Well I added a few photos to yesterday's blog entry and then realised how pathetically sad my life must be if I actually use my time and effort to take photos of the insides of our loft and balls of wool. Perhaps I would have made better use of my time supervising the children...
I suppose I only have myself to blame having spent yesterday morning hiding in the loft (see previous blog entry). I knew that when I finally came down I would have to face the carnage of those few hours' unsupervised play.
Urrgh.
It was like a scene out of Lord of the Flies, but with fewer boys, more split peas and no blood (well as far as I could see).
The first thing I noticed was that there was a saucepan of water mixed with dried split peas, which had swelled to a sodden mass, on my bathroom floor. Apparently (as I was later informed) this was dinosaur food. Clumps of wet toilet roll adorned the bath, sink and toilet lid. Perhaps the dinosaurs had used the toilet after eating their dinosaur food? [note for future reference: need to train the dinosaurs to tidy up after themselves]
All - and I mean ALL - the soft toys were having a 'tea party' on the floor of dd1's bedroom, a room where even if I wanted to swing a cat I would have great difficulty doing so. I could barely open the door so I had no idea how we were going to get her into her bed that evening.
The trail of split peas (most, thankfully still in their original dried form) led across the landing and down the stairs through the hall and into to the lounge where there were further piles of them on the rug. In the middle of the floor the boys had set up a train track using all the wooden Brio trains. The carriages were loaded up with split pea 'cargos'. I was pleased that my 9-year-old felt comfortable playing with toys most people would consider only for younger children, but the lounge looked like a firework had been thrown into a lentil factory.[And when will my children realise that the reason I put cushions ON my sofa is because I like them ON my sofa, NOT all over the floor. If I wanted cushions on the floor then I would have bought floor cushions...obvious really.]
And then to the conservatory where every possible item of scrap had been emptied on to the table and floor and several half-finished creative masterpieces - i.e. some scrap that had been glued together - were precariously balanced on top. The dog had made some effort to tidy up judging by the chewed remains of plastic straws and something I can only assume was once a cork.
Continuing back through the house the available evidence indicated that several small elephants had tried to make themselves strawberry milkshake in the kitchen: there were showers of milkshake powder across the surfaces, splodges of milk on the floor and a trail of footprints, none of which looked human, from the fridge to the cupboard and back again. A half-eaten banana, 6 used cups, an empty packet of Jacobs Cream Crackers and a pile of satsuma peelings confirmed my elephant suspicions. If there's one thing that home education has taught me it is that unsupervised small elephants just can't resist Jacobs Cream Crackers and strawberry milkshake.
The dog had peed in the hall. Well to be precise he had peed along the hall. He'd probably peed on the lounge rug as well judging by the smell, but amongst the split pea carnage it would have been difficult to tell. While on the 'dog' theme, my clean pile of washing looked suspiciously like it had been home to a small lazy Spaniel for several hours. Tell-tale white hairs and a dog shaped crater in the middle was a dead givaway. A half-chewed lego tree and a sprinkling of dog-slobbered cardboard (possibly once containing dd1's pack of playing cards) was further indication of dog rebellion. I shouted at the dog and tried to put him out in the garden. He was clearly bemused by my feeble effort at discipline.
As I went back into the lounge I noticed all the children had moved to the sofa and were glued to the tv.
Ds1 turned to greet me as I entered the lounge.
'Oh hi mummy. Where've you been?'
A friend once warned me about the changes in children's behaviour when there was a power vacuum in the house. At the time I probably thought she was talking about hoovers, but now I understand exactly what she means.
Thursday, 6 March 2008
Wednesday, 5 March 2008
..9998.....9999......10000..coming, ready or not!
Do you think it's normal to hide from your children?
I only ask because that's what I've been trying to do all day.
In Summer I tend to hide from my children by going as far down the end of the garden as I can. I can still hear them there, but we have a pretty long garden so the sound from the house is quite muffled, particularly if I stick my fingers in my ears and sing 'la la la' very loudly.
