T-Bird Anni Rides Again

gosh!  how did that happen then?????  Doesn’t seem that long ago I woke Duke up with a wail of "my waters just went, fetch me a towel!"  I think I may have just about forgiven him for fetching the smallest towel we own

The day has been another wobbly one for her.  Similar to Christmas but not quite so bad, she just builds herself up so much then plummets once it’s all done with.  On saying that, everything has been used/watched/played with so no having to tuck stuff away until she could cope with it this time   And a good haul of spending money, some of which she spent on a Littlest Petshop VIP bunny as I said she couldn’t have a real bunny.  The rest is allocated to make up and some tat from Argos she’s seen advertised.

She has decided that this year she is going to become an accomplished seamstress, so we started with a simple fleece top for her doll, it’s half done and so far not been too stressful.  One thing I’m noticing now that I’m looking after me is that I have more to give her, which can only be a good thing but I’m not sure she is seeing it that way yet as it does mean that I’m less prone to leaving her to it if she flounces off at the first sign of trickiness or hard work!  She’s also picked out a "baby sleeping bag" for the same doll which will also be fleece (a very forgiving fabric!) and will give her the chance to play with my poppering machine (with very close hovering on my part!) and she wants to make a "boohoo bunny" which is basically a bunny beanbag with rice in that you can heat up or chill.  ACtually I may look at getting some wheat for that, I think it smells better than rice when it’s hot and the grains are bigger so less likely to escape if there are any less than perfect seams……

We made cake today to take with us to the play barn tomorrow to share with Crystal et al (most of which I will then hoover up when I go in and clean later…..) and her party is to be in summer as the guest of honour (whose mum I really must contact!) will need to camp (and what with our garden being clay it needs to be warm-ish otherwise it’s just horrid).  She decided on only one guest as that seems to be a comfortable number for her to deal with.  I think that’s quite mature really, last year she wanted a huge party and I was quite relieved when we only got 3 girls turn up but even then she was really ready for them to all go home by the end.  I may well extend this concept and have a few other short visits for other happy campers in our back garden throughout the summer.  House guests are too stressful, we just don’t have the space, but campers are great, we can even provide the tent adn bedding (grin) and company is always welcome.

The highlight of the week was Aprilia and Duke spending an hour or so watching the stars, and the moon and Mars, through binoculars on Friday evening.  Was really clear so there was a good view and Duke grabbed the laptop so they could check what they were looking at.  There is a fair bit of light pollution round our way but actually I think that helped them as it meant that only the big stars were visible so the major constelations stand out better without all the little twinkly stars clustered round them confusing the issue.  She was very impressed that she could actually see something that the nice man at the planetarium had pointed out and I was very impressed with quite how orange Mars looks.  They consulted the badge book and realised that it wasn’t going to take much effort to do a fair chunk of the Stargazer badge and she’s keen to finish the rest before next Friday.

She has also finished her Traditions badge this week and thus knows how the Union Flag is made up (she already knew it’s a Flag, not a Jack unless it’s on a ship   )  and about the rules of heraldry that mean that the colours can’t touch, thus the white between the red and blue.  it also led to discussions on how it may look with a Welsh element in the flag, and whether it should be the dragon or the yellow cross on black of St David which whould be "in keeping" with the other flags being "Saints flags" as well as being the flag used by many Welsh people in preference to the more well known one (and I did know why but I’ve forgotten now…)

CDT was amply covered with the same badge as the final clause was to make a poster about what Brownies would be like in 10 years giving her scope for designing a better uniform (she specified that it had to be really long in the body so it doesn’t come untucked :LOL: ) which she did by colouring in outlines printed off from good old Making Friends paper dolls.  I asked her what sorts of fabrics she would use as well as colours etc so we had a good discussion about what was practical and why.

Then there was the time spent looking at photos of the last winter paralympics as part of her Disability awareness badge and was facinated by the adaptations that are made to allow people to compete.  This all started because my boss narrowly missed out on a place on the summer paralympic rowing team for the 2012 because, of all things, he’s worked so hard to overcome his injury that from being told that he would never walk again, he now looks like there’s nothing wrong with him.  

