I'm not tired, I'm just checking my eyelids for leaks...

Ok, behind on my posting again. Just a quickie to say that I haven't disappeared (honest). May is the month of birthdays and I've been having a bit of a frenzy this week trying to organise ds2's birthday party (today). All went well and now feel shattered. Will post photos when I get a chance. Just one more birthday to go- dh's birthday at the weekend - and I can start trying to pay off my overdraft lol!

Another reason for my lack of posting effort is that I've been focusing on keeping up with my writing class. I have lots of ideas, but as always it's taking me a long time to get any of them into the required format; the more I work on them the less appealing they become and the further away from my initial enthusiasm I trail. I feel like I should put a 'lol' in here, but if there was an abbreviation for wry smile {ws} ?that would suit better.

The tutor is looking for 'sparkling prose' in our work, a term which has completely frozen my brain into petrified squid intestines. If she keeps mentioning sparkling prose I'm not going to be able to write a darned thing! Personally, in between keeping the house from meltdown, home educating and going out to work, I think she should just be grateful I appear in class with 2 shoes the same colour. Sparkling Prose!!! What does this woman want - Blood??!!

I don't have writers block. I just can't stay awake long enough to finish a ....

Ok, having to do a very quick update again...whatever happened to my regular blogging habit??

So...we've been having a bit of a creative time...

..Painting
(so much nicer for mummies when it's warm enough to do it outside and the rain can clear it all up afterwards!):

Making chairs out of newspapers:



and yes, you could sit on it, just. Thought it best if I didn't try, that extra slice of fruit cake might just have done for it...

Making bionicle lego things:

Making pancakes (in pyjamas):

And cakes (when dressed):

Sowing seeds at the allotment.

Does that count as creative? We'll certainly have to be creative trying to find the carrots in amongst the weeds in a few months time.

And making a gazebo/pagoda/wooden thingy in response to my pathetic attempt to hitch up an old duvet cover over the garden table:

And now for the non-creative stuff:

Sword-fighting (should I categorise that under 'drama' or 'historical re-enactment'?)

Watching the professionals do it:

And saying hello to the nice man in charge of the horses:

The Rebel Forces are at work - and they're sat at the table!

Ok, ok, so it's been a while since I've posted.
And we've done loads of stuff (honest!).

So let's start with today..

ds1 started writing a letter to his penfriend this morning (it usually takes about a month of hard slog before he completes a page), ds2 did a few pages of his Miquon maths (all easy stuff at the moment) and dd decided she wanted to join in. So I had to rummage around and see if I could find something for her to do too. I'd thrown away most of the preschool educational stuff as I thought it was a bit pointless. And then I had a girl and realised that some under 6s can sit down for longer than 30 seconds without destroying everything in the immediate viccinity. Funny that...

And there we were, all sat at the table - yes, sat - SAT! - SITTING DOWN! - AT THE TABLE - doing worky - WORK! - sort of stuff. I wish I'd taken a photo, cos it's such a rare event in our house. But then one click of the camera would have spoiled it all wouldn't it?

Oh horrors! Am I really celebrating that my kids are doing what they're told to do? Am I really singing hooray because they are writing and doing workbooks? Hmm...my autonomous education body is turning in it's autonomous education grave. I guess balance will be restored to the universe in due course ('Help me Obi Wan Knobe, you're my only hope'). Watch this space.

And then around 9.30am a friend's kids came round and everyone plugged themselves into various electronic devices: computer, Wii, etc. But, hey, my children haven't come off the set of 'The Railway Children', so what else could I expect? As I said, balance will be restored to the universe, and in this case it only took about an hour (and the wrinkly guy with the pointy ears and a fondness for lightsabers didn't have to turn up after all)

In the afternoon ds1 went off to a friend's house, and later to an ongoing workshop thingy where he learns behind-the-scenes stage/theatre stuff [don't ask me what, cos I only get monosyllable replies when I ask him - it's his age, you know]. And the remainder of the circus troupe helped me put up beanpoles at the allotment. The beanpoles look very rustic (sorry no photo yet) as they are real willow poles from real willow trees that I chopped down (no, I didn't chop the tree down, just the poles you understand). I'm just hoping they don't start growing - willow has a reputation for this - as I don't think the allotment committee will appreciate 3 willow teepees growing on my plot! (They don't like children, so they certainly wont like willow sculptures. Sometimes you just know these sorts of things.)