Being at the end of the garden does have its disadvantages though. It does leave me vulnerable to encountering next door's children over the fence. Not that there's anything wrong with next door's children, it's just that at those times when you don't want to be with your own children, you generally don't want to be with anyone else's either.
The greenhouse provides a fairly good hiding place too and I can be there under whatever greenfingered pretence I might like to make up. A little too hot in Summer (I can last about 8 minutes at a push), but Spring time just after I've painted the glass with white sloppy 'shading' is the perfect time for me to hide there. At this time of year it's no good though. The glass has been cleaned of all shading and any pretence of being 'busy' inside the greenhouse is quickly revealed (as is my hand stuffing a large chocolate bar into my mouth - darn!).
[This has reminded me though to see if I can squeeze a comfy chair into the greenhouse in preparation for later in the year - I might even get to read a little while I'm hiding in there]
The toilet - sorry Bathroom - is a desperate 'last measure' place for me to hide. One of the pluses - probably it's only one - is that it has a lock. On the downside it has a door. Now I hear you ask, why should this be a downside? Well unfortunately there is an alarm attached to the bathroom door. This alarm triggers a signal in my children's brains just as soon as that door is closed. Perhaps it completes some kind of electrical circuit the moment the metal slotty thing slots into the thing that it slots into [don't you just hate it when your knowledge of door vocabulary lets you down?]. Perhaps it interrupts whatever thoughts are going through my children's heads at the time with a sudden 'need'. Anyway, however it works it seems that everytime I close the bathroom door then the calls start.
'Mum! Mum! Where's my...'
'Mummy, he did this to me...'
'Mum! Can you help me with...'
'Mummy! Where are you?!'
Grrr.
The day in my life when I finally accepted that I was never again ever EVER going to be able to have a pee without an audience was a very bleak day indeed. Alas, the entry into true Motherhood and the slippery slope down towards losing the need for a hairbrush and the sight of my feet.
So where did I hide today?
Well not in the garden (too darn cold).
Not the greenhouse (too revealing - I needed to eat chocolate and lots of it).
And definitely NOT the bathroom (for the reasons stated before).
I hid in the loft.
Yes I know that's the sort of things that dodgy fugitives do (apparently, though I don't have firsthand experience of this), but it seemed the best available option today.
Of course I had lots of excuses - I mean reasons - to be up there. The loft is in dire need of a clearout and as I had mountains of wool (from the Scrapstore) to sort out and store, it was a perfect opportunity to hulk it all up there and do some - well - sorting. And yes I did do some sorting. But I also ate chocolate and found all sorts of things to sidetrack me from actually doing anything very useful. And although I could hear the children bickering - in a muffled through 2 floors sort of way- the fact that I wasn't actually next to them while they were bickering was almost restful.
I only ask because that's what I've been trying to do all day.
In Summer I tend to hide from my children by going as far down the end of the garden as I can. I can still hear them there, but we have a pretty long garden so the sound from the house is quite muffled, particularly if I stick my fingers in my ears and sing 'la la la' very loudly.
Being at the end of the garden does have its disadvantages though. It does leave me vulnerable to encountering next door's children over the fence. Not that there's anything wrong with next door's children, it's just that at those times when you don't want to be with your own children, you generally don't want to be with anyone else's either.
The greenhouse provides a fairly good hiding place too and I can be there under whatever greenfingered pretence I might like to make up. A little too hot in Summer (I can last about 8 minutes at a push), but Spring time just after I've painted the glass with white sloppy 'shading' is the perfect time for me to hide there. At this time of year it's no good though. The glass has been cleaned of all shading and any pretence of being 'busy' inside the greenhouse is quickly revealed (as is my hand stuffing a large chocolate bar into my mouth - darn!).