Today was a quiet sort of day.  Aprilia pulled out a folder of "Making Friends" paper dolls and a variety of clothes for them.  She happily made Captain Jack Sparrow Junior, a cowgirl and nearly finished a cowboy before her hand got tired from the cutting out.  Meanwhile I read her several chapters of Ginger Pye which isn’t grippingt me but she likes, a few poems from A Child’s Garden of Verse which she’s loving and which I’ve loved for years (she doesn’t remember but I used to read them to her as a tiny tot) a couple of Aesop’s Fables and a week’s worth of stuff about Vikings.  Then she insisted that we carry on with Jotham’s Journey…. we may just get him to Bethlehem in time for Easter at this rate!  She also did stuff towards her Brownie Traditions badge, the frustration being that actually she has finished this badge but somehow it didn’t get recorded when she did it with Brownies (I wonder if she did it to the best of her ability but Brown Owl couldn’t tell what it was…… or she’s brought it home by accident etc, you never can tell!) so we’ve picked clauses that are easy to do at home and should have it finished for Friday.

Duke took the afternoon off to swear at my exhaust which was really very firmly attached to the car, although not to itself, then take it to be welded by his brother.  Wondering which bit of my momo is going to get noisy next

I have been suffering from a severe case of mum flu this week…. it’s a bit like man flu (lots of whinging, sneezing and hopes of sympathy…) but the housework still gets attempted

Aprilia has been very solicitous and insisting that I rest lots, either sat on her bed with her watching DVDs together or tucked up in bed with lots of snacks and cans of pop (well recognised by the most discerning of 8 year olds as being the best way to feed a poorly person!) whilst she "entertained herself" ie played endless PC games and got away without doing any brainwork   Thus I have listened to several audio books including Worzel Gummage, Expresso Tales (not very exciting but an amusing people watching type book sent to me by Calibre) and the first of His Dark Materials which is one of the books for the next OU course and is really good and am now onto the second book.

On Wednesday we went to a meeting of the local Parent Partnership forum, they are interesting events usually, this time we had someone who is an adult diagnosed in his 30s with ADHD and on huge doses of ritalin in order to function "normally".  He was really good to listen to but I was glad Aprilia had headphones on so she could listen to her DS beeping without disturbing anyone as his turn of phrase was a bit "colourful"!  I did have to educate someone a little who has bought the "the best place for children is in school, because teachers are trained to deal with their special needs properly" as well as the "home education could be a cover for abuse" bull too. I got as far as agreeing that there had been a few high profile cases that had erronerously been linked with home education like Kyra Ishak and she lept in with "I was thinking more of Victoria Climbie" (rolls eyes repeatedly) So I stopped being politely reasonable and informed her that the Victoria Climbie Foundation had stated very publically that she had not at any point been home educated and that she had been well known to many authorities for a very long time before her aunt stopped taking her to school.  Then I went on to inform her of the results of the mass FOI reseach done by home educators showed that in fact the abuse rate in the home eduacation community was significantly lower than in the population at large.  She had no reply for that.  But then we had the "teachers are trained with how to deal with dyslexia" (wittering on about how they are trained to use special reading schemes that cure it you know) at which 3 ladies on the next table nearly wet themselves laughing…   I very calmly explained all about the over-diagnosis of dyslexia amongst "late readers" for whom rigourous small group work with phonics can quite often "cure dyslexia" (big rolling of eyes… ) but that really, any phonics programme is as good as any other and that we had worked through 4 already thanks, and besides the reading element of dyslexia is only one facette of a "data processing glitch" and so on and on and on and then she realised that I had a fair grasp of the situation with out the benefit of specialist training :LOL:  Her child has physical needs you see, and in our area the provision for phyical disabilities is fab, it’s "hidden" disabilities like dyslexia, Aspergers etc that are really badly dealt with.  But anyway….

Today, I was at Oulton doing very little apart from sewing 20+ Brownie badges onto Aprilia’s new gillet and wondering why I thought it was a good idea to encourage her to do all those darned badges!!!!  Aprilia and Duke did Kung Fu then went to the Battle of Nantwich and for a visit to her fave  cousin where she stayed for the rest of the day (you gotta give Duke credit, he’s dead good at finding people to entertain his daughter!!!)

today we all went to Kung Fu together again, that’s 2 weeks running now!  there was talk about family outing to the gym during the week but it didn’t happen.

