Monster & Teeny

Monday We went to the local-ish cinema to see Curious George as part of Film Educations free screenings. Teeny’s first time at the cinema so quite exciting. We all loved the film. I thought it was charming, beautifully animated and a perfect low impact, easy to follow storyline for a 3 year olds’ first time. Monster enjoyed it too and we had various whispered conversations about things involved in the movie and the plotline.

We did some drawing, predicatably of the film and the children played with the sticklebricks while I did some baking and then my Dad came over to look after Teeny while I took Monster to Badgers.  I sat in the car and enjoyed an hours peace reading my book while Monster learnt about German currency and it’s location in relation to England.

Tuesday We’d arranged an afternoon after school visit to some friends (who go to school) but their mum was ill so it was cancelled and we had an at home day instead. Monster and Teeny spent the whole day being utterly self sufficient which was lovely as it allowed me to get all sorts of round the house type stuff done. I watched and listened without getting involved to a lot of their play so I could document just what they do without any intervention from me.
They started playing with their toy dinosaurs - at about 2.5yo Monster got very into dinosaurs and I learnt loads about them alongside him. Consequently dinosaur toys, books, models and cuddly creatures are something we tend to have in slight abundance but they do still get played with lots. So they did various sorting out of carnivores and herbivores as they played with Teeny frequently asking Monster what certain ones were called and him reliably answering and giving various add on information too ‘that’s a triceraptops - it’s got three horns and it ate plants’ ‘that’s a raptor, it eats meat and chases you but if you stand really still it might not see you’ etc.
They then played teddy bear races down the stairs for a bit - they have a teddy the same (although Monster’s is two years older and more loved!) so they were evenly matched in assuming teddy into a forward roll position and letting go to see who would make it to the bottom of the stairs first. It seemed slightly perilous but the educational opportunities and turn taking alone seemed to outweigh that so I left them to it!
They then gathered various refreshments from the kitchen and set up a picnic in Monster’s bedroom. I was invited to join them so I did and read a couple of books aloud to them while they ate.
Monster then came and showed me some magic tricks and then they asked if I’d do some drawing with them. I said I didn’t know what to draw so Monster suggested I ‘just draw anything from you imagination. Not a car or a tree, just get a piece of paper and a pen and draw whatever you feel!’ so we did some ‘mindless art’. I started off and drew a few bold lines and some detail of random patterns and then they carried them on and interpreted them. Monster was more inclined to turn it into ’something’ whilst Teeny was quite happy to just follow a colour scheme in a similar wild fashion. Fun though

Wednesday Another Film Education screening, this time of The Wild which was watchable but weak in our opinion. I’ve not heard Monster refer back to it at all and given his usual ‘live the film’ habit after a new viewing (he has led Curious George games with every friend he’s seen all week!) this marks it out as far from successful for us. We all really enjoyed the two films in a week and cinema critic status we awarded ourselves though so that was nice.
We went straight to Home Ed group from there - our last session in our hired venue. The theme was dinosaurs but we were far from well patronised so they ended up playing and dancing along to some classic disco tracks brough along by a friend with a cd player. Said friends came round for coffee and playing after group too.

Thursday We headed off to a local mini zoo that we have had season tickets to for the last two years and are about to run out for a last visit there. We met up with our friend Lucy and her children there so a fine time was had by all the children looking at the animals, playing with the various interactive bits around the zoo and then playing in the very well equipt playground area. Nice to have some outdoors time in a week with lots of out and abouting but most of it indoors.
When we got home we played a memory game (pairs) with some freebie Ice Age 2 cards they’d got at the cinema and I wrote out the words ‘green’ ‘banana’ and ‘cat’ and Monster successfully read them all so that was good - I love him realising that actually he *can* read he just doesn’t bother to very often

Friday Over to Ali’s for a play and a chat via a cheapo shop locally where we picked up a notebook and pen each for M&T who have decided they want ‘diary books’ to record stuff in. So far they have drawn loads in them, Monster has done some writing and they have illustrated stories as they tell them to each other.
A lovely time as ever at Ali’s with the children playing with various things including a Monster gears thing, marble runs and fun blox and Monster and F coming up with an act for MP camp involving a harmonica and plenty of twirling around dancing.