[This has reminded me though to see if I can squeeze a comfy chair into the greenhouse in preparation for later in the year - I might even get to read a little while I'm hiding in there]
The toilet - sorry Bathroom - is a desperate 'last measure' place for me to hide. One of the pluses - probably it's only one - is that it has a lock. On the downside it has a door. Now I hear you ask, why should this be a downside? Well unfortunately there is an alarm attached to the bathroom door. This alarm triggers a signal in my children's brains just as soon as that door is closed. Perhaps it completes some kind of electrical circuit the moment the metal slotty thing slots into the thing that it slots into [don't you just hate it when your knowledge of door vocabulary lets you down?]. Perhaps it interrupts whatever thoughts are going through my children's heads at the time with a sudden 'need'. Anyway, however it works it seems that everytime I close the bathroom door then the calls start.
'Mum! Mum! Where's my...'
'Mummy, he did this to me...'
'Mum! Can you help me with...'
'Mummy! Where are you?!'
Grrr.
The day in my life when I finally accepted that I was never again ever EVER going to be able to have a pee without an audience was a very bleak day indeed. Alas, the entry into true Motherhood and the slippery slope down towards losing the need for a hairbrush and the sight of my feet.
So where did I hide today?
Well not in the garden (too darn cold).
Not the greenhouse (too revealing - I needed to eat chocolate and lots of it).
And definitely NOT the bathroom (for the reasons stated before).
I hid in the loft.
Yes I know that's the sort of things that dodgy fugitives do (apparently, though I don't have firsthand experience of this), but it seemed the best available option today.
Of course I had lots of excuses - I mean reasons - to be up there. The loft is in dire need of a clearout and as I had mountains of wool (from the Scrapstore) to sort out and store, it was a perfect opportunity to hulk it all up there and do some - well - sorting. And yes I did do some sorting. But I also ate chocolate and found all sorts of things to sidetrack me from actually doing anything very useful. And although I could hear the children bickering - in a muffled through 2 floors sort of way- the fact that I wasn't actually next to them while they were bickering was almost restful.
[Ha! Bet they wont find me in here!]
So, with my 'busyness' I managed to while away the morning sorting (or not) and enjoying a relatively peaceful few hours. I even discovered several knitting projects - blankets, half-finished jumper arms, weird knitted oddities - from previous years which I proceded to unpick and wind into wobbly balls of wool. A few of the projects I didn't actually recognise as being mine, so it's quite possible that I spent the morning unpicking someone else's knitting? Even more therapeutic.
One can never have too much wool you know...
Tuesday, 4 March 2008
You call THAT snow??!!
I've just noticed that I haven't posted any photos on the blog recently. Does that mean we haven't done anything worth photographing? Perhaps.
It did snow today, however. Did I take a photo of it? No.
We were sat watching rubbish morning tv in the lounge when ds1 tore down the stairs and shrieked 'it's snowing it's snowing!'. So we all rushed out the front door into the freezing cold front garden and stood there looking hopefully into the sky. And yes, with a bit of imagination, there were incy wincy teeny little dandruff flakes of something cold and icy. Not exactly snow, but near enough. A few schoolkids trudging past our house to school gave us a rather strange look. I suppose our ragged half-dressed bunch stood in their socks on the garden path running around trying to eat the non-existent snow flakes falling down, was probably a rather bizarre sight. At least it's a bizarre sight if you don't belong to our family. If you belong to our family then bizarre is relative.
A short while later on the way to get in the car for preschool, poor dd1 let out a sigh of disappointment, ' but I thought there'd be heaps and heaps of snow, where's it all gone?'.
Ah well. Life is full of little disappointments and snow in southern England is definitely one of them. The sky is grey, the wind is biting, we are all freezing our little wotsits off, and the only demonstration we have of exciting - or even slightly interesting - weather is a few pathetic flakes of vaguely cold stuff that disappear as quick as bubbles blown from a cheap pot of bubble mixture.
I suppose being a home educator I could have used it as the start of a discussion on the water cycle or global warming. In fact I should be full of guilt that we didn't go on to perform some scientific experiment freezing and thawing water, or look through an atlas at places in the world that have proper snow. But we were late, it was cold and I was grumpy (probably because we were late and it was cold). Besides, if I turn every conversation into an educational example my children will stop listening to me altogether. Methinks perhaps it's already too late.
