Unplugged?

Does wireless count? Thought not!

About time we start our first Unplugged Project then!

Starting a blog: Take two!

There have been loads of things in the last four weeks that I would have liked to have blogged; there was the snow, Sarah's birthday party, her seventh birthday, walking up one of the Malvern Hills with my parents and plenty of other things that I can't remember right now. Then there are all those little 'educational' moments like Bill counting and wanting to know how to write the initial letter of his name, Percy taking a guess at reading some words based on their initial sound, and Sarah coming up with the idea of separating alfalfa seeds from rice using a sieve. The fact that I'm struggling to remember many examples even though I know that there have been loads of these moments is a good reminder of why I wanted to start a blog in the first place. Must try harder this time!

Today was our busy HE day. We went to French Club this morning which is conveniently held in a lovely arts cafe so we got there early and had croissants for breakfast. Usually Bill and I go and do a few errands whilst the older two are at French but I was still drinking my tea and Bill was still eating his croissant when the class started so we stayed in to watch today. Sarah was really keen to participate today although she forgot how to say how old she is despite practising on the way! Percy introduced himself well and appeared to enjoy joining in the actions to the songs and rhymes but was reluctant to speak too much. This isn't unusual for him and we are really lucky that the French teacher is very patient and understanding; he always speaks to all the children and gives them a turn but never pushes them to answer just moves on to the next child.

After French we went to Oxfam to get the dried mango that the children like and as usual I picked up a couple of books. Meanwhile Percy was looking at the toys and found two of the Power Ranger figures that we were looking to replace, still in their packaging. I never have that kind of luck in charity shops!

We went home, the children played and I caught up with a few emails. We had lunch and I looked up a playdough recipe on the internet only to find that we had no salt. I decided that I would buy the salt on the way to our HE meeting and make the playdough there instead of interupting the children's play.

Today was the HE meeting that my friend and I run together. There were two families there that I haven't met before and both seemed really nice. One live in the same town as us and the other live not far from us and have a seven year old girl who Sarah got on really well with. As usual most of the children spent most of the time outside. Sarah, Percy and Bill were all playing Power Rangers with some of their friends, none of whom had known anything about Power Rangers before today!

Tonight Sarah took herself off to bed about 8 o'clock, Bill came and asked for 'mummy milk' and went to sleep on the sofa about an hour later and Percy played a game which involved lining up his plastic dinosaurs and soft animal toys and numbering them, starting at 50 and working backwards! Eventually he came give me a cuddle and fell asleep shortly after asking me to leave his toys out so that he can play the same game in the morning!

Time for me to go to sleep now I think. I have plans for a blog-worthy day tomorrow!

Another HE Wednesday!

Today Sarah and Percy went to French club whilst Bill and I went and did a bit of shopping in town. Bill is reasonably cooperative now as long as I buy him a packet of crisps (for breakfast!)and some dried mango to share with the others on the walk home and I do like being able to get a few jobs done with just one child in tow rather than three! Hopefully, later this year Bill will go to French club too and I will be able to get my hair cut on my own!


We walked home only stopping in the park to run about on the skate-ramp area and I had to hide my smile as I noticed an older lady giving the children funny looks. I'm sure that she didn't approve of three obviously school-aged children (I had an extra one) and a slightly younger one running about in the late morning. If she had asked, I was going to tell her that they had had their French lesson and were now doing P.E. and then reminded myself that I shouldn't be using school-talk anyway...we don't do school. At home the children played, had lunch and played some more whilst I made biscuits to take to our HE group.


After lunch, we went to the HE group that I help run. Today one of the mum's had brought marshmallows and dried spaghetti to build structures (very sticky!), another had brought some cress seeds to sow in yoghurt pots and we had the ever popular playdough table. As usual the children dipped into each of these activities but mostly played their own games outside. I saw Bill playing with lots of bigger children. Apparently he was a monkey being fed by the older children. I saw Sarah organising a 'sport club' and also teaching ballet to three boys all older than herself. I saw Percy joining in with Sarah's sports club until about an hour before the meeting ended when I found him hiding by the car. He refused to tell me what the matter was and would not return to play with his friends. Knowing him as I do, I thought that he was probably embarrassed about something so I reassured him that whatever had happened nobody else seemed to be upset about it and he had nothing to worry about. He seemed a bit happier but chose to stay in the car until five minutes before leaving when he finally couldn't resist swinging around a pole with some friends!

Also, today was the first time that I have had to deal with an 'incident of inappropriate behaviour'. My friend, with whom I run the group, and I had talked about how we might handle such situations but when it actually happened she had gone home early! Anyway I spoke to the mother of the child and hope that she will speak to him before the next meeting and that it will not happen again.

