Saturday

by Liz Posted on August 8, 2010

Saturday

Mr Bat declared that his plan for the weekend involved cleaning the whole house on Saturday, so that Sunday could be a relaxing day. He and the kids brainstormed the fun stuff they wanted to do, and made a deal that they would help him clean the house as fast as possible so that they could get on to the fun stuff for the rest of the weekend. He instituted “helpful points” as a framework for remembering what they were working towards. I was a bit blah about that approach at first, but I have to admit it kept K excited and motivated for the entire day. She did an enormous amount of work without the need for anything except a bit of direction where to start next when she’d finished a task. H wandered in and out but wasn’t as motivated as K by the whole structure of work now->fun later, so DH just gave him a symbolic helpful point whenever he did anything and didn’t try to use it to get him to do anything when he didn’t want to. So I guess in the end it worked out better than I was anticipating. I was impressed that K was able to understand that it worked on two different levels for her and H and didn’t insist that there had to be some equal definition of “helpful” (as B probably would have).

I did a bit of cleaning in the morning, but mostly used my uninterrupted brainspace for planning. Given K’s interest in doing more structured learning, I figured a good place to start would be to make up a bunch of different self-contained exercises which I can bring out when she’s asking for things to do. I also need to find all the other manipulatives, like the pattern blocks and counting bears, then I can turn one of the empty shelves in the craft cupboard into a maths learning centre. So I went through the book K’s been into this week and made a list of all the manipulatives they called for. I’ll get DH to photocopy the first bunch of exercises, then put them each in a plastic sleeve along with the necessary manipulatives (probably in a sandwich bag to keep them together). I *could*, if I felt so inclined, even haul the laminator out of the shed to make up some numeral and operation cards to go with some of the exercises. Maybe I’ll go that far if it looks like she’ll stay interested in the system for more than a day or two, lol. Once I’d done my list, I went off, explored the second-hand shop in the village which I’ve been meaning to go into for months, had lunch, then went into Huonville and stocked up on rubber bands, paddlepop sticks and stickers.

While I was out, Mr Bat and K got so much done that they decided to go and see Toy Story 3 in the evening, and I stayed home with H. I did some more research into maths learning centres and rearranged the seasonal table, which was getting a bit tatty, and he watched Playschool. Mr Bat and K ate out after their movie, so I just fed H and me something simple then put him to bed.

Posted in DVDs, life skills, maths, movies, op shop, pattern blocks, seasonal table | Comments Off on Saturday

Thursday and Friday

by Liz Posted on August 6, 2010

Mr Bat had a half day on Thursday and worked from home, so he was available most of the day and did a fair bit with the kids that I don’t now remember. I had hunted out some more old workbooks that I had stashed about the place, so in the morning K and I went through them, and she did various pages from a phonics book (consonant blends, at which she kicked arse) and played the “jigwords” game, which involved lots of sounding out and word chunking and presented her with no trouble at all once she got the hang of it. We also looked through an old maths book which was all about using manipulatives to practise skills. We did a couple of exercises from there, and K keeps asking to do more, but we really need for me to sit down with the book one night and work out what I need to have on hand, and then organise it so that when she asks I can just pull something out, rather than feel overwhelmed by having to magic up a set of cubes or pop sticks or substitutes thereof.

The kids and I went to the library, post office and lolly shop after lunch. Our holds weren’t available, so we only borrowed two books each to make sure we didn’t fill up our cards, plus I found My Neighbour Totoro which I knew K would enjoy. We picked up a parcel at the post office, and also three postcards for the homeschool swap we’re doing. I gave K 50c at the lolly shop and told her to look at the labels and work out what she could buy with her loot. When we got home, Mr Bat finished up his work and went off to the hardware store while the kids settled in to watch the new DVD.

Friday it rained solidly almost all day. K’s passionate interest in paleontology continued, so I figured that, instead of going to craft morning, it was the perfect day to all tuck up in bed and watch Walking with Monsters, which I’ve never seen before. So we had a shameless DVD day. K ended up watching all of Walking with Dinosaurs as well, which I didn’t feel the need to sit through since I’ve seen it many times already. She asked ENDLESS questions about evolution, etc; I really wished I had a remote so that I could pause the movie while I answered them! H watched most of the monsters with us but got bored and watched Playschool in the other room instead. He also played with Duplo, and engaged in various imaginative games with me as well, and generally came in and out when he wanted connection. K was much less fractious than she usually is when she watches “too much”, because she’d spent a couple of hours connecting with me while doing so, instead of us doing our own thing all day. So that was interesting to observe.