Saturday - We’re counting down the days til our first experience of camping at the MuddlePuddle camp at Kessingland. We went last year but enjoyed the luxury of a static. This year thanks to reduced finances and a yen to be more in the thick of it we are going to be spending our nights ‘under canvas’ and borrowed canvas at that. Our plan is that if we enjoy rather than endure the experience we may well look at investing in canvas of our own so we trailed round a couple of the many tent shows which seemed to be happening in Sussex this weekend, learning exactly what terms like ‘groundsheet’ ‘dome’ ‘rigipod’ and ‘guy rope’ mean. A whole new world and an education for all four of us! Also plenty of exercise for Monster & Teeny who happily ran round fields whooping with excitement and dashing in and out of all the tents on display.
In the late afternoon / evening we headed over to The Screamteam who were guest staring Sarah and children for a weekend stay. Barely saw Monster who was happily off playing with his two friends, or indeed A who was happily watching the massive screen in their film room .

Sunday We went to a car boot sale locally in the hopes of finding treasure in the shape of camping ‘gear’. There was none to be found but we did get plenty of very cheap toys for the children (total spent £3.20, total new items brought into the house - seven!!). Then we headed over to BIL & SIL for chatting, tea drinking and plenty of running around being noisy and playing for the children.

Monday We joined SIL and cousins on a local HE group organised Bluebell walk about 30 miles from home. The place took a bit of finding as I’d only a vague idea where it was and was hoping to guide myself in properly using brown signs of which there were none

Once there the weather held and we had a lovely walk through woods with plenty of opportunities for the children to wander ahead or linger behind out of sight if not hearing range. We stopped for picnic lunch and had fun doing nature type stuff like bug and flower spotting.

In the evening was Badgers for Monster. This week he agreed to me staying in the car while he was in there (usually I have to wait in the room next door), so I enjoyed an hour’s peace and quiet in the car reading my book while he learnt to count to 20 in German and played some running around game between various German cities (not literally, obviously!).

Tuesday A day at home. I did various housework type activites and some paid work, while the children had a pretty self sufficient day. They had a total film-fest managing Emporers New Groove, Corpse Bride, Nightmare Before Christmas and Madagascar. They played with various toys, did loads of drawing and dot to dots and imaginative play. In the evening I went to Book Group at the library.

Wednesday A very efficient start with various out and about stuff done and home again by eleven am. Monster played with wooden blocks, both constructing various things and building some 3D shapes like pyramids. I’ve recently explained the idea of 3D to him so he is experimenting with that a lot at the moment, which of course brings in all sorts of maths skills. Teeny and I did some reading - she brings me a pile of books and I sit and read them Monster normally ends up half listening if he’s in the room, joining in if it is a known and loved book, coming over to check the illustrations or listen for a bit before going back to what he was doing.

In the afternoon we had Home Ed group. Our third session and a very good one although the attendees were me, my SIL and 2 of my friends so we could have saved the hall hire cost really The children all had a great time though. The theme was space so they did a big joint space picture with planets, stars, rockets and so on, various space themed puzzles and then spent ages setting up a complicated game using skittles, balls, hula hoops and cones all by themselves without adult intervention.

Ros came back with us, bringing Pea and Buzz so the children had further playtime here at home too. Bloke came home and they all went in the garden to look at the tadpoles we have. We started with a couple of hundred at frogspawn stage and have spent lots of time observing them at every stage of their development, removing and viewing under a microscope any which die and chatting about the life cycle as we go. Last year we had caterpillars and watched the chrysallis to butterfly cycle before letting the butterflies go so it’s been nice to watch another metamorphasis this year.