As usual, Bill was asleep by the time we got home and we had to rush to get Sarah ready for Rainbows. K came to collect her son and Percy watched Star Wars...again!

Baking and fractions

When Sarah came home from her friend's yesterday she told me that she had eaten their home-made lemon curd and it was delicious. So today, not wanting to be outdone by other HEing families, we made some too! Sarah did most of it herself with just a bit of 'help' zesting and juicing the lemons from Bill! When we had made the lemon curd we decided that we needed to make lemon tarts. At which point Percy arrived in the kitchen announcing that his tummy was hungry so we stopped for cheese sandwiches. After lunch the older two disappeared of to play a game that appears to involve most of their Power Ranger figures and My Little Ponies. So I assumed that lemon tart making had been postponed.

An hour later, Sarah came down to ask if I've made the lemon curd tarts yet! I said that I hadn't because I thought that she might have wanted to make them with me. She said she was busy playing at the moment and I agreed to make some later. It wasn't long before she was back to tell me that she was ready to make the tarts!


Whilst we were getting ready I asked Sarah to turn the dial on the oven half way round. It wasn't until the tarts had been in the oven that I saw that she had only turned it a quarter of the way round to only 100'C. I called her to show her what temperature I had wanted the oven which led to a spontaneous lesson on fractions on the back of an envelope! I drew around one of the pastry cutters and asked her to divide it into two halves and then into quarters. She did all of this without a problem. I took the opportunity to show her the notation for writing one half and one quarter and we saw that one half was two quarters and that one half plus one quarter was three-quarters. To be fair to her I think that the mistake she made with the oven setting was that she had thought that the dial turned from 'off' at the top to 'on' at the bottom so she turned the dial to halfway between these two points.

Just an ordinary Monday!

This morning, Sarah painted her paint-your-own-mug that she won in the pass the parcel at party yesterday. When she had finished she chopped the mushrooms and garlic for our lunch.

After lunch, the children played outside with the puppy whilst I did a few jobs. Then I took Sarah and Percy to play at a friend's house. I think that they ended up playing mostly with the dad whilst the little girl played with her other friend. They came home with a bag full of apples from their friend's garden.

They spent all evening watching Power Rangers and were still watching it when I got home at 10.30! Just as well they haven't got to be up for school in the morning!

Last week

I've been thinking about whether to start this blog all week and have taken photos just in case. It would be a shame not to use them so I'll start this blog with a mammoth week-long post. Here goes!

Saturday - Birthday Party

The children were invited to a 5th birthday party with a princess theme. Sarah had to decide between wearing her Disney 'Belle' dress or her other princess dress. She chose the latter (I was pleased as I prefer that one!) and adorned herself with a necklace, bracelet and the tiara thing that I wore on my wedding day. Percy put on his best shirt with his knight tunic over the top and armed himself with his sword. He decided that he was Prince Caspian. I tied an orange play-silk around Bill's neck as a cape and put a felt crown on his head. He said he was King Aslan. When Sarah heard that her brothers were Narnian royalty she decided to be High Queen Susan of Narnia. The children all enjoyed the party and I found about a ballroom class for Sarah.

After the party we went to our local Pets At Home to buy more puppy food and had to resist buying a rabbit, guinea pig and a russian hamster and left talking about the possibility of getting a kitten. The truth is we're only just managing to cope with owning a puppy and plan to get chickens sometime too!

Monday - Shopping (or Numeracy, if you prefer!)

Today Sarah's new till arrived in the post. She was given it for Christmas but unfortunately the solar powered calculator didn't work so we had to send it back and the one that arrived today was its replacement. Naturally she wanted to play with it straight away! So with the help of Percy and Bill, we set to work collecting toys and books for Sarah to sell in her shop and then Sarah made price labels. She glanced at our homemade number poster on the wall a few times, presumably to remind herself which way round to write some of the numbers. She then gave me some play money in a purse and opened her shop. She knew how to use her calculator to add up the prices to find the total and I showed her how to work out the amount of change to give. Eventually we swapped places and Sarah was the customer.

I had to take photos of Bill mixing his playdough because he was sitting next to Sarah saying "and me, and me" and of course, he is so gorgeous! Percy was not in the mood to be photographed.

Tuesday - Catching dreams

For a long time now, Percy has been asking to make a dreamcatcher. He probably found out about them from something on cbeebies, I don't know. Anyway, he gets bad dreams from time to time and seems to believe that a dreamcatcher will stop them. Percy threaded his own beads and I wrapped the wool around the frame for him. Sarah did hers with very little help.