Since they’d done bugger all physical during the day they were pretty restless in the evening, but I suggested that K go on a torchlit walk outside after dinner and look for critters, which she did until she got too cold. Then they had a bath, and Mr Bat read and told stories to H while I finished reading Little Town on the Prairie to K. We shall have to have a hiatus on Laura for the next few nights as our requested copy of These Happy Golden Years hasn’t arrived at the library yet. Poo!

Posted in duplo, DVDs, learning to read, library, Little House, maths, natural history, post office, science | Comments Off on Thursday and Friday

Wednesday

by Liz Posted on August 4, 2010

K wanted to watch Sleeping Beauty during her computer time, and was asking me to spell it for her so she could search on YouTube. I’m sick of spelling it over and over so I suggested I could write it down for her. She came up with the idea of having a book for spellings, and asked me to draw a little crown next to the words “sleeping beauty” so she would know which ones they were next time. So I did, but I put a couple of ZZZ next to it, then drew a crown and a picture of a shoe on the next line, wrote cinderella, and told her to work it out. She made her extremely funny squinched-face look which means “I am amused but I don’t want to gratify you by admitting it” and didn’t have any trouble decoding “cinderella”. Then she went off and found what she wanted on YouTube without difficulty.

H and I played a very funny impromptu game after he came to me and asked me to sing him “the piggies song” (This Little Piggy). So I did, but each time I sang it I’d change it from “piggy” to his name on one line. He’d catch me out, I’d pretend I hadn’t noticed and start singing it over again, then change it somewhere else. It lasted through five or six different nursery rhymes. He sang back to me a couple of times so I would get the word right (aww), and his pitch is great.

Then there was grumption because he wanted to watch Playschool and Mr Bat’s study is out of bounds now. I asked K to come up with something they could both watch, so she suggested Shrek and they’re happy with that. Mr Bat is trying to figure out how to share Playschool episodes by remoting in to his desktop, but so far without much success. Instead, K asked for more bookwork, so I started looking for some phonics workbooks to work on vowel sounds. I had some I quite liked (but B didn’t, lol) but I can’t find them and they probably disappeared years ago. I brought in the basket of random literacy bits and bobs I had collected, and K seized upon the flashcards and the shufflebook. She was interested in the Silly Sentences game but it’s a bit old for her at the moment. So we did the flashcards, and she had no problem recognising or figuring out any of the blended consonants. She worked out quite a lot of the words, too. After she went onto the shufflebook I finally managed to finish my menu plan and shopping list, so we went to the shops.

They were just gorgeous at the shops, it was lovely. They were a bit painful at one point when they were getting overtired, but we got through it with lots of cuddles. We went to the cheapie shop first because K is almost completely out of socks, but they didn’t have any in kids sizes (dangnabbit). I picked up another couple of the sticker books that they both passionately love, instead. Then we did the supermarket shopping and they were mostly cheerful and K wanted to help get things off the shelves for me.

When we got home, they went back to playing happily together, and eventually they discovered that, thanks to technowizardry, now they could get Playschool to work. Mr Bat got home and provided a diversion with stories and books, then a comment on a forum about megatheriums led to finding episodes of Walking With Beasts on YouTube. K was far more enthralled by that than by dinner. I foresee a new interest in fossils, perhaps. She watched that til Mr Bat’s computer ran out of battery, then it was time for Little Town on the Prairie before bed. We were up to the chapter where Pa and some of the other men put on a black and white minstrel show *cringe* so we spent quite a while talking about racism. I asked her to think about what it might be like for her friend Bee watching the show Laura described, which I think hit home for her.

Posted in computer, DVDs, learning to read, Little House, natural history, racism, science, singing | Comments Off on Wednesday

Friday-Tuesday

by Liz Posted on August 3, 2010

Gawd, I hadn’t realised it was so long since my last update…

Friday

I can’t remember a single thing we did, except that I know we went to the library and post office. It was a better day than Thursday, anyway.