And what other stuff have we been up to? Well lots. But until I load up the photos I wont remember it all.

So...be patient. I just need to upload some photos and then I'll tell you all about it.

Ok?

Are you sure?

Good.

May the force be with you.

Fun fun fun in the sun sun sun

(if you watch Charlie and Lola, then you'll recognise that very Lola-ish title). We're all feeling very Lola-ish at the moment.

With a few days of fine weather and no particular place to go we've had bit of a garden-frenzy.

Tomatoes are looking fab in the greenhouse (all 40-odd of them).

Shame I don't really like eating them.

Why do I grow so many? Darned if I know.

The weather's been good enough for outdoor work so I dug over the border that Jack keeps trashing, and decided to risk planting out a few tomato plants. Last year this patch had herbs in, but I think the combination of dog wee and confrontations with next door's rotweilers through the fence (literally) finished most of the herbs off.

Only the sturdy chives remain; to be honest, as they are Jack's favourite marking spot, they're only really for decorative use, or for less hygenic cooks. Oh and there's a hollyhock plant too. Despite dh's best attempts to kill off the hollyhocks which he hates, they seem determined to live and procreate...in every crack in every concrete surface...ha ha ha ha they cackle, shaking their little seedy things everywhere.

As you can see below I decided to set up some sort of contraption for keeping the tomato plants in the way to which they were accustomed; a little bit of protection in the garden. I figured that these black plastic sheets (actually 3 king-sized binliners that I bought in error) might warm up during the day and give off a little heat later in the evening (well that's how the science is meant to work, isn't it?). Needless to say the kids were bemused to find me trying to nail binbags to the fence. You know how the conversation goes:

'So what's that for Mummy?'

'It's a binliner and a nail and a hammer.'

'Yes but what's it for?'

'It's science, child, but not as we know it.'

Or something like that...

Well if I'd given them the long version including the science they'd have only glazed over before muttering 'oh so it's educational then...'

Then I used some leftover plastic glazing panels to give them a bit of protection:

Not sure it will withstand a bouncy King Charles Spaniel and the heads of next door's rotweilers as they come through the fence, or the investigation of 3 inquisitive children for that matter. Live and learn.

Talking of creating structures, here is another attempt to convince myself I have the gift of construction. I introduce the DIY pergoda:

Actually, as you may have guessed, it's a double duvet cover tied to the neighbours' fence and the conservatory window and propped up on poles. But shh...don't tell anyone.

The average collapse rate of this structure is about once an hour in calm weather, increasing to every 10 minutes in windy weather. Collapse isn't a major issue, unless you happen to be eating your bbq at the table underneath. Perhaps a more permanent structure should be on the agenda?

Talking of bbqs, the kids have been doing some outdoor cooking. If you like your food untouched by human hands, seasoned with grit and only slightly licked by the dog, this is the perfect way to enjoy lunch. What's that I hear you say? You've lost your appetite?

Looks like someone is keen to join in with the DIY (you'll have someones eye out with that, you know):

Thankfully we still have a garden bench, though there may be a few extra drainage slots in it now...

And ds2 was given the job of getting the lawnmower working for the 2009 season. Took a bit of oil and some kicking (probably something to do with the fact that we kept it out in the garden all last year) but eventually it slugged and creaked into life, ready to attack the stones, dog poo, string, plastic spades, bits of fishing net, lego, ice cream tub lids, soggy shoe boxes and - oh yes - the grass. Still, at least the risks of a push mower are less than the flymo; you don't have wear a hard hat and full-body armour (have you seen how far those stone chips go??).

And here it is in action. Why am I videoing ds2 cutting the grass? Well because he asked me, of course. You don't think I'm mad enough to go around taking photos and videos of average, everyday not-terribly-exciting activities, just for the fun of it and then post them for public viewing, do you? What sort of a nutter do you think I am?! (I'm off to join the cackling hollyhocks, far too much sun on my head today).

Bare Butt-erfly Sandwiches topped with Beagle Beans

Today, carrying on with our Darwin and Evolution theme, we - or should I say ds2 - made South American Comida. What has this to do with Darwin? Well seeing as the Darwin geezer popped off around South America in The Beagle, there is a tentative link to this dish of beans, tomatoes and squash. Honest. Well that's what the book said and I'm sticking to it.