Thursday Another ‘at home’ day. Started with a pile of all the library books from around the house so that was nice. I love reading aloud to the children, I remember loving being read aloud to when I was younger, long after I was able to read for myself and actually if someone reads well I still enjoy listening to them now. I did some baking while they played with geomags (a real favourite toy here, gets loads of use) and the pretend play food.

They both did some drawings to illustrate stories - Teeny’s were imaginative and creative but without a great deal of plot Monster’s were fab with a really well though out storyline, an introducing the characters beginning, a story and a happy ending. We also all did some copying of words out at Monster’s request - he tells me he likes writing now

Then  I remembered details of a competition I’d recieved from Film Education so I got that out, read through the rules and showed Monster how I would approach designing a poster with sketching out an idea in rough, experimenting with a couple of designs, working out what words I was going to use and how to do the lettering and then finally doing the actual poster.  We talked about it a bit and Monster started practising his writing for his poster - more to do there but the competition doesn’t close til September, so plenty of time.

Then we went to the GPs (which is literally across the road from our house) for Teeny to have her stitches removed in her chin. She remained as brave and worthy of awe and praise as she was when having them put in. Was issued with a whole sheet of stickers, much praise from the nurses and at her request her stitches in a jar to keep.

Friday In the morning the children did drawing. Monster drew Scooby Doo in various stages - normal, with skin but no fur and as a skeleton. He cut them out and then tasked me with putting them in order - alive (skeleton, skin, fur) and then after death (fur, skin, skeleton). Then we made some birthday cards for my brother. They both did fab drawings, Teeny’s was an abstract pattern with a definite plot to it and Monster’s was a pic of my brother and a birthday cake. Monster happily wrote ‘Happy Birthday’ on the front and then ‘To F, Love, Monster’ inside with me just telling him what letter came next. Teeny very nicely copied ‘To F love Teeny’ from my writing.

Monster played with a wooden circus toy we’ve got while Teeny sat on my lap and we played with an electronic alphabet book for about half an hour until she got bored and went to join Monster with the circus.

Our friends Ali and F  arrived so the children played while Ali and I drank tea and chatted. The children were all slightly fractious but there was some sort of show put on and they seemed to enjoy playing albeit very noisily!

After Monster had gone to bed A realised that one of Monster’s fish had leapt out of the fish bowl. We put him back in but he appeared to be not too well on his adventure and Monster came downstairs to find out what was going on. He was persuaded that the possibility of the fish being transfered to my Dad’s pond as they really are too big for the fish bowl should be done now and new smaller fish got to replace them. Somehow this led to conversations about all sorts of things including twins, natural selection, death and more. I covered all of it in my standard way of answering every question and seeing if that answer led to another question or not. I think children are very able to ask for as much information as they can handle or process without necessarily needing the ‘full story’. Both children have fairly wide knowledge of all sorts of things on that basis, plenty of which has not connected up for them as part of the same topic (eg being menstruation and reproduction) which hopefully should all nicely tie together as and when they are ready to make the connections.

Saturday Monster and I were treated by Ali to join her and F at the Brighton Festival to see James Campbell - a children’s stand up comedian. We all really enjoyed it and Monster is still refering back to it / quoting large chunks of the routine. While we were doing that A and Teeny went for a Daddy / Daugher wander around the marina, looking at the boats and the designer clothes shops and enjoying one to one time with each other.

We then went to my parents to see my brother and make arrangements for the release of the fish into their pond for Sunday.

Sunday The fish were released into their new home with a few kind goodbye words from Monster about settling in and adapting to change

and then we went to the pet shop to replace them with far smaller models.

The children played with my Mum for ages and Monster came and sat with me for a while looking at some brain stuff on the laptop which was very interesting and led to chats about various parts of the brain, strokes (which A’s Dad died of before Monster was born) and how the brain works.

Back home again I read both them Earth Story and Life Story  by the wonderful Eric Maddern. Which answered some of Monster’s questions from the conversation arising from the leaping goldfish - and led to more. We covered reptiles, insects, birds, mammals, fish, amphibians and examples of each. Evolution with very basic examples and touched on where water comes from - think that one might require further work as Monster asked to do something practical like an experiment to illustrate that.