Saturday

Went into Huonville to see the real estate agent and sign the contract. Then Mr Bat took the kids off to the park and have fish and chips for lunch while I did my own thing for a few hours.

Sunday

Pottered about. Mr Bat took the kids for a walk over the hill and down along the little path by the river which appears to be K’s favourite spot in the valley. I had to come and collect them because K hurt her foot and nobody really fancied walking all the way back up the hill again.

Monday

No HIP today. K complained that homeschooling is terribly boring because I never give her any work to do, and she wants to go to school (I suspect too much Laura Ingalls Wilder here!). So I suggested that we could sit down and do some bookwork if that’s what she wanted. She pulled the pile of workbooks and activity books out of the cupboard and spent an hour or so happily doing that. H and I did a sticker workbook together too. K lost interest after a while and went out to play, but we left the books out and she came past a couple of times and spent shorter periods working on them. I noted that she has totally gotten the hang of dot-to-dots now and can make a recognisable picture with the straight lines from number to number (last time she went through a dot-to-dot stage the lines wavered all over the place while she looked for the next number). She has absolutely no problem with identifying onset phonemes from a picture/word puzzle. And her pattern-matching is improving (eg. she’s getting the hang of those puzzles where you have to match the shadow to the shape).

Apart from that, we went to check the mail and buy some butter, then came home and made playdough. They also spent heaps of time in the garden playing together and getting stuck in trees. And in the evening, when I got into making dinner plus biscuits plus quiche for the park meet and was thus too distracted to interact much, they played happily on the computer together til Mr Bat came home. K and I are still reading Little Town on the Prairie, and Mr Bat has been telling stories and reading library books in the evening.

Tuesday

I made hummus for snacks, and ballasted the kids with porridge, then we headed off to the park meet at Long Beach. We got there around 11, and the kids raced off and played tirelessly for hours. Mostly in the playground with the other kids, but we did spend at least an hour by ourselves on the little beach with the kids getting sandy and wet and collecting shells and beach glass and chasing seagulls. There were remarkably few dramas between the kids, although there was one rather unpleasant little kid from outside our group who was harassing K briefly. One of the dads was there and got into playing hilarity-filled games of chasies with the kids, and a couple of random kids who wanted to join in. So by the time we left, around 4:30, the kids were totally knackered. By some miracle I managed to keep them awake all the way home, so I fed them a quick dinner, stuck both of them in the bath to get off the ingrained sand and grime, and then books and bed.

Posted in beach, books, computer, garden, library, Little House, playdough, playground, workbooks | Comments Off on Friday-Tuesday

