The Brick House

Yesterday was a very busy day for E and the girls. They went out in the morning to get E’s comics, and dropped in on a local school fete for fairy floss, patting zoo and rides. Then they came back, collected me, and we all went off to the mall, had lunch together, and then B and I had some mama-daughter bonding time. We picked up a present “from” Rosy to K, and K and E went off and found one for B. I also picked up a little stocking something for B which caught my eye *she says mysteriously* They dropped me off home again and picked up some nice clothes for the evening, before heading off for yet another school fete. After that they met up with E’s parents at his aunt’s birthday party, and he swapped the carseat over to their car so that he could come home and fall in a heap. They stayed out til 10pm and apparently the girls had a lovely time and weren’t overtired and ratty at all. But we all slept in this morning *g*

B set off this morning for a day of sailing with Cubs, but when E went down a while later to drop off a jumper (it being colder than she had prepared for), he discovered that the sailing had been cancelled due to the high winds. Disappointing, as B loves sailing, but can’t be helped. We had hopes that grandparents would like some more time with their grandchildren, but apparently they think they can have their own lives or something. Huh 😉 E is currently upstairs doing some of his overdue subcontracting work, and B and K have come in after spending ages playing together in the garden, and are now watching TV. I am nominally in charge of them but they are not being very demanding, so I am heroically tackling the mounds of dry laundry so that I have room on the racks to hang up some more. If this baby would just arrive I would have an excuse to let other people do all that, darn it!

We made it out to the markets this afternoon, and now I am exhausted. B is upstairs on the computer, K is watching Play School, and E is working. I am contemplating doing some cooking for the freezer, if E does some washing up first… Instead, E got sidetracked doing B’s internet connection in the playroom, and I got sidetracked making K a pirate’s costume when she started trying to put one together herself from a hankie and a large earring. We got quite ambitious, and have some gorgeous shots of our piratical lass *g*

Oh joy. I had just finished adding a new spelling list and setting up all our web-based programs, and was about to get B to sit down after she’d finished her breakfast…and the connection from the router to the internet fell in a heap yet again. In fact it did so twice – for only a few minutes the first time, but over an hour at time of writing. I am fucking sick of this!

Luckily yesterday I recorded the science shows (chemistry and genetics) on ABC schools’ TV in the morning, so B could watch them instead. At least they tie into the science we’re focusing on. The genetics show started with the history of the discovery of the mechanics of inheritance and genes as well as the basic science, so that is pretty useful. They finished just in time for her to flick over to today’s educational programming and watch Real Chinese. We should think of some things she can do with Lily to add another dimension to this (she’s already expressed an interest in learning to speak Mandarin), so I can write it up as a “unit” in Social Studies. Need to take photos of her with Lily for a start *g* She is now watching a show about forensics, but with a promise that it will go off at 12pm and we’ll do some Math-u-see or some reading if the intertubes aren’t back again by then *bangs head on wall*

K and I found a magnetic book about animals in the cupboard which I bought ages ago, so she has been sitting next to me sorting the animals out into their ecosystems (rather eccentrically *g*). We had a look through the cupboard and she briefly played with an egg-carton full of buttons and the Brainy Blocks, but wasn’t hugely interested in either. The Brainy Blocks were requested a couple of times during the rest of the afternoon, though. She’s also done some cutting out and drawing, and I pulled together an activity using magnets to sort between a pot of magnetic and non-magnetic items, which she loved playing with. She pulled out her rice basket later on, and we also tried out a suggestion I had read earlier for a fine motor activity – using trainer-chopsticks (the kind with the spring at the top) to pick up dry beans. K couldn’t quite manage the beans (although B had fun sorting them into cups using a real pair of chopsticks – we should get her to practise that way more often!), so I gave her another pot full of big beads and she had more success with that. I had to take the beans away from her when she started trying to eat them, though! She has been nappy-free all day and using the potty very reliably, without even needing a reminder most of the time. My big grown-up girl 🙂

[Later]

We have the intertubes! But we started with Math-u-see anyway. I’m not happy with B’s grasp of multiplication as demonstrated by the Smartkiddies stuff, and there is nothing I’ve seen on their website that really gets to grips with teaching the fundamental skills. I don’t think that attempting to get her to learn the times tables is going to do a bit of good if she doesn’t understand the principles behind it, and that is where the Math-u-see stuff is really brilliant. So we opened up the Gamma (multiplication) pack and watched the first two lessons before heading out into the garden to blow the cobwebs out of her brain. She picked up a book I’d found in the cupboard (Contrary Mary) and read it to K while I was making lunch. After that she did the first lesson page in MUS while K played with the manipulatives, then we gave up for the day. In the evening B had Scouts, and K went to the mall with Daddy to get some shopping.