Anyway there has been progress in the household of a sort. Ds1 and 2 have been making a stopframe animation using their playmobil and an animation package that we've hooked up via my laptop to a basic webcam. We've had the package for some time, but only really used the drawing aspect of it. It took a bit of getting used to, and the kids had an annoying habit of keep clicking buttons and copying over frames that they'd already done (grrr), but I think the result was pretty good for a first attempt. Unfortunately it's meant that my laptop, my nice shiny all-for-me laptop, has now been touched by small people from the planet child. I'm not sure this is a path I wish to go down.
I suggested to the kids that they should send in their animation(s) to Blue Peter, with an accompanying film about how they made it, in an attempt to get a blue peter badge each. I'd like to say that this suggestion is entirely altruistic, but it isn't because there would be some rather good financial benefits for moi. Free entry for the kids to places like Legoland would be just one of the bonuses of being a Blue Peter Badge holder and seeing as last year I used up loads of Tesco vouchers to pay for their year's passes, I have an incentive to make sure that I don't have to do the same again this year. I might even be able to use the Tesco vouchers for something for me (whoa now that would be a novelty).
So, did they like my suggestion? Well, not much. It was met with what I can only describe as 'lukewarm' enthusiasm. In fact even the word enthusiasm is probably a bit strong. But, hey, I'm a mother and ve have vays of making zee little people do what ve vant them to.
So plan A is that I'll nag them in the hope that they might eventually they might give in (possibility it might work, but it might just make them even more resistant).
Plan B I could just send it in myself pretending that it was from them, but that would probably be morally wrong (if I had any morals left).
Or for plan C I could go for the non-coercive method , i.e. give in and just blow all my Tesco vouchers on this year's passes.
Ah, the difficult decisions forced upon us poor parents.
It did snow today, however. Did I take a photo of it? No.
We were sat watching rubbish morning tv in the lounge when ds1 tore down the stairs and shrieked 'it's snowing it's snowing!'. So we all rushed out the front door into the freezing cold front garden and stood there looking hopefully into the sky. And yes, with a bit of imagination, there were incy wincy teeny little dandruff flakes of something cold and icy. Not exactly snow, but near enough. A few schoolkids trudging past our house to school gave us a rather strange look. I suppose our ragged half-dressed bunch stood in their socks on the garden path running around trying to eat the non-existent snow flakes falling down, was probably a rather bizarre sight. At least it's a bizarre sight if you don't belong to our family. If you belong to our family then bizarre is relative.
A short while later on the way to get in the car for preschool, poor dd1 let out a sigh of disappointment, ' but I thought there'd be heaps and heaps of snow, where's it all gone?'.
Ah well. Life is full of little disappointments and snow in southern England is definitely one of them. The sky is grey, the wind is biting, we are all freezing our little wotsits off, and the only demonstration we have of exciting - or even slightly interesting - weather is a few pathetic flakes of vaguely cold stuff that disappear as quick as bubbles blown from a cheap pot of bubble mixture.
I suppose being a home educator I could have used it as the start of a discussion on the water cycle or global warming. In fact I should be full of guilt that we didn't go on to perform some scientific experiment freezing and thawing water, or look through an atlas at places in the world that have proper snow. But we were late, it was cold and I was grumpy (probably because we were late and it was cold). Besides, if I turn every conversation into an educational example my children will stop listening to me altogether. Methinks perhaps it's already too late.
********************
Anyway there has been progress in the household of a sort. Ds1 and 2 have been making a stopframe animation using their playmobil and an animation package that we've hooked up via my laptop to a basic webcam. We've had the package for some time, but only really used the drawing aspect of it. It took a bit of getting used to, and the kids had an annoying habit of keep clicking buttons and copying over frames that they'd already done (grrr), but I think the result was pretty good for a first attempt. Unfortunately it's meant that my laptop, my nice shiny all-for-me laptop, has now been touched by small people from the planet child. I'm not sure this is a path I wish to go down.