Recent stuffs

by Liz Posted on July 29, 2010

Because I can’t be arsed trying to remember it in chronological order

  • We used this site to find out how many days until K’s birthday, and until H’s birthday. She wants to make a calendar so she can cross off days, but I pointed out that this would have been easier if they hadn’t recently broken the printer…
  • K managed to get the Counting Bears down from the top of the cupboard (I have no idea how) and spent ages arranging them in different ways. I still haven’t tracked down the last of them, though *sigh* H found them irresistible and kept disappearing with them. 
  • made two lots of muffins, to use up old fruit and veg that the kids had left lying around. I now have committed the multi-purpose fruit muffin recipe I found to memory, and it is BRILLIANT.
  • K picked two more costumes from the African paper dolls book for me to cut out. They turned out to be from Ghana, so I found a kids’ site with info about Ghana in case she was interested.
  • K wanted me to make her a bow with a stick and some wool. She had some arrows and couldn’t think of how to carry them, so I found a long narrow box in the busy box, cut offset slits in it to thread a belt through (bandolier style), and buckled it on as a quiver. She was Most Impressed. I think that she would enjoy going to watch some SCA archery, since she plays with a bow quite a lot.
  • Thursday was gloriously sunny, so K took her bow outside and played happily for quite a while. H went out occasionally too, but mostly in order to get stuck in trees.
  • K clearly remembered my restaurant set-up earlier in the week, because she dragged the oven back into the living room and set it all up again, and then she and H spent ages playing together. There was a kerfuffle when I got K a chair, on request, but didn’t get one for H because a) there was no space and b) it would be silly when the “table” they were using would have been more of a footrest. Luckily I rescued the situation by giving H a cushion to sit on and telling him it was a Japanese restaurant so of course he couldn’t have a chair, lol. Flurf and one of the dolls had to have a pillow to sit on as well. H was appeased and they got on with their game.
  • The kitchen is covered with chopped bits of paper because K spent half an hour trying to work out how to make her teddy bear a paper tutu. I was actually rather impressed at her perseverance: she would try it on the bear, it wouldn’t fit, she’d make a disgusted noise, chuck it over her should and get on with the next one. She didn’t ask for help and I didn’t wade in and try and do it for her. Eventually she clearly decided Meh to the whole idea, and went and did something else. VERY different from B’s (*cough* and my *cough*) impatience and perfectionism.
  • H is getting more and more interested in sitting down and “reading” books to himself. I haven’t seen K do it much recently, though. She seems to be cycling through a more imaginative mental space, right now.
  • Computers didn’t go on until after 4:30 on Wednesday, but we hit a bit of a screen rut today. K watched too much Moomins on YouTube, and H watched too much Playschool. Still need to find a better way of keeping us all engaged and connected on at-home days; it’s too hit-and-miss at the moment. I don’t want to have a routine, but we could do with *something* more in the way of structure.
  • I am an eejit and forgot to take the due-on-Sunday DVDs back earlier this week when I was in town, so when I finally remembered about it, Mr Bat took the kids off before dinner and returned them.
  • K was extremely helpful this evening in tidying up the chaos they had created in Daddy’s study. H, despite being the author of most of it, was rather less so. K also seems to have internalised doing the washing up as a “Laura job”, which means she wants to do it. H just likes getting wet, so he’s happy to help her. I’m still working on convincing her that making beds and collecting kindling are also “Laura jobs”.
  • Still reading Little Town on the Prairie before bed. Tonight involved a discussion of corsetry, and trying out how small a waist would have to be before it could be encircled by two hands (hint: smaller than my 2yo’s). Hardest was trying to explain why the hell you would torture yourself like that!

Brains iz sleepy naow. We probably did heaps more than that but buggered if I can remember what…

Posted in africa, baking, craft, DVDs, garden, imaginative play, learning to read, life skills, Little House, maths, sca | Comments Off on Recent stuffs

Tuesday

by Liz Posted on July 27, 2010

Dragged ourselves out of the house around 11ish for a 10:30 park meet being held at a park nearly an hour’s drive away. Um, yeah *blush* When we got there A positively leapt on K and dragged her away – I think they’ve missed each other. Gorgeous park, heaps to do, and enclosed so I could leave the two of them to do their own thing and chat with friends. A highlight was watching a long line of 4-7yo girls (including some strangers they had roped into their games) trying to negotiate the climbing equipment while holding hands in a line. Much giggling ensued *crosses “collaborative play” off checklist* L mentioned having a park meet next week and maybe more regularly – yes please!

After I could finally drag them away from there, we went to Kingston and ate lunch, dropped briefly in at Vinnies to look for more pants for H and long-sleeved Ts for K, then did the F&V shopping. Considering that I got slapped with a $150 speeding fine this morning (buggrit) I figured we could skip the rest of the weekly shop and eat from the pantry this week so it doesn’t bite too hard into savings.

H was asleep by the time we got home (around 4) and when he woke up he was grumpy, so I tucked him up in Mr Bat’s bed and put on Playschool. K was playing Starfall again, then watched something else. We played tic-tac-toe, although K got very disgruntled when I kept winning despite the number of times I pointed out how she could stop me from getting three in a row (she kept ignoring me!). When Mr Bat got home, there was story-telling, books, and voyaging outside with a torch to look for the possums before dinner. Then they had a long bath, and K and I read another 20 pages of Little Town on the Prairie before bed.

Posted in books, DVDs, learning to read, Little House, op shop, playground | Comments Off on Tuesday

Monday

by Liz Posted on July 26, 2010

This morning I finally stopped procrastinating about sewing the iron-on mender onto my worn-out jeans and brown cords. The jeans are only just starting to wear through but the cords are definitely on their last, ahem, legs (sorry). K, who was playing on Starfall when I initially invited her to come and watch me, wandered past later and was intrigued by what I was doing, so I showed her how it all worked. Alas, that was probably the last really productive thing that happened today. I had intended to take them out to HIP, but K started complaining of a tummy ache. Since Mr Bat’s Pernicious Lurgi has prominently featured nausea and tummy cramps, I didn’t want to take the risk of exposing the other kids to something potentially infectious. So we stayed home.