Monday Monster had been very inspired by the Madagascar theme of the party at the weekend and been mentally planning his own themed party for some future point. His theme being Wallace and Gromit (predictably!). He’s planned the party decor, the catering, the games, the guest list and wanted to design and draw the invites. I sat with both children first thing drawing W&G character pictures for the invites. Even I enjoy sitting on the floor when there is drawing and colouring to be done and both the children love their drawing, doing some sort of art pretty much every day. They have a playroom in our house which is filled with most of their toys - they each have a fair few in their bedrooms specifically their own and all the rest is split between two big cupboards and two sets of drawers. The drawers contain paper, card, pens and pencils and felt tips, things like glue, glitter, sellotape, crafty bits like pipe cleaners, sequins, stick on eyes, feathers etc for crafty stuff. They have watercolour paints available as well as playdough and plasticine, all of which are very popular being brought out most days. Drawing is something I’ve done with both of them since babyhood as it was something I loved doing as a child and stopped doing for years as an adult until I had the children and rediscovered an enjoyment of drawing cartoons, pictures and likenesses of the children themselves and their favourite characters. We also often cut out and laminate drawings, particularly of characters which then get used in all sorts of imaginative play.

 Monster, particularly, tends to express himself through his drawings, making pictures to show his emotions and his writing has come a long way simply from wanting to be able to label things he’s drawn.

They then started to play with some foam shapes and my Dad arrived. While me and Dad chatted Monster made several 3D letters with the foam shapes, making cubes and then stacking them up to make the shapes. He made them and correctly identified loads including:  L, P, D, V, U, N, M, W, O, C, S all of which helped to impress and reassure Dad who has the odd concern about the whole autonomy thing, not to mention Home Education generally.

We did some baking and then the children played together for ages with some jigsaw puzzles (another thing accessible to them in the playroom), one on Space and one on rooms around the house and household objects. Monster also spent some time playing with paint on my laptop creating a cool space picture out of blobs of colour.

In the late afternoon it was Badgers, where this term they are learning about Germany. They looked at Germany’s location on a globe and on a map, made a stick and paste collage of the German flag, learnt a German nursery rhyme and did some running around too.

Tuesday A whole day at home. The children watched Roobard and Custard and Mr Ben on dvd and lots of Discovery Kids. The played with Leappad, the Dora dolls house, the toy cars and the blocks, the plasticine and a heap of soft toys. I did lots of Muffin-y stuff like sorting washing, listing loads of stuff on ebay and some writing.

After tea we talked a bit about animation - one of Monster’s favourite things and the reason he spends so much time with his plasticine and watching cartoons. I’m planning to take him to the Science Museum’s Pixar exhibition later in the month and having looked on the website I sat with them and showed them how to make a flick picture with two pictures. We did loads of all sorts including facial expressions, jumping men, fish leaping out of water, cuckoo clocks and more.

Wednesday I had work to get on with in the morning as well as various household-y tasks so the children entertained themselves. This involved playing one of their perenial favourite games entitled ‘babies’ or ‘holidays’. They pack bags containing all sorts of essentials, load them onto the stairs, which appears to be their car, one of them sits on the bottom step ‘driving’ until they reach their destination. They then come to me for their ‘key’ which involves me welcoming them to their hotel and issuing them with a room number and something pretending to be a key. They then take themselves off to a new location (bedroom or playroom) and upack. They love this game and play it for hours but it does involve lots of household items being moved into rooms they don’t belong in!

In the afternoon we had Home Ed group. Our second week and already an extra person to last week. The theme, which was very loosely organised, was underwater. I took some lining paper and crayons and got some of them drawing a joint, very long, picture of under the ocean. Monster did various fish, star fish, octopus, sea weed, seahorses etc. Teeny did what I assumed was an octopus but on explanation from her turned out to be the ‘reflection of the sun on the water’. Blimey! We had a fantastic inflatable toy brought along by one of the other group members which had all the children occupied for well over an hour and we finished up with some collages. Teeny was mostly occupied with the glue spreader and the very pretty non-sparkly blue and pink glitter, but Monster used his cut outs of fish and divers to tell a very long story, which ended up cativating the whole room. It involved a very lazy fish and a diver who dived down and kept digging, he reached the centre of the earth and found lava and then suddenly he saw a kangaroo and he’d reached Australia. Very entertaining and of course more reassurance that plenty of stuff is going into that mind.