I suggested to the kids that they should send in their animation(s) to Blue Peter, with an accompanying film about how they made it, in an attempt to get a blue peter badge each. I'd like to say that this suggestion is entirely altruistic, but it isn't because there would be some rather good financial benefits for moi. Free entry for the kids to places like Legoland would be just one of the bonuses of being a Blue Peter Badge holder and seeing as last year I used up loads of Tesco vouchers to pay for their year's passes, I have an incentive to make sure that I don't have to do the same again this year. I might even be able to use the Tesco vouchers for something for me (whoa now that would be a novelty).
So, did they like my suggestion? Well, not much. It was met with what I can only describe as 'lukewarm' enthusiasm. In fact even the word enthusiasm is probably a bit strong. But, hey, I'm a mother and ve have vays of making zee little people do what ve vant them to.
So plan A is that I'll nag them in the hope that they might eventually they might give in (possibility it might work, but it might just make them even more resistant).
Plan B I could just send it in myself pretending that it was from them, but that would probably be morally wrong (if I had any morals left).
Or for plan C I could go for the non-coercive method , i.e. give in and just blow all my Tesco vouchers on this year's passes.
Ah, the difficult decisions forced upon us poor parents.
Thursday, 28 February 2008
Finding your work
I've currently found myself in the situation where I am reading around 4 or 5 books at the same time. No this isn't my usual scatty 'where-did-I-put-that-book-nevermind-I'll-start-another-one' behaviour, but a pleasant side effect of ordering too many books from Amazon, them all arriving within days of each other, and me not being able to resist peeking into each new arrival.
There's something truly wonderful about receiving a book in the post. In my imagination the books are individually wrapped in brown parcel paper and tied with string, smelling of exotic libraries in foreign places.
In reality they appear in a dull-looking padded envelope sandwiched in between bills and junk mail, and mostly they smell of the sorting office floor where they've probably been kicked around a bit.
But at least our regular postman is considerate enough to knock on the door and pass them over in person, a huge improvement on the relief postman who will try and stuff anything forcibly through our rather narrow letterbox. If on the rare occasion we are actually out, our lovely postman will carefully place the packages in the porch behind our green recycling bin. Sometimes I don't notice them there and have the surprise of finding them a day or two later when I'm not expecting them. It's almost as good as finding a ten pound note in a pocket that you didn't know you had, except that the latter is such a rare occurence that I don't believe it has ever happened to me.
One of the books I've just finished is John Holt's Freedom and Beyond. I'd like to say it's a beautifully written, eloquent examination of educational philosophy, but I'm not that posh and actually it's not always that well written (but who am I to criticise the acclaimed Master?). It does however make some very interesting points (in between the grumpy-old-man-bemoaning-the-state-of-society ramblings) and there is certainly lots of food for thought. Some of the issues I'm sure have already been covered in his other books; I have no idea in which order his books were written, but there is a great deal of overlap between them in terms of subject matter. A large proportion of this book is devoted to discussing Schooling and Poverty (plus a further chapter on Deschooling and the Poor) which make some pretty damning accusations against the American education system. These accusations are a common theme in most of his books, though there are occasions when he strangely holds up aspects of the English Education System as an example of better practice. I'm not so sure this would apply today.
Here is a quote from the book in which Holt is agreeing with the arguments of James Herndon (How to Survive in Your Native Land) :
'...no one can find his work, what he really wants to put all of himself into, when everything he does he is made to do by others. This kind of searching must be done freely or not at all.'
Sometimes you find someone says something that says exactly what you would wish to say if you found the words to say it.
There's something truly wonderful about receiving a book in the post. In my imagination the books are individually wrapped in brown parcel paper and tied with string, smelling of exotic libraries in foreign places.
In reality they appear in a dull-looking padded envelope sandwiched in between bills and junk mail, and mostly they smell of the sorting office floor where they've probably been kicked around a bit.