They were whinging round my feet, asking for various different movies and generally behaving as though they were totally unable to think of anything to do that didn’t involve a screen, so to kickstart their imaginations I set up the toy kitchen in the living room, put out some suggestive dress-ups like aprons and handbags, and upturned a basket to use as a table. I was hoping they would take it further and play shops or restaurants or something, but it didn’t quite grab them. But then, since K was complaining bitterly about her sore tummy and lay down on the couch, I did successfully redirect it into a game of hospitals. H was the hospital head cook, and Flurf the teddy bear and K were the patients. He handed meal trays around, and they kept that going for a while. Eventually K’s tummy stopped hurting, and they played outside in the garden (including throwing branches onto the road and climbing into the ditches where they’re not allowed to go. Aargh). While they were outside and temporarily not distracting me, I got an idea for a parenting article and did some research and tried to organise my thoughts for that. After they got too wet and muddy in the garden they got out the farm and animals and played with that for a while, and we read through the pile of library books and another bunch of books from off the shelf. H and I also told each other stories – he is really getting into that as a pastime! Today’s inventions involved lots of horses, Big Bad Wolves (what else) and cuddles.

Eventually I was tired of reading and too knackered to help them think of any other alternatives to DVDs, so around 3:30 or so I decided to watch something with them. I picked Life in the Undergrowth because wildlife docos are about the only things I can actually sit through these days. K and I were both fascinated but unfortunately H was very restless and didn’t want to sit still, so it wasn’t entirely a success. I think he must be going through some kind of a growth spurt because he did.not.stop.eating all day. It drove me bonkers to be having to get him food what felt like every half an hour. When the episode of Life in the Undergrowth finished K watched her own shows,but H couldn’t settle at one thing for more than five minutes and drove me totally insane. He was obviously really overtired, poor monkey.

We had a quick, late dinner of bean and pasta soup after Mr Bat came home and cleaned the kitchen, then he sang H songs for all of about 30 seconds until he fell asleep, and I started on Little Town on the Prairie with K. And I really need an early night, because clearly I am not getting enough sleep to be much chop at this parenting lark. I just had a look around the place for something I could set up on the table to amuse them when they get up, and I could not think of a single thing to do. I need a bit more sparkle in our lives…

Posted in books, DVDs, games, garden, learning to read, life skills, Little House, natural history, playgroup, sewing, story telling | Comments Off on Monday

Sunday

by Liz Posted on July 25, 2010

Today was pretty nothingish. Mr Bat was staying in bed resting his lurgified self and doing some more work on his volunteer project, having finished his paid one last night. I cracked the shits around lunchtime and asked him to take a week off and spend it getting a decent amount of sleep and spending time with his children.

I was doing some journalling in my bedroom a bit later on and the kids decided to communicate with me by sticking notes under my bedroom door. K is obviously a pedant in the making – she wrote me a note saying “I want to make something” and spelled want as w’ – when I asked her, she said it was because she didn’t know the rest of the word so she put an apostrophe in there to indicate that there were missing letters, lol. That’s my girl! (The note was spelled “I w’ to mk sfi”, and she explained that she had sounded out the words to try and work out what letters to use). Then she wrote another one saying “I w’ to mec a paper cron” (she asked me to spell “paper crown” for her). So we made paper crowns and K decorated them with flowers she cut out of some wrapping paper.

Mr Bat took them out to the cafe at the bottom of our hill to get hamburgers for lunch, but that was about the only excursion we made. It was a very cocooning sort of a day. The kids watched The Magic Pudding (on loan from the library) and a BBC nature DVD I bought at the op shop yesterday – Ant Attack and Spiders from Mars (they were much less silly and melodramatic than the titles, although there was some annoying camera work inflicted on poor David Attenborough in the spider one). Mr Bat cooked dinner, and then took H off to bed for music til he went to sleep, and I finished reading The Long Winter to K. She wasn’t tired after that, so watched the ant DVD again until she was ready to go to bed.

