Monster & Teeny

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.