argh! I hate the the fact that cash in essential. It is though, so Rich went back to work on Monday and I am Numero Uno. the Boss. The One in Charge.
HELP MEEEE!
Anyhow. He's off in a lovely cushy office number that pays well, and so I am taking on the job full time, so to speak. We have decided on a continental style week with Mon Tues work days, Weds free day, Thurs Fri work days, and then Rich will do a few hours on Saturdays to give me a break. So now it's just a case of reminding them ever so gently that I am in charge and it's really hard work. I think Rich is much better at this than I am in all honesty - he is loads more patient and seems to engage them better but in time I think I will learn to be too. I am hopeful, anyway. Yesterday was really tough,Cal is pressing all the right buttons, testing and pushing the boundaries but so far I am managing to stay fairly calm. Even today, when we walked all the way to the post office (the first time I have been out with all 4 for ages) and it was CLOSED ( at bloody 2pm?) I remained calm and we sang really loudly all the way back to release stress,lol.
We need to start a new topic on Monday as we have exhausted football now as we suspected so for tomorrow and Friday I am just going to wild card it - teach them a bit of French, do some reading and painting, go through some great History books that NannyLyn got for Cal as an early birthday present (he was really chuffed with them so thankoooo xx) start reading Matilda and maybe do some cooking. New topic is yet to be chosen but I need something I can really plan because I find if the day is planned the night before it goes a million times better. Big thanks to Claire (Spidey) for her really useful motivation ideas - they are being implemented on Monday. Also thanks to my April girls who picked me up yesterday when I was wobbly - you girls are worth a million squids. *mwah*
Anyhow - everyone is well and happy and I feel totally up to the challenge which is the main thing. Onwards and upwards! xxx
Wednesday 27 February 2008
Friday 22 February 2008
For those who hated Claire Verity on C4s Bringing Up Baby as much as we did....
This article may bring you some sweeeeeet vindication. HA! :-)
Monday 18 February 2008
Confession..
... we are slavedrivers!
Today we sat the kids down with some 3rs stuff as usual for a morning, Cal worked hard on some multiplication and Issy on her Jolly Phonics. At about 11am the door knocked and Cal's friend Connor was there asking if he could play out. I said no, as Cal is grounded for leaving-the territory he-is-allowed-to-play-in-offences (he came running home on Sunday afternoon to ask if he could go to a BBQ, At a house way out of his allowed range. What a plank!). (and, WHO has BBQ's in FEBRUARY?)
As I shut the door it dawned on me that it's half term, ROFL! There I was planning their activities for the week as usual and the rest of the town are out having a laugh. I am so mean.
Anyhow - work is adjourned for the next week, guess they could do with the break huh!
So - we have finished our first half term and we can definitely say that this is the way for us. We are loving our new lives and the kids are definitely benefiting so much - rows and rivalry have decreased by 2/3.
Just a quick mention to Hayley - I don't know if she reads this but she is a lovely lady from the parenting site I use and after my moaning about the back carrier, she very very kindly let me have a ringsling and a lend of the Kozy carrier I have my eye on! She wouldn't even let me pay her for the postage.Thank you Hayley, you are wonderful! I have changed my BW avatar to the pic of me trying it, but here is Sam giving it a go with his Daddy:
til next time... Rahs xx
Today we sat the kids down with some 3rs stuff as usual for a morning, Cal worked hard on some multiplication and Issy on her Jolly Phonics. At about 11am the door knocked and Cal's friend Connor was there asking if he could play out. I said no, as Cal is grounded for leaving-the territory he-is-allowed-to-play-in-offences (he came running home on Sunday afternoon to ask if he could go to a BBQ, At a house way out of his allowed range. What a plank!). (and, WHO has BBQ's in FEBRUARY?)
As I shut the door it dawned on me that it's half term, ROFL! There I was planning their activities for the week as usual and the rest of the town are out having a laugh. I am so mean.
Anyhow - work is adjourned for the next week, guess they could do with the break huh!
So - we have finished our first half term and we can definitely say that this is the way for us. We are loving our new lives and the kids are definitely benefiting so much - rows and rivalry have decreased by 2/3.
Just a quick mention to Hayley - I don't know if she reads this but she is a lovely lady from the parenting site I use and after my moaning about the back carrier, she very very kindly let me have a ringsling and a lend of the Kozy carrier I have my eye on! She wouldn't even let me pay her for the postage.Thank you Hayley, you are wonderful! I have changed my BW avatar to the pic of me trying it, but here is Sam giving it a go with his Daddy:
til next time... Rahs xx
Saturday 16 February 2008
Manifesto for the Idle parent
Taken from the Daily Telegraph online. Thanks for posting this article Alison on BW! :-)
LOVE it! :-)
Manifesto of the idle parent
LOVE it! :-)
Wednesday 13 February 2008
Spring?
