Start of the year

The year has properly started now. We’ve been doing explicitly educational things with the children again, and this has been made easier by the furniture shuffling and clearing out that we did over the holidays. (Woo-hoo! We know how to celebrate Jesus’ birthday! And Katy’s!) So, now each of the children has their own drawer with their current workbooks in, and we have other stuff on shelves or in plastic crates. It makes life much easier this way – the children know where to get things from and occasionally *gasp* get things out by themselves. I try to get the boys started on some English or Maths before I leave for work, so that they don’t have chance to get into can’t-be-bothered mode after breakfast which also makes life easier for Katy. (We now have to do the same magic to the rest of the house, which is not something that I’ll write up like this:
We sorted out the rest of the house. And then we had lunch.)

Katy’s been battling a nasty cold / cough / general bleurgh feeling for nearly a fortnight, which she’s now finding rather boring. But she has found several games on Miniclip, including the cousin of Lemmings called Scribble. The children all like it – L does some with help from Katy and so learns better mouse control, and J is quite into it. It helps with problem solving and forward thinking I reckon, and doesn’t involve death or gore.

J’s football started again and he enjoyed it again, despite it being less well-run than usual as one of the proper instructors didn’t turn up so emergency random instructors / parents filled in. On the way back from football we picked up L’s Bookstart pack from the library so now she has her own book bag and two books. I really like BookStart – it’s a state-funded thing that is at least partly successful in its aims, which are very noble ones (getting children to like books and reading, to get parents to encourage reading and not rely on TV or computers, and as a by-product spend time reading with their children and not shouting at them etc.). No massive intrusive waste-of-money database, no mis-calculation of how much people owe (it’s always 0) – it just works as far as I can see. It’s too easy to be cynical about state-run things, so I have to remind myself of when things work.

K got a dinosaur moulding kit for Christmas, where you pour plaster of paris into dinosaur moulds, paint the dinosaurs and turn them into fridge magnets or badges. He finished off the first batch yesterday by painting them – he did a good job and he’s chuffed with making something he enjoys. There’s a local HomeEd group meeting tomorrow about favourite things – he’s asked to take pizza and his Uneversaurus book which my parents got him for Christmas and he loves (with good reason – it’s excellent).

J bought a chess set in a tin with some pocket money last week and we played with it for the first time today (him vs. K and me). J and K insist on calling the foot-soldiers prawns, although K did experiment with prunes. With these exceptions K’s got the names of the pieces sorted, and how they can move basically OK. J’s at the stage where I’m trying to get him to think what his opponent could do in the move after his i.e. plan ahead a bit. If we do this regularly they’ll quite quickly realise how shallow my chess skill is and start beating me – time to start learning how to do it properly rather than relying on pinning the king in the back row with two rooks.

Another way in which the year has properly started is we had our covenant service today. The start of the Methodist church year is officially in September some time – ministers change churches on the Big Day in September and so on – but I always think it starts in January at the covenant service, and it’s the time to make the more meaningful New Year’s resolutions.

J and I had an interesting discussion during and after the service. At one point the service includes “holy catholic church” and he thought that was wrong because we were in a Methodist church using a Methodist service book. I said that it meant “including all sorts of things or people”, and pointed out the noun/adjective and big/little C differences. Then we went on to decoding the Christian jargon a bit – folly, sin, mercy, salvation – which aren’t everyday words.

Oh, and Prison Break starts again tomorrow, and Law and Order: Criminal Intent already has. Woo hoo! I like watching dramas where the hero is clever and doesn’t just punch their way to success. I feel sorry for Eames sometimes – she’s a bit like Watson, just padding out Holmes’ flashes of brilliance so that they can be fully appreciated rather than blurring into one.