Late Night Learning

So, at 8pm last night, S asked me to help her make a pie chart of how she spends her day. Luscious servings: 1/3 sleeping 1/3 reading. What a life! The final 1/3 divided into 4 further sections including eating. Spontaneous maths and late night learning. Autonomous Fractions. She had seen a pie chart in a story book, Rabbit Rescue, and had already figured that the pie needed 24 slices before approaching me (one for each hour) we had a look in the usborne maths dictionary for other pie chart ideas. All the examples were very schooly. Which is the classes favourite milkshake for example. I do fret about unschooling (I do use unschooling and autonomous education pretty interchangeably even though I know they are not exactly the same concept.) and maths but these incidents fill my confidence cup. I was required to make a pie chart of my day too but we discussed how it would be tricky as I am often doing multi things simultaneously! My biggest slice was still sleeping though :)

This morning we headed to Horsham Soft play first thing after word game and hair brushing (which has expanded into a stand alone event these mornings!) Horsham Soft Play is very different from Worthing and Fishers Farm soft plays because it is staffed and, consequently, has a very different atmosphere. The trio had a blast though playing ball and getting very sweaty as it is not air conditioned or even ventilated! O crashed into the wall and cut his lip :( and another person in West Sussex now knows it is possible to breastfeed a three year old and that three year olds who are breastfed stop crying and bleeding very quickly. 

After this we headed to a little park we like in Pond Tail Road that has yet another new piece of play equipment to meet some lovely home ed friends of ours for a couple of hours. S was delighted to see them and declared it "the most fun she'd had in ages." It hasn't rained today and has, out of the wind, been relatively warm. O took a tumble here too when a plane to ride his bike down the ramp went left but despite this. for around an hour, he meticulously raced his cars cars down the little slide. There is a new big slide that appears to have been inspired by a West Indian Steel Drum.

The boys were asleep almost instantly as we set off home so I detoured for new wellies for O, they are the same as his old wellies, just bigger! 27, 32 & 33 are the current shoe ages.

In Other News

The large pile of library books from Horsham are proving very popular. E and I had a story on the sofa this morning which is unusal as usually storires are a stricjly bed time afffair.

The bath bombs dried eventually after TDO suggested a stint in the freezer, and fizz wonderfully. The blog needs to be scratch and sniff to appreciate their full glory!

Blackbird

Blackbird

Managed to enjoy parts 3 and 4 of The Bridge last night and still be at the gym by 8am :) My weight has stayed within a kilo of the same since I achieved my target 4 or 5 weeks ago. Feeling much stronger too which will hopefully help with the falling over thing. I also treated myself to a turn in the hot bubbly tub and steam room. Easy like Sunday mornings

On another, weather driven, largely indoor day for the trio in which S has made bath bombs with too much witch hazel and they won't stop fizzing!! And planted more seeds with TDO whilst I have transformed the lego room from the photo above into an oasis of calm and colour coordinated order. Despite over a week of near constant precipitation I have yet to google rainy day ideas. The boys have played cars and lego and S and E made a Jurassic Park for the Barbies to holiday in.

Hot Music iii

Hot Music

This is the wall in Grandma's room at our house. The picture in the middle is the interpretation of Henri Matisse's Snail that E, then 4 now 5, made, after seeing the original in Pallant House gallery last year. Here is the blog post all about its construction. So, when I read that there was to be a Matisse touring exhibition in nearby Horsham, I knew we had to go. (The frames are from Seawhites btw perfect for framing the trio's art)

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 It is really fascinating to watch the different tastes in art emerge. S, 7, is clearly drawn towards more traditional art and much preferred Tate Britain and The National and National Portrait Galleries to Tate Modern and frequently requests to see actual pictures that look like what they are supposed to. Whereas, by contrast, E, 5, is naturally and instinctively very drawn to street art and sculpture and has also shown a preference for Matisse. He really enjoyed the exhibition this morning and afterwards said it was great. I was apprehensive that he wouldn't even go inside as I know parts of Horsham Museum (especially the jail) really scare him but he was so keen to see.