Well nearly! It was so nice the last couple of days! Makes this whole thing seem so worth it - the parks and outdoor places are devoid of scummy kids and the world is our oyster, it's marvellous!
Anyhow, the last few days we have spent only working mornings then making the most of the afternoons tbh. They have done lots of the usual 3Rs stuff, and Issy has watched the first three parts of her Jolly Phonics DVD that she got for her birthday, along with the accompanying workbooks. Cal had a nostalgia trip and ended up watching them with her, lol, trying to pretend that he couldn't remember, daft sod. We have also done our studies on Turkey and Switzerland for the football project. Only thing we aren't covering much of yet is Science but all in good time. There are some good books I have my eye on when funds allow that should give us some ideas with regards to that.
Afternoons, we have been out! At the playground, playing tennis, flying kites and football and climbing trees namely. We also took a walk up to the nursery schhool yesterday to get Alex's form in for a place, hopefully he'll be able to go soon.
Photos from the last few days then:
Sam loving the swings
Cal and his bleedin' beloved football
Issy and Alex trying to play tennis, rofl
and lastly me and Chops
Bloody back carrier, no idea why I bothered buying 2 pushchairs! :-S Can't wait for my new mei tai though...
One last thing. When I was 11, my dad went to the local rescue centre for dogs and he brought home the friendliest, gentlest most darling dog that ever lived. His name was Sam, and I loved him very much. Part of the reason Sammy is called Samuel is because of how great an animal he was, I liked him and could have better conversation with him than most human males... He was put to sleep today in my mums arms after a long and happy life and I will miss him so much. RIP Sam the dog. We'll never forget you. xxxxxxxxx
Anyhow, the last few days we have spent only working mornings then making the most of the afternoons tbh. They have done lots of the usual 3Rs stuff, and Issy has watched the first three parts of her Jolly Phonics DVD that she got for her birthday, along with the accompanying workbooks. Cal had a nostalgia trip and ended up watching them with her, lol, trying to pretend that he couldn't remember, daft sod. We have also done our studies on Turkey and Switzerland for the football project. Only thing we aren't covering much of yet is Science but all in good time. There are some good books I have my eye on when funds allow that should give us some ideas with regards to that.
Afternoons, we have been out! At the playground, playing tennis, flying kites and football and climbing trees namely. We also took a walk up to the nursery schhool yesterday to get Alex's form in for a place, hopefully he'll be able to go soon.
Photos from the last few days then:
Sam loving the swings
Cal and his bleedin' beloved football
Issy and Alex trying to play tennis, rofl
and lastly me and Chops
Bloody back carrier, no idea why I bothered buying 2 pushchairs! :-S Can't wait for my new mei tai though...One last thing. When I was 11, my dad went to the local rescue centre for dogs and he brought home the friendliest, gentlest most darling dog that ever lived. His name was Sam, and I loved him very much. Part of the reason Sammy is called Samuel is because of how great an animal he was, I liked him and could have better conversation with him than most human males... He was put to sleep today in my mums arms after a long and happy life and I will miss him so much. RIP Sam the dog. We'll never forget you. xxxxxxxxx
Friday 8 February 2008
more birthday photies...
With some presents...
Opening said presents....
and another.... lots of ponies... so many ponies...
Bit of a poser in a cracker crown, lol!
You are never too young to have a pub lunch on your birthday,ROFL
And your brothers are never too young to enjoy ice cream, heehee!
Birthday cake and candles time...
Can I just have a special mention for Super Callum though. We went to the soft play place as thats what Issy most wanted to do, unaware that over 5's are not allowed in before 3pm (grrrrr). We found this out when we got there.... and Issy was so upset because she thought she coiuldn't go in as we were rather of the Well F You Opinion. Rules are rules yes, and management discretion blah blah, but there was not a single under 5 in there - the place was empty and the rules surely could have been bent for half an hour or so. But anyhow. Callum, without any fuss, accepted that he couldn't go in and willingly went and played on the outside play equipment with Rach for 45 minutes while Issy and Alex went in the soft play. He could see them through the window, and his little heart was breaking but he kept a determined smile on his face so his sister could have a nice day. What a man. So proud of him :-)
(When people did come into the soft play, BTW, it was a bunch of rowdy three year olds that were throwing balls and made it unsafe for Sam to crawl about in case he got hurt.... Moral Victory won, ROFL).
Anyway - she had a great day, thank you for the well wishes. xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Opening said presents....
and another.... lots of ponies... so many ponies...
Bit of a poser in a cracker crown, lol!
