Days like these

Fairy nuf the weather is down to the evils of global warming but ISN'T IT STUNNING!!!! We had made terrific head way on the lottie and just loved being outdoors - bliss!!!

We have got the potatoes in and the brassica frame made with rocket, brussels, savoy cabbage and calabrase as well as swiss chard currently waiting to grow and salad waiting to go in.

T's plot has grown to take over the salad be next to it as the salad can fit in the brassica frame. So he has planted his carrots, surrounded by chives to deter carrot fly, potaotes, loads of sunflowers and some sugar snap peas. Its all getting very exciting!!!

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!

Where'd Februaury go????

I know it's a short month but really this is ridiculous! The month seems to have flown by in a blur of denbuilding, birthday parties and home ed meet ups! Half term (for me not the boys) zoomed by and despite daily visits to EC and Starfall not to mention endless discussions about dinosaurs, a dinosaur birthday cake AND pin the tail on the dinosaur the lack of structured activities has made me blanche a little so writing it down helps to see all we have done. Drama started back and despite me nearly crashing the car on the way there T had a ball. Wk beginning 19th Feb was just plain bonkers to the point we had to cancel the Tuesday outing. Mon Drama and bog ole long walk with J and S. Tues mass baking and house tidy in preparation for the imminent arrival of H, P and the 6 kids for an overnight stay. Wed, Denbuilding with the W's who didn;t stay the night because my lovely mate was very poorly. (hugs to you my dear) and Mini party (as mini as you can get with 8 children) in the eve. Thursday, another party with T's mates from home ed groups all over and Friday? Well Friday we crashed, I had my lovely Mummy down from Tues night onwards to help with the carnage and all in all much fun was had.

Obviously I have to show of my handy work. T sat with L and played puzzles, picture lotto and dinosaurs while I iced this beauty. I am very proud of it and T just loved it. I also painted a Harry and his bucket full of dinosaurs style apatosaurus for pin the tail on the dinosaur which was won by S. I had planned quite a few other games but when it came down to it the kids played so well that none were needed. D made Pizzas with them and all in all a good time was had by all!

This month T has really cracked on with his reading, by means of Starfall and Ed city. We moved him on to KS1 as the reception stuff was getting a little tedious. We bought him a wheel barrow and gardening gubbins for his birthday and he has been out on the lottie today planting seeds and getting his plot ready. The potatoes arrived and he helped me chit them, which aint easy on Anya and Pink Fir apples. Finding the rose end is a little tricky. I am sick with an evil bug and have missed our two lottie days but T has revelled in them. Must get round to writing our Ed Phil soon or the LA are going to be on my back. So all in all a busy old month.

Pizza party!!! See I fit in the education when they aren;t lookin ;)

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!!!!!!

More lottmenting

So today we measured and planned the allotment whilst T dug for pig bones! The allotments were a pig farm during ww2 and there are loads of bones in the soil....can't quite work out why but there are! T has decided he wants to plant sunflowers, potatoes, carrots, lettuce and tomatoes and peas...... He has never eaten lettuce or tomatoes (cept from in pasta sauces etc) or carrots but assures us that he will if he has grown them so that told me! I have dutifully planned how we can fit the amount of plants I have just bought (possibly more than last year and they were supposed to be for an acre) in our weeny half rod plot but with my trusty calculator and ruler and scale plan of the plot I might have done it. I was working from the point of view of "Whilst it says plants should be placed 45 cms apart, 20cms short of that isn't going to make that much difference and if the plants are closer together then there is less room for the weeds!!!" that's my story and I 'm sticking to it!!!! In tribute to my Aunty Wend we are planting potatoes but proper tubers that we will chit.......(when I work out what that entails, so far it seems to involve egg boxes and peat) Any ways initially it was "hey lets have a go at planting potatoes!" now its "We have 4 different varieties of potato. First Early, Second early, early main and late main............and I have gone for the ones that Hugh Fearlessly eatsitall suggests as he is our gardening guru!!!

So this year we will grow:-
Potatoes
Carrots
Leeks
Broccoli - purple sprouting - oh get us aren't we posh
Calabrese - NOT broccoli just billed as it in supermarkets...hopefully this time totally caterpillar free coz last year it made me feel a little queasy!
Brussel Sprouts
Savoy cabbage
Spring cabbage
French beans - purple and green
sugar snap peas
Cucumbers
Butternut squashes
Pumpkins - giant of course
Sweet corn
Strawberries
Tomatoes
Peppers
Chillies
Courgettes

And they will be in the ground at the time they are supposed to be.....not in May!!!!!!!!
Truck load of horse shit being delivered this week and we'll be away!!!!! yay for horse poo!

Need a weekend to recover from the weekend!!!!

Saturday was a jolly down to Dorset to see H and the gang. We arrived at about lunchtime and I lost T within minutes of entering the house........he kind of gets absorbed!! B and L spent the day alternately arguing and kissing! Where as T and S did lots of very boysy wrestling and chasing!!!!!I was pleased to see that T could hold his own, not having any older siblings. T did manage to come home with a split lip but that was nothing to do with the wrestling or the chasing, he merely smacked himself in the mouth trying to lift the handle of a push along toy out of the toy and it came away quicker than him thought!! And made a nice mess too. We went up to Bond's folly on the purbecks and walked back down again to see the sun setting over the sea and to the dulcet tones of L have the worlds most monumental tantrum. Sadly he had forgotten what he was having the tantrum about approx 30 secs into the tantrum but it didn't stop him from hollering like a good'un all the half mile walk back down the hill. D naturally had to climb on top of the folly just coz he could........and this is where the kids get it from!!!!!

Then we went to have a look at H's new house before going back to let the men cook tea! L decided to continue his tantrum and general clinginess, which was nice. Then we all played on H's Wii which I have to admit is bloody marvelmouse! Shame we can;t have one!

Sunday and we decided to get a head start on the allotment. D had borrowed a rotivator and the Steward had told us that we hadn't taken as much of the plot as we were entitled to, so we moved the boundary fence, shifted where the compost bins were (hmm that was a nice job) and re arranged the plot completely. T wants a patch of his own so we created a big bed behind the green house and have set aside half for him. We picked the last of the leeks and broccoli and about 3 million brussel sprouts. The noisette ones were the tastiest and most successful so we'll be doing them again this year! Then D rotivated the whole plot and I laid a carpet path. Then T and I set about trying to rid the new bed of evil convulvilus (bastard evil plant) T raked and sifted though with his fingers removing bits of root and big rocks from his bed and is very excited about what he is going to plant......Although I am not that sure how well an orange tree is going to fare in Surrey!!!! We are thinking about getting an apple tree for the main garden tho, well we need something to plant L's placenta under as it can;t sit in the freezer forever!!!

Was looking at the science section of EC today and I am guessing that the allotment will cover most of reception and KS1 science so there's a plus!!!!!! Who knew?

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? ;)