Sunshine

A lovely sunny day for the children to play out side in the park, with their friends. The boys getting into their usual play fights, with no hard feelings. The girls chatting and imagining together. Then it was back home again, to checking the email for updates on the house move. Finally a bit of progress today, insh’Allah, as a bit of paperwork I’ve been chasing for weeks has finally been received by my solicitor. After all the frustrations of waiting to see this done! Like the change in the weather today, a change in events. Alhamdulillah. Of course this is only a breather, I’ll soon be on to stressing about the next bit! Really all this is taking up too much mental time. The home ed is ticking along, all the basics are getting done, but there is not much creativity at the moment, I’m too distracted.
Plus the kids are always hungry, are they about to grow suddenly? All day there are requests for more, for every meal I increase the amounts, but still they want more. Is the healthy food plan resulting in bigger appetites?

More about U

U has been sleeping in her own bed for almost a week now, the first night she came out half way through but since then she has wanted to settle there herself. She is making progress in other areas too, recognising and saying some of the colour words, (yellow, red, orange and black) matching them fairly reliably to the crayons. Today when I announced that it was time for maths she was the only one to come straight to the table “mafs, mafs”. Of course she may be demanding “mafs” in the same way she demanded chicken pox.
14/05/07
This morning the girls saw the fox in the garden. I have seen it quite often, usually in the early morning when the children are asleep. They were fascinated to see it jump off the fence, dig for something under a bush, which it then ate, and go back to hide in the bushes again.

Quick note

Emails and phone calls for the house move have been a big distraction today. The science session got a bit shortened as a result, but the boys did a study of pumice, including floating the sample across the basin, reportedly in 22 seconds. This afternoon they started a section on symmetry, while Ia was at nursery. Today she brought home more bulky junk models, she always seems to have the largest and most of these, maashAllah!

Contd

J has been learning how to help out. He has washed up, helped bake the bread and flapjacks and unloaded the washing machine. The two of them had a go at remaking the double bed, with the mattress protector ending up upside down and the sheet on back to front with its corners tucked in very oddly. But it’s never looked like that before has it?
U did not want to have her nappy changed this morning, blaming the bad smell on the cat!
Ia’s best friend has just come out in chicken pox. I told Ia that she would not be seeing B at nursery next week, and that she might get chicken pox too. U, not wanting to be left out of something B has and Ia might get said “Me, me, I ticken box!” Similarly this morning she said “I diving lessin”, as I was about to go out for mine. She gets so cross about being sidelined!
In the afternoon the boys did a spelling sheet and capacity work in between computer games and a DVD. Ia followed up capacity by experimenting with various containers and then putting most of the dinosaurs into a sink of water.
I have been sorting out some of the photos, U insists that pictures of Ia at 18 months or below are really of her, in fact she gets quite angry with Ia for it, “No, dat ME!”

Saturday

Saturday began with Ia wanting to make butterflies.
I did have a timetable in mind for other activities, but everyone else had different ideas. The boys had received an email, and found out how to download attached photos into the correct file. Then they sent email, attaching photos which they had taken.They also did some spelling work today, had a Quran lesson, went to town with H, played computer games, read and did some practical work on capacity, followed by the workbook.
Ia and U made more mess, went to the park to play on the swings and played internet games.

Not quite worked out photos

Touching flour. " I need to play this", said U.

Ia's best colouring

U's essential selection

1/05/07
I’m now into my second week of feeling ill, alhamdulillah. Last week it was earache and a sore throat, now it is a draining cold. I decided not to try to get Ia to nursery today as I didn’t feel up to it. I called the nursery and the sister there was making me feel guilty, saying that next week would be a short week anyway with the bank holiday, basically I was causing my child to miss out. And she did feel that she had missed out too. Even the boys were fed up by the end of the day as I was too exhausted to do anything with them. H took them out to the park for cricket practice.
We did spend some pleasant time in the garden reading, until the girls got grumpy with that too.
U loves to scribble in old (already used by someone else) workbooks. A few evenings ago she was scribbling away when she closed the book and said loudly in her just talking, two year old voice “I finished my lesson!”
04/05/07
Since then….I felt better, alhamdulillah and we started our study of rocks, with the recently arrived rock set. Everyone enjoyed handling the rocks, then the boys chose to study obsidian in more detail. So we looked it up in the rock book and they noted some points down.
In the afternoon we took Ia to nursery (where she made another yoghurt pot shaker, and learnt more about minibeasts). The rest of us browsed the bookshop and went to the park.
Ia wants to touch the leaves on the trees in the park. U likes touching them too but she still seems scared! Ia brought a leaf home and left it on the floor in the corridor, U refused to walk past it and shouted “leaf, leaf”
Yesterday Ia asked me whether Roo (Winnie the Pooh) used to have a dad but he died!!!

Photos are here, but not in the right place.

Still here (again)

Where should I start? The days have been mostly sunny and warm, we’ve spent time in the park with friends, the boys have been playing cricket. Friends have visited. We’ve kept up the usual routines of nursery and school groups, etc, etc.
We did the celery in ink experiment, to show how the stems take up water. This worked really well, with the leaves turning very obviously blue.
There must have been more to it, but when I get out of the habit of blogging……
Must try harder.