New Tricks

My big plan for the day was to clean the house, all of it. Completely unrealistic, obviously but it has reached crisis point! And then Bean has an epic melt down which lasts almost an hour and just as Pumpkin and I are settling down to clearing the breakfast table so he can play an andry birds game, Bean appears and asks if we can make Fimo angry birds. All three smalls are excited by the idea and we gather pictures to copy and get out the fimo. This is our first ever go at using the modelling clay and I am really pleased with them but not as pleased as the boys are.

A trip to the park, where they boys and their friend set about clearing up all the leaves, played simon says and invented a new game. A walk into town to try and find a copy of the Disney version of Robin Hood (unsuccessfully) and look at the giraffe trail. And a play date at SGS and SGG where there was much train set building, den exploring, colouring, a carpet picnic and Bean reading a whole story to me (three pages long of a phonics book, but none the less exciting)

We returned home to find, inevitably, the house in the same fimo strewn, two loads of laundry out, beds unmade, toys all over the floor state as we had left it, dirty dishes in the sink, and not one thing cleaned. Plus Plum tore some wallpaper strips of the hall wall today whilst I was showering. She can now say 'Yoda' though! 

Princess Leia

Luke Skywalker

An angry bird

Bad piggy

Yoda snail

Yoda (without ears)

unexpected

This week was to be the busiest week ever! ...Well, for us, anyway. We had outdoor playdates (monday) and walks in the woods, teatime play dates and shopping in town (Tues), a trip across to the next county to meet cousinB and FA#2, grandma and pops for bowling (wed), the cimema and gymnastics and swimming (Thurs) and a scheduled home day to recuperate (Fri) We don't normally schedule quite so much but they were all things to good to miss. I was super organised and planned our meals for the whole week and even got a head start on the cooking, which was going to prove very useful.

And then...following on from Beans sickness last Thursday, we had an enforced day at home on Monday as Plum had her turn. We managed a full on day on Tuesday but Pumpkin had got the taste for home days and was really reluctant to go anywhere. This is usually a transition issue, moving from one place to another, but today it endured as a persistent request to be at home. As usual though, he refused to come home at the end of the day. We had arranged to met a group of home ed friends at Slindon Woods but, due to Pumpkin needing some persuasion to leave and getting stuck in traffic, we missed the meeting time. We stayed anyway and walked through the woods in the rain. The boys had a great time measuring puddles with sticks and wading through mud and running in and out of the trees. We plan to return next week to go mushroom hunting. We also stopped by the Slindon Pumpkin display on our way past. We discovered lots of different varieties of pumpkins and really enjoyed looking at all the different shapes and names.
We made it home for just about an hour before we had to go to town for a few things. I try to avoid town with the smalls now as it generally becomes too stressful trying to run the errands and keep happy troops in tow but today was the last opportunity we had to buy glowsticks in preparation for our cinema trip on Thurs and we needed to get Bean's feet measured too. We also bought pumpkins ready to carve. And then we journeyed on to our friend's house. A friend we made from our NCT classes over six years ago and the smalls still get on together well and we continued our Star Wars education by resurrected our friend's dad's old star wars figures. Totally amazing how he could remember the names of all the characters!

Wednesday took us bowling and meeting up with my family followed by a play in Dunorlan Park where we continued our recent dragon theme by riding endlessly on the wooden carved dragon. All feeling very sleepy on the way home. Mummy curled up in bed early, not able to go to sleep as Plum is constantly in need of mummy in the evening, just for cuddles and company, but i cannot sleep until she does. 

And then it was mummy's turn to be unwell. And it looked like the trip to see Planes at eh cinema as part of the National Youth Film Week would have to be cancelled along with gymnastics except that daddy came to the rescue and took them off to see it. And mummy relaxed at home. A friend then took Bean and Pumpkin to gym and they went to play for the afternoon, including going to their friend's french lesson and arrived home just before daddy, who then took over again. Plum came home about lunch time and pottered about the house as mummy lay on the sofa and watched movies and we took a sleep together in the afternoon. The boys enjoyed the french lesson so much they are asking to go back.

And Thursday night was Pumpkin's turn to be unwell. We spent Friday morning together at home but Bean went o our friends again in the afternoon and Boy's Brigade. Pumpkin was so upset to be separated from Bean and spent the rest of the day looking forlorn whilst playing on the ipad and watching iplayer. He really didn't eat very much and was very lethargic. 