You are never too young to have a pub lunch on your birthday,ROFL
And your brothers are never too young to enjoy ice cream, heehee!
Birthday cake and candles time...
Can I just have a special mention for Super Callum though. We went to the soft play place as thats what Issy most wanted to do, unaware that over 5's are not allowed in before 3pm (grrrrr). We found this out when we got there.... and Issy was so upset because she thought she coiuldn't go in as we were rather of the Well F You Opinion. Rules are rules yes, and management discretion blah blah, but there was not a single under 5 in there - the place was empty and the rules surely could have been bent for half an hour or so. But anyhow. Callum, without any fuss, accepted that he couldn't go in and willingly went and played on the outside play equipment with Rach for 45 minutes while Issy and Alex went in the soft play. He could see them through the window, and his little heart was breaking but he kept a determined smile on his face so his sister could have a nice day. What a man. So proud of him :-)
(When people did come into the soft play, BTW, it was a bunch of rowdy three year olds that were throwing balls and made it unsafe for Sam to crawl about in case he got hurt.... Moral Victory won, ROFL).
Anyway - she had a great day, thank you for the well wishes. xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Happy Birthday Isobel!
I'l do a proper update later but just wanted to put a pic of the cake I made for her here. I know it's not brill because I am crap at decorating, I lack the talent and patience, ROFL! BUT she loves it, and I know it will taste great, (vanilla madiera....mmmmm) so thats all that matters right? :-)
x Rahs x *going to play ponies*
Monday 4 February 2008
New Topic Time!
Okay! We're a month into this schooling lark, so we decided to shake things up and bring in a new topic, but FIRST!
Birthday Alex! With his Thomas track and Dinosaur Wellies....
...and his Thomas cake! Thankyou Nanny Lyn!!
So, the new topic, as drawn from a hat by Birthday Boy himself is......FOOTBALL! Callum is very excited obviously, as is Rich, but to be honest, we spent the weekend thinking 'how the gosh-diddly-heck can we turn this into a lasting topic?'
We printed off plenty of worksheets of generic footie-related work (although with the majority of websites available on homeschooling being American, they are plagued with the words 'soccer' and 'offence', but hey-ho), but even by the time they started working on them this morning, we were still stumped. Callum would happily spend the next few weeks watching Match of the Day re-reuns and going to the park, but we needed something to sustain not only his interest but Issy's too, not to mention ours!
Then Rich stumbled across this link which had a World Cup Project Ideas sheet, and lo and behold, we had our direction. Basically, by adapting it to the Euro 2008 Championships, we have ourselves a Geography project! 4 groups of 4 teams, so one group a week, amd we simply dip into a little bit of European culture every day. We are hopefully going to create a Euro 2008 Country Factfile, with a couple of sheets on each country. We have made up our own Factsheets, which have to be filled in with details about each country - Capital City, Climate, Population, Geographical Facts, Language, National Cuisine, Flags and Historical Interest. To give Callum an extra footballing kick, we added the tasks of finding 3 of the national team's squad and the club teams they play for, their FIFA ranking and the name and nationality of the manager. Phew!
Basically we will be aiming to cover a country per afternoon, with 1 catch up day a week. Today we didn't really start untill 2pm, but managed to cover Portugal by 3.30, but in time we will be leaving it more to the kids to find stuff out more independently. All thats left is for Callum to copy his work up neatly onto the factsheet tomorrow. It was very sweet watching Cal and Issy try and work out, from a map, what the capital of Portugal was, conferring and coming to an executive decision. Sadly Callum overruled Isobel's correct answer of Lisbon with Porto, but the spirit of it was nice.
Can I just give a quick thanks to Grandad Michael - 3 years ago he bought the kids a whiteboard/blackboard easel for Christmas, it's certainly coming in useful now!
The River Tagus splits the country in diagonal halves, quite literally - the south-west is warm and wet, the north-east cold and dry, so this was a good opportunity to show them the basic compass directions. Callum was quick to realise that given the size of Portugal's coast, fish and seafood were eaten in large amounts (and that most of our country's sardines are from there). Also after discussing the language and its history early on, when it came to discussing the manager, 'Big Phil' Scolari, he straight away knew that he was a good choice because, being Brazilian, he too speaks Portugese!
All in all, it would appear we have gone from struggling for source material, to having a wealth of things to study. On the geographical theme, Callum has a book of major football grounds around the country, so we will be looking similarly at British geography. We just need to invest in some superlarge map posters from the library, and we're sorted. It looks like there will be less workbook work, which is, I think, a good thing, it's nice to see them working a little more creatively. Lots of maths work too, tables, statistics etc, which is good in terms of letting them use numbers in a practical, real-world way, rather than just lists of sums. And interwoven with everything else, as and when the opportunity comes up, we'll be dipping into the game itself, ie. the rules, team positions and roles, referees job, the history of the game and great teams past and present. Also, a topic rather eloquently suggested by Callum, how much money footballers make and whether or not they deserve it! Well I was impressed, lol.