Recap of the last two days:

B was out at the farm from Tuesday evening to late Thursday afternoon. Mum said they did some spelling and maths in the morning on Wednesday. The homeschooling group meet on Thursday was a tour and workshop at the new glassworks, which B adored. She was too young to be in the hot glass or beadmaking workshops, but she did get to make same kind of kiln glass art they did last year at Kirstie Rea’s studio. Afterwards there was a picnic, but I’m not sure how long they stayed there before ending up at Caitlin’s place til fiveish. K was very sad that Nannie only had time to drop B off on her way home – she appears to believe that any time Nannie arrives means she gets to go to the park *g* A very woeful little being she was when she realised that this was not the case… B also watched Catalyst in the evening, and had a discussion (which eventually became a productive one although it started out pretty badly) with all of us about how she was feeling apprehensive about being bumped out of our attention by the arrival of Rosy.

B was out at the farm today, but K and I have kept ourselves tolerably well amused. After spending an hour in the garden this morning in a pooey nappy but refusing to come inside so I could change her, she’s been mostly out of nappies this afternoon, with only one accident.

Ness came over to visit later in the afternoon, and K was very intrigued by baby Aiden. We built a marble run and played with that, also with her “treasure box” (beads). She was getting tired and grumpy after an hour or so, so has mostly been watching TV since then. I fed her an early dinner and have hopes that she may actually go to bed early since she has not had a nap…

Today has been somewhat more productive!

In brief:

• Club Penguin
• BTN
• mockumentary on the Yellowstone supervolcano
• Most of the first Physical Sciences episode
• looked at various metric measurements, esp micrograms which was unfamiliar to her – looked at it in the context of vitamin tablets, which led to a discussion of which ones she should be taking and when, so she measured out a daily dose and had some of the pills then
• 3/5 units in the Mass module on Smartkiddies
• optometrist for K’s lazy eye

[This was written offline on Monday afternoon]

With all the internet outages we’ve been having lately, a slight flaw in our educational program has been revealed. Without Teh Intarwebs, we have nothing to do… I was in the process of working out how to log into our new Physical Sciences subscription this afternoon when the ‘net went down. Without access, we can’t use our Science curriculum, our Maths curriculum, or our spelling tutor. We can’t even listen to our only semi-regular Arts activity, the Classics for Kids internet radio show. Given how B feels about books (*burn them!*), that doesn’t leave us much to do… As it happens, when instructed to find something educational to do which didn’t involve internet access, she decided to start listening to the CD of the Horrible Histories episode The Awful Egyptians (which she followed up with an episode from another audiobook: James and the Giant Peach, then The Measly Middle Ages), which was fine by me. But I think maybe we need to diversify our program slightly *g*

When I can actually log into the CyberEd website and look at the program outline, I want to use our fairly substantial science reference library to add a prac component to the theory. We have heaps of books of experiments, and I’m hoping it won’t be completely beyond my level of scientific literacy to put them together with the theoretical outline so that there is some kind of fit. But I can’t do that til I have Teh Intarwebs either *bangs head repeatedly on the wall*

Apart from these frustrations, B did some reading and maths with Nannie at the farm this morning, before they went in for her pottery lesson. Then Nannie took B and K off to the park for a little while, before having a cup of tea and popping up to the local shops for me to buy a couple of onions (I’m trying not to drive if I can possibly avoid it because it’s so painful). Now I have the onions, I can finish converting the contents of our vege crispers into dinners, so (in the absence of anything better to do) I may as well go do that now…

We haven’t done much in the way of organised “school” this week, but today I pulled my act together a bit. B and I looked at the Playschool program notes for this week and she decided what she wanted to do with K – play with play dough. So I made some play dough, which was ready just before Playschool ended. They played happily together for three quarters of an hour – although there was a narrowly-averted tantrum from K which we managed to defuse! While everyone was at the table, I figured we could also resume our other supposedly-regular Friday activity – listening to Classics for Kids internet radio. This month is Stravinsky, which is a bonus for me since I love The Firebird and for once we have a recording to follow up without having to borrow CDs from David *g* When I turned on the TV to play the CD I discovered it was just time for Real Chinese on ABC, so B decided to watch that instead, and the nature program about baboons which followed (a rescreening of Wild Women of Viramba). K got bored with the playdough after an hour and went off to play with the dog instead, but came back to it again after a snack.