And then Saturday came and daddy is feeling unwell. I've never known him to be sick so feeling unwell is as bad as it gets but sometimes that can be worse, can't it? Pumpkin and mummy haven't quite recovered but the boys were keen to go to the park so as soon as there was a gap in the rainy weather, off they scooted. It didn't last long as the rain came down again. The rest of the day has been a lego, cars, balloon play, iplayer, ipad, guinea pig cuddling, hours in the bath, nerf gun shooting, building train stations from cardboard boxes, kind of day.

And in amongst all of this, Bean has been requesting more reading words games, help me read a book, making words with bricks, let's change the words of the story, and enjoying that he can recognise some words. Which, apart from the fact that he is learning to read (which makes my heart sing) is exciting as he is enjoying learning to read.

Comic Relief

What a day! An enforced day at home due to sickness (Plum) and our very busy week looks like it might be much calmer if the sickness continues.

We have finally finished the comic strips that we started three weeks ago. It is rare for us to finish a project but this one was sparked by receiving a picture in the post from a friend and this was the boys idea as their response. We have managed to keep it at the forefront of 'things to do' by inserting a new table into the dinning room just for the boys to permanently have a space to keep on going projects and in this way it has been easily accessible to dip in and out of. I'm not entirely sure where the idea of a comic strip came from. It occurred to me that in schools it would be a small unit of literacy work where the children would have a few minutes each day to complete a section- the story line, the pictures, the word, the title- they would probably read a few comics and look at it's features and maybe even freeze frame a few scenes. And here we are with relatively little exposure to comic books (I may have bought them one each during the summer) and now we have completed our own comic strips. It also interests me how different their styles of drawing are, Pumpkin mostly opting for line drawings and Bean being determined to create a suitable background. It has almost make me sad to post them but I know that they're going to a good home. 

Bean's Angry Bird Comic Strip

Pumpkin's 

Pumpkin's (cont)

Pumpkin's (cont)

Pumpkin's (cont)

We have also been busy writing cards to our friends and Plum is enjoying colouring but will only use the felt tip pens! We got daddy's robot out of the cupboard today. Pumpkin has been keen on the idea of a robot for a while in particular building a working one so whilst I look into this we are filling the space with other robot related things. Today was playing with Pino (the robot) and creating our own robot designs from given parts. What I especially like is that, despite the fact that he had a choose of heads, bodies, arms and legs, Pumpkin still managed to create outside the box and came up with his own unique robot.

And Star Wars reared itself again into our day via hama beads and lego cartoons. In between all of this, Bean asked if we could do some more reading (today he read the words 'you' and 'dark' throughout the story and we had fun replacing words in the text with silly nonsense and laughing a lot) there was also lego. 

Bean declared it a trick day and we have several lined up for daddy, Bean his in a kitchen cupboard and scared the life out of mummy, and Pumpkin continues to tell jokes at breakfast time. We are trying to increase his repertoire by introducing one new joke a day and then repeating it to death until we have all memorised it. 

Ten things I love

Ten things I have loved about today (bullet points because that's all I have time for)

• Waking up with Plum, giving me morning cuddles and a kiss x
• Making chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast.
• Sitting with Bean whilst he cuddled Charlie.
• Running in the rain with all three smalls.
• Watching our friends' 10 year old boy playing with Plum.
• Playing a card game with my boys.
• Watching Toy Story 2 in the afternoon with Bean and Pumpkin.
• Lying with Plum for ten minutes whilst she settled to sleep.
• Listening to Pumpkin tell me about how Plum said the words 'moon' and 'animals' when he read her a story and then he tried to get her to say them again for me.
• Plum saying 'moon' and 'animals' just for me.
• Bean giving me a cuddle when he got out of the bath all wrapped up in a towel.

PLaydough lady on playdough hill: Pumpkin

Playdough ice cream: Pumpkin

Don't rain on our parade

What I love about our days is that things often flow seemlessly from one thing to the next, that is, the smalls don't seperate life into subject boxes and change their thinking from learning about geography to history to P.E. We move from minecraft to lego to comic book writing to angry birds games to the park to pirates to books to junk modelling and so on it goes.

Friday was a free day, planned to be at home day, with a trip to Boys Brigade at the end of it. We began at breakfast by getting together any ideas the boys had for the day. Playing lego together, hide and seek, and going to the park around the corner, were the three requests along with my own, spend some time working in the garden. And then we laid out when each thing would happen in the day. It worked really well as a technique.