 What a contrast from Haselmere Museum last Friday where the staff where so helpful and friendly and genuinely interested in the children. I felt our reception was a little frosty this morning. Don't let that put you off going to see "Drawing with Scissors" though it is only on til May.

 Et really enjoyed guessing the vegetable on here.

13 pairs of scissors in here! Drawing with scissors

Afterwards we made a journey home of many stops. First off Horsham Library where we haven't been in ages. Sumetime ago I felt guilty about not frequenting our small local library in favor of the larger local ones with a bigger selection but, seeing the trios eyes light up at the huge selection on  offer today I sense the pendulum maybe swinging back again. S bagged a couple of Caroline Lawrence (author of the much loved Roman Mysteries) books she hadn't seen before and E found Star Wars and Dinosaur Coves whilst I grappled with the auto check out feature! New tomato plants at the garden centre, sausage tasting at the local butcher, where we have signed up for a new local veggie box deliver scheme, and dropping of the DVD of Gladiator Day to Bignor Roman Villa that TDO  burnt so they can use it on their website. We were going to stay for coffee but today is another rainy day so we headed home. Hope to make it next week.

S has planted cress seed again today. She has been plaguing TDO to help her and I am contemplating baking some orange spiced muffins, well with such a clean oven following yesterday's clean it would be rude not to on a grey afternoon, with Gilles Peterson on BBC6 as my soundtrak.............

Uptight (Everything's Alright)

Uptight

 I had to go down the run several times this afternoon so O, 3, could ride on my lap!

When O got stuck!

 O's "Thank-You" drawing

Ooh I woke up grumpy this morning. Took me a while to clock that the thermostat (in one of the coldest rooms of our house) was at 23oc - No wonder I felt so dehydrated and headache ish! During this time the epic monthly pay day shopping delivery arrived and a guy from the ovencleaningcompany came to clean the over. I had feared it was broken as it didn't seem to be heating up properly but he found the cause, a metal shelf bracket had become jammed where there flame comes out. Phew!

That said we manged word game and S painted this interpretation of favourite view which is the view from the top of nearby Bury Hill. At first I didn't really get it but when we drove to Arundel yesterday the sky was a forbidding colour even though the sun was trying to shine and the yellow of the rapeseed crop provided clear lines. The withered tree on the left is there whatever the season.

At ten am Weed, fresh back from holidays, arrived and I headed to the gym. Only four more Fridays of my membership left. I do enjoy the exercise and break but O really misses me and it is very disruptive. To continue yesterday's dance analogy I am moving to different music (usually pretty dire music at the gym!) and it takes a while to regain the groove with the trio! Come June I hope you use the time to do things with the trio individually. Today they played lego, making a catapult as well as paper aeroplanes and fans.

After lunch we headed to Fishers Farm. I thought the trio would appreciate a bounce in soft play whilst I relaxed on the sofa but the sun came out and O discovered the toboggan run. He also optimistically walked out across the castle then suddenly realised how high he was and froze with fear. S and E talked him down (there was no way I could have fitted up there) with such poise they could have done a hostage negation! S said she remembered from a TV show that when cats are stuck up trees the first principle is not to scare them! So, no rest whatsoever for me! Don't they know I'm nearly 40!

This was a brief moment of loveliness from E though in between several really naughty patience testing outbursts today!Why is it when I am tired or is it because I am tired!

The boys have discovered the camera on the tablet as you can see and S is keen to make a movie called Barbie and the Romans. She has been playing the Roman Mysteries game on the CBBC website and started on the Barbie script last night. Following yesterday's post I have had lots of book suggestions with evacuee themes and Weed bought this one along today. Thanks everyone.

Am very into this TV show called "Two Greedy Italians" at the moment. I made several of the recipes from last week's show and have already made the tomato & porchini sauce from yesterday. If there is a nation's food I could eat to the exclusion of all others it is Italy's!

Long As You're Living iii

Long As You're Living

 At last, a proper blog post about actual real home education and our family! Sandra Dodd writes that unschooling can be like a dance between partners and we haven't had this background tune on for a while. First stop this morning was the local library where E walked out with armfuls and S not so much. Looking at the fiction she has enjoyed so far in 2012 most of it has been series based meaning we need to know the titles and authors before we can order them in. There is little in the way of inspiration for S, 7, on the shelves of our small village library now. It would be exaggerating to say she has read every book in the place but certainly of the topics that interest her most have been borrowed. We need a new series to order in.

