Look, no Rescue Remedy!

First day without in about 10 days i think. 😆

Blog is undeniably getting a bit boring at the moment i think. Not only is everything going relatively swimmingly but the kids are actually asking to do maths, writing and reading. I’m not asking for family related conundrums, but i don’t seem to have much “homeschool angst” to thrash out. Even Amelie has quit acting up and bounces in and out of nursery everyday. Clearly she just wanted to see me humiliate myself 🙄 I wonder if she reads the blog?

Now’ve we’ve settled into the Singapore maths, it is somehow miraculously getting easier to incorporate practical, hand-on maths too. I’ve got Miquon but don’t really like it, but the Cuisinaire books we got from Ichthus really work. Amelie, Maddy and Fran have all spent time on the Alphabet version today. Fran asked for all the letters to her name, i copied them off for her and she did them, coloured them and without being asked to do it, did the add on questions on the page which i hadn’t even noticed were there! made me chuckle really. I can just imagine if i had said “Make the shapes, colour the shapes, then do the ‘meaningful maths’ bit down the side;” i’d have got nothing but grumbles.

Maddy and i were doing some of the puzzle maths in her book – having done pages of sums with pictures, i got her to do them with blocks as manipulatives today. She got to grips with that quick enough and was working independently at that for a good while. One of the things i actually love about our “normals” is it gives me time with each child and although it is the subject i hated at school, i actually really enjoy doing sums with them and they seem to like the time. But with 4 children here, they are going to have to learn to do some stuff on their own, and have some sort of basic discipline about it. We don’t do well here on disordered chaos and learning by osmosis, however much it might work elsewhere. I kind of wish it did 🙂 So anyway, i was pleased forMaddy; it was lovely to see her busy and happy and i suspect she’ll be a child who comes asking for sums to occupy her in the future, if she’s anything like her Dad. 😆 She takes so little explaining to with stuff like that, which is incredible really, given she still can’t reliably go upstairs, brush her teeth and come back down with a pair of socks if asked 🙄 😆

Fran has been taking huge leaps with her writing this week. Today she read a book to me, a reader really but one she wanted to do for her Reading Tree called Slow Magic. I picked it up at Melrose last year.

After she’d read it, with a bit of encouragement, she wrote a book review and she didn’t do bad.

“Polly and Grandpa did some slow magic. They planted some grass seeds. She waited and waited and waited and all of a sudden the seeds popped up. A sheep eats some of Pollys seeds. A lamb was born and wool was made and Granny made a jumper.”

Her longest writing ever. 🙂 We then noticed that all her “s” letters were backwards and it suddenly occurred to me the s, 5, 2 and 3 all all very similar and she finds them all hard, so she agreed that some concentrated practise might make sense, just to try and drum those letters into her hand, as it were.

Js came over and baked with them; we’d run out of Golden Syrup but honey worked, just 😆 Interesting affect on the Gingerbread, i’ll say that for it 😆

I’m snowed under with BM again, bring it on really 🙂 Need to order more stock, it’s less than 3 weeks since i got £1000 worth in 😯

Fran picked up 4 Brownie badges tonight; Stargazer, Computer, Collector and Entertainer, the last she apparently did there but seems slightly surprised to have got it! We need to pick the next ones she is going to work on at home. She has been practising skipping for Agility but i only know 2 fancy steps!

And the only other thing of interest was that for the first time ever, i got sent a school application form, for Amelie. I’m sure the recycling centre will do it proud.

Edited to add: How could i forget! Josie WALKING!!!!! 14 steps all on her own today and now she is starting to stand up to walk places she wants to get to, rather than get down to crawl to them.