Yesterday Crystal was at our house all afternoon, and for tea before going off to Brownies with us which all prooved too much for her.  Total melt down was just about averted by some distraction techniques by me…. Crystal was supposed to be doing part of a relay but didn’t get what she was doing so I sort of did the "come on, you and me are going to do this together" and totally hammed up the whole proceedure with her over exagerating everything I did to ridiculous proportions which confused the hell out of Crystal thus stopping the melt down and caused lots of gigglyness with the rest of the girls thus distracting them from noticing just how badly Crystal was coping.  Probably not in the handbook…. and probably she wouldn’t take it from anyone except people she knows really well but it saved the day and meant that Aprilia didn’t have to rescue her, which is what happens if I don’t wade in (and whilst I admire any little girl who will go to the rescue of a mate in distress, it’s not fair on Aprilia to *always* be the one who as to do it)

Education-wise, I’m insisting on a little Moshi-ing and a little Ed City-ing every day at the moment before she gets to do much else.  She’s reading for herself at the mo, mainly "Benny and Watch" (based on Boxcar Children) and "My First Little House"  Both of which are now pretty much in her range with very little support but getting towards being to young for her interest-wise but she does now accept that putting the work in will pay off and a short story is just about within her reading stamina.  There’s been a lot of PC ed in the shape of Horrible History games and other random stuff and there’s been TV ed from various films (media studies) Joseph’s Dreamcoat (music and RE) and How do they do it and some Hot Rod restoration programme (technology)  Then there’s the "incidental ed", the stuff that slips itself into the day - I really can’t remember all the stuff we’ve covered this week but it’s been a bit intense at times!  She’s headed for some sort of developmental leap forwards, no idea what or when but it’s on it’s way…. I can tell because she won’t leave my side!  Oh to be able to poo in peace…..

Friday morning I discovered that we had no internet, and on further investigation, that we had no phone line either.  So we wombled off to Jungle jim with a laptop in hand to make use of their free wi-fi whilst Aprilia played.  It was seriously cold there though so the free wi-fi cost rather a lot in plenty of servings of hot chocolate to keep Aprilia from demanding to be taken right home!!!!

We spent the afternoon entertaining ourselves without the aid of the internet which was probably very good for both of us!  For Aprilia it meant playing non-internet based games, watching films, a bit of TV, some arts and crafts and a bit of DSing.  For me it meant waaaay too much housework but hey, it needed doing and there are bits of work surface and carpet peeping out all over the place.

I was supposed to be a Wombwell at the weekend but for some strange reason they decided that that light dusting of snow was enough to mean the meeting was cancelled.  Spoil sports.  So we all went to Kung Fu together which was fun, there’s something vaguely therapeutic about swinging punches at family members you know…..

Non-internet based entertainment continued all weekend until the very lovely and very clever man from BT came and mended the broken wire in the junction box.  Meanwhile we started looking for the laminator so I could crack on with an organisation board that Aprilia wanted.  We have no idea where it is.  So Duke bought a new one today in Lidl for £12, which, naturally, means we will find the other one tomorrow.

Today there has been a lot of educational interneting going on, lots of Ed City, a bit of Moshi, some facebook "how brainy are you" type games etc.  Then we did a bit of SonLight whilst she cut out stuff (all over our bed… must make sure there’s no shreddings under the duvet) and she read to me.  Thus totally worn out she lolled about and I snuggled next to her and read for myself, an indulgance that I am aiming to enjoy lots this year….you know, just reading for the sheer heck of it.  It occured to me part way through last year that since getting my funny specs I’ve really not taken advantage of them, I’ve just read stuff I’ve needed to for the most part.  Well, this year I’m going to read anything and everything.  I’ve just finished "Dear Fatty" by Dawn Fench which was lovely, funny, emotional, frank and a pleasure to read.  Now I’m launching into Swallows and Amazons, which I remember watching on the TV as a child but never reading, I’ve got everything from Jane Austen to Terry Pratchett on the list. 

the other "must do" this year is for me to make a bit of an effort to use the gym at work.  it costs me nothing, I’m there every day anyway so it’s not like I have to make the effort to leave the house and most of the time I’m there it’s closed and thus devoid of testorerone laden posers.  So tonight I went and staggered home feeling virtuous and knackered.  I’ll consider how regularly I go depending on how dead I feel in the morning :LOL:

but we did get up at a reasonable time, and did the whole washed, dressed and sort of straightened the beds sort of thing.  Then there was the filling of two bin bags with the general detritus from Aprilia’s bedroom floor as our contribution to the Great Home Educators Tidy-up that seems to be sweeping the nation.  Then I saw her accross the road so she could go and be sociable with with she who used to be refered to as Nelly on here, but seeing as she now has her very own Net Name I’d better start calling her Crystal now hadn’t I! 