It's good having an end goal, as it means less time stressing every night over what to do tomorrow, so we can just enjoy it and let the kids do as much work as they can, rather than trying to find them as much work as we can, if you understand? Ooh, and it means our field trip is over to Preston and the (free entry!) Museum of Football! So, onwards and upwards, and looking forward to the next day, and the interesting political shenanigans of Turkey! Altogether now, Istanbul, not Constantinople, do-de doo, do-do de do-de do-de dooo.....
Just me then :-s
Birthday Alex! With his Thomas track and Dinosaur Wellies.......and his Thomas cake! Thankyou Nanny Lyn!!
So, the new topic, as drawn from a hat by Birthday Boy himself is......FOOTBALL! Callum is very excited obviously, as is Rich, but to be honest, we spent the weekend thinking 'how the gosh-diddly-heck can we turn this into a lasting topic?'
We printed off plenty of worksheets of generic footie-related work (although with the majority of websites available on homeschooling being American, they are plagued with the words 'soccer' and 'offence', but hey-ho), but even by the time they started working on them this morning, we were still stumped. Callum would happily spend the next few weeks watching Match of the Day re-reuns and going to the park, but we needed something to sustain not only his interest but Issy's too, not to mention ours!
Then Rich stumbled across this link which had a World Cup Project Ideas sheet, and lo and behold, we had our direction. Basically, by adapting it to the Euro 2008 Championships, we have ourselves a Geography project! 4 groups of 4 teams, so one group a week, amd we simply dip into a little bit of European culture every day. We are hopefully going to create a Euro 2008 Country Factfile, with a couple of sheets on each country. We have made up our own Factsheets, which have to be filled in with details about each country - Capital City, Climate, Population, Geographical Facts, Language, National Cuisine, Flags and Historical Interest. To give Callum an extra footballing kick, we added the tasks of finding 3 of the national team's squad and the club teams they play for, their FIFA ranking and the name and nationality of the manager. Phew!
Basically we will be aiming to cover a country per afternoon, with 1 catch up day a week. Today we didn't really start untill 2pm, but managed to cover Portugal by 3.30, but in time we will be leaving it more to the kids to find stuff out more independently. All thats left is for Callum to copy his work up neatly onto the factsheet tomorrow. It was very sweet watching Cal and Issy try and work out, from a map, what the capital of Portugal was, conferring and coming to an executive decision. Sadly Callum overruled Isobel's correct answer of Lisbon with Porto, but the spirit of it was nice.
Can I just give a quick thanks to Grandad Michael - 3 years ago he bought the kids a whiteboard/blackboard easel for Christmas, it's certainly coming in useful now!
The River Tagus splits the country in diagonal halves, quite literally - the south-west is warm and wet, the north-east cold and dry, so this was a good opportunity to show them the basic compass directions. Callum was quick to realise that given the size of Portugal's coast, fish and seafood were eaten in large amounts (and that most of our country's sardines are from there). Also after discussing the language and its history early on, when it came to discussing the manager, 'Big Phil' Scolari, he straight away knew that he was a good choice because, being Brazilian, he too speaks Portugese!
All in all, it would appear we have gone from struggling for source material, to having a wealth of things to study. On the geographical theme, Callum has a book of major football grounds around the country, so we will be looking similarly at British geography. We just need to invest in some superlarge map posters from the library, and we're sorted. It looks like there will be less workbook work, which is, I think, a good thing, it's nice to see them working a little more creatively. Lots of maths work too, tables, statistics etc, which is good in terms of letting them use numbers in a practical, real-world way, rather than just lists of sums. And interwoven with everything else, as and when the opportunity comes up, we'll be dipping into the game itself, ie. the rules, team positions and roles, referees job, the history of the game and great teams past and present. Also, a topic rather eloquently suggested by Callum, how much money footballers make and whether or not they deserve it! Well I was impressed, lol.
It's good having an end goal, as it means less time stressing every night over what to do tomorrow, so we can just enjoy it and let the kids do as much work as they can, rather than trying to find them as much work as we can, if you understand? Ooh, and it means our field trip is over to Preston and the (free entry!) Museum of Football! So, onwards and upwards, and looking forward to the next day, and the interesting political shenanigans of Turkey! Altogether now, Istanbul, not Constantinople, do-de doo, do-do de do-de do-de dooo.....
Just me then :-s
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