Monster & Teeny

I’ve just realised that although I’ve been here a couple of times this year and have several unfinished posts in draft form I’ve not actually published anything since early January!

It’s been a mixed start to the year really. We’ve all had several bouts of illness, nothing serious but enough to write off whole weeks at a time and cause us to cancel various things and keep us housebound which isn’t good for us. We are very much out and about people, infact I’d call our style of Home Educating ‘Gallivanting’ more than anything else

Illness aside we do seem to have managed a fairly full start to the year nonetheless and have been enjoying new endeavours and activities. Monster has now attended the first 2 YAC (young archaeologists club) events of the year  and is very enthusiastic about that. He is also signed up for a ten week Forest School ‘term’ after Easter which he’s really looking forward to. We’ve borrowed a geology loan box from a local museum which had loads of interesting rocks and fossils for him to explore and he and his equally fossil-obesssed cousin are planning a trip to Dorset in the summer with their respective Dads to do some fossil hunting.

Monster has taken real steps towards reading and whilst I’d not consider him totally there yet I can see it is just a matter of time, confidence and practise now. All of which is up to him and he is achieving in short bursts here and there. Drawing is still a real passion for Monster and he very often retells a story in a series of illustrations or makes up new ones of his own. I often wish this wasn’t after he’d gone to bed as I lose track of how many times he reappears downstairs at midnight long after I thought he’d gone to sleep armed with a full notepad and a lengthy story to tell me! Interestingly many adults tell me their most creative times are either late at night or early in the morning though and at least he has the freedom to spent time as and when the mood takes him with no negative effect created by him having to get up in the morning for school!

Teeny continues to be a happy go lucky bundle of energy. She loves Rainbows and has been lucky enough to see lots of her beloved but sadly not geographically close friends already this year spending time with them at our house, on visits to their houses and at various other locations. She is loving the egg collecting duties associated with our chickens now that the spring has sprung and they are laying again. She and I are currently mid way through a 6 week rock tumbling project using pebbles we collected on the beach. It’s very noisy in our house with the constant sound of stones being thrown around their drum with grit and water but it looks like we’re going to have some impressive results at the end of it.

Both children are enjoying Badgers, swimming lessons, Wildlife Explorers, Magic Lantern film club and seem to be leading very full lives along with packing in time playing with friends, helping up at the allotment, working through their RSPB Wildlife Action Awards (they have both achieved their bronze awards and are midway through their silver having had an impressive display of their photography and artwork up on public display at the library for two weeks recently) and still fitting in time for baking, DSing, building whole cities out of lego, drawing and all the other myriad ways they fill their days.

I was going to pop some photos in but it’s occured to me that we are in April which is Annual Photoblog Day month so I’ll try and do that sometime in the next week or so.