I rattled off another massage assignment during the afternoon and did lots of washing (whhich, oh the shame, I had to dry in the tumble dryer cos the house wsa too cold!) to make up for not having done much of anything last week.

And breaking news….. I’ve been instructed to buy the new slow cooker that’s been on my Amazon wish list for 2 years….. easily pleased me……

Last year wasn’t my best.  And when I’m not on top form, neither is the house, or the educational provision!  However, in an uncharacteristic bout of autonomy, Aprilia has got the hang of reading at a functional, if still basic, level.  She can sound stuff out (and regularly exclaims with exasperation when her friend can’t) but the real breakthrough seems to ahve been from a look and listen aproach courtesy of watching lots of edutaiment type TV with subtitles.  I think that counts as "the best of both worlds" as she has the tools to work out words she doesn’t recognise but has the speed through "whole word recognition" to be able to read quickly enough to make sense of sentences rather than fumbling along a word at a time.  Only the parents of a child who has struggled to learn to read can understand the joy of sitting and listening to that same child reading chapters of Rainbow Fairy books with expression and fluency.  (hands up how many others have a love-hate relationship with the dread Daisy Meadows!!!)

She has Moshi-ed and more recently Ed City-ed and, by way of treats has played numerous games on FaceBook, all of which require at least a basic level of literacy and I believe that this has helped her greatly in as much as providing incentive to put in the large amounts of effort required to stretch her reading abilities, although quite where in real life she will need to read "alchemy" and "ballista" I’ve yet to work out  

Other major attainments  were several more Brownie badges, although the momentum to do many on her own has waned a little, which I do think may be down to the lack of inspiration being provided by me - did I mention I was crap last year?  and she is part way through several more that I’m going to "timetable" into our work time over the next few months.  She graded up twice at Kung Fu, passing the same requirements as the adults, and did one of those gradings without any parent for company, for which I was very proud of her, as was Sibok who made a point of telling me, in front of her, how well she had done.  I do like our Sibok (teacher)  Swimming also happened rather a lot, resulting in a 25m badge on her swimming bag, she’s probably capable of her 50m now but needs a bit more technique and confidence before she "graduates" to the next class as she only did crash courses for a few weeks over summer rather than regular lessons.  Her teacher did say though that if we nobble a lifeguard on a quiet session to watch her then she can be awarded her next badge without lessons.  Spontaneous writing has also occurred, mainly in the form of list writing related to games she is playing.  Handwriting has been requested as a regular feature to help her to write better and to practice how to spell things. 

So, looking forward into the new year.  She is asking for more structure, and to be fair, we BOTH need an imposed structure on our day in order to get things done.  It is too tempting to let her sleep herself out of a morning whilst I loll about, leaving us both floppy for hte day and unable to settle to anything.  So I am making a simple "morning routine" in PECS form for the both of us.  Mine will have such FlyBaby concepts as re-booting the laundry, hers will be a little more simple but will include getting dressed and making the bed as an absolute minimum!  From there we will also have various tasks on a bigger schedule in the living room including brain work, crafty bits, chores (for both of us) and "rewards" of free choices for how to fill half hour slots in the day.

I am planning on finishing off our current SonLight and various stray books we have lurking arround so that we can cull the books a little, well, at very least get rid of stuff we really don’t like to give us enough room for the ever growing collection of things we do!  There is a good shelf full of easy-ish books, things like My First Little House which are getting a bit young for her these days so we may read them together one last time and sell them on, likewise the Benny and Watch books which are based around the very wonderful Boxcar Children books and are now really within her ability with very little help but getting a bit below her interest level so need one last push to get the benefit from them and send them on to be enjoyed by another family.  She has informed me that the Rainbow Magic books are not for passing on…. grin.

