A week in the life

These are a few of my favourite things

One morning this week I had a chance to just sit quietly at breakfast time and realised that the table was full of my favourite things.

The first daffodils we’ve had this year:

A lovely scone with home made jelly (apple and sloe gin flavoured).

A tea pot full of Earl Grey tea – the tea pot is very very important to just how relaxing this feels.

I loved noticing all these things and it made me think about more things that I love that I could see – my red fleece blanket from Ikea which I snuggle up with every winter night and at camps, my brown teddy bear that Jonathan gave me and a book from the library.

Really want to spend more time appreciating my favourite things this year.

Thursday

I’ve blogged every other day this week so I have decided to blog everyday for the whole week so we can have a record of a week in our lives.

So in the interests of full disclosure here’s what we did after I had blogged yesterday. the thing with home education is that many of us don’t keep school hours. So I picked up the girls (and friends) from expedition club. Bickered on the way home with rebekah about what dates we had agreed for what activities etc. etc. Quick dinner again – potato wedges, courgettes, reduced breaded chicken from Sainsbury’s and salad.

Then the girls presented the work they had done for the environmental science IGCSE – it was a week and half overdue! It was about birthrates and death rates and different climate zones. Jonathan helped out by explaining to rebekah how a key worked on one of the diagrams!

Then Lark Rise to Candleford this lead to lots of discussion about changing work practices, the industrial revolution and housing in the 20th century – the girls drifted away leaving Martin talking only to me!

So back to Thursday. The last of Jonathan’s circus course today. So there was lots of practising to do and a Splat challenge for Jonathan. I managed to sneak out to the lovely wool shop in Ventnor and buy some new wool and needles! Martin snuck out to the library – yes really – Martin who doesn’t read went to the library and borrowed an actual book!

Then we had to dash back, pick up the car from the garage, rush round Lidl to try unsuccessfully to get Jonathan some cheap shoes and get back for lunch. Ruth had left to go climbing by the time we got back and Rebekah had made some lovely sweet potato and lentil soup. Not sure exactly what the girls had done in the morning Ruth had done some Environmental science work and Rebekah appears to have reorganised her bedroom as well as sorting lunch.

Next up Rebekah was taking Jonathan to the local youth centre for a Lego play and Wikaniko reps talk. Ruth and I were doing felting with a couple of friends just some basic dreadlock hairbands.

Had a great time doing the felting – haven’t done any for ages and really enjoyed it – looking forward to doing my felt bag making course now.

Rebekah and Jonathan arrived home, Jonathan liked playing with my friends toddler for a while before everyone headed home and it was yet another rushed dinner. Martin has a 6.30 meeting and the girls need to get out for circus. So it’s pasta and pesto made more interesting by Rebekah doing some onions, sweetcorn and courgettes to go with it.

Dinner involves discussion about the too many things we want to do on Saturday – the protest against the cuts is definitely out, some want to go to Ian Boyd’s bird walk some want to do Roundabout exchange – cleaning hour needs doing and Martin wants to work on the van. We’ve been pretty busy all week so not sure what if anything we’re going to manage to fit in on Saturday – key thing is not to feel stressed and remember the value of idleness.

Histree Walk – Venerable Oaks

We had a fantastic walk this morning. It was one of the Histree Trail series. I picked up all of the walk leaflets from the libary about 3 years ago but we hadn’t managed to do any of the walks. Sam had organised a walk so we were motivated to go and do the walk.

I say we but once again it was me and Jonathan the girls were busy with English classes, working on band stuff and messing about at Cowes beach:

So Jonathan and I headed out to Ryde to do the Venerable Oaks Histree walk. After a typically late HE start we set off – a small and slightly unusual group – there were no girls at all and a higher adult to child ratio than usual too.

We walk down paths round the back of Binstead that I had never been down. When we got past Pucker Copse we should have found a “Veteran Oak….well loved” However what we actually found was a huge oak which had fallen over. This gave the children a fantastic place to play.

After we had spent long enough playing and eating bourbon biscuits (the staple diet of HE outings – their vegan so OK for everyone except the wheat free!) we moved on towards Quarr.

We walked along Coronation Lane down the row of poplar trees and noticed the large clumps of mistletoe mentioned in the tree trail.

We had some great views along this part of the walk, across the Solent to the mainland

and saw some of the Quarr Abbey horses and ponies.

We carried on ladies walk stopping to discus the stone idol on the the archway to the church yard and look at the strangely shaped oak besides what was the infirmary chapel.

We finished off the walk and headed home. A very late lunch for me and Jonathan and then more Big Toe Books and Hama beads for Jonathan and blogging for me!

Another good day here – and the weather was fantastic and spotting snow drops and daffodils out in the sunshine really made my heart glad 🙂

A day home educating actually at home – well for me and Jonathan anyway!

Jonathan and I had plans for today. Yesterday Jonathan had made some shortbread and crispie cakes at the HE meet – but they weren’t dairy free (I hadn’t been on top of things enough to remember to take alternative ingredients) so he couldn’t eat them. He was happy to give them away to the rest of us but I promised him that we would do some dairy free shortbread today, the other thing on the cards was some more Hama beading.

Despite going to bed at a reasonable time Jonathan didn’t wake up until 10, so Rebekah and I had plenty of time to sort out a very yummy quiche and a bacon sandwich before getting on with things with him. One of the things I love about home educating is that the children can get the amount of sleep that they need (well except for those doing paper rounds and at least they can go back to bed if they need to) when they need it, most of the time, he better get up in time for us to meet up with friends for a walk tomorrow!

So the day started well I’d printed off some bird sheet from the nature detectives site because yesterday we’d been bird spotting when we were waiting for Ruth to finish her 4×4 challenge meeting. I am so rubbish at bird identification that I couldn’t even manage to recognise a chaffinch but we remembered what it looked like and looked it up on the bird spotter sheet. So Jonathan ticked off all the birds he had spotted.

As he is interested in all birds of prey I also printed off the owl collage sheet too.

When he started this he asked me “Is there any Home Planet or Material World to listen to?” I am so proud of him – he might not be able to spell “found” (see bird sheet) or even write consistently in lower-case letters but he is 8 and he wants to listen to radio 4 science programs! I heard something about R4 and R7 wanting to encourage younger listeners we are definitely doing our bit here!

We now got a text asking if Jonathan’s friend could come over while his siblings and Ruth and Rebekah went to cut down trees or something in the rain with the rangers (this is their regular Tuesday afternoon session), we agreed that this was good as long as we carried on with the things we wanted to do.

After we’d finished with home Planet we moved on to Radio 7 and Matilda on Big Toe Books ( we did A Hat Full Of Sky last week).

Lunch time and the yummy quiche and then Samuel came to join us.

We made the shortbread (dairy and wheat free to cope with everyone in both families dietary needs)

and then moved on to more craft activities. Jonathan decided to give Samuel the choice of making camouflage arm warmers or doing some Hama beading (at some point in the morning’s proceedings Jonathan had managed to make a Hama Bead giant).

They decided on the arm warmers and made them very quickly, the most difficult part was cutting out the felt.

Wristies finished it was time for them to head off and play Lego. the whole time everything else had been going on there was loads of discussion about Dungeons and Dragons and setting up their characters.

Samuel left and Jonathan finished off listening to Matilda. He played on Runescape, had dinner and did the dishes then watched a children’s wildlife program Deadly Something or Other on the iplayer with Ruth and off to bed.

I have no idea really what the girls have been doing all day – it has involved musical instruments, cooking, playing hockey and volley ball, being out in the woods with the rangers and heading off to play rehearsals – they just turned up at meal times and asked for food and money!