Its really fecking COLD!!!!

And why does this not seem to bother kids????? I'm standing there freezing my bits off, supervising the planting of the sweet peas we bought yesterday.....and we bought a LOT of sweet peas, 1 x multi pack which had 100 seed in + 3 packs containing 25 seeds each...... and 20 planting tubes!!! So 4 seeds went in each tube, then I battled with the shed which Dan has packed to bursting and trying to fit my Bump around the strimmer to locate more pots!!! Which T was thankfully happy to fill ...I wasn't about to - too flippin cold, then we watered them, and stuck them in the greenhouse and I'm hoping the soil won;t freeze!!! L was very happy to play in the ice and near freezing puddles in the bottom of buckets with no gloves on???? But they are all in and I just hope they grow!
T did some reading for me this morning after a bit of cajoling and a fair few threats. He tends to guess alot of the words which I'm assuming is normal, he would also rather read what he thinks is there as opposed to whats actually on the page but when he actually looks at it he does really well!! We're up to 6 pages at a time which means he actually knows what's going on in the story. We also did a mini book for our lap book on Space - its a did you know about the moon. Quit impressed with the things he's remembered. I ordered the Sam Neill "Space" series on DVD as they only last half an hour and really seem to push the right buttons. All in all, despite the fact that I am shattered and doing a very attractive waddle we seem to be getting stuff done!
Writing endless lists for T's party on Fri! A request has been put in for Doritos, apparently the normal organic crisps are getting boring!

Surreh PIA council!

The past two months have involved some serious letter writing of the "Disgusted of Surrey" kind! Despite the new guidelines issued by the DCSF ( which are actually alright - they appear to have taken on most of what the home ed community wanted) Surrey seems firmly stuck in the dark ages and hell bent on trying to push visits and monitor the quality of education being provided as opposed to just checking that an education is taking place. So in Jan a number of things happened; I got a letter yet again either requesting a visit or a report.....coz the fact they recieved one in Aug seems to have been forgotton!!! R found a job vacancy on the Surrey CC website which was so misleading and misinformed it was painful and then she got hold of Pam Berryman's response to the guideline consultation by the DfES.....exceedingly interesting reading!!! so enough is enough they need to dramatically change thier approach and now the guidelines are advocating thatwe've decided to push so the first wave of letters went off 2 weeks ago to the education bods at SCC as well as the head of the council, education select committee councillers and Jeremy Hunt our MP. We had a generic "we're looking into it" response within 4 days, which was impressive considering I am STILL waiting on acknowlegement for a letter I sent to the EbPP team in Sept 2006!!!! It even took them a month to acknowledge my emialed in Ed phil! But its seems if you go a bit further up the food chain you get more of a response. So we'll see...... Its sure to have ruffled a few feathers at least and whilst it would be lovely to think we're going to make a difference I'll not be holding my breath!

Random breakfast questions!

What I love about home ed is the spontenaity (sp) of the learning.....This morning I had my to do list all worked out, the boys chores, my chores and the home ed bits that all needed to be fitted in before home ed group along with the shopping delivery and mealtimes. So we are sitting eating breakfast and T has tha face on that generally means he's percolating a question then suddenly out it pops - "How is soil made?" Totally relevant seeing as we've spent the weekend and past week on the allotment with D rotavating, muck spreading, plot rotation etc. He's been party to conversations about weed mulching, soil acidity and what grows best in previously used areas. So although I have a vague recollection of a test tube with soil and water in it, and the words humus (not to be confused with houmous) sediment and stones I google soil and come across this fab website

www.soil-net.com Genius a cartoon badger explaining many things about soil with interactive games and good graphics! So the list gets postponed, whilst T does some learnin and Mummy gets wistful ideas about chocolate spread jars, soil samples and a magnifying glass!!

So then the playroom gets done and now we are onto times tables.....with cups and buttons and the intrigue of setting it up early has done wonders to engage interest!!! tee hee