So far this year she has read:

The series of Jane Blonde's, great stories about a young girl who is a spy, The whole of Caroline Lawrence's Roman Mysteries Series 1-18, Katie Davis' Pet Series, The Secret Garden, box set of Horrible Histories, Several Anne Fine's and Eva Ibbotson's and the Molly Moon series by Georgia Byng.

There are other themes going along too. S's purchase of an evacuee paper doll at Halsemere Museum on Friday has lead us on to bomb shelters and talking about whether there is a bomb shelter we could go and visit anywhere near our house and, in the way that Sandra Dodd talks about connections, we discovered that a late local celebrity Anita Roddick, founder of the Body Shop, was actually born in a bomb shelter in nearby Littlehampton.

The historical paper dolls have been great. S has the whole series now. Irritatedly they only sell them to match the Key Stage National Curriculum areas of history but the market outside of that is probably rather small. Regular readers will know my opinion of the current school history curriculum and its ability to simply ignore large chunks of the past!

After the library we headed to Arundel Swing Park on Mill Road for a home ed meet-up that I posted up several months ago to mark O's 3rd birthday. On the journey there it rained so hard the wipers were unable to keep up and a large branch fell on the roof of the caravelle but, for the hour that I had posted to say we would be there, is a secular pilgrimage kind of way, the clouds parted and left us with blue uphead.

The one advantage of keeping a blog for a year is that you have the annual posts to review and I see, here and there, I have blogged that the family dynamic suits our sibling relationships best and today was no exception. S was really upset that E ignored her to play with some boys and they are still discussing it now.......O well he is asleep, how will all the banging and crashing that is accompaninging the on going loft conversion next door I am not sure but he is........

It is me, that dreaded S question, you know the socialization one, I like talking to other home ed parents about what they are up to and how they are feeling about things. The trio are really not so fussed and are very happy playing and reading at home! Love these photos with the castle in the background. The weather kept almost everyone away today but I am pleased we went back as this is where we spent the day 3 years and 3 days ago. The day before O was born and it has special memories because of that. I guess Sandra Dodd has featured in the post today too as it is a park we took her too when she visited last summer. It has a new wooden turtle.

Life After Home Education

Apologies for the photo heavy posts of the last few. Been enjoying advantage #512 of a life out of school that is being able to do whatever you like on the days around your children's birthdays!

Spent yesterday afternoon with my once virtual. rapidly becoming real, friend mother of now grown home ed children, Barb and her husband who are enjoying a mini Sussex holiday. Our initial plan was a stroll around the gardens at nearby Parham House but the weather had other plans so instead we relaxed at home a wise plan as the trio were still tired from yesterday. And after the photo overload I forgot to take a photo of Barb. Doh!

Great hearing about what grown up home educated children are up to, especially when they are headed to live around our way, outside of the well shared lists of famous home schoolers, hearing about the careers and  lives of others outside of the school system, is always interesting and affirming. We are fortunate to know several second generation home educators and families with grown unschooled children and this reminded me that Ross Mountney is bringing together information for a blog post on this subject so if you have any do make contact with Ross. Also Charlotte Rochez, who I have had the pleasure of meeting in real life,  is tudying for  a Phd in the History Of Home Based Education and would be intersted to hear from you too if you were home educating a while ago.

Fantasy

Fantasy

With a severve weather warning in place for our area today it was obvious we wouldn't be going far.

So: home made fishcakes, fimo, play-doh, word game, playing with new birthday toys and other indoor activities including a new found passion for Battle of the Planets have been the order of the day. Not complaining. E has been overtired for a few days now so home is certainly the best place!

O is Three

So, we are all odd again. At least until I get even in 6 weeks time! At 3, 5, 7 and 2 x 39 odd numbers prevail.

Green Chick Hicks, Lego Cars 2 sets, a scooby doo suitcase and a very happy birthday boy spent the morning with his Grandma and Grandie. Sibling birthdays are always difficult for those without.