The boys spent two hours in their room upstairs playing lego happily together whilst Plum and I began tidying the garden. She was very unsettled after a rough nights sleep and ended up in the sling for a long while (which we haven't used around the house for months.) As we finished and Plum fell asleep, the rain began. We all ate lunch and did some drawing whilst we waited for Plum to wake and eat, and still the rain came. But it not change Bean's mind about going to the park. So, we pulled on our waterproofs and walked to the park in the rain, and played in the park in the rain, and walked home in the rain. The slides were extra slippery and all three smalls slide extra fast off the end of them. We spent most time with Plum and Pumpkin in the swings and me and Bean pushing them.

We zipped home and ate sandwiches before heading out to Boys' Brigade, except we didn't quite make it as Pumpkin fell asleep on the way there. We drove home and he slept for two hours waking just as everyone else was finishing their dinner about 7.30pm. The evening was spent bathing and reading stories and watching a dvd together. Plum was clearly tired but not giving in until daddy took her and laid down with her instead of mummy.

And Saturday became a lego orientated day. The boys having been saving their pocket money for ten whole weeks so that they can by some lego. It's the first time we've given them pocket money and I didn't think they would save it for so long but they did. Today they had (nearly) enough money to buy some lego and daddy and I decided to pay the excess as they have done so amazingly well. Our decision to start giving them pocket money came from the constant asking for this or that or the other whenever we went out. We decided to give them some control over what they could buy and how they use their money. Today they choose a star wars lego item each and daddy found the most cost effective source and we ended up journeying to Brighton for the afternoon. We bought the lego and spent an hour in a large park playing family football and exploring the play area before we headed home to begin building our new sets. They're bigger sets than we've previously had so it may take us the rest of the evening, in between eating and bathing. 

Dinosaur Roar

We began our week celebrating granddad's birthday with a huge roast beef dinner and an equally huge cake, obviously enjoyed by all. The smalls were busy all day eating and playing lego and enjoying nana's garden with cousinJ and cousinC. It was especially joyful to watch Plum with cousinC (11 months her junior) having a beautiful time interacting together. I can see them forming an alliance against Bean and Pumpkin in the not too distant future.

 Tuesday saw us change our existing plans once again as we had a last minute invitation to a play date in the park which we accepted and then we caught the invitation to make cards at the craft shop down the road from us. We got dressed in record time and the boys made these cards with the help of a wonderful lady who wasn't phased at all with them being children (as she was clearly expecting adults, given that it is mid-week term time)

The remainder of Tuesday turned out to be a bit of a dinosaur day. Pumpkin found the sand cast of the dinosaur bones and Plum asked for the dinosaur toys out. We ended up taking a selection with us to the park along with the bucket and spades and spent some time building volcanoes and sand castles in the sand pit as well as practising our writing (Pumpkin)

On Wednesday we finally made it to Polesden Lacey, a National Trust property north of us. It was our fourth attempt at a visit but it was a good day for it. The reason we were so keen to go was to play with the giant chess set on the grass. We had a good game between Pumpkin and Bean mostly revisiting basic rules and piece moves but they are so keen to learn. We have several chess sets at home but none appropriate for using besides, this giant set, suits the boys needs to physically move the pieces and walk the move (kinaesthetic learning.) There is also jenga, naughts and crosses, coits and nine pin bowling.

And then Thursday came around really quickly this week. Our weekly trip to gymnastics saw a few of us mum's chatting with a lady who is interesting in home educating her son and then joined by another lady who overheard us talking from the neighbouring table and joined us too as she is considering it for her, now, 11 month old. 

And on the home front I was reminded today of one more reason why I love home ed. Bean took a fall whilst getting dressed this morning and caught his chin, lip, gum and teeth on the corner of the toy box in their bedroom. We sat and cuddled for nearly half an hour, as well as administering first aid but it reminded me that I was glad that it was me who was there when he needed me to be and there was no need to rush through the first aid and miss the emotional comfort needed. 

The whole time I spent with Bean, Pumpkin played with Plum and read her stories. Equally a joy to watch.

I had a busy afternoon with the boys making runs with the marble run and reading about pirates and making pirate ships with large boxes. We're not finished yet and are in the process of making flags with plans to make treasure maps too. And this has all come when I was just thinking that we haven't done anything topic based in a long while. Bean has also asked if we can go back to Leed's Castle soon, which will move us forward in his interest in castles. And so, comforting me in my momentary anxiety that we may have stagnated.