But at least our regular postman is considerate enough to knock on the door and pass them over in person, a huge improvement on the relief postman who will try and stuff anything forcibly through our rather narrow letterbox. If on the rare occasion we are actually out, our lovely postman will carefully place the packages in the porch behind our green recycling bin. Sometimes I don't notice them there and have the surprise of finding them a day or two later when I'm not expecting them. It's almost as good as finding a ten pound note in a pocket that you didn't know you had, except that the latter is such a rare occurence that I don't believe it has ever happened to me.
One of the books I've just finished is John Holt's Freedom and Beyond. I'd like to say it's a beautifully written, eloquent examination of educational philosophy, but I'm not that posh and actually it's not always that well written (but who am I to criticise the acclaimed Master?). It does however make some very interesting points (in between the grumpy-old-man-bemoaning-the-state-of-society ramblings) and there is certainly lots of food for thought. Some of the issues I'm sure have already been covered in his other books; I have no idea in which order his books were written, but there is a great deal of overlap between them in terms of subject matter. A large proportion of this book is devoted to discussing Schooling and Poverty (plus a further chapter on Deschooling and the Poor) which make some pretty damning accusations against the American education system. These accusations are a common theme in most of his books, though there are occasions when he strangely holds up aspects of the English Education System as an example of better practice. I'm not so sure this would apply today.
Here is a quote from the book in which Holt is agreeing with the arguments of James Herndon (How to Survive in Your Native Land) :
'...no one can find his work, what he really wants to put all of himself into, when everything he does he is made to do by others. This kind of searching must be done freely or not at all.'
Sometimes you find someone says something that says exactly what you would wish to say if you found the words to say it.
Wednesday, 27 February 2008
The SPILT DRINK TEST
A friend and I once came up with the idea that parents can tell how mean they've been to their kids recently by using the 'SPILT DRINK TEST'.
In essence, the 'SPILT DRINK TEST' is revealed by assessing your children's response to knocking a cup of drink over in the lounge. Responses can be graded on a scale of good, ok or REALLY bad.
If the children ignore the spilt drink, don't bother telling you and carry on watching the DVD while cheerfully sitting in the puddle of liquid then you know you've been far too lax in the parenting department recently. Not exactly good, but not bad either.
If they promptly get up, get a cloth, clean up and THEN make a casual remark about it to you an hour or so later, then you're probably doing a pretty good job of parenting. Just don't brag about it to much to other parents because they will probably never speak to you again.
If, on the other hand, following a spilt drink occurence, the house suddenly becomes so quiet you can hear the rat in the garden tunnelling under your new compost bin then all is not well. On investigation (ie opening the lounge door) the worst response you can expect is a pale face looking up at you which promptly burst into tears and apologises profusely in a hysterical terrified sort of way. Then you know you've been REALLY MEAN to your kids for quite some time.
Well, let's just say that on the Spilt Drink Test we are so close to the hysterical apologetic teary face that I daren't even let my kids have drinks in the lounge for fear of what proof a spilt drink might provide about my recent tyrannical parenting.
But ON THE POSITIVE SIDE, apparently England, or more particularly Lincolnshire, had an earthquake at 1am this morning. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7266136.stm
OH JOY!
Not that we noticed.
Like most of the faintly exciting things that happen in England (so few I can't think of any other ones at all) we missed it. Slept through it. Bit of a bummer really, but hey, ho.
I did have some faint (desperate) hope that the shaking that we apparently experienced might have worked some magic on the DVD recorder which is doing a very good impression of a useless box of wires at the moment. As if I haven't got enough to contend with with picky children who like an excuse to moan about everything. Now I have a piece of technology with a similar temperament. It's not as if I'm asking for alot. ALL it has to do is:
(1) play DVDs - i.e. all of them, not just a select few that it deems are boring enough to be worth waving its little laser finger over, and NOT by spinning them so hard it sounds like our old lethal twin tub on its manic fast spin.
(2) record onto it's hard disc the programmes I want to record. Yes SOUND would be helpful as I'm not a professional lipreader. And no, I do not want a very long recording of the precise actions of a small child looking up and down through the freeview channel listings before settling on an episode of Top Gear.
and then
(3) allow me to copy the programmes I want to save onto a DVD. Yes, preferably ANY of the 40 or so I have spent a fortune buying in a desperate attempt to get the damned thing to work.
