oops and its April and Jesus and Eric!

So much for keeping a regular blog then!March seemed to fly by in a blur of stomach flu and grumpy children. T's reading has come on no end surprisingly via the good ole Peter and Jane Ladybird Key words series!!!! ya know Peter and Jane, Jane and Peter.......Peter and Jane and the dog. Riveting stuff I know but the repetition and reinforcement really seems to work for him. He seems to be learning words via pattern recognition rather than see-saying but he will revert to that if shoved! I remember teaching S (lil bro) to read aged about 3 using these books and the added threat of physical violence....*shakes head* Admittedly he learned to read but won;t be using that particular method on T.....oh I was a harsh big sis!The wee lad also learned to swim via the letting down of the armbands in the middle of the pool...... I knew he could do it he just didn;t believe me.....LUCKILY for me (and him) I was right and the little bugger is swimming with sharks as I type!
March saw a trip to Haslemere Museum with J and S. L poddled about quite happily in the wake of the two boys whose attention span was typically gnat like! L freaked me out a bit when discovering the bear - Albert I think it is called. He was really unhappy about going near it. Hey what self respecting 1 yr old wouldn;t baulk when faced with a 6 ft stuffed bear! So after I proved it wasn;t alive L looked at it and said "Bear, Dance" and proceeded to do a little shuffling dance..............HOW THE FECK DOES HE KNOW THAT BEARS USED TO DANCE!!!!!!!! So now am getting more convinced that both my chillies have been here before! We saw the Mummie with his toes poking out and all the boys were very impressed with the mummified cat head *sigh* well boys will be boys. on the way home L threw a wob so I turned up Jesus Christ Superstar full blast and drowned out his screams with Gethsemane!!! Had to be done and Rent has too much swearing in it. Talking of JCSS listening to it, after I was asked to turn off Linkin Park, it sparked a luffly bout of questions none of which I was prepared to answer. The questions went something like this

T -Can you tell me about Jesus and Eric?
Me - Sorry who?
T -Jesus and Eric?
Me - I don't quite know what you mean darling there is no Eric in the bible
T - (utterly exasperated by this time) Jesus and ERIC!!! The king Eric who walks on the swimming pool.....the king....
Me - OHHHHH Herod!!! Jesus and Herod! - For those oh you who aren't twirlies in JCSS there is a line in Herods song "prove to me that your no fool, walk across my swimming pool!"
T - So can you tell me the story?
Me - Oh er um yes but erm I can;t really remember the details erm I will have to ask B if she has a children's bible as we sure as hell don't!

There followed a truly appalling, even by my standards, recounting of Jesus's last days. Followed by another stunning battery of questions including highlights such as

So is he the son of god or isn't he?
When you say he came back was it as a ghost or a real person?
did the angel shift the stone?
The sun is a god isn't he so is it the same one or a different one?
Is he the sun of the goddess as well?
Was Mary his wife or just his girlfriend?

The first one just about stumped me and the follow ups left me about on the verge of tears!!!
Than we got the children's bible and tbh it really didn't help that much. it was still very complex and very hard to re-phrase in a non- "this is the total truth" way. questions following this reading were generally based around the blonde bearded guy who featured as Jesus.

Did he really look like that?
Well why didn;t they recognise him? You can see its him!
Why is he blonde on here if he probably wasn;t blonde in real life?
Can we find a picture of him on the internet?
You said he was a ghost when he came back but in this picture he isn't see through!

ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

I was assuming (stupidly) that the fact that we are pagans would negate any need for indepth christian learning...me and my big fat stoopid JCSS cd and explanation of the Christian side of Easter. That'll teach me to raise a questioning child!!!!!!

But Jesus and Eric still makes me chuckle!!!

We are gonna start a new project on Ancient Egypt which Toby feels should include a visit to the pyramids seeing as they are still there.....unlike the dinosaurs! I see his point but we are still a bit wary of Egypt considering the instability of the middle east - this small tiny weeny comment gave rise to another wonderful discussion. The middle east and what was going on there. SO why did we invade Iraq? oh ho! Yep T, that's the question we all want answered aint it! In a way I think its great that he can see that there isn;t always a definitive answer....its just that at his age he feels he should have one! So I have bought a load of books and trawled through the internet and found loads of resources games and activities. Mummification doesn;t seem to gross him out at all so we are going to attempt to mummify a chicken - not one of ours might I add! He has been playing Senet - and ancient Egyptian board game - has elements of draught and chess. He LOVES playing chess and is good enough at it to manipulate the game to make it go on longer - if he is winning he will deliberately start losing to stretch it out a bit more then start winning again??!!!! He is getting a bit better at losing but still wants to win and be the best all the time - 1st child! He is obsessed with getting 100% on Ed city and gets quite stroppy if he has to struggle with something. The explanation that you learn as much from mistakes as you do from success infact probably more does NOT wash in any way shape or form so we help him out a lot and get him to re-do exercises so he can get his 100% in the end!!!!He did really well at a maths exercise so I printed him out the certificate and he was very chuffed! I am guessing this may have a detrimental effect on our printer but heigh ho!

Had T and the family over for lunch and got loads of ideas from her. So have been on Amazon and ordered the Magic Treehouse book on Mummies as well as the non fiction accompanying book. Am also going to intro Songbirds - Oxford *yuk* reading tree books. These are written by Julia Donaldson (her of the Gruffalo) and came highly recommended from T. Just so long as there is no Biff or chip in them!!! oh those names make me cringe!!!