I followed some rabbit trails on-line and discovered that there is a nearby Raptor Refuge near Kettering, although it doesn’t appear to be regularly open to the public. From there, I found SOAR, a site for kids, and a link to Soaring: A Tasmanian Wedge-Tailed Eagle Kit, produced by a Tasmanian wind energy company, Roaring40s. I reckon we should join the raptor refuge and go to the members’ open day, if they have another one in September this year. That would be awesome if it’s on while B is here!

Posted in craft, DVDs, learning to read, Little House, natural history, natural learning, writing | Comments Off on Sunday

Saturday

by Liz Posted on July 24, 2010

Another late night last night. H and I got up around 8am, but K slept in longer, as did MrBat (or at least, attempted to). I think K was playing online games in the morning for a while. I don’t know what else they did, because I went out at midday for a women’s circle/crafty afternoon and Mr Bat attempted to amuse kidlets while still suffering from his week-long attack of the Pernicious Lurgi.

I got home around sixish and Mr Bat retreated to work on his projects and I small-wrangled. H wanted some concentrated attention, and was also very excited about his discovery that he is almost tall enough to turn light switches on and off, so he turned all the lights off then we sat in the living room in the dark and watched the fire and had cuddles and told stories to each other. Because I am crap at telling stories but my children have recently become convinced of my genius and started demanding story-story-story on a regular basis, I am developing my collaborative story-telling game where I start them off, get to a suitable cliffhanger, and let them keep going. Tis lots of fun! In H’s stories, things tend to get eaten by dragons and big bad wolves, TheEnd, but K is getting into spinning long convoluted tales. My favourite this afternoon involved a family of carrots who met a fairy godmother and asked to be turned into people so that they wouldn’t get eaten…

After dinner and more cuddles and books, H went and listened to music with Mr Bat until he fell asleep, and K and I read some more of The Long Winter. When Almanzo gets back from his epic trip with frozen feet, we talked about frostbite, circulation, gangrene etc. She wasn’t particularly tired when we finished but it was very late and I wanted some peace and quiet, so I suggested she could take a torch into bed with her and look at books or play quietly with her toys until she was tired. She liked that idea. Mr Bat came in to sing songs after a little while, then left her playing with her torch, and she stayed happily in bed with it until she went to sleep. Very painless: will try again if needed.

Posted in computer, Little House, story telling | Comments Off on Saturday

Thursday and Friday

by Liz Posted on July 23, 2010

Thursday was a bit of a waste of a day. H woke me up in exactly the wrong point in my sleep cycle and then refused to go to sleep for over an hour, aargh. Plus my bleed was due, so it was pretty clear that there was going to be a higher than usual level of Grumpy Mummy for the rest of the day. The kids played together beautifully for at least four hours, but when they got bored playing by themselves I was a bit of a failure at interacting with them. I wish we had gotten out of the house to the usual library and post office day, but despite actually getting everybody ready to go out, we never made it out the door for one reason or another. Playschool went on after 4 or so in Mr Bat’s study, and shortly afterwards they broke the B&W printer while arsing around. So that was not a huge success. We had a massive clean-up in the evening and having a clean house is a great mood improver around here.

Friday we all slept in late, thanks to late bedtimes and more nocturnal partying from both smalls this time, so Mr Bat ended up working from home, since he’s sick anyway. I didn’t try to make it to Katy’s for craft in the morning, given that neither kid woke up until after 10am. Instead, our landlord dropped in for a cuppa and to check on various things which needed fixing, then I shovelled porridge into the kids and got them ready to go out. I suggested to Katy that we met up at the park in Huonville, instead of coming over late and potentially overwhelming already wired-up kids, as happened the last time we were running this late on a Friday. So we went to the post office and library then headed off to the park. We met up with three families there and it all went absolutely smashingly. The kids played with virtually no altercations for three hours straight and had to be dragged off protestingly when it got too cold and close to sundown for us mums. Back home to read the new library books, and a trip to the hardware store with Mr Bat to buy a locking doorknob to keep them out of his study after the printer debacle, then watching two newly-downloaded Playschool episodes which Mr Bat had put on K’s computer. After dinner the kids pootled til Mr Bat put H to bed and I read to K (we’re almost finished The Long Winter). They were late to bed again tonight, so hopefully won’t be sleeping in til lunchtime tomorrow…

Posted in books, library, Little House, playground, post office | Comments Off on Thursday and Friday