B hatched a plan to go back to Temora with Grandmoogi, and I took advantage of her continued presence in town to take both granddaughters over for spoiling while I had a nap. I also decided to cancel my final chiro appointment on the grounds that I don’t think I’ll be safe to drive… Before we left, B rounded up K (on her own intiative) and made sure they watered all the pots on the deck. When I left them, they were having fried rice cooked for them by their doting Aunt, who had also agreed with pleasure to B’s suggestion that she wanted to learn to speak Chinese…

Other stuff this week? B spent the weekend at the farm with C, and Nannie took them out to the local field days. There was no pottery on Monday – that starts next week, along with play group, so Nannie dropped the girls off here in the morning, and they took the dog for a walk to the shops, then played Club Penguin til C’s Mum arrived. Ness also came round on Monday to take belly pics, so K and B had some baby cuddles. We nearly missed my chiro appointment due to that distraction, but fortunately noticed just in time! Nannie hurt her leg on the weekend so there was no swimming on Tuesday either, but she did take both of them for a walk down to the park on Wednesday while I was at chiro. B has moved up to Intermediate classes at horse riding, which she was very pleased with. The only doctor’s appointment we could get this week was on Thursday at the same time as the HENCAST activity, so B decided to give that a miss this week in favour of trying to get something done about her feet. We’ve done some gardening most days, B has played Club Penguin and Virtual Horse Ranch and done some spelling and maths on the computer, and helped me with jobs round the house. Mostly it was a lovely relaxed week, although there was a parental melt-down last night which wasn’t very pretty! *blush*

And to avoid the likelihood of any further meltdowns, I am going to have that nap now…

This morning I actually got around to talking to B about my idea for getting her to do some of the “extension” activities with K after Play School. She was quite enthusiastic about the idea, and I headed off to the shower this morning to the scene of them playing toy hospital *g* B has gone back to her computer but K has taken the idea and run with it – she is currently “on the phone” to the doctor. A nice change to find her playing independently – she must just have gotten into a rut about turning to Play School whenever she was bored and with a little bit of redirection (and the ability to find her toys and have floor space for playing!) she’s getting back into imaginative play again.

Yesterday we didn’t do much. B decided not to go to pottery in favour of coming with us to playgroup. Given that the next playgroup isn’t til October 22nd it’s doubtful that we’ll get back there before the baby arrives, so it was nice to catch up with so many people there. We had a couple of hours at home between playgroup and my chiropractor appointment at 2:30, but didn’t really get all that much done. B did help a lot in the evening when she cooked herself a meat sauce for nachos. I told her I was only cooking one sauce, which would contain kidney beans and could contain meat if she was prepared to live with the beans, and she opted to cook a separate sauce instead. She even decided by herself to use the food processor to whizz up onion and capsicum to add extra nutrition. I am impressed with the way she is taking responsibility for her own health more and more lately.

This morning I got up really early (6am) so had gotten through my waking up routine early enough that my computer was free when B decided she wanted to get started at about 8:30. She did her -tion spelling list practise, then did the test, and got 10/10. Then she did an addition assessment task on Smartkiddies, for practice. I was very impressed with the way that when she made a mistake she went back over the question until she figured out what she’d done wrong and gotten the right answer.

She has also built a large cubby house in the playroom, done the chickens, and is now watching BTN.

This is just a reminder so I don’t forget all the complicated arrangements we have made for Tuesday!

• 10-11am Electricity workshop at Peter S’s
• 11:30-3:30 Caitlin’s birthday party (bring swimmers, towel, spare shoes and warm clothes)
• 12:00-1ish Lunch with E (bring eggs)
• 1ish Kidsafe to have K’s seat checked, possibly buy a new toddler seat if she needs it now, and find out what if any we need to do before we can install a new capsule for Rosy
• 1:30ish-3:30 Potter around til it’s time to pick up B, then pick up E as well, and go home early so E can fix the fence that the neighbour’s bloody dog broke through again today

If we have time and are sufficiently organised in the morning, I’ve uploaded new spelling lists for B, plus we can go back and practice the 4X and 5X times tables on Smartkiddies. Will try to remember to record BTN as well.

ETA: B will get a kick out of this web tour!