T has been busy measuring - LOVES the measuring! And now has 4 potatoes and 5 sunflowers in his plot. Whilst we beaver away building brassica frames to keep out the evil caterpillars T and L irritate the crap out of the gazillion tadpoles growing in the lottie pond. Sadly L tends to kill them but T like to catch them, look at them and send them back! He is very concerned that they might get sucked into the watering can.

The summer appears to be here...in april? So tis the time for hats and sunblock tra la la la la la la la la!

a productive day well disguised!

One of those days where you feel its been a write-off but actually quite a lot has been achieved. I have a stinking viral bug thingy and had to attend a childminder briefing meeting today to investigate new ways of making enough money to stay home with my boys with out going to work!! Yet this morning over breakfast I found myself explaining Roman numerals and having a discussion about how they might make maths easier....which hadn't occurred to me, I am ashamed to say. Meeting - Sat there slowly losing the will to live feeling like I was drowning in a barrel of snot. Really the whole thing could have been covered with a website and a letter but Ofsted and the CC just LOVE standardising people don;t they, so a meeting it was. Came home and we were all knackered and decided to have a Harry Potter afternoon.....well they boys did, I went to bed! D then went off to work and I decided to do some reading with T. Totally forgotten about www.starfall.com but went on there as his choice of book was one he knew off by heart! So he read Zac the Rat and Peg the Hen. I had both of them on my knee and T has a really bony bum!!! Anyways tired of trying to keep L's hands off the keyboard I surrendered the lap top to T who then went on to find "games" related to the stories. I sat in the lounge when I heard the printer go....which is never ever a good noise coz T has very little patience and expects the printed item to appear the second the big, fat, print button has been pressed. (God love these sites for suggesting you print every thing) So when said print item does not materialise instantly the button gets pressed again....and again and again so when I come to try and print out something vaguely important? NO EFFING PAPER!!!!! Anyways on this occasion something else on the site distracted him and print was only hit once (that or all the shouting a have done in the past about finding 3 million copies of the numberjacks e-card as permeated........I'm putting my money on the distraction) SO then he wanders in with this print out. "Look! Tracings so I can do writing then I am going to do a picture of a net." T sits himself at the table and off he goes, tracing letters then copying them then drawing a lovely picture of him and Daddy fishing.

Then I mention that one of the ladies on my list has organised a campaign defending home ed http://handsup4homeed.blogspot.com I explained that we were going to draw round his hands and decorate them then write a wish on them. Then this lady is going to deliver them to the government to show them that they need to leave home edders alone. Cue a painfully detailed discussion about who the government is and what they do and how we need laws and who makes them etc oh made me brain ache. So T disappears off and returns with two decorated hands and then tries to do L's....L was having none of it and buggered off to eat a Santa stamp, returning with a blue mouth.....sometimes they make me so proud!!!!!!

sociable?? us??

SO this week on an all out "shit we need to be seriously more sociable" drive (its the only thing about home ed I panic about, its periodic panicking but its still there) We did the soft play on Tues. It was supposed to be ice skating but the time is hard for us as it is at least a 45min drive and it means waking up L early which is never a good thing! So Ice skating has been relegated to once a month. Arrived at the soft play about 4 ish and stayed for about an hour and half. T palled up with a gang of boys almost immediately and soon progressed from being the much needed "Baddie" in their game to a "baddie turned goodie who is cool" and apparently a greater honour is hard to find among the under 6's!!! Had a ball, then had a bonfire on the lottie and toasted some marshmallows - L got absolutely covered in sticky goo!

Wednesday we met up with J and her son S. We got together to chat about starting a home ed group near here but blatantly did very little *shop* chat and just had a damn good natter. T and S totally clicked and were chasing round the playground within minutes. We left the playground when the kids got out of school and moved to the park where S showed T the joys of bamboo. We didn't see them for ages but w could see the bush moving and hear chattering and giggles. When D arrived with L the boys even took him into the bamboo. S was so good with L bless him. Helping him through the jungle of bamboo!!! Both J and I were told that the boys wanted to play at our houses again so very pleased with that! J is lovely and a good friend of a divine IM we both know. As soon as I knew that I knew we would get on!

Thursday it was off to the home ed group in Hants. Naturally I got lost on the way so arrived very stroppy but the kids were having a ball. Huge garden area, apparently empty but for the very strange hedge. The hedge wobbled a lot and chattered, shrieked and giggled, particularly when approached! It also had many different heads that would pop up on top of it periodically! Sod all the toys and the big space to run in, the kids wanted THE HEDGE!!!!! S was there as was another boy F who T had clicked with the week before and there were some dinkies for L to bumble about with. Both boys had to be forcibly removed when it was time to go and had hugely red cheeks. I got to meet some more home edders inc our old next door neighbours from about 10 yrs ago! Small world! Their baby is now 10!!!!!! OMG Then got home and almost forgot about ballet! Silly Mummy!T's jumps are a lot better yet he still lands like an elephant....can;t think where he gets that from *blushes* At least he doesn't jump like he has wellies on anymore!!!!!

Worreid about socialisation? Who, Me? ;)