Some reading aloud of The Little Mermaid and a Dr Seuss book rounded the day off nicely back at home.

Thursday A lovely day spent enjoying the hospitality of the Home Educate Me (please) crew. We arrived mid morning and the children all played very happily while grown ups chatted, then Parent 1 and our friend L headed off with some of the children to see Joseph and his technicolour dreamcoat while I stayed behind with Monster and Teeny, Ernest and Buttercup. We went to the park for a while and then came back via the ice cream selling corner shop for the children to play in the garden while I did some work. Everyone returned including L’s husband and A and Parent 1’s parents and a lovely evening followed. We left around 10pm with the children falling asleep in the car and being plonked into bed around midnight when we got home.

Friday - a  fairly quiet day was in order to recover from the day before. We popped out in the morning to return some library books and do food shopping for the week. I’ve started to try and do food shopping with the children rather than avoid it as if we tackle it at the right time of day with no one tired or hungry or in a rush then actually it is quite enjoyable. They are fairly helpful - Monster even went off back halfway round the store this week to get a french stick I’d forgotten to pick up and navigated his way back to us again. They also learn a huge amount identifying products, chatting about what’s in them and where they come from and counting things into the trolley. This week Monster asked why the union jack flag was on the strawberries container as we’d been looking at all the car flags with St George’s flag displayed for the football and I’d explained about the World Cup, supporting teams and countries and so on. We spotted other fruit and veg ‘grown in Britain’ and chatted about where some of the non-British produce came from.

Back home we started making some birthday cards for A, assembled a fruit flan (I chopped the fruit, Monster arranged it on the flan base), baked a cake (we all had a stir, tipped in some love and made a wish for Daddy) and the children generally had a quiet afternoon.

 Saturday - A’s birthday I got up early with Teeny and we finished his card from her including her copying ‘To Daddy, Love Teeny’ really well and we wrapped his presents.

My parents joined us for a visit to a local wildfowl place with a mini train, a woodland and a playground. We had a lovely day with the exception of Teeny being bitten by a swan and falling over and scuffing hand, arm and knees

Home for birthday cake and baths for very grubby children.

Sunday Over to BIL and SIL for a birthday barbecue for A. A lovely day again except for Teeny’s continued ‘in the wars’ ending with a spectacular collision with Monster and their cousin D which had Teeny in A&E having three stitches in her little chin

 Poor baby was so brave, not crying at all while it was done and being rewarded with a whole sheet full of stickers from the nurse. She’ll have the follow up educational opportunity of having them removed later next week at the GPs. We read every book in the waiting room, she learnt all about how skin can be sewn together just like the soft toys I’ve recently made them and as a lack of space meant we were seen in the crash / trauma room she also had a quick tour of various medical equipment in there too.

Monster is also suffering having developed some sort of allergic reaction rash all over his body yesterday which has come and gone throughout the day but appears to respond well to piriton. So there has been discussion of allergies, reactions and so on here today too. 

Monday - Bank Holiday, I hate Bank Holidays! I had some work to do so the children were amused with building Brio train tracks with Monster designing a tricky bit first on paper and then copying his design to using track. He also drew a fab dragon on a large piece of card from the scrapstore including turning the card over to draw the back of the dragon on the back.

We read some of the large pile of library books inclucing one about a family of crocodiles which led to Monster making a pin the nose stud on the crocodile game just like in the story. He also crafted a blindfold from some material and we all played that for a while.

We made birthday cards for a family friend and Monster did some lovely writing in his while Teeny wrote her name really well too for the first time.