Whoever said that technology was here to make our lives easier? Perhaps they should be given the punishment of trying to make the DVD player work while cooking dinner, fending off a small ravenous puppy determined to stick its head in the burning hot oven, and putting up with the smell of rotting Giant African Land Snails, which have made the dining room a no-go area. He obviously wasn't a woman OR a home educator.
In essence, the 'SPILT DRINK TEST' is revealed by assessing your children's response to knocking a cup of drink over in the lounge. Responses can be graded on a scale of good, ok or REALLY bad.
If the children ignore the spilt drink, don't bother telling you and carry on watching the DVD while cheerfully sitting in the puddle of liquid then you know you've been far too lax in the parenting department recently. Not exactly good, but not bad either.
If they promptly get up, get a cloth, clean up and THEN make a casual remark about it to you an hour or so later, then you're probably doing a pretty good job of parenting. Just don't brag about it to much to other parents because they will probably never speak to you again.
If, on the other hand, following a spilt drink occurence, the house suddenly becomes so quiet you can hear the rat in the garden tunnelling under your new compost bin then all is not well. On investigation (ie opening the lounge door) the worst response you can expect is a pale face looking up at you which promptly burst into tears and apologises profusely in a hysterical terrified sort of way. Then you know you've been REALLY MEAN to your kids for quite some time.
Well, let's just say that on the Spilt Drink Test we are so close to the hysterical apologetic teary face that I daren't even let my kids have drinks in the lounge for fear of what proof a spilt drink might provide about my recent tyrannical parenting.
But ON THE POSITIVE SIDE, apparently England, or more particularly Lincolnshire, had an earthquake at 1am this morning. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7266136.stm
OH JOY!
Not that we noticed.
Like most of the faintly exciting things that happen in England (so few I can't think of any other ones at all) we missed it. Slept through it. Bit of a bummer really, but hey, ho.
I did have some faint (desperate) hope that the shaking that we apparently experienced might have worked some magic on the DVD recorder which is doing a very good impression of a useless box of wires at the moment. As if I haven't got enough to contend with with picky children who like an excuse to moan about everything. Now I have a piece of technology with a similar temperament. It's not as if I'm asking for alot. ALL it has to do is:
(1) play DVDs - i.e. all of them, not just a select few that it deems are boring enough to be worth waving its little laser finger over, and NOT by spinning them so hard it sounds like our old lethal twin tub on its manic fast spin.
(2) record onto it's hard disc the programmes I want to record. Yes SOUND would be helpful as I'm not a professional lipreader. And no, I do not want a very long recording of the precise actions of a small child looking up and down through the freeview channel listings before settling on an episode of Top Gear.
and then
(3) allow me to copy the programmes I want to save onto a DVD. Yes, preferably ANY of the 40 or so I have spent a fortune buying in a desperate attempt to get the damned thing to work.
Whoever said that technology was here to make our lives easier? Perhaps they should be given the punishment of trying to make the DVD player work while cooking dinner, fending off a small ravenous puppy determined to stick its head in the burning hot oven, and putting up with the smell of rotting Giant African Land Snails, which have made the dining room a no-go area. He obviously wasn't a woman OR a home educator.
Tuesday, 26 February 2008
All quiet on the Home Ed Front...
Well, it's been a deliberately quiet few days wrt home education. After a visit from friends and their daughter 2 weeks ago and some rather intense socialising the previous few weeks (enough to put paid to all the 'what about socialisation' quesions!) we had a week of hiding at home during our local half term, avoiding the crowds.
That's not to say that the kids haven't been occupied. Ds1 and 2 spent a couple of saturdays at a local free animation class. I'd seen the poster the day before the first session and on finding there were hardly any children attending (why?) I phoned round some of our local home educators who soon filled the group with their kids. As always, the boys' animation had a rather violent theme - there's usually a killer mutant 'something' trying to take over the world - but having seen a quick draft version of their mutant killer rabbits (in plasticine) it looked fantastic for 8 hours of teamwork. There's still the sound to be edited on, apparently one of the adults does this, and then we will get to see the finished result plus other children's efforts during a screening this Saturday.
