Tuesday/Wednesday

Plans for afternoons out went awry when Max overslept and the weather was awful, so he took the car and we were stuck home in the rain. Briefly considered a walk, but didn’t fancy the swim home 🙄

Spent the morning normalling and very determinedly listening to people read; Fran is heavily into a copy of the Just So stories we brought back from Gran’s, Maddy is liking Oxford Reading Tree books and her confidence is really growing and Amelie is half way throguh the 2nd level P&J books. She can’t sound out, it is all sight reading, but she loves it so i’m happy. She’s also worknig her way through subtraction in Singapore 1A, which is quite impressive as she’s 2 years younger than the grade it is aimed at. I barely have to explain anything, she’s very like Maddy. Maddy has sussed vertical subtraction with carrying (in a sort of ‘i’ve actually been doing this in my head for 2 years’ sort of fashion) and Fran’s happy.

In the afternoon we played a bit at various things, some games, some French etc etc and then we made a sideways start at the Sonlight Core 1 box we’ve got from Claire and Charlie. Hugely grateful for this and very happy with the shelf full of books. We all sat and pored over the pile, sorting it on to the new shelves for a while, then we looked at the Instructors Manual together and discussed how we might approach it, then we made a start of a book about our world. Nothing we’ve not done before, but we ended up discussing natural selection and so on; REALLY interesting to see how Fran and Maddy have come on in that respect since last time we talked about it (during our Darwin phase)-  they get it now and funny to see Amelie still wallowing about in confusion!

Wednesday was more of the same but in the afternoon we did a trip to the storage unit and then went berry picking. Hill Farm is (surprise) on a hill, very high up compared to our house, which is really within sight from the top. FGelt like the weather was going right passed our ears. It was fine, with a track of dark cloud off to one side, appearingto be heading away. We trotted off to the strawberry field, more for fun than berries and they had a lovely time, till i looked up to see the black cloud was right above us and a huge streak of lightening leapt right across the sky over our head.

😯 Suddenly felt us to be 5 very tall objects on the side of a very exposed, high up spot, so tried to get the kids to move off without unnerving them. 😯

They moaned and whinged, i tried again with slightly more force, they saw the next streak of lightening and suddenly my 3 big girls had legged it and unfit me and little Josie were the only 2 tall things left on the hilltop! (Sounds a bit like the song… ‘mother duck said “RUN FOR COVER!!!” and only mummy duck got scorched….’) 🙄

Got back to the berry hut and it HEAVED it down, place was drenched in seconds, so we hung about a bit, dived for the car and arrived home very wet and mucky, only for me to remember i’d had all the carpets cleaned that morning!!! So i made them stand in the rain till i found something for them to stand on, a white bed protector, and judging by the state of it afterwards, i now know how my carpets got so dirty!!!!

I went out in the evening and Max played a Sci-0ology game with them that we got from the Young Scientist Club – lots of fun, they were all playing it again thism orning before 8am 🙂