Are you impressed that we are still working on our P -P - P ..ok I can't say the P word.
Our P word that has 'ject' at the end, which from now on I'll call our THEME. Does theme sound better? I can't remember what I decided last time I wrote about this.

[I've just noticed something interesting about the P word: If you take away the P and replace the 'O' with an 'E', you get another interesting word: a word that best explains what my kids usually do when I say to them we are doing a 'P' word.]

Anyway, are you impressed that we're still doing Darwin? So am I. I'm not sure what it does for our autonomous education status, but I guess we got to a point when something had to give. And whatever it was has left some space for Darwin.

Chopping butternut squash (all fingers intact)

Cooking (no fingers burnt)

The finished result!

Anyway, The Beagle has officially now got as far as The Galapagos Islands, and the sticker is about to go on the map (when we find where The Galapagos Islands actually are - yeah I know, somewhere near South America...). So here I am, with baited breath, preparing my mind, body, and what's left of my soul, to grab the Galapagos DVD and shove it in the player. Ok, so it was the cheapest dvd I could find about the Galapagos Islands, so I'm hoping it isn't so incredibly boring that the kids will hate watching it. I must confess that David Attenborough and his fossils DVD was starting to grate on all of us after a week of viewing the series. Though I guess it was interesting to see how Mr Attenborough looked back in the late 80s...he seems to be ageing much better than this mother of 3. Hmm...I suppose never having been pregnant or given birth gives him a significant advantage.

So what else have we been up to? Oh the usual. We visited the sailing club during the week and as it was too blustery to sail we spent some time 'butterfly hunting' instead. We're joining in with the Great British Butterfly Hunt of The Independent newspaper. See:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/uk-butterflies/
I've just added our sightings to the map. The best one I saw was the Speckled Wood butterfly, really pretty (unfortunately this isn't on the list to add to their map). We saw loads of Peacock butterflies too, more than I've seen for ages and ages. I didn't tell the kids to do it, or even ask them, but once they saw me looking at the poster and filling in a chart with the butterflies, they joined in too. I'm sure that's something John Holt talks about in his books (not the bit about butterflies).

We've also been doing the usual fire-lighting, storm-kettling, and marshmallow melting.

Hmm..my touch-typing is a bit skew-whiff today. Having twice replaced the 't' s in the word 'butterfly' with 'g' s (which puts a whole new slant on the word!), as well as just typing 'tough-typing' instead of 'touch-typing', I'd probably better finish off now...

[Before I go, I must let you know that I've just this minute Googled the word 'comida' thinking it would be some specialised word for a particular type of stew. NO! It appears to be the Spanish word for food! Ho hum. I knew there was a reason why I didn't like this 'Evolution for kids' book that we're using. Why don't they tell you things like that? There I was thinking we were making some exotic dish and all we've made is South American FOOD!]

Oh and if you're wondering why I have put such a strange title for my blog post, I have no idea. I just got fed up of trying to think of wonderfully creative titles and thought this one sounded interesting, even if it bears only a slight resemblance to the blog post.

Anyone fancy a trip on the titanic?

No? Well I think our chances of survival on the Titanic might well be higher than at the hands of the newly-revealed Home Education Review panel.

http://www.freedomforchildrentogrow.org/hereviewpanel.htm

Rather weighted towards Childrens Services and Ofsted it would seem and not looking at all favourable for us home educators. Strange how a review panel on home education managed to have no-one from the home education community on it...

Ok, so even the optimistic part of me is thinking now that we're b******d.

Expert Group Reps

Area:Details

Early Years, home learning environment, child development:Professor Ted Melhuish, Birkbeck, University of London

Education / curriculum: Mick Waters – Director of Curriculum, QCA

Child protection / 3rd Sector:Delroy Pommell, Director, London and the South East, Barnardos

Safeguarding: Steve Hart, (HMI, Ofsted)

SEN: Jean Humphreys (HMI, Ofsted)

3rd Sector: Paul Ennals – Chief Executive, NCB

ICT / future technologies:Professor Steve Heppell, Trustee of NotSchool.net

Children’s rights:Sue Berelowitz, Chief Executive, 11 Million

Safeguarding: Professor June Statham, Institute of Education

Education:Professor James Conroy, Dean of Faculty of Education, University of Glasgow

SEN: Beth Reid, National Autistic Society