My parents came over in the afternoon / evening so they spent some time playing with them too. 

Tuesday A bit of a fall out with the children first thing over some teasing of one of our cats, so they got some lessons in what our responsibility it to our pets, why we shouldn’t bully and what bullying is and Monster did some getting over being in trouble with his favourite activity - drawing.

We had a quick visit to the library to return some books, and of course come away with more. And a quick trip to the charity shop which netted some bargains

Then in the afternoon some of their schooled friends came over for playing and tea after school. They all spent some time in the garden playing various games with sand, sticks and spades. Teeny and her friend L did some dancing for us too.

Wednesday In the morning I had some work to do so the children played with geomags and a foam interlocking pieces puzzle which can be used to build 3D shapes. Davies was also doing some maths basics whilst playing with it including learning names of 3D shapes (cube etc), lots of estimating numbers, working out how many pieces he’d need for various constructions and so on.

In the afternoon it was the first session of our new Home Ed local group. I’d dashed around getting stuff like cups, tea, coffee and sugar together to take as well as lots of paper for drawing and some playdough for activities. We had five families attend which wasn’t bad for a first time but we will need eight to sustain it ongoing so we will give it five sessions - all of May and see how we get on before making a decision as to whether to continue. It was nice to chat to a few new contacts though and the children had a great time running around, building lego creations, learning how to make and fly paper planes and then doing some collages with various dried pasta and pulses.

Thursday I spent most of the day sewing an outfit for Monster to wear to a fancy dress birthday party on Saturday. The children played at length with plasticine and playdough making all sorts of creatures and characters and then playing games with them once made. Monster also did some experimentation with animation such as making eyelids for one of his characters and opening and closing them, changing heads on one of the bodies and so on. After lunch we popped out to get some hair colour for Monster’s outfit and to look at camping stuff for our first camping holiday coming up next month with Muddlepuddle.

In the afternoon we played in the garden, the children with sand and water and the slide and me painting a papier mache creation made for a friend’s birthday present.

Friday The children spent the morning drawing and then doing some workbooks - I should stress here that these are workbooks which have sat on our shelves since I decided to Home Educate nearly 3 years ago and bought in preparation for Monster. The only time they have ever come off the shelves it has ended in threats of school, shouting and despair at him ever being able to read, write and add up. So on the shelf they’ve stayed and our approach to learning and education has changed accordingly. However today it seems to have been something they wanted to do so I left them to it, just explaining what they were supposed to do on various bits and letting them do their own thing if they decided they’d rather. On the back of one which was a Cat in the Hat themed book there was an optical illusion to cut out and make so Monster and I did that and discussed how it worked and talked about other optical illusions we could think of.

In the afternoon we went over to Ali’s where the children played outside for hours, getting filthy and worn out but playing really nicely with all sorts of highly creative and imaginative games and every child’s fantasy of a secret door opening to reveal a whole other world for exploring, only to be runined by us realising a fence panel had broken and let them into the alleyway behind the garden and herding them back in the house again! They then played upstairs, with , I believe further workbook related activity went on and they did some drawing too.

Saturday The day of the Madagascar themed birthday party for our friend Buzz. Monster was King Julien, the lemur and Teeny was a zebra.

They had a fab time doing all sorts of traditional party games as well as laid on activities such as making flags, plasticine modelling (always popular with Monster & Teeny) and repeated dancing to ‘I like to move it, move it’.

They had a great time and then dropped me in town to go to the opticians before going home with A to have all their face paints and hair colour washed off in a bath.

Sunday We went to The Sustainability Centre for the day meeting up with BIL, SIL and cousins J & M. We had a picnic lunch and walked right round ending up carrying all the children. After tea and cakes in the cafe the children learnt all about beekeeping and honey from a very friendly beekeeper;

went on the people-powered swing roundabout

 Monster learnt how to make a kazoo from a very cool man in a teepee;

Teeny petted various dogs (she loves dogs )

and we had a go at making peg pixies from wooden pegs and scraps of materials.