I’m also planning on either working through or disposing of the basket-ful of random puzzle/workbooks.  She quite likes the full colour cartoony type books but I’m really never convinced about their value in developing any sort of depth of understanding!  Hence why she is rattling through the maths ones but really still with a very patchy understanding of such basics as Hundreds Tens and Units (pass the base 10 blocks….)  I’d like to finish off the Stile books as well, then either sell the whole set including tray or buy the next set and carry on with them.

She’s specifically asked for timed challenges on basic skills (tables, sums, spellings etc) in the form of file folder games with an egg timer, I’ve made challenge cards for these, if she completes the challenge 5 times she gets a specified reward (a book, some money etc negociated when we start the challenge)  i may throw the Stile books into the timed challenge catagory as they are a sort of "match and sort" activity really.

She’s asked for handwriting practice too.  I have plenty of stuff for that, I just need to print it off and bind it up so the pages don’t wander off round the house!

And she’s asked for project type stuff.  Specifically so far for Dinosaurs (I have a lapbook set for that) Ancient Egypt, Romans, Space (have stuff for that too, plus a few ideas for "3 part cards" of conselations etc) and Tudors - what is it with home educated children and The Tudors????

And last but not least she has informed me that we need to go on the following holidays…..

Shell Island (but I’m sorry Nic, it’s the dunes not the view….. am wondering what compromise we can come to with that????)

the Sustainablity Centre (will bring wood again, and maybe pay in advance and stockpile lots and lots so we aren’t forced to resort to burning the furniture   )

Visits to a large number of "Puddlers"

Sigh, we need more hours in the day!!!

So, we shall be very busy!

We headed over the Pennines for a visit Off the Path, with the extra bonus of the Rainedrops visiting at the same time.  A lovely day was had by all, although I suspect Babs had hoped that B would lift his head out of his book for long enough to be sociable at some point

Night seemed to arrive ridiculously early and brought a snowstorm with it which was a little startling!  The Rainedrops headed off and we started that "have you got everything, where’s your cardi, your shoes, your socks….." that seems to take about an hour before every departure, which is normally pretty irritating but actually was fortunate this time!  Babs phoned not long after they left to give us a trafic and travel update which persuaded us not to leave after all.  There was a brief trauma as Aprilia was quite certain that she wanted to go home Right Now but the suggestion that that may end up with us sleeping in the car if the road was inpassable seemed to sway her!

A quick text message to work resulted in a reply of "that’s cool" followed, aparently by utter panic as the boss needed to head over the Pennines the next day to return his son to the ex-partner and had hoped for an easy journey…..

Thus the next morning found us in a lovely winter landscape

*there will be a photo here when I can beat Flickr into submission!*

So Aprilia dressed in donated waterproofs and went out to play for a few hours whilst Duke tried to establish which, if any, routes were open.  We finally left just before lunch with the idea of going over Saddleworth as this is less up and down so less likely to be slippy slidey!  We got as far as The Huntsman before the road was closed…. so declared it lunchtime (despite only having been travelling for 15 mins or so!!!!) and tucked in whilst listening to the staff updates on snowploughs etc.  The food is very good.  Really, really very good.  Staff were very good too.

Fully refueled, we decided to head down into Holme Firth and thus out on the A616 and over the Woodhead (which, when we had checked before leaving was open but slow)  A616 was lovely, snowy, pretty, a bit slushy in places but lovely.  So we were rather surprised to find that the Woodhead was closed.   This precipitated some debate on how on earth to proceed from that point…. a discussion further complicated by a conveniently timed travel update that basically said that all routes over the big hill were shut.  This left us with 2 options…. go back and further impose of the Off the Pathers (and Duke phone into work and say he couldn’t get in) or go *around* the pennines…… it’s a long stretch of lumpiness you know…… One basically has to go down as far as Barnsley to get to the M1, carry on down, and down, and down…. then wander across the A50, up the A500 through The Potteries, onto the M6 and home.   It takes about 4 hours.  And, once we got further south there was no snow, just miserable drizzly rain.  But anyway.

It added adventure to a lovely visit and has prompted me to seriously consider travel planning….. my car is always really well provisioned (first aid stuff, fleecy blankets, random drinks and snacks, not purposely, just stuff that accumilates!) but most long journies we seem to use Duke’s car, which is very poorly provisioned indeed.  Hmmmm, am thinking that there may have to be small amounts of organisation occurring at some point in the next decade!