Monster & Teeny

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.