Arranged for Sarah to go to ballet on another day so that she can still go to drama as well.

The best cottage pie ever!

All the children helped me use the leftovers from Sunday lunch to make a cottage pie this afternoon. They all ate lots and Sarah made up a song full of praise for it!

Wednesday - Poorly children

Wednesdays are our 'HE days'. Sarah and Percy go to French club very early in the morning and in the afternoon we go to our local HE social groups. We have two that we regularly go to, one of which I help to run, and they both meet fortnightly on alternate weeks. Therefore we always have somewhere to go to on Wednesday afternoons. This week we were all meeting at a local soft play place whilst a new venue for one of our usual groups was being rearranged.

However, it was clear very early this morning that we were going to have to rearrange our plans as Percy had woken up with a cold and was wheezing quite a bit. Although he's not really affected by asthma most of the time, both Percy and Sarah do seem prone to asthma symptoms when they have a cold (I blame their father's dodgy genes!). Anyway it seemed unfair that Sarah should miss French club because her brother was ill so I arranged for a friend, whose child also goes to French club, to take her. Just before our friend arrived to collect her, I thought that she also sounded slightly wheezy so gave her a puff on the inhaler. When our friend collected Sarah she offered to take her to the soft play this afternoon as well so I sent Sarah of with an inhaler and told my friend that Sarah knew how to use it. Sarah arrived home saying that she had had a good time but was absolutely exhausted and wheezing quite a bit. She put her pyjamas on straight away and was asleep on the settee by twenty past five!

Meanwhile, Percy slept most of the day only waking up every now and again to tell me that he couldn't breathe which meant that I got to spend the day with just Bill. This is something that rarely happens and we both enjoyed it. Although, I had forgotten how boring playing Bob the Builder games on the cbeebies website over and over again can be!

Thursday - A restful day

The children seemed much better this morning but needed a calm restful day. They played and watched dvds.

Friday - Impromptu HE outing!

This morning I was unusually organised. I went downstairs before the children, who were busy playing a game that seemed to draw from both Narnia and Star Wars, to make them eggy bread for breakfast. After breakfast they went back to their game and I made soup and bread ready for lunch with our friends and then started preparing tea for tonight. Whilst I was doing this, a good friend and ex-neighbour, who I don't see so often any more, popped round for a cup of tea. She was very impressed with how clean and tidy my kitchen was and that I was preparing proper food! Then dh's carpenter friend arrived to measure our doorways so that he can adjust a door to fit our smaller then standard doorway and make us a sliding door for the kitchen.

Fortunately our other friends were running slightly late and arrived just after the other had gone. The children found things to play with and eventually even the puppy calmed down. After lunch we decided to walk the dog at a local field and bumped into another HE family around the corner just as they were about to take their puppy out too. So three mums, two very excited puppies, and eleven nearly as excited children had a lovely walk in the cold sunshine. After our friends went home, the children decided to watch their Power Rangers dvds after a discussion during tea about which episode Bill's favourite character first appears.

I've spent the whole evening starting this blog! Tomorrow, hopefully I'll work out how to upload photos so that I publish this post.

Saturday

...was spent rearranging the house so that we could get our new-to-us sofa bed in.

Sunday - Another Birthday Party

Today we went to a joint 4th and 29th birthday party. The birthday girls are mother and daughter and we have known them since the little girl was a very little baby and they were one of the first HE families we met.

My children all enjoyed the party, especially the parachute games. Actually, I think that my children would quite like to adopt the grandparents and uncle from the other family!

Now I really am going to upload the photos and publish this post before it gets any longer!

Introduction

I am a full-time mum to three lovely children who don't go to school. Instead they play and learn in their own way in their own time with help and guidance from me when they want/need it. In this blog they will be referred to using the pseudonyms Sarah, Percy and Bill. I have taken these names from the book Owl Babies by Martin Waddell because my husband often has to read this book replacing the owls' names with our children's names so I've decided to do the reverse here. Sarah is nearly 7, Percy is 5 and Bill is 3.

And for those of you who are wondering, I haven't read E.Nesbit's The Railway Children although it is on my list of children's classics that I haven't read but will read one day! The title is a reference to how close to the railway we live. However, having read the synopsis, I can tell you that the similarities between my railway children and those in the book are that there are three of them, they don't go to school and they live close to the railway. The differences are that most of my children's adventures are with their mum, or at least with her close by, and that their dad is not imprisoned for espionage!

I intend to use this blog primarily, although not exclusively, as a journal to record the things my children get up to and my thoughts and observations as I watch them grow. Of course, there will probably be many rants and rambles, sorry, I mean posts, about plenty of other things as I go along.