I need to get my head around the couple of animation programmes we have on our pc at home. the kids use two drawing ones (from http://www.2simple.com/). There is also the facility to do stopframe animation using one of our basic windows packages, but I'm yet to work out how. They're all fairly clunky programmes and our pc seems to struggle with anything at the moment, so it may be a case of having to buy a new pc for the kids before we can get anything to work. As I have a new laptop my personal urge to buy a new efficient pc is rather diminished, but I think there will come a point when the kids are totally fed up with it's constant misbehaviour and refusal to play their favourite games.
After a long period of little structured 'work' I'm hoping to start up 'The story of the world' again soon, a really good children's history book/curriculum. Although I've been progressively getting rid of workbooks off the shelves, and we're mostly autonomous in our educational style, I think the kids are missing a bit of structure and direct adult interaction. Ds1 even asked when we were going to do some more history, so I think that's probably a good sign (there are obviously some positive advantages to leaving them to their own devices for a few months). Japan during the middle ages was our last theme that we were working on and there's still plenty of scope for doing more on this. I've plans to look at Japanese art and also try out some Haiku (have I got the spelling correct?) with the kids. We might even get to do some reading about Samurai. Then I have ambitions for the kids to go sketching in a local museum, an anthropological museum that has literally thousands of little and large artefacts from all over the world and I'm sure they have a Samurai 'outfit'. Is 'outfit' the right word? - uniform?- oh I dunno. At least if they have weapons of some sort it will please the boys. Of course these are all possible plans and in the world of home educating very little goes according to plan. FLEXIBILITY and the patience of a Saint seems to be the key to a calm home educating life.
That's not to say that the kids haven't been occupied. Ds1 and 2 spent a couple of saturdays at a local free animation class. I'd seen the poster the day before the first session and on finding there were hardly any children attending (why?) I phoned round some of our local home educators who soon filled the group with their kids. As always, the boys' animation had a rather violent theme - there's usually a killer mutant 'something' trying to take over the world - but having seen a quick draft version of their mutant killer rabbits (in plasticine) it looked fantastic for 8 hours of teamwork. There's still the sound to be edited on, apparently one of the adults does this, and then we will get to see the finished result plus other children's efforts during a screening this Saturday.
I need to get my head around the couple of animation programmes we have on our pc at home. the kids use two drawing ones (from http://www.2simple.com/). There is also the facility to do stopframe animation using one of our basic windows packages, but I'm yet to work out how. They're all fairly clunky programmes and our pc seems to struggle with anything at the moment, so it may be a case of having to buy a new pc for the kids before we can get anything to work. As I have a new laptop my personal urge to buy a new efficient pc is rather diminished, but I think there will come a point when the kids are totally fed up with it's constant misbehaviour and refusal to play their favourite games.
After a long period of little structured 'work' I'm hoping to start up 'The story of the world' again soon, a really good children's history book/curriculum. Although I've been progressively getting rid of workbooks off the shelves, and we're mostly autonomous in our educational style, I think the kids are missing a bit of structure and direct adult interaction. Ds1 even asked when we were going to do some more history, so I think that's probably a good sign (there are obviously some positive advantages to leaving them to their own devices for a few months). Japan during the middle ages was our last theme that we were working on and there's still plenty of scope for doing more on this. I've plans to look at Japanese art and also try out some Haiku (have I got the spelling correct?) with the kids. We might even get to do some reading about Samurai. Then I have ambitions for the kids to go sketching in a local museum, an anthropological museum that has literally thousands of little and large artefacts from all over the world and I'm sure they have a Samurai 'outfit'. Is 'outfit' the right word? - uniform?- oh I dunno. At least if they have weapons of some sort it will please the boys. Of course these are all possible plans and in the world of home educating very little goes according to plan. FLEXIBILITY and the patience of a Saint seems to be the key to a calm home educating life.
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