the school resources in my "craft room" along with a couple of desks and a table, perfect for working in :o)

Tonight I am hoping for a good sit down and plan type session, with lots of typing, printing, and sorting out to do. I actually enjoy it once I am in full swing, but the thought of getting started fills me with dread and I know I would prefer to just sit and relax and watch the TV! It WILL be done tonight though, of that I am certain (unless the children conspire together and decide otherwise!) I know it will all be done by the time we are starting the new term (the schools are on holiday down here at the moment, and I am not going to start trying to get my lot into their full school-work routine until the girl from nextdoor stops calling for them to play! ;-) )

Chelsea is staying over at my parents house tonight, so I'm not expecting her back until Friday. We are having to make some sad decisions at the moment, concerning Scouts and what Chelsea is experiencing there, but she has made me very proud with the way she is dealing with things.

Joseph is playing on his football game on the Playstation, and Tiegan is doing the Mario Olympics with Callum on the Wii. I'm cooking dinner (roast chicken tonight that smells yum!) whilst I'm blog surfing and forum reading, so I apologise for any errors in this posting but I'm multi-tasking *grin*

Getting Back on Track

With all the bugs and stuff that we have been suffering with over the past few months, it appears 2008 has got off to a pretty slow start for us.

We have been pretty much back to full health for a few weeks now, which is a relief. We have been struggling to get back into our "school" routine though, but I think we are getting there.

Yesterday I sat and talked through things with the children as to our goals and expectations. We also discussed the topics that they may like to work on and they came up with:

- The history of Pompeii (sparked off by good ol' Dr Who on Saturday!)
- A project on Italy, to include landmarks, foods, populations, events in history, famous people etc.
- The Olympics; History of, events, countries, etc. They want to do a running report on the 2008 olympics, with details of teams and results etc. We are also going to hold our own Olympic re-enactment in the garden and park ;-)
- Space exploration through the ages.
- A more in-depth study of the Human Body.

I have set up another blog (I won't link to it yet as there is nothing on it) that will include details of our plans and work, and a list of resources we used, in case they are of any use to anyone else.

We are still without a car which is a bit of a pain in the backside as I feel as though we are missing out on a few meet-ups which is a shame. Still, we have been enjoying our life as it stands, with nice picnics and walks with Kira, which incorporate exercise and nature study. Next time we are going to go armed with sketch pads and various media to do some artwork, we are just waiting for a dry day.

We went to the local library this morning and stocked up on a variety of books. I got a couple about Nature as it is something I know little about but would love to know more. Chelsea is sat next to me as I type this, reading about ancient mummies and telling me all that she is learning as she reads.

I'm hoping to get back into the swing of blogging again as I've missed having that record to look back on.