ETA: We managed to remember everything we needed for the day, and we still got to the workshop on time! B even managed to do her new -tion words spelling list practice before we left, although it intimidated her at first. K and I went to L—— shops after we dropped B off, and sold two of my unwanted books to the bookshop there. Then spent the proceeds on morning tea *g* B had a good time learning about electromagnetism, and then had lots of fun swimming and rock-hopping at C’s birthday celebration. K and I met E for lunch, picked up the nail gun and compressor E had hired to fix the fence, then we all went and had lunch together before K and I headed off to Kidsafe. The news was not fabulous: we need to take the car in to a licensed installer to find out if we can have a bar installed across the boot so we can add a sash or harness to the centre seat for B. Even the narrowest booster seat and the capsule will not fit next to each other, unfortunately. If we can’t find a way to install all the points we need, we will have to find a way to buy another car. God knows how…

After that, we went to visit Ness and baby Aidan, with a short detour to sit under a tree with a book while K napped. We had a nice, albeit short, visit, then went back to pick up B. K faceplanted in C’s backyard and cut her lip open, poor little mite. After she’d finished bleeding all over me and her front and the garden, we made it over to pick up E, then home to start working on the fence. E demolished the problem area and secured the palings on the less dodgy sections, but (thanks to having to deal with lazy and patronising hardware minions) I didn’t make it home from Bunnings with the cross-pieces and extra palings until it was getting too dark to work safely, so he’s getting up early tomorrow morning to finish the job, since the nail gun has to be back tomorrow. E checked the mail box, and my package from the Dairy Goat Society arrived, so B and I looked through that. She and I also had a D&M while E and K were out, which was nice. She is turning into a very interesting conversationalist!

Today started badly, as I had a crap night’s sleep, and B decided to make a vet’s appointment for the pneumonic rat 45 minutes after I was woken up at 8am. We did get there almost on time, and fortunately they weren’t busy so we didn’t have to wait. The vet gave Whitewhiskers a different kind of antibiotic which looks like it will be easier to administer as it is a paste not a liquid. She seems to be relatively perky this evening after two doses of it, so hopefully it will make more of a difference than the last lot did… After we dropped the rat home and I had a chance to have a shower (eeuuww, I hate going out without having one in the morning!), B had pottery, and K and I went to D—— SVDP and then the library to kill the time before picking her up again. I found a copy of Cane Toads – An Unnatural History (the book of the film) at SVDP which I thought B would like. We bought morning tea from the bakery before picking B up and going home.

We did manage to get some good work done after lunch. B finished her practice and aced the test on her latest spelling list. She did the revision sheet to finish off the unit on subtraction and Data, but had a mental block about doing subtraction with borrowing. As I am also doing it by rote with no real understanding of what I’m doing, I’ve decided that it’s pointless me trying to explain to her how to do it. So E, can you spend some time with her going over the principles behind it, please? I’m sure you can find a way to get it to make sense better than I can, since I’ve realised that I’m even shaky on the actual process, let alone the whys of it! *is embarrassed* She finished the rest of the sheet with little difficulty, and then cheered herself up by playing against the computer in timed races to practice various skills. She practiced the 10x table and one of the addition games, and then crashed in a heap when trying out one of the subtraction races. I managed not to compound her feelings of inadequacy this time, fortunately, and her dejection didn’t last long.

My package of eBay books arrived, and I read her the first chapter from Bog Bodies, which she loved. The reading level is still slightly above her at the moment, but now I’ve read her the first chapter, I could conceivably give her comprehension exercises based on what we’ve already read, since she’s familiar with the contents already. I was going to start giving her comprehension exercises from a workbook we have, but she’ll get much more out of it if she’s interested in the subject matter. I’ve also read her another chapter from the first Deltora Quest book, and she dictated a story outline to me this evening which shows a definite stylistic influence *g* I have run out of brain for the night, but do want to finish reading this article on teaching reading comprehension, since that seems to be the point at which B has gotten stuck. From what I have read so far, there seem to be some good strategies I can help B learn to employ if we make daily reading more of a priority. Ahem, I should admit that we didn’t do any today as we couldn’t find The Stone Giant. Aaargh.

In the afternoon/evening we did the demo lesson unit from the second CyberEd science course we were looking at buying, the Physical Sciences one. It was a lesson on chemical and physical properties of matter, which B already knew a lot of and consequently didn’t enjoy as much as the Life Sciences one we looked at last week. But it convinced us that buying the three introductory-level courses (Physical Sciences, Earth and Space, and Life Sciences) would be a very good investment for our munchkin over the next year, so we signed up for all three at the Homeschool Buyers’ Coop. It will take another month until we can use our subscription, because the offer stays open for buyers to sign up until the first week of October, and the final price will depend on numbers. It won’t be more than US$140, though, which seems pretty reasonable for a year’s science curriculum!

Speaking of science, last night Zane came round and they spent a happy hour discussing geology. E had had the brainwave of asking Z and J to pay rent for our storage space in interesting rocks for B, and last night was the delivery. She scored some very cool pieces, including a plant fossil Z dated to the Triassic. He even gave her a basic pine display case which he carefully labelled for her with descriptions of all the pieces